Brian Keng

Personal

Family: My home life is pretty similar to the year before with me trying to spend as much time as I can with my daughter. While it can be frustrating at times, there are at least many joyful moments too. The trick is ensuring that I’m in the right state of mind and body to play (young kids are almost always in this state). The usual rules apply on health, sleep, and fitness. Of course the big difference this year is that we’re expecting another one! Surprisingly, we’ve done much less preparation for this next one. It’s likely a combination of having already gone through it and being super busy with my first one. I’m not quite prepared for the sleepless nights, and I either don’t remember what they’re like or I’m in denial that they will be coming, but no one is ever really prepared so I’m not too worried. More recently though, I have been looking at my daughter’s baby pictures and getting excited by how cute she was at that age. I’m going to take a bit of time off work so I’ll be able to enjoy the glorious first few months of human life. Wish me luck!

Friends: Similar to last year, I’ve done quite a poor job of keeping up with my friends. I’m pretty bad at chat, and don’t really use anything like Facebook or Instagram so I don’t have a great way of keeping in touch. The one thing I did this year, which was my wife’s idea, was to have an actual birthday party where I invited my closest friends over. This was incredibly fun and a great way to generate new memories with them. With the new baby coming, I likely won’t get much leisure time but hopefully I can at least find a yearly event like my birthday to get together with them. The blessing of having old friends is that you can easily pick back up with them from where you left off. I’m so fortunate to have a group of friends like that. Family is still my top priority so I’ll ask for a bit of forgiveness from my friends and count my blessings that they still hang out with me.

Fitness: This year I started up again with (approximately) weekly sessions with personal trainer. As my life has gotten quite busy, this is pretty much the only outlet I have to exercise at the moment. Luckily, it’s really good. Even when I’m dead tired, he pushes me to have an intense work out. I’m noticeably stronger, feel like I have more muscle, and have been injured a lot less recently (although my weight has climbed up a bit). I’ve hit some personal records for some of my exercises, so no complaints here. The goal now isn’t to push my performance, but really to gain strength and prevent injury. I’m going to want my body functioning well when I’m older, and making sure that I have enough muscle mass is one key factor that I’ve identified. Maybe when I get time to play sports again I’ll change it up, but for now this is more than enough for me.

Health: I have a minor healthy issue that I’m dealing with that I’m not ready to talk about publicly. It’s more annoying than anything but does degrade my quality of life a bit. Luckily, there are multiple physicians in my extended family so we’re working through some treatments, which I think are moving in the right direction. Somehow I suspect that the issue somehow is related to age. It’s quite alarming that your body can suddenly behave differently as you get old (e.g., getting allergies). Luckily modern medicine has a lot to offer (if you can find the right type of doctor). Otherwise, thankfully there isn’t else much to write about related to my health.

Hobbies: Basically I haven’t done much this year at all. Things have been so busy in all other aspects of my life, this is on pause indefinitely. It’s all about prioritization, and right now this is just not high on my list.

Blog: This year has been pretty slim on writing. I did two blog posts on my technical blog and this is the only post for my personal blog. Again, priorities. The lack of blog posts however were mainly driven by being busy at work (see below). Nothing much to say here except that I hope I get more time to write next year because this is my main vehicle for learning new things.

Professional

RBC Borealis: One of the big changes at work is that we did a reorganization that created a new department called RBC Borealis that is a combination of the old Borealis AI and another data and analytics group within RBC. Along with the reorg, I also got a promotion to Senior Director, AI Solutions, leading a much bigger group of highly talented people developing cutting-edge AI-powered products and capabilities for the bank. As with most reorgs, it has kept me quite busy and I’ve had a lot less time for many things like my blog, but I’ve made sure that it hasn’t significantly impacted my family time. This new opportunity has been quite exciting for me because it’s a new role leading a bigger team (thankfully with a ton of support) so I’ll have the opportunity to learn more and do bigger things — exactly what I’m looking for.

Rotman: On the teaching side, the big change I mentioned last year was adding new material for LLMs. It went well enough but like most new lecture content, it needs to be tweaked. Even though I added the material last fall, one year is an eternity in this space so I’m afraid some things are a bit out of date already and will require some more iteration for the course this spring. I’m still quite excited about this space and improving material for the course is a good excuse to learn more about this subject. I also helped run a couple of events with folks from Microsoft (listed below). It used to be a big deal finding speakers and organizing these events but now that I’ve done it so many times, it’s just a normal sort of thing I do (to be clear Rotman has a wonderful events team, all I work on is the content and speakers, not the logistics). I’m doing more of both in this school year so I don’t expect too much to change.

