Today we’d like to introduce you to Haig Hovsepian.
Hi Haig, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
My family and I immigrated to the United States from Armenia when I was young, ultimately settling down in San Diego. My ambition began at a young age. My father always tells the same story to anyone who will listen: I was 7 years old- only a short time after we immigrated to the USA- I brought the mail in from the mailbox. We lived in a small townhome in Carlsbad on Cazadero Drive. We received a postcard ad for a local wealth generation convention. I immediately ran inside and got my dad’s attention; “Dad! I have to go to this convention!”. “Why?” my father asked. “Because I’m going to be rich!” I said.
Money was always tight in our family. My parents used whatever savings we had to the purchase a small restaurant in 2006. It was a hole in the wall restaurant in Vista called Kabob Cuisine. They poured their heart and soul into running that restaurant, working long hours and giving it all their effort. Unfortunately, due to the economic impacts of the 2008 recession, we lost the restaurant and filed for bankruptcy.
Although I was young, I sensed my family had financial problems that many of my friends’ families didn’t. The challenge at the time was that I was too young to do anything about it, but seeing my family struggle so much just to make ends meet equally frustrated and motivated me to strive for success. After all, my parents came here so that my brother and I would have opportunities they didn’t have. This was a sacrifice I would not take advantage of.
I was never a great prospect for education, I did enough to get by and maintain a B average. I instead developed an obsession with entrepreneurship, particularly rags to riches stories. I stayed up late at night listening to Steve Jobs and other prominent entrepreneurs reflect on their journeys. At 16, I read ‘Think and Grow Rich’ by Napoleon Hill and ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’ by Dale Carnegie. I found a mentor in a new family friend who I now refer to as my uncle. An astute and successful businessman, my uncle became an invaluable resource in navigating all parts of my journey to achievement. I can’t overstate enough how valuable a good mentor can be.
The thesis of my teen years became: “I’m not successful yet, but I will be”. In my mind, success was never a question, it was an inevitability.
After graduating high school, I elected to go to college and take on student debt. This was a decision I would make a hundred times over as the experience served to teach me immensely. I enrolled with a major declaration in Business Entrepreneurship. My freshman year, I started a company called Clatch Socks. Clatch Socks provided custom socks to schools and organizations as a fundraising campaign. This was during a time when crew socks were in style, specifically in teenage fashion. I set up a supply chain with an international sock manufacturer and used a Python script I bought to scrape emails from school websites and email them my pitch.
I ran Clatch Socks for 4 years throughout my college career, selling to 122 schools nationwide and generating $64,000 in revenue. This wasn’t much, but it was great for a college kid with bills and debt. I learned some invaluable lessons in this endeavor, the most important being that I attempted something off the beaten path, and it actually (kind of) worked, albeit with many mistakes and tumbles.
Upon my college graduation, I moved back to San Diego and needed to support myself. I wanted to work in the start-up world, but I had no idea what I wanted to do. The $12K ARR from Clatch Socks wouldn’t score me a closet and a top ramen diet, so that was out of the picture. With no clear direction, I landed in a sales position with a start-up recruitment agency. I joined a core start up team of 6 alongside salespeople with years of prior sales experience. As the kid straight out of college, I wasn’t taken very seriously. I knew from the start that sales wasn’t the right fit for me, something was always missing. However, I had an intense drive to succeed, and after my first year I won the “US Rookie Salesperson of the Year” award, outperforming my colleagues by a large margin.
The money and accolades didn’t mean as much as the lack of purpose I felt in that line of work. Only a few weeks after winning this award, I spoke to a friend who participated in a coding bootcamp, ultimately switching his career to Software Engineering. As a tech head, I’d always held a fascination for software and its ability to disrupt. I quit my lucrative position in sales to join a coding bootcamp. This was an intense 6-month long bootcamp that involved 60–70-hour weeks spent learning software languages and principles. Throughout this process, I had to overcome severe spouts of imposter syndrome: am I smart enough to learn these concepts? Can I be a competent engineer with no real foundation in engineering? Will I be able to prove myself among competent engineers? Suffice to say I am very grateful these thoughts did not deter me from pushing through even when I felt overwhelmed.
