Neil Soni
We met up with Neil (who also happens to be one of the newest members on our Good St. team!) on a rainy, winter day in New York City.
How’d you discover Good St.?
I met Joe Teplow through my consulting work with The Estee Lauder Companies. We spent half of our first meeting talking about Good St.! I like that Good St. does verification work with charities and makes discovery of causes easy — that really connected with me.
Good St. is about making giving a part of our daily routines… What is a quirky daily routine of yours?
Regardless of what time I wake up — whether it’s at 5 am or 11 am, I always try to start my day with reading a book. I don’t usually get too far because I’m not mentally awake, but it’s become part of my routine. Right now I’m reading a book called Daily Rituals by Mason Currey.
What’s one GOOD change you’d like to see in the world?
There’s two that kind of overlap — women’s rights and education. I spent all of last November in India. One of the things that I saw that was encouraging but highlighted a big problem was that there’s a lot of government effort to stop discrimination against women. We’ve only leveraged half of the world’s brainpower; in many countries, women are still expected to stay in the house and have/take care of kids. I think as a world, we have to start taking advantage of women’s brainpower and encouraging them, and by doing so, we can double the number of people contributing solutions to problems.
What is a cause or organization you’re particularly passionate about? And why?
If I was going to say a cause that needs money to be solved, I would say Alzheimer’s Disease. It’s one of those things that has no real cure right now, and it’s as hard for the person going through it as it is for the family. The thing that is so scary for Alzheimer’s, is that the person who is sick disappears even though their body is still there. It’s a painful disease to watch. I support the Cure Alzheimer’s Fund. It’s super efficient, with the vast, vast majority of the money going towards research and is consistently rated among the best charities by CharityIQ.
On Good St. we believe that small change (like our daily quarters) can lead to big change… can you think of a particular experience in your life that you believe changed you, whether in a big or small way?
When I was in high school, I played a lot of tennis and I coached at a tennis club. Between senior year of high school and freshman year, one of my neighbors asked me for a private tennis lesson. I remember giving him a lesson, and I realized I made more money in that one hour session than I made with a day of minimum wage at the tennis club. So I thought maybe I should do this for more people. I started by making flyers, putting them in mailboxes, and going to the tennis club during the day but doing side lessons in the evening. I didn’t really have any entrepreneurs in my family or have any entrepreneurial background until then, but that small little decision, that tennis lesson, was what led me down the startup rabbit hole. It literally opened up a whole world to me that I didn’t even know existed until that moment.
Tell us about your past startup, The College People/College Zen!
The College People became College Zen in the end. With The College People — if you were a student in high school like somewhere in Newark and wanted to apply to Berkeley, odds are you didn’t know anyone there, so the idea was to set up video chats between the prospective student and someone at the university with a similar background as you to help give a better sense of what the campus was like. This stemmed from when I applied to college. I was going to commit to Hopkins, but my parents told me to visit Carnegie Mellon, and just by talking to the students I learned so much about the school and that completely swayed my decision to attend CMU. And I thought, why wasn’t there an easier way to do that without coming to campus?
College Zen was a Facebook-like tool to do a similar thing as The College People but with more stakeholders. As an example, high school guidance counselors often don’t know where students are applying… with College Zen, students added colleges to their lists, which let counselors passively understand that information, making the process more efficient, digital, and personal. The students who really connected with it most were students who go to low income schools. College Zen later fell into the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation through the College Knowledge Challenge.
After College Zen, probably the best experience of my career is Mom Trusted. I interned there for 4 months (remotely) while I was finishing up college and then actually took their full time offer, still not having met anyone on the team in person. I agreed, and I moved to California from Pennsylvania. The biggest factor in that was my interactions with the founder, Chaz Giles, and how much I felt I was learning by working with him. Among many things, the biggest personal learning I took away from the experience was how much more there is to learn in business and life. There’s no end to it.
Advice for someone interested in entrepreneurship?
Find a mentor as soon as possible. Be picky with who it is. Make sure it’s the right mentor, who has your interests at heart and is upfront with you when things are good but also when you’re messing up. Great ideas are important but a mismanaged great idea won’t go anywhere. The important thing is to have great skills, whether business, technical, or whatever, so that you’re able to execute when the time comes. Having a great mentor is the best way, in my opinion at least, to improve skills quickly.
Rapid Fire Good:
Good quote?
“If you ever start taking things too seriously, just remember that we are talking monkeys on an organic spaceship flying through the universe.”
— Joe Rogan
Good band/musician?
Weezer/Future
Good gift?
Anything that you know that they would really like but would never buy for themselves. For me, it’d be a coffee bean grinder!
Good place to visit?
Have visited: India in November 2015!
Want to visit: Belgium next month!
Good word?
Serendipity
Good food?
Thai food — especially Tom Yum Soup!
