The New Quant Times

Welcome to The New Quant Times. This month, we chat with Guang Cui, an MIT graduate and ex-quant trader who has worked at Five Rings, Jane Street, and Akuna Capital. Today, he's the CTO and co-founder of Miyagi Labs, building an AI tool that transforms Youtube videos into personalized courses..

Q:

So, let's start with a brief introduction, who you are, what you do, and we can go from there.

Guang:

Yeah, sure, cool. Well, I'm Guang. I'm from Maryland. I went to school at MIT, studied computer science, and I guess I got thrown into the quant world when I was in college. Then, I did a couple of internships and worked fulltime for a little over a year, and now I've started my own company with a college friend who also has a finance background. We've been running it for about six months.

Q:

Nice, cool.

What was the path you took to get into quant? Was it like a spur of the moment thing, or was it something you had your mind on for a long time?

Guang:

I would say maybe it's a little different these days, but at the time, I didn't think it was that popular going into college, so I think people didn't really know about it, but I did math and computer science back when I was in high school. I really enjoyed that, and I think once I got into college, there were career fairs and, at the time, that's when people started to talk about it. I think quant firms, especially these days, are pretty aggressive in recruiting. So yeah, I sort of started interviewing. Some of my friends were doing it, and I figured I'd check it out, see how it was. And yeah, I guess that's how I got into it.

Q:

Kind of just how things lined up for you. I guess.

Guang:

Yeah. I'd say so.

So were you into math competitions and stuff, back in high school?

Yeah, mostly early part of high school, but also, I guess later too, I was a math team captain. I would say I was definitely in that world, which certainly helps for the quant interviews.

You said you enjoyed some parts of the job. Would you say, on a day to day basis, you felt pretty challenged and happy with what you were doing?

Yeah, I would say so. I think it certainly comes with every job, and there are pros and cons to it. I think the things that I enjoyed were, like, the game aspect of it. I think a lot of firms will make you play games and teach you how to play poker because it's sort of similar to some aspects of trading. I really liked when we did mock trading or played some of these games. And it was a bit of a mini-game where you could try to get better. It was pretty competitive, and you could see how well you were doing. Those are some of the things I liked about it. I enjoyed mentoring the interns. Then at a certain point, it became a little bit repetitive. For me, startups seemed more interesting. There are more opportunities to have a greater impact, in my opinion. So that's why I sort of switched over recently.

Was entrepreneurship something you had always wanted to do, or was that also a spur of the moment thing?

Hmm. I would say I had more of an idea for entrepreneurship earlier on than for quant. I think growing up, I wasn't entirely sure what I was going to do, but being an entrepreneur was certainly up there. So this has definitely been in the works longer than being a quant trader, for me.

How does your day-to-day now compare to when you did work in quant?

Very, very different. As a quant trader, things were hard, but once you learn the ropes, your day-to-day is mostly the same. You'll spend hours trading. You'll also be looking at the markets and thinking, "Okay, here's where I can potentially see some sort of signal, and I'll incorporate that into my next day." And of course, there are other research projects you can do, but overall, it's very confined to one thing. Now, as a startup founder, it's a very, very different day-to-day, and we're just in the early stages. I'm sure it's going to be a lot different a few years down the line, but as of right now, we have to code a lot. The coding is quite different. It's also a lot more calling people, doing sales, and a bunch of random one-off things as well. Now it's like almost all of my days are consumed by the startup, which is great because I think I'm way more invested. At the end of the day, my quant job was sort of a nine-to-five, nine-to-six job, whereas now it's, you know, a bigger part of my identity these days.

So wake up, start up, and then… more startup stuff and go to bed. Startup, that's you.

Exactly, yeah. I mean, I do have time to take breaks, socialize, have fun and stuff. But a lot of it is startup related.

Was there a notable inflection point for you where you're in quant and the next moment you're like "this is the right time to do my startup"?

Certainly a few. In quant, there's this whole payment cycle thing where you get your bonus at the end of every year or so, as well as signing bonuses. Because of that, there's an "ideal" time to leave, which is right after you've received your bonus. I've talked with friends who are in quant or other roles as well, and there's always a time when you could leave. So I was pretty sure I wanted to leave after I got this bonus. But on a deeper level, I realized that another year in quant would probably feel a lot like the one I'd just finished. The learning curve had started to level off, and that's usually a good sign it might be time to try something new. And I think that's also a pretty good sign to think about trying something new because—I don't know—I'm pretty young, and I don't want to be trapped in a job where I'm just doing the same thing over and over again. So I think when I was coming up on that year mark, I realized it might be fun to do something different.

Sort of premeditated, a little bit.

I would say, so, yeah.

Was there any overlap between what you did in quant and the idea behind Miyagi Labs? Where did this idea of transcribing YouTube videos into courses come from?

