Episode 93: From Actuary to Serial AI Start-up Founder with Sam Zheng
"Be a friend of uncertainty and try to analyse it and live with it instead of being, ‘I want to control it.’"
Sam Zheng, AI Start Up Founder
Sam Zheng is a Fellow of the Actuaries Institute and Co-founder of 477 Studio, which builds AI products and provides consulting services to help teams and organisations become AI-native. He previously co-founded Hyper Anna (CTO; Series A led by Sequoia, acquired by Alteryx) and Curious Thing (CEO; a voice AI platform for business phone calls, acquired by MaxContact), and is an active angel investor backing early-stage tech founders.
In this episode, Sam and I dig into what it actually takes to build a career (and a company) without the certainty most actuaries crave. We talk about why he never had a master plan, and why he's come to see that as a feature rather than a flaw. We unpack what it means to "become a friend of uncertainty" rather than trying to control it. And we get into the practical mechanics of becoming a generalist: how founders end up thinking like a product manager, a designer and an engineer all in the same week, and why the real skill isn't knowing everything - it's being comfortable saying "I don't know."
Key takeaways from the episode:
Ditch the master plan. Sam built his first start-up without one, and he came to see the absence of a rigid plan as part of what made the work enjoyable.
Reframe uncertainty as a relationship, not a threat. Analyse it and live with it, but don't try to control it.
Start building before you launch. Sam argues that now may not be the best time to start a start-up, but it is the best time to start building something, anything, that solves a problem you actually care about.
Let building make you a generalist. The process of building something forces you to think like a designer, an analyst and an engineer - and that's where the real skill compounds.
Know your runway before you leap. Sam's first tip for anyone considering a non-traditional path: be honest about how long you can survive without income.
Connect with Sam on LinkedIn.
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Views and opinions expressed by guests on this podcast are their own and do not represent the views of their places of work.
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