Events: Here are the public events that I was involved with this past year. Most of these are either through work or Rotman, which I suppose is par for the course unless you are active in the scene (which I am currently not).

• Gave a talk titled “AI for Financial Services” at Vector’s Remarkable 2024 (Feb 2024)
• Co-organizer for How GenAI Will Transform Financial Products event (April 2024)
• Co-organizer for Responsible GenAI and Governance event (May 2024)

Investing

It’s been a good year again whether you’re trying to pick stocks like myself or invest passively. Similar to the market, the gains I’ve had in my concentrated portfolio are in tech stocks that I bought at opportune times. Recently, I’m still slightly ahead of the S&P 500 (my benchmark) but it fluctuates a bit. I’m still ahead over the long term by a bit, so it’s still sensible to keep doing it myself.

The key to my success (or luck?) has really been buying stocks at reasonable prices and just holding on to them. Superficially, it’s not that hard: buy low and hold. The hard parts are really around buying the right company at a fair price and not selling.

Buying the right companies at a fair price is the fun part. Searching for that outstanding business is incredibly rewarding for me. I love learning about how they make money, what’s so special about them, and how they respond to competition. My process is likely quite less effective than the industry analysts out there with me having less data and less time dedicated to analysis, but I find joy in it. I’m doing better against my benchmark and I like it so I think I’m still coming out ahead.

The fair price bit is something that I do a lot less quantitative work on than I probably should. My approach really is just having a reasonable metric that roughly correlates with the company’s value then buy when it’s an obviously good deal. I’m a bit of a cheapskate when buying stocks or maybe a better term is that I’m quite risk averse. This mostly has protected me from buying too high, even when it’s not so great a company. The way I see it is that I’m quite a bit more ignorant than the average professional analyst, so if I’m going to buy something I want to make sure I have a big margin of safety. It’s quite an imperfect approach, but given the time I dedicate to the whole endeavor, it’s worked out to a satisfactory degree.

Recently, I’ve been investing much more in tech and growth stocks as I’m getting a better sense of how their business models work. Most of the time you do not get to buy companies growing at 30%+ per year on discount, more often than not you’ll instead pay nose bleed valuations for them. The trick is to buy them when they’re knocked down to a more fair (but I wouldn’t say cheap) price, which in itself is hard to determine. It’s not easy though since whenever they get knocked down, the media surrounding them is super negative. It’s hard to be a contrarian when you see the price drop by half (especially if you own the stock). But I’m kind of weird in that I get excited when stocks drop a lot. I also like it when they go up too, but also get more disappointed because I’ll have fewer places to deploy my cash. I’ve observed that this isn’t how most people think about investing, which is probably why most people really shouldn’t be actively investing themselves.

Related to that point, the last part of my investing process may sound the easiest: holding, but in fact, I think this is the hardest for many people. Seeing one of your stocks drop by half is pretty hard on the psyche. On the flip side, when your stock goes up 50%, it also takes equal (if not more guts) to hold it. Again, as Buffett always mentions, you need to have the right temperament or else it doesn’t matter how smart you are. Luckily, I have a bias for thinking rather than action (which is not so good in others situations) and this really helps me from making any sudden moves like prematurely selling low. The real money is made when you can hold companies through their low points to when they rebound to new highs. If you bought at a reasonable price and it’s a quality company, you’ll usually do quite well.

My moderate success over the past 18 years has more or less used the above process (a lot less so when I started out though), which has become more refined as I learn more about businesses and how they work. There’s still a long way to go but that’s the exciting part! There’s so much more for me to learn and that’s really one of the joys of life!

Insights and Learnings

Here are a bunch of random things that I should’ve written blog posts on but I’ll just jot down here for posterity.

• Attachment: I’ve observed that some people have a lot of attachment to things e.g. cars, toys, clothes etc. I don’t really have much of this attachment, relatively. I don’t really care much about most of my material things except to the extent that they are useful. I really like useful things. It might be my overly pragmatic disposition but it’s how I am. I think this has served me pretty well in that I have relatively modest wants for material things and it’s helped me be a bit more rational than others in this area. On the other hand, I think some people do get a lot of joy from their things, which I’m missing out on. I get more joy from learning new ideas and about how the world works. Everyone’s different I guess.
  
