It’s Good to be an Optimist.
Founder: Swish Goswami
Located: New York, New York
Start-Up: Technotronics
Education: Currently attending the University of Toronto
When it's a struggle to just fit work, gym, and sleep into your busy schedule, it can be difficult to be optimistic. But I can say, it really makes my day when I run into or have a conversation with someone who has a positive light on life and doesn't get bogged down by the mundane. Recently, I had the chance to speak to an optimistic entrepreneur, Swish Goswami, and he kindly shared a lot of great advice for any budding entrepreneurs. Currently, he has a number of interesting projects going on in New York City.
Swish Goswami was born in Singapore, in 1997, and moved to Canada when he was 9 years old. Growing-up in a hyper-competitive environment in Singapore, Swish notes that young people compete on every possible level, from sports to academics. Even though there is a big one up mentality, it is quite healthy given the way the country is going; a city filled with competition and talent, and Swish still embraces this type of lifestyle.
Soon after he moved to Canada, his entrepreneurial journey started. When he was 9 years old, him and his dad started a toy hover craft company, and although it only hovered a few centimetres off the ground, they sold one toy. This sparked the number of more successful non-profits he founded later in high school. As he continued his journey, he didn't fall so much in love with the engineering side; it was the marketing aspect that excited him. In his early teens, Swish joined a program called Junior Achievement in Canada, a program to help high school students learn about entrepreneurship. His drive pushed him to do everything to get a spot in the program, and even though most of the people around him were older than him, his company was nominated Alberta's company of the year in the program. His parents quickly realised that the traditional doctor or lawyer routes may not be for him, and they also started supporting and pushing him into the entrepreneurial route. Taking a visit to his Dad’s day job re-affirmed his reasons for taking on a more creative path (without the cubicle).
Moving from his experiences in social entrepreneurship, he is currently working on 3 projects in New York. He's working with Fortune 500 companies on improving their LinkedIn and Medium strategy, he's working part-time at a sports venture capital firm, and he is working on a start-up called Technotronics. Technotronics is a wearable start-up with the idea to build a product that would go on an athlete’s knee and shoe, which would connect to an augmented reality headset. This would help inform coaches on the biometrics of the player like their basic vitals, fatigue, balance, and would help to optimize the player’s rest time and prevent injury. The idea started to come together after a conversation with Trevor Booker, a basketball player from the Brooklyn Nets. Swish always wanted to be a basketball player, but realised at 16/17 years of age that he was likely to short and not strong enough to make that his next career move. With Trevor behind him, he realised he could still be part of the game in other ways.
Currently, Technotronics has 3 founders, including Swish, his high school debate partner, and a wearables expert. After about 7 moments of “let’s go,” they finally started. Given that they are all located in different cities, they split up and assigned each other different tasks to complete. One drew out a sketch of what the product would look like, the second created a marketing plan along with a business plan, and finally, Swish reached-out to potential investors. After about 3 weeks without talking, they all thought the project was dead, but decided to meet anyway. It turns out they all had done their tasks, and they were all really excited about the idea and were ready to continue. Swish noted these 3 tasks are particularly important when you are just starting a business.
Nowadays, Swish has reached a stride where he no longer really needs motivation. In the early days, he noted, there were definitely days he would want to come home and just melt into his bed. But the big thing is that he reminds himself of how privileged he is to be in the position he is in with his incredible family and great support, and to remember at the end of the day, he is writing his legacy whether he wants to or not. He continued “Whatever I do will be in the book of Swish, and I want Chapter 20 to be really cool with lots of experiences and people.”
Swish kindly shared some great advice he's received from his mentors. Swish has had 3 big mentors in his life and they’ve given him a lot of great advice. First, Trevor Booker says to keep things simple. The first time Swish described his idea to Trevor, he was way too technical, and learned the best way to brand yourself is to keep things simple. Second, Michael Hyatt, a dragon on Dragon’s Den, told Swish to live a minimalist life, money should have value, save up. The greatest freedom you can attain is when you don’t have to worry about money. The only way one can do that is by not spending frivolously. Third, Gary Vaynerchuk, another huge influence for Swish, noted that it is really important to not only get to know who you are but to truly do things that align with your true passions and to not fake who you are. Realise who you are and go all in on those passions.
Get to know Swish!
He is a big optimist! He is willing to try everything and is willing to help people out.
If he wrote a book, he would call it You Inc. or Swish. The former being a book about personal branding and how you can come out as a thought leader in your field, and the latter, in Swish’s words “super original and people would think what the hell is that and buy it.”
His favorite place he has travelled to is Cologne, Germany. Swish noted this was such a small, serene place he felt so at peace at. Such a weirdly creative place with incredible design. The second place would be Singapore.
Some great advice from Swish: don’t speed through things. Patience is highly undervalued and people aren’t willing to wait for it or see the bigger picture. Things take time to germinate. Really trust others. His current business has come to fruition because he trusted his 2 co-founders, who are both located in different cities. He humbly noted that he used to do all the work because he didn’t think people could do the work to his standards, and noted that this was a rather immature view. In start-ups, you need to wear different hats and you need to trust people 100%. For anybody contemplating starting a business, just start somewhere. Don’t plan too much, get feedback, create a prototype, and move forward by building out a plan.
Swish will continue to fit as much as he can in his 24-hr daily schedule, including creating content for platforms like LinkedIn, speaking, writing, investing and packing as much in as he can. Try something new and try to approach the world with a more optimistic view. Remind yourself what an awesome city you live in and how many amazing people you are surrounded by. If you’d like to hear more about what Swish is working on, please check out his website. If you have any questions for me, please reach-out through social media.
