This past Tuesday, the Gann Stock Market Club hosted prominent tech entrepreneur Doug Levin to speak about AI. Levin’s career began at Microsoft in 1987 where he helped develop Excel and went on to work in development, marketing, and even global distribution of cutting-edge software. His CV is impressive, he hosts a popular weekly podcast called Lessons from a Start-up Life and is an Executive Fellow at Harvard Business School – but he is also a nice Jewish boy from Brooklyn. You can see why the students wanted to bring him to the Gann campus! It was an inspiring, funny, and interactive talk and many thanks to the Stock Market Club for bringing this special guest.
Before he talked about anything tech, Levin shared that he learned to read from studying the Wall Street Journal while sitting on his dad’s lap. His Jewish immigrant parents had big and very specific plans for young Doug. One, that he would be a lawyer or doctor. Two, that he would journey north from Brooklyn to attend Columbia University in the bustling city of Manhattan. But there was one problem: Levin wasn’t interested in law or medicine. While classmates studied for the Bar or the Boards, Levin’s passion was in the realm of binary and blockchain. At 17, he hacked a bank (very illegal, not recommended) but exposed cybersecurity issues and offered solutions which led to his first job offer (mazal tov!)
Levin is best known for Black Duck Software, a 2002 start-up that helps companies find and fix problems in their coding. A highlight of Levin’s talk was his retelling of a story that speaks to the power of finding inspiration in unlikely places. While his baby duckling of a start-up went on to be sold for $600 million, Levin shared the charming origin story that began on a family trip to Cancun. While at the beach, Levin watched his 4-year-old daughter run across the sand to join her mom in the distance and in that moment “I couldn’t tell the difference between my wife and daughter,” Levin recounts with a smile, “at a distance, they looked to be the same size.” It’s a cool visual phenomenon where the brain basically guesses the distance wrong. Levin had an aha! moment: just as he couldn’t tell which figure was his child, companies couldn’t tell if their software was using legit and legal source code. Forty-eight hours later, Levin banged out a business plan alongside the “best engineer I ever had”, his beloved dog Trent.
Levin’s story is a testament to his natural abilities, but he also shared a difficult truth without mincing words: “In a couple of years, unless you use AI as a major force in your career, you will be unemployable.” Some students looked visibly surprised by this statement. One student asked why AI is so problematic in school if it’s so vital to professional life. This question allowed Levin to explain a deeper point. AI in modern careers boosts a person’s productivity and streamlines repetitive tasks to allow for more creativity. Education is the highly personalized, individual mastery of skills. AI used as a shortcut is not only academically dishonest – it robs a person of the richness and rigor of gaining knowledge that will enhance their lives professionally and personally.
Just as AI fluency matters, Levin reminded students that classic, old-fashioned qualities still matter most during a lifetime. Levin has sat at many tables where programmers are yelled at and humiliated – after all, it’s a stressful field. But Levin is, at the end of the day, a Jewish boy who was raised to respect and value others. In closing, he urged kids to familiarize themselves with AI tools like Curiosity, Cursor, and Pytorch and of course, ChatGPT. The unspoken advice? Get a dog!