It was an immense challenge, but I absolutely loved it. I knew this was what I wanted to do. Coding is a vehicle to bring ideas to life- akin to my principles rooted in entrepreneurship. I took a deep dive into the tech industry as a Software Engineer, and never looked back.
Upon graduating the bootcamp, I joined an early-stage tech start up local to San Diego as employee # 4. The startup was born out of an AI incubator. Our goal was to help business development teams achieve “Personalization at Scale”. We combined Open AI’s GPT3-a powerful natural language API, and the makers of ChatGPT- with publicly available prospect data to generate a highly personalized sales message programmatically. I had an incredible experience building such an innovative product, but circumstance ultimately brought me to the dream company I work for now: Smartcar.
Smartcar is a Series B tech start-up with ~50 employees. Smartcar is the API for cars. What Plaid does for banks, Smartcar does for vehicles. A stellar start up born out of Silicon Valley and backed by reputable investors; I knew I arrived to exactly where I belonged.
That brings us to today, I work on innovative solutions to modern day problems. I have the privilege of advancing my knowledge and expertise in entrepreneurship every day. I am challenged, but I face my challenges with gratitude:
I’m grateful that the struggles I faced as a child lead me to develop a drive that would lead me to success as an adult.
I’m grateful that I figured “hey, maybe I can sell socks to schools?”, starting my first business and not quitting when I messed up my first order.
I’m grateful that I worked hard at my first job, even though I really didn’t like what I did.
I’m grateful that I didn’t stay in that job, even though the financial outlook was comfortably positive.
I’m grateful that I didn’t convince myself that I wasn’t capable of doing what I wanted to do.
If you’re still here, thank you for reading all the way through! It means a lot. I’ll part you with my favorite words spoken by Steve Jobs:
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So, you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The road has been many things, but smooth is not one of them! I had so much ambition, but I didn’t know what to do with it. For myself, being on the right side of the road/moving towards my purpose meant everything, so when I found myself on the wrong side of the road, I had to balance the realities of having bills & financial pressures with the intention to redirect towards what felt right to me.
I left my career in sales to pursue my career as a software engineer. In doing so, I committed to 6 months of no income to develop skills that would pay off later. Those times were tough, and I didn’t even know if what I was trying would work out for me.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I work as a backend software engineer. I’m responsible for developing and maintaining the server-side of web applications and software. This line of work is critical helping start-ups scale by enabling them to handle a growing number of users, requests, and data.
I specialize in crafting APIs using Node.js, a JavaScript runtime environment.
I’m known for the enthusiasm I bring to my work. My work is a big component of who I am, and I really enjoy what I do. This equates to an enthusiasm to learn, an attitude which I strive to radiate to those around me.
I’m proud of how much I’ve been able to achieve at 26 years old. I started and ran a business, I achieved accolades as a top performer in sales, I successfully transitioned to the tech industry and have proven myself in a technical field, and there is so much more to be achieved!
I believe what sets me apart is my high degree of conscientiousness. I have a strong internal critic in my head that analyzes much of what I do. If I do something in a less than optimal way, I want to correct that behavior. I’m far from the smartest person in the room but my ability to self-correct has propelled me forward.
So maybe we end on discussing what matters most to you and why?
To have built a legacy I can be proud of. As a kid who came from a lower-class immigrant family that never did better than average in school, there was never much expected from me. That fueled me to dream bigger and bigger, as I wanted to far exceed these expectations.
What matters to me is to build something that changes the way the world works, even just a little bit, hopefully a lot. I’m an entrepreneur at heart, and when I think about what I can accomplish, a lot that comes to mind. I want to look back on my life and see some really awesome achievements, may even ones that helped some people out a little bit.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ready_set_hike/?hl=en
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hike-dev/