That's a good question. Well, the big reason behind what we're doing now is because both my co-founder and I used YouTube videos a lot when we were young to learn different things, whether it be math, chess, or even certain sports. YouTube is a very valuable resource, but it's also a huge platform that's not just educational. So we wanted to bring the educational side of that out, plus integrate AI into it. AI is quite good at helping you get better and understand different concepts. So that was a big part of it. I think with quant, I'm sure it's helped subconsciously to some extent, but I wouldn't say it was a huge part of why we started the company. It's funny, because my friend and I both did finance, but I wouldn't say finance is a huge part of what we do these days. Some of the skills have definitely carried over in some sense.

What you said about AI being good at helping people learn—I've had AI help me make a study guide for this topic, and then I'm like, okay, yeah, wow, pretty good.

Right? Exactly. What we're trying to do is streamline that. We want to make the user experience better so that you would come to our site if you wanted to learn anything, as opposed to just going straight to ChatGPT.

You've had experience at a few of the bigger firms, like Jane Street, Akuna, and Five Rings. Across all of those, were there any similar qualities you saw in the people who work there?

Similar qualities? Yeah, I would say so. The average person who's a trader is definitely on the more competitive side and pretty good with numbers. I'd say those are the big ones: being somewhat competitive and also being intuitive when it comes to numbers. I'd also say maybe being interested in playing games, whether it be poker or strategic board games. I think those are definitely skill sets that help as a quant trader, which is different from a software role or, like, maybe even a research role at some of these firms. Generally, all cool people, though.

The general consensus, or at least what I saw at school, was, people think you have to be a genius to get into quant. You know, gotta be "cracked" or whatever. Do you think, with enough diligence and tenacity, anyone can get in? Or do you really think there is some inherent intelligence that you need?

I think the inherent intelligence part is a bit overrated. It certainly helps in some capacity, but there are a couple of reasons people think that way. One big reason is that the interview process selects people who have done math in high school and such. And I don't know, I personally don't think that the interview process correlates to how well you do during your day-to-day as a quant trader. You could say the same thing for, like, LeetCode, SWE, and internships. I would say what's more important than just having that genius, "cracked" personality or something is being quite interested in quant and actually being passionate about both the industry and the willingness to get better. I've seen a bunch of people who were in college, freshman/sophomore year, who didn't do too much math growing up or things in the quant sphere, but they were able to land the internship and do really well just by staying curious, putting in the effort, and getting a little better every day or every week. In my opinion, that's a much more sustainable path forward.

Some great insight there.

Comparing what you just said to startups, I personally think anyone has the ability to go and make their own company, even more so now, with AI. In your opinion, do you think everyone has this same potential?

Yeah, I mean, similar concept, right? I feel like, generally, people can do more than they might think on average. I'm sure some people are different, but yeah, you'd be surprised by how much you can learn by just making it your full-time job to focus on a certain thing. Whether it's quant-related work or startups, I've learned a lot over the past year just by doing things on the job. That said, startups call for a slightly different skill set. You need a lot of passion and competitiveness to some extent, or at least drive, but there are a lot of other skills that are more interpersonal or more idea-heavy, basically. The startup world is such a big ecosystem, and you have to know a little bit about a lot of things rather than focusing deeply on one very specific problem, which is more typical in quant roles.

That's an interesting point about knowing a little bit about a lot of things, as opposed to really specialized knowledge.

Yeah. And I think, I mean, you probably should be quite good at, like, whatever your startup is as well. If you're doing an education startup, like we are, we're very passionate about teaching and learning. If you do a startup specializing in healthcare, it definitely helps for you to be in the medical space or have someone who's a doctor on your team. It's not like you can just zero in on that one thing; you have to understand how to talk to people and get sales. Yeah, the day-to-day is a lot more diverse than that.

That makes sense. I mean, I guess you're starting your own company, right? You're kind of doing like everything now at this point.

Yeah, exactly. A lot of different hats, as they say.

What's the future plan? Any big things planned that are coming up with your startup, or just things in general?

Yeah, absolutely. So right now, we have a lot of different features on the site. For example, if you're studying with a YouTube video, a PDF, or even a textbook, you can plug that into our site and we'll generate an entire course for you. We're working with a bunch of creators, some with millions of subscribers on YouTube, as well as schools that have a lot of learning resources online. We partner with them to create official courses you can take. Looking ahead, we're building on this foundation by adding more customized plans. For example, if you want to prepare for a specific test, like the SAT, we'll have a great way to do that. We're also creating a customized blackjack or poker learning experience so that, if you want to learn those games, we'll be the best place to do it. And years down the line, our goal is that if you want to learn any new skill or topic, Miyagi Labs will be the first place you go. There's a lot to do, but we're excited for the journey.

So like super personalized Khan Academy, almost an adaptive Khan Academy.

Yes, that's a great way to describe it. We do say that sometimes, like allowing other educators to become their own sort of Khan Academy, but for their niche, and we'd be the platform to host all of that.

Awesome, excited to see where you guys go with this.

…

[Normal thank yous and goodbyes]

Want us to interview someone or ask a specific question? Let us know at hello@topquantunis.com