What Harvard Didn't Know: I Was Already Building an 8-Figure Startup

How Stephen Turban did it: I Was Already Building an 8-Figure Startup

Stephen Turban runs Lumiere, an education company focused on PhD-level research for high schoolers. He didn't start it as a grand mission. Back in 2020, while on the PhD track at Harvard Business School, he wanted out — and figured that if he had a company that was working, he'd have "a choice set." His framing at the time: "how do I de risk the other option." So the PhD became the side thing and Lumiere became the 16-hour-a-day thing.

The forcing function came from his department. The head of staff brought him onto a Zoom call, screen-shared the Lumiere website with his face and bio — "hi I'm Stephen Turban I'm a PhD student at HBS" — and asked, "Stephen, is this you?" The department gave him an ultimatum: do your PhD or run your company, but not both. He was pissed at the time, but grateful in retrospect: it made an easy decision. He paused the PhD, told himself he could always go back, and went all in. His parents, all from Hawaii, were so chill they just said, "that's great honey."

The episode is really about focus and identity. Stephen argues researchers, entrepreneurs, and artists are nearly identical — all creating something from nothing — but warns that getting "caught up in the system" turns useful skills into useless ones. He tells the story of his biggest rookie mistake: after Lumiere hit roughly 50 people, he got arrogant about his hiring ability, started a second "assistant company," and split his attention. It did okay; Lumiere suffered; he sold the assistant company "for not much." His rule now: he'll only start new things that fit inside the Lumiere umbrella. "Once I go outside education, I'm an idiot."

He chose to bootstrap, not raise, because he doesn't do well with authority — "I'm a like an a minus entrepreneur but I'm like a C minus employee" — and because a company with good margins and service fees up front doesn't need the money. The other throughline is attention and belonging: Stephen leans into a deliberately controversial public persona ("attention's king"), does stand-up comedy in Vietnamese, and credits that comedy group with finally rooting him to Saigon after years of feeling temporary.

What you'll hear

• The ultimatum — how Harvard's screen-share of his own profile became the forcing function that ended his PhD
• De-risking the leap — why he built a working company first to create "a choice set" before quitting
• The rookie mistake — starting a second "assistant company" out of arrogance, splitting his attention, and selling it "for not much"
• Scope yourself down — his rule that new ideas only count if they fit inside the Lumiere umbrella
• Why bootstrap — not doing well with authority, plus a margins-and-upfront-fees business that doesn't need to raise
• Attention's king — the deliberately controversial persona, the "go fuck yourself" post, and standup in Vietnamese
• Belonging over optionality — why he stopped treating himself as temporary in Saigon and what changed

Key claims from this episode

Chapters

Quotes from this episode

Themes Stephen returns to

• De-risking the leap — Stephen keeps returning to building optionality first: a working company as "a choice set" so quitting the PhD wasn't a cliff
• Focus over opportunism — "if you're a good founder you see opportunities everywhere," but his lesson is to scope down and stay inside the Lumiere umbrella
• Autonomy and bootstrapping — he "bristles" at authority and built a bootstrapped company specifically to control his own destiny
• Attention as strategy — "attention's king"; being interesting and controversial beats quietly working hard and hoping to be found
• Belonging over temporariness — investing in relationships and language so a place accumulates meaning rather than staying a way station