My name is Kovid, and this is my story.
A 19-year-old boy steps into a job interview for the first time. Nervous and worried, he can only wonder if he will face a disaster. The interviewer asks him, as all interviewers do, “Tell me about yourself!”. He replies “Hi, my name is Kovid, I’m 19 years old, and somebody recently named a global pandemic after me.”
There’s a brief period of silence, then the interviewer bursts out laughing. He turns to his wife, mutes his mike, and says something. His wife nods. He’s hired. Of course, there’s still an hour of an interview to go, but he’s hired. I’m hired.
Kovid Bhaduri, Junior Researcher, Adrianople Group.
Kovid would spend the next few weeks reading a book a day. He came from a business bootcamp, straight out of high school. He had little idea how Special Economic Zones and private equity and network states worked, so he compensated by reading a bunch. Did he get to know everything there was to know about SEZs at the end of the week? No. But he got to know about everything he didn’t know. And that was a great start.
He used his newfound knowledge (or lack thereof) about SEZs to consult investors and institutional think tanks about buying into Special Economic Zones.
His work would take him everywhere, from an African Monarch planning to present his business park at Dubai world Expo, to a United Nations departments conducting research into SEZs, to a real estate tech company looking to expand into the industrial zones market. He was exposed to a lot and slowly, but surely, he became good at his job.
One fine day, his boss came to him and said we need to give a Venture Capital and Private Equity 101 class to our new interns, and our finance guy is on holiday. Can you help? Kovid wasn’t sure how he would, but he said yes.
The next day, he gave one of his greatest presentations in the company. The trick was simple, think of what you’re trying to teach as a story, and take your audience on a journey with you. Who is the end user of a Venture Capital firm? What is his life story? How is it affected by the industry of Venture Capital?
It is akin to sending a company you want to work for your story instead of your resume.
His boss was impressed. They soon decided Kovid should become a “partnerships manager” at the company. And so he did. Kovid, now 20, was a partnerships manager.
Being a partnerships manager was educational, but challenging. He learned a lot of important skills, like business development and long tedious hours of data entry. But there was no longer a cohesiveness in the efforts he was putting in. He had had some definite snags after being promoted, and he no longer felt passionate to give his everything to the cause.
He decided it was time for a new challenge.
But first, some river rafting and paragliding for a month.
Done, that was very fun.
Now that that was over, he joined his previous mentor Hannah (who taught him at the business bootcamp he came from!) in building the alternative education media brand, rebelEducator (rebelEducator.co). rebelEducator was working on a cause that was both incredibly important and incredibly close to Kovid’s heart. rebelEducator wanted to be the one-stop shop for parents’ education needs everywhere. It was the beaming voice against the public school system. It had the goal to become the most important voice in the alternative schools movement.
rebelEducator had the perfect mix of ingredients. A cause that was highly relevant and close to Kovid’s heart, a team that would take this to the skies, and the perfect timing for the parents to already be frustrated with the pandemic and be looking for alternative educational systems. By all metrics, this was the right work to do.
And the rebelEducator team was perfectly poised to take over.
Over the next few months, the rebelEducator team grew their Twitter following from 200 to 40000, and from one social media platform to multiple social media, a newsletter, a podcast, and a website.rebelEducator was seeing tremendous growth, and becoming an important voice in American education. Alongside this, Kovid himself started growing both professionally and personally.
The work he was doing with rebelEducator ignited a passion in him to learn all about learning and teaching. He started reading books and watching videos alongside his work for rebelEducator.
Soon he decided that wasn’t enough and started volunteering in schools. He went to Tanzania, and Cambodia and taught children to understand what education really means to the world. He started writing articles for education magazines and interviewing with innovative schools. He started reading more about education, and following more educators online. Both he, and rebelEducator, were making big waves, and people started taking notice.
A few months later rebelEducator became the main sponsor of “The Liberation of Education”. “The Liberation of Education” was building an annual event with the greatest minds in alternative education. They were later further joined by “The Youth Entrepreneur Award”, who were building a competition to reward young kids with entrepreneurial ventures.
Kovid began independently consulting for all three companies. He learned the valuable lesson of why people don’t usually work three jobs at once, and started hiring people to help him. He is now 21, and functions almost like a consultancy.
Kovid has built up a repository of marketing and operations skills. Over time, he has combined enough skills to make him somewhat of a niche. He has further leveraged himself using the skills of his hires, and become a competitively priced marketing bro, or “efficient asset” in marketing speak