  
• Sleeping: I recently discovered a great method to fall asleep when I wake up in the middle of the night. It’s so obvious I don’t know why I didn’t think about it before: listening to podcasts with my AirPods. It’s usually pretty easy for me to fall asleep at the start of the night (assuming I don’t consume too much caffeine) but my problem is that I often wake up in the middle of the night and am not able to fall back asleep. It’s usually because I start thinking about work or some other recent problem. I’ve tried several meditation-inspired ways to relax but it doesn’t work for me all the time. Of course the best way is to avoid the root cause all together but that’s not practical at my stage in life.
  
  The other idea I read about is that it’s better to stay in bed instead of getting up because at least it gives you some rest. It’s not as effective as deep sleep, but something is better than nothing. With these ideas combined, listening to podcasts helps distract me from other thoughts, which in turn helps my body relax. If I don’t end up actually falling asleep, at least my body gets some rest. Most of the time though (unless it’s close to wake up time), I’m able to doze off to sleep within an hour or so. At some point in a half-waken state, I take off my ear buds and fall into deep sleep. I don’t need to do it every time I wake up in the middle of the night, but it’s a good tool to use when I’m having a particularly difficult time sleeping. I like this method because it’s not aiming for perfection (in terms of sleep), rather it’s aiming for decent, which is much better than all the anxiety from the occasional bout of insomnia.
  
  
• Being More Present and Procrastination: I think most are familiar with the advice that you should be more present in the moment. Easier said than done. I’ve been trying to do this more with my daughter. It’s hard though when I come back from work exhausted and wanting to zone out. The usual advice applies here of getting good sleep, eating well, and exercising regularly. However, one insight that I had about this subject is related to procrastination: if you can just get over that first hump of actually engaging in an activity, e.g., playing with my daughter, it’s much easier to stay present. It’s just like doing homework or some task at work, if you can just start the activity (as opposed to feigning a start while looking at your smartphone), it’s much easier to get into it. Obvious but it’s another frame of mind that sometimes helps me get off my smartphone and overcome that initial activation energy.
  
  
• Novelty Cravings: One interesting thing I’ve noticed is that my brain craves novelty. It appears in so many places. For example, I think the main reason I like to follow the news and social media is to find new things that are happening (I’m using the Opal app to help control it). I have a huge backlog of books that are both more interesting and useful than the news but I still spend more time than I should on it simply because the news is new. For investing, I also realized that I’m anticipating the next quarterly earnings call because there will be some new development that I can learn about. This also shows up for me in anticipation for a new TV show or game that is coming out. The novelty is what I’m craving. Luckily, I feel that it’s mostly in these harmless areas that I get my “novelty fix”. I’m generally pretty good at being patient and optimizing for the long term, but I’m only human so my monkey brain needs to be fed from time to time. If this is the worst of it though, it’s not so bad.
  
  
• Parenting: Something I realized (as I think most parents can relate) is that I don’t really know what I’m doing. My daughter is a very different person than me (which is obvious even at this age), and the surrounding environment has changed a lot too. So you would expect that the parenting approach should also change. The main problem is that when I’m tired and exhausted, my default instinct is just to revert to the not-so-productive parenting style I grew up with — that’s all I really know after all. At the same time, parenting is more of a real-time activity, it’s not something where I can take my time and do a careful analysis especially when it’s two hours past bedtime and there are crayon drawings all over the wall. Luckily, my wife has a much better intuition than me on productive parenting so I’m learning from her on how to deal with my daughter. I learn much better viscerally in these situations so I feel I’m slowly becoming a better parent.
  
  
• AI and Information Access: I’m obviously deep in this AI space and I truly feel like we’re in a revolution. It was exhilarating in the early days of the internet (even though I was just a teenager) to have unlimited access to information and have any answer at my finger tips. At least that’s what I used to think. It’s only now with modern AI tools like Perplexity and ChatGPT that I really feel like I have the answers at my finger tips. I literally can ask any question and get the answer I want in the time it takes me to type it in. This is in contrast to clicking through half a dozen links, wading through a ton of ads, and piecing together the answer myself. It really has lowered the bar for information access. It’s so much easier to ask about questions outside my own domain like fixing up stuff around the house, or repairing my car. It’s also a great tool as a companion to reading where if I come across some idea or term I’m not familiar with, I can immediately ask the question with minimal disruption. I’m sure the different apps will eventually have all this built in, but it has already been a big productivity gain for me. The great thing is that we’re still in the early days, five or ten years from now AI is going to much more integrated in our lives and I can’t wait!
  
