Alvin Ang took a gamble when he joined Turn/River Capital, a San Francisco-based private equity firm. He believed in the endeavor so much that he volunteered to work for free for the first year - a decision he doesn't regret. When he started, Ang was new to the field and one of only two employees - the other being the founder. His duties ran the gamut, from sourcing new deals and negotiating terms to leading the purchase process and handling paid marketing and search engine optimization. He learned the trade by reading blogs and listening to interviews about growing software companies, then leveraged that learning to drive profitable growth among the firm's portfolio of companies.

Ang ascended from an associate to partner in 10 years, helping scale the firm from two employees to 70, improving from $30 million to $2 billion under management, and completing 12 exits. At Purdue, he learned how to think systemically, especially how to break down big problems into smaller ones and identify the 20% that will have 80% impact. This skill, combined with a data-driven approach, helped him create a system that allows Turn/River's companies to grow.

At the onset of his career, Ang worked as a process engineer at Bechtel Oil & Gas and spent his evenings learning software development and marketing. Then, as co-founder and developer of AS Flux, a custom software and application development company, he created and launched 20+ websites, indexed 14 million pages, and wrote code to integrate with open-source APIs before passing the project off.