MS Venture club hosted founder and former Chief Executive Officer of SADA, Tony Safoian P ’29, ’31 in the Munger Library Reference Room on Friday, Jan 23. Safoian spoke with middle school students about entrepreneurship, leadership, and the pursuit of personal interests.
Safoian immigrated to the United States from Armenia in 1987 at the age of nine. He and his family built SADA together, one of the world’s largest Google Cloud partners before it was acquired in 2023. He is also a parent of two Harvard-Westlake students.
Safoian initially discussed his background as an immigrant, and reflected on his family’s experience coming to the United States.
“By those standard measures of what people think of why immigrants come here to pursue the American dream, I think we’ve achieved that and got really lucky and worked really hard,” Safoian said.
Safoian structured his talk around a set of “first principles” that he originally developed for his children.
“I think it’s much more important at this stage of where you are in your lives to help you build a foundation such that whatever you pursue, you will be in the best possible position to be successful at,” Safoian said.
Safoian also spoke about the importance of standing out in vast competitive markets.
“It’s very difficult to say that, like, ‘I’m going to make t-shirts.’ A lot of people make t-shirts,” He said. “If you’re going to be successful in a business, you have to find a niche. You have to find something unique that you can offer the market.”
Safoian concluded by encouraging students to pursue their interests.
“Whatever you obsess about, can’t stop thinking about, you dream about, you read about, you can’t stop watching YouTube videos about, that’s a pretty good sign that that’s something you probably want to pursue,” Safoian said.
Afterwards, students shared how his insistence on passion left a strong impression on them.
“What stood out to me most was how much he emphasized finding what you care about early on in life,” said Jack Davis ’29. “It really made entrepreneurship feel less daunting to me.”
