In econ, we often talk about opportunity cost like its some abstract magical concept that allows economic profits to go to 0 while accounting profits stay positive, but in reality, the concept governs the decisions we make on a daily basis. Case in point, ironically, today I decided to skip my econ lecture to meet with Sonith Sunku, one of the organizers of Z-fellows. As someone in the entrepreneurship sphere, the opportunity cost of missing an econ lecture is heavily outweighed by the potential gain which comes from meeting with the organizers of one of the most prolific early-stage funds in the US. However, opportunity costs in life are often completely unpredictable. Apparently, in today’s econ lecture, Prof. Cormac dressed up as Waldo and made three separate 6-7 jokes. I will forever have to live with the fact that I missed the opportunity to see Prof. Cormac in beautiful red stripes from head to toe.

Also today, I made the much more difficult decision to miss out on dinner with Tom Lee, founder of OneMedical group which he recently sold to Amazon for 3.7 billion dollars, to attend a midterm review session for my Linguistics exam tomorrow. I can only imagine the insights that I would've gotten from speaking with him, but the prospect of bombing my Ling midterm made the opportunity cost of missing that review session far too high. Maybe my fears drove up the predicted opportunity cost; I will never know what I missed out upon, and that is the point. In this life, we are faced with many decisions, and as much as we try to rationalize our decisions with economics, philosophy, or whatever discipline of choice helps us sleep at night, we will never know if we made the “right” choice. I think it's important that I learn to accept that reality.

On a more positive note, I had an incredible meeting with Khaled Aljuraywi, COO and co-founder of Sawt, which recently raised a 1 million dollar pre-seed round lead by Saudi Technology Ventures and T2. I can’t say too much about our discussion, but let's just say that this hopefully won’t be the last time they are mentioned in one of my blog posts.

To end off, the lesson of the day is to do your best to minimize opportunity cost, but don’t beat yourself up about your decisions once you make them. See you all tomorrow.