Gagan Sandhu didn’t chase freedom. He calculated it. In this first of a two-part series, the Chicago Booth MBA, former tech exec, and founder of fintech startup Zillion shares how he redefined financial independence—moving beyond buzzwords and into practical action. From his immigrant roots to his pivot from mechanical engineering to Silicon Valley, Gagan shows how knowledge—not speed—builds real freedom. Whether you’re Gen X or Gen Z, this conversation reframes wealth not as a finish line, but as a tool for designing the life you actually want.From Engineering to Independence“I didn’t change careers at 22—I did it at 30, with a kid on the way.”Gagan shares how he shifted from mechanical engineering to tech—slowly, methodically, while balancing parenthood and late-night coding marathons.Knowledge Is Currency“Every leap I made came from learning, not luck.”He reflects on why knowledge—not connections, not titles—has been the key success driver in his nonlinear, global career.Financial Independence ≠ Retirement“I didn’t stop working. I stopped relying on someone else to fund my time.”Gagan breaks down the real math behind financial independence, and why it’s not about quitting your job—it’s about having options.FIRE Without the Hype“We turned it into a real-time calculator—so people can stop guessing and start acting.”Gagan explains how his company Zillion helps users understand their path to independence through clean logic, custom inputs, and grounded assumptions.Money, Math, and Meaning“Independence isn’t a destination—it’s a design challenge.”In a thoughtful back-and-forth with Vince, Gagan shares why financial planning must merge psychology, lifestyle design, and human behavior—not just numbers in a spreadsheet._________________________Connect with us:Host: Vince Chan | Guest: Gagan Sandhu --Chief Change Officer--Change Ambitiously. Outgrow Yourself.Open a World of Expansive Human Intelligencefor Transformation Gurus, Black Sheep,Unsung Visionaries & Bold Hearts.EdTech Leadership Awards 2025 Finalist.18 Million+ All-Time Downloads.80+ Countries Reached Daily.Global Top 1.5% Podcast.Top 10 US Business.Top 1 US Careers.>>>170,000+ are outgrowing. Act Today.<<<
Chapter 1: Who is Gagan Sandhu and what is his background?
Hi, everyone. Welcome to our show, Chief Change Officer. I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. Our show is a modernist humility for change progressives in organizational and human transformation from around the world. Today, I'm thrilled to be speaking with my Chicago MBA classmate, Gargan Sandhu.
Like many of my previous guests, Gargan is an immigrant who moved from India to the States about 20 years ago. With a mechanical engineering background, he began his journey as a grad student. About two years ago, he founded a FinTech company aimed at helping Gen Y and Z achieve financial independence.
Speaking of financial independence, I've always been skeptical of it, seeing it more as a myth or a marketing buzzword. In true Chicago Booth style, Gargan and I will be exchanging viewpoints on this topic, agreeing to disagree while appreciating and understanding our different perspectives in a sensible manner. On top of that, Gargan will share invaluable insights on managing career paths.
I really appreciate that before our interview, despite his busy schedule, Gagan made it a point to thoroughly understand the scope of my show. He asked for examples and even took the time to write down his career insights to share with me ahead of time. So for the next 45 minutes, I guarantee you'll learn a lot from him. Let's begin, shall we?
Hey, thank you so much, Vince. Thank you so much for reaching out and rekindling old memories from business school. And I'm so happy to be doing this with you. And I'm a fan of you and what you're doing. So thank you so much.
You're really a key part of this bigger journey you started off some time ago. It feels like just yesterday, maybe a year or two back, when we got on that call as you were beginning your venture. You had just left your corporate job to dive headfirst into your new endeavor. But before we dive into that, let's take a step back. I'd love to hear more about your background.
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Chapter 2: How did Gagan transition from engineering to tech?
What have you done before this? Let's explore some of the major milestones. moving across borders, adapting to different cultures, and how you've embraced change throughout your life so far. Let's start there.
