Entrepreneur Interview: Syed Aziz

Yunhan Wang

179531347

MN30575

Maksim Belitski

May 11, 2018

Syed Aziz is a young entrepreneur based in Toronto who founded and runs Yonge Street Capital,

an asset management firm, with his partner. Through the course of our interview, we discussed

his early life, events which motivated him to start his own business, his beliefs and psychology,

and his current business.

Early Life (The Entrepeneur)

As a child and teenager, Syed was a natural athlete, not only good at one sport, but proficient at

many. In our discussion, he reinforced that many of the traits that made him into an athlete, such

as competitiveness and the desire to always improve oneself were directly transferable to the

business world. Furthermore, he gained an understanding of perspective, and the way that one is

viewed. As an athlete, especially in high school, people looked up to him, and through his own

self-awareness he gained the understanding that you are what you portray to others. This would

help him later on in the onset of his business, in the process of attracting clients. Though he

didn’t have any experience or clients to qualify him as a businessman at first, he believed that he

was, and in doing so, was able to portray the demeanor that would help him to secure his first

clients and inspire their confidence.

In his early high school years, around the ages of 16-17, Syed worked a minimum wage

job as a sales associate in Walmart and at the clothing retailer Winners. In fact, the experience

which crystallized his desire to start his own business and be his own boss was when he was

chewed out by his manager at the time for making a mistake. It was at this moment that he

realized that he did not want to be part of the rat race, to “work for someone else’s dream”, in his

words. Thus, the motive to create his own business was born.

Early Stages
The business that would become Yonge Street Capital was started 2 years ago, when through a

mutual connection, Syed met his current business partner. They discovered a mutual interest in

the analysis of financial trading, and quickly decided to form a partnership. Within their first

week, they found their first client, who was a friend of Syed’s. Thus, this was their initial target

base: their friends. The reasoning for this was simple. It would be very difficult to attract

accredited investors in the beginning, so they targeted people who they were already connected

with.

At the same time, initial difficulties were present as well. Most significantly, at the time,

Syed was still living at home and studying physiology at university, so his parents strongly

discouraged his business idea. However, as the company began to grow and pick up clients, his

parents got on board, though somewhat reluctantly. Another difficulty that Syed faced was

attracting accredited investors, but he strongly desired them, as they held significantly more

wealth. However, as a young company and a young person, he found himself not being taken

seriously. He had to build his legitimacy, and finally, he was able to acquire them by quantifiably

demonstrating his success through his results. In his words, “numbers don’t lie”.

Connecting the Dots

A methodology that we felt applied to Syed’s journey to inception is “Opportunity Recognition

as Pattern Recognition”. This refers to the connection made by the entrepreneur of disparate

elements through his own experience and intuition to identify opportunity (Baron, 2006). In this

case, Syed saw that the younger generation had a loss of faith in traditional investing and in big

banks, which had failed not long ago, and have constantly been shown to be corrupt. As well, he

could see a shift in the world of business, with the onset of new technologies such as

cryptocurrency harboring the potential to disrupt the entire financial market. Furthermore, he saw
the desire in his peers and in himself to “grow” their money, rather than have it sit in their bank

accounts. He understood that though many of them did not have much money, they still wanted

to invest it. So he “connected the dots”, and formed his financial investing firm, providing this

target demographic of young people looking to invest an outlet to do so. Thus, he was able to

connect these disparate elements and recognize the opportunity for a new business, and capitalize

on the opportunity present to him.

The Established Business

Currently, Yonge Street Capital is an asset management company that focuses on active short

term investments through algorithmic forecasting, as opposed to more traditional passive long

term management. The company accepts the wealth of both retail and accredited investors, and

provides a quarterly return. At the moment, they are operating in the field of cryptocurrency,

more specifically trading “utility tokens”, though in the past they have primarily traded Nasdaq

100 futures and Leveraged 3x ETFS. Furthermore, at any given time, only 20% of the total

account is traded, with the remaining kept in a bank account, to reduce risk. Revenues come

from what the company generates above the promised return that it has agreed upon with its

investors. Though this may seem risky, as there is even a potential for loss from month to month,

the company has been successful in turning a profit thus far. In fact, Syed and his partner have

moved into their own space in downtown Toronto, to better facilitate their goals of increasing the

size of the company.