  
• Experience: I’ve come to realize that there are a lot of skills that are hard to obtain (at least for me) without experience. I would put most people related things in this category like leadership, parenting, and relationships. Reading about these things just does not do them justice. This is tough because to be great at these activities, you really need the right role models. A joke (that is probably closer to the truth than fiction) is that the main way most managers learn about management is by watching TV! This points to a sad fact that we have poor management training. But more so it points to the fact that many activities can only be learned through experience. One thing I’m glad about is that early on in my career (and life) I put myself in uncomfortable positions with smart people so that I would learn faster. Startups are a trial-by-fire experience where you get an accelerated lesson in many different skill sets. I also did similar things in public speaking with Toastmasters, and to a lesser extent with other activities in my personal life. Right now I can point to two big places where I’m again in an uncomfortable position. The first one is obviously parenting, it’s totally new and I’m growing in ways that I could never have imagined. The other is at work where I’ve been put in a new role where there is a lot to learn. As you might be able to tell, one of the most important things for me is learning and growing, and you only get that if you are put in new, uncomfortable positions from time to time.
  
  
• Lottery: It might surprise some folks to know that I occasionally buy lottery tickets. Logically, I know the math doesn’t work out (this is actually true even if the naive EV is positive, for many reasons including this one), but the chance of winning is the not the main reason why I do it. The tickets are mainly used as a fun exercise to think about what I would do if I were to become financially free (which I would hope is sooner rather than later). I’ve honestly been struggling a bit with the answer because the immediate thought of just doing leisure activities all day seems like it would be dreadful after a while. Sure, I’d like more time to do my hobbies, exercise, improve my relationships, but a core part of what I’m all about (i.e, learning) would be severely reduced. Despite all the stress and time spent at work, it is a great place to learn new things, not only because I get to ship leading edge AI solutions, but also because I have some world-class colleagues. Even if I was financially free, where could I as easily get that? So in the end, I’m not sure that I would be doing anything that different at this point. Things change so that may be different over time, but that’s the point of the whole exercise: to stop and reflect upon it.
  
  
• Love Letters: I’ve started writing a love letter (via email) to my wife on her birthday. Day to day I’m not the most romantic person, and it’s even tougher when you have a four year old causing chaos around the house, but I thought it would be the least I could do to show my love for her. I think it’s also special to be able to look back on them decades later and remember the earlier times in our lives. Time passes by so fast that I’ve found it more and more important to document things so that my future self can enjoy my present. It’s a form of long term thinking if you will.
  
  
• Journal: As I mentioned in a previous review, I also write a letter (via email to an account I made for her) to my daughter every year. I keep a journal of notes about her throughout the year too, which I also send along. This year, I changed how record these notes. Instead of just plain text, I’m using the Day One app to journal now. In addition to text, it lets you attach pictures and videos. After looking through my notes, it’s just so much more interesting to see a curated and annotated set of pictures versus just the raw notes I took. The app makes it really easy to select pictures you’ve taken, tag specific dates, and write a blurb about what happened. Exporting is available in several formats (although I haven’t really tested it yet). I now anchor my journal entries in photos I’ve taken, which also encourages me to take more photos so I can have more journal entries. At the end of the week, the app lets me attach photos on the date they were taken and then write a short blurb about what happened. The nice interface greatly reduces the friction needed to takes notes, which is much more important now that my life is more hectic. I just started this year so I’ll let you know how it goes.

Next Year

In 2025, the big thing I’m looking forward to is the new addition to my family, which I’m sure will change the dynamic at home quite a bit. At work, things are changing quickly and my new role is also going to keep me as busy as ever. The challenge for me will be trying to manage everything outside of those two things. Who wants an easy life anyways? Looking back, the most rewarding experiences in life weren’t the easy ones, rather they were the ones that I was fully invested in, regardless of how hard it was. I’ve never been one to shy away from a challenge, so I’m just going to keep moving forward into 2025 learning, growing, and most of all collecting beautiful memories along the way. Good luck in the new year everyone!