Daddy, You Just Fly in Planes and Swear at People
- StevenMiyao
- 6 days ago
- 2 min read
Mike Ma's son was around eight when he looked up at him and said:
"Daddy, I think you just fly in planes and swear at people."
Mike was 40, head of digital strategy and innovation at Bank of America, with a job that looked great on paper. He says that's the moment he realized he had become the corporate version of the person he'd spent his whole life saying he never wanted to be.
That recognition eventually led him to leave the bank and start Sidecut Ventures, a pre-seed fund built on a thesis most VCs would call upside down: advice before capital.
A lot of my clients tell me some version of:
"I don't think I can do what I love and still take care of my family."
Mike has three kids and a pediatrician wife, and he'll tell you it was often hard. He's still doing the work he wants to do instead of the work he was supposed to want to do.
He grew up the son of Chinese immigrants in Cleveland who risked everything to come here, and he thinks his own risk should be commensurate with theirs. If he plays it safe with the privilege they made possible, he discredits the story they wrote.
That's why I wanted him on the Midlife Remix this week. We also got into:
Why did he raise an impact fund instead of the much easier fintech fund his pedigree could have supported
Hapware, his investment in a wearable that lets blind people feel facial expressions through haptics — he found the company while doing blind guiding in Pittsburgh
Why thinking about death often is what loosens his grip on risk
The two practices he'd give anyone in midlife (one of them is writing down how you want to be remembered)
Why his 16-year-old seeing him at the kitchen table at 6 am is the lesson he most wants his kids to learn
Listen on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, or the Coaching Metta Substack.
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