Reflection

There are a few critical factors which led to Syed’s success, some drawn from the Big 5 Traits of

Entrepreneurs.
Openness to Experience – Prior to the inception of his current business, Syed explored many

ideas which he believed to have potential. This demonstrates a willingness to explore and a

desire to innovate (Zhao et al. 2006). Even in the creation and initial stages of his business, he

had no established rules or procedures that he could rely on; rather, he had to count on his own

intuition to lead him to a place that was viable. It’s evident that this openness to experience is

what led him to create his own business.

Conscientiousness – In our interview, it was clear to me that Syed was a hard worker. Starting

from a young age, he practiced hard in his athletic endeavors, and later on, in his business, he

had to put in significant effort while balancing university work. Furthermore, he was driven to

entrepreneurship because his achievements would be his own, and would be attributed to his own

efforts, as opposed to a traditional work environment, where oftentimes you are told what to do

and how to do it (Zhao et al. 2006). This gave him motivation to work as hard as he could,

compared to in a retail job, where he would just slack off, as his efforts were insignificant. This

conscientiousness is what has lead him to success.

Willingness to take risks – As a university student undergoing undergraduate education, it would

have been easy for him to continue down this road, as most of his peers have done. To start a

business in a field with no prior connections, and with not much investment capital to begin with

was highly risky. Perhaps this is the most impart factor in his success, as it was a huge leap of

faith, one which most would not even think of taking. Furthermore, Syed was able to take

advantage of his peers’ youth and willingness to take risks, by acquiring much of the initial

capital for investments from them.

Syed’s story can be linked to the literature through Carol Moore’s model of the

entrepreneurial process (Bygrave, 2014). We can return to the negative experience that he had
working with his manager as the triggering event that has given birth to his company. In his

dissatisfaction, he found realization that he could not continue down this path, for he would

never be able to achieve his own dreams. As well, sociological factors also come into play.

Coming from an immigrant family, he felt pressure from his parents to follow the “traditional”

route to success; namely, to finish undergraduate and postgraduate education, to get a job in a

relevant field, and work his way up to a comfortable position which he could then hold and in

which would sustain a family for him in the future. In many ways, this may have even driven

him to work hard and find success in his venture, as at his core he still valued his parents and

wanted to make them proud and to be able to support them in the future. However, he had the

energy and the risk-taking nature of youth, and as such, decided to dive headfirst into his own

venture, putting school on the backburner.

The Future

There are a variety of potential challenges that Syed and his company may encounter in the road

ahead. The most pressing and impactful of all is potential future regulations that governments

can place on the trade of cryptocurrencies. As the sphere of cryptocurrency is very young, having

only rose to prominence in the mainstream within the past year or two, there are many legal grey

areas in regards to regulations and trading from a regulatory standpoint. However, countries such

as China and South Korea are already looking to crack down on cryptocurrency and its trading

(Orcott, 2018). If major regulations were to be put on crypto in North America, the likelihood of

this hindering Syed’s business in a major way is high. However, as explored above, Syed is

someone who is always on the lookout for new opportunities and emerging markets to invest in.

If crypto becomes regulated to the point where it is not feasible to trade, surely he will explore

other avenues.
References

Baron R. (2006). Opportunity Recognition as Pattern Recognition: How Entrepreneurs "Connect

the Dots" to Identify New Business Opportunities. Academy of Management Perspectives

Bygrave, W. D, (2014) Entrepreneurship, 3rd, Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley

Orcott, M., 2018. Like it or not, the future of cryptocurrency will be determined by

bureaucrats [Online]. MIT Technology Review. Available

from: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610202/like-it-or-not-the-future-of-

cryptocurrency-will-be-determined-by-bureaucrats/ [Accessed 9 May 2018].

Zhao, H. and Seibert, S. (2006). The Big Five personality dimensions and entrepreneurial status:

A meta-analytical review. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91(2), pp.259-271.