HUCP Community Spotlight: Meet Robert Harraka Jr.
By Erin Yuan
HUCP virtually sat with one of our diligence associates, Robert Harraka Jr., to chat about his journey, his interests, and his aspirations. Robert is a sophomore at Harvard College interested in fintech and real estate, currently based in Honolulu. Here’s a snippet of our conversation:
Welcome Robert! Tell us a little about yourself and your startup experiences.
I’m Robert, a current sophomore at Harvard. Over the summer I worked at a startup called Public, a high-growth, mid-stage/early-stage startup based in New York City. Think Robinhood, but with a community of investors wrapped around it. This is kind of a cheesy, Silicon Valley startup-y phrase, but it’s democratizing investing and making investing more friendly for beginners.
What were your roles at the startup?
I did a lot of work in affiliate marketing. Basically, we go to other companies’ websites that we think would associate well with Public and say, hey, we want to set up a partnership with you. I also did a lot of work within content for Public Learn, which has articles all about basic investing. I wrote about topics such as why you should join an investing club and how to know if a stock is risky. It’s helping to educate our 7500+ users to become more immersed in investing and up their knowledge of the field. The common belief is that the more knowledge you have, the more you experience you get, and the better you’re gonna do.
What inspired you to join this startup?
Two things. Frankly, there’s not a lot of opportunities for freshmen. But it’s also a really unique opportunity to be able to say that I worked at a high-growth fintech startup that’s making a positive impact. It’s great to work for a big finance company with a lot of talented people, but on the flip side, there’s also something to be said about working for a company that, even if they don’t have as big of a brand name, at the end of the day, when you go into work and when you leave work––I don’t really know how to describe it––it’s just this happy feeling of knowing you’re doing something really good. With Public, I felt like every time I logged in (because it was remote), every time I talked to other people within the company, it was this general vibe of “we’re doing something good.”
What were some of the lessons you learned from working at a startup?
I think it’s really important to go in with a specific goal of what you’re looking for. Thankfully, my boss was awesome and asked me up front. But there’s going to be some companies where they’re not as upfront with you. You need to constantly ask yourself what you’re trying to get out of this internship and seek that out. Especially working within an early stage startup, it can be somewhat easy to just get thrown somewhere because you’re the intern. Try to put yourself into the right position for your own career interests. Something else that I was trying to do was making sure that, at the end of the day, I was always happy to work with Public. Ask yourself, is this what I want to do?
What do you consider to be your greatest accomplishment?
Right now I’m working in investment sales, a specific vertical in real estate, for a firm called Standard Commercial. I’ve worked really hard on cold-emailing and developing my cold outreach process. This is the pinnacle of months and months of practice and getting rejected by professionals and even hitting myself on the forehead for sending out some emails. But now, I reach out to the CEO and say what I could offer them to grow rather than just come to them from the viewpoint of a student asking for an internship. I tried to come from the angle of, hey, I’m young, but I’m hardworking and have some tangible skills that can be applied to your firm. I was really happy with that––not so much as the accomplishment itself, but the fact that the entire process took months to develop. I’ve made a lot of mistakes, so it’s very satisfying to get it right––at least I like to think so.
What are you planning for the future?
I’m really interested in real estate technology and I’m networking with a lot of real estate professionals to dig my teeth into the industry learning as much as I can. I’m actually planning on serving in the Navy after college, but I’m trying to gain as much real estate experience as possible. I’d like to have a long career in real estate. Eventually, I want to start a foundation––a big initiative to uplift financial literacy––and give back, emulating First Generation Investors, an organization I work for that deals a lot with financial literacy and teaching underprivileged youth. When I’m on my deathbed, if someone asked me what I did in life and the only thing I could say is that I made a lot of money, for me that’s failure. I want to help a lot of people.
What’s something people seem to misunderstand about the real estate industry?
People grossly underestimate the size and importance of the real estate industry. If you think about it, everything needs real estate. Even if there’s no building somewhere, there’s land––there’s parking lots, there’s offices, multifamily housing, retail complexes, shopping malls, strip malls, all that. Real estate plays a pivotal role in our economy. One of the most interesting, and, frankly, very exciting aspects of real estate is that it’s somewhat archaic. I think some of this is attributed to the complexity of real estate transactions––it’s real physical property with a lot of intangibles which makes it less easy to just automate. But it’s an industry that’s totally ripe for disruption and to be infused with tech.
What advice do you have for younger folks?
One, if you want to go into finance, make sure you get a really high GPA to make recruiting easier. To follow that up on the flip side, don’t worry so much about your career. Be open to exploring new ideas. I’ve pivoted probably five times during my time at college. I know a ton of kids just like me who have flipped back and forth and that’s totally okay because you’re learning a lot, you’re constantly changing. Not just career-wise, but I mean, I want to get more into tennis! Be open to those things because you never know what can happen to you. One of the biggest revelations for me during COVID, with all this isolation, was learning to relax a little bit and not worry so much about my career constantly. I still care a lot and I still put in hard work like crazy, but I still find ways to enjoy myself.
What in life are you most grateful for?
If I could pin one thing that I’m forever grateful for, it’s definitely my family and my upbringing. I was very lucky to have an extremely supportive family. I’m just incredibly grateful for the fact that I’m able to pursue my high aspirations because my dad worked seven days a week as I was growing up so that he could have enough money to support my siblings and me in all of our endeavors. When my grandparents immigrated from the Philippines, they were poor. Poor in the Philippines is like outrageously poor here. The hard work that they put in is the reason why I’m able to pursue the things I want today. I don’t think I’d be able to do the same things without all the incredible dedication and selflessness that they exhibited all throughout their lives.
What would be your ideal day?
I wake up after having nine hours of sleep (which does not always happen). Bacon and eggs with pancakes for breakfast. I go out and surf for a couple hours. I come back to take a nap. I have some networking calls or do some work because I find that fulfilling. Probably have lunch and then go out surfing and kind of screw around for the rest of the day. I mean, that’s kind of how I’ve been right now (laughs). Work can be really stressful, so being in Honolulu and being able to surf is so much fun.