Great. So my story is not very different from a typical immigrant to the U.S., and the U.S. is a big magnet for immigrants. So I came here in the early aughts, 2001, 2002, to pursue grad school at Arizona State, and I liked the way things are here. I got a job. Incidentally, though, even though I came here to do something related to tech,
My undergrad was in mechanical engineering, but I'm like, yeah, mechanical engineering, a lot of innovations happened in the 20th century. I should switch to something related to tech. So I went to grad school for that. By the time I graduated, nobody wanted to hire in tech because we were going through a huge recession. And
What happened, I ended up again working in the mechanical engineering industry here in the U.S. That was my first job. But I kept at it. I kept working on the side and just doing things on my own, which helped me secure a job in tech, actually. That happened back in 2005. I know I'm dating myself here, but that happened in 2005.
And one quick note I want to share with the audience, given that people are looking for nuggets in terms of career and how to grow. I do want to share that by the time I got into tech, I was 29 plus years old, so close to 30. I was married and I had a child by then. So I just want people to realize and know that you can change careers and nothing's going to stop you if you put your mind to it.
I remember when my wife was pregnant with our first child and I was preparing on the side. I would take printouts, read all the time. I would install software on my laptop and write programs and write code and all that. And sometimes when my wife would have to, I would have to take her to the doctor's appointment for the wellness checks and all that.
While we were waiting for the doctor, I would be combing through the notes and the PDFs and all those things and just studying, just reading. And all that paid off. I got into tech in 2005. I moved to Boston, worked at a tech company called Akamai Technologies. I worked there for many years, first as an engineer, then as a manager.
Then I realized that Boston is too small for market, which we will talk about in more detail. But I realized that since I was 8,000 miles away from where I was born and where a lot of my loved ones lived, moving a couple thousand miles within the U.S. wasn't going to make a big difference to me. So we moved about, this was around the time when I was still in business school.
We were still at Chicago Booth. And I got a job in Silicon Valley and I moved about 10 years ago.
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Chapter 3: What does financial independence mean to Gagan?
going deep and becoming a super specialist in your area, or it could mean going broad and finding more about certain areas, or it could mean looming one area and picking totally different area and learn more about it because you might have learned most of the things that had to be learned in your previous role, in your previous avatar.
So to answer your question succinctly, I would say seeking knowledge has proven for me to be the ultimate success criteria. And every time I've increased knowledge, the dividends have been tremendous. And I should add here, since you and I share that background, for me, going to business school was purely a knowledge decision. I didn't go there to change careers. I was working in tech.
I continued to work in tech. I didn't expect a huge jump. I was working as a senior manager, then I became a director after that. It was a pretty linear path. But I went there to learn about things that, as a person working in tech, Certain things like economics and marketing and finance and accounting, those things were my blind spots.
And as I was growing in my career, I realized that I needed that knowledge in my toolbox to be able to have a coherent conversation with some of my business partners at work. Even if I'm the tech person, I'm still expected to know a little bit more about how accounting works, how the basic unit economics of certain product work, how the cost accounting work.
And for that, I went to business school. So that has been my constant journey and even starting Zillion. One of the reasons was I learned a ton while working at different companies and I'm like, my learning has slowed down and plateaued. One of the best ways to learn more is to start something from scratch.
And so I would argue that even starting Zillion was a step in that direction, which is to actually increase knowledge at a rapid pace.
You've become financially independent and then decided to start this company to help others achieve the same. This makes me wonder, what does financial independence mean to you? I'm very eager to hear about your personal wealth philosophy. The term financial independence is heavily used online. In fact, often misused or reduced to just a buzzword.
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Chapter 4: What is the difference between financial independence and retirement?
But I'm interested in your genuine perspective and practices. How do you interpret and apply this concept in your life?
Yeah, absolutely. And I agree with you that There is a lot of noise around this term. Financial freedom, financial independence, financially independent, retire early. There's a whole fire movement. And also, especially ever since the social media became a dominant force in the society, there are just too many people out there trying to almost... Some of them sound like snake oil salesmen.
They're like, oh yeah, I'm financially independent. I just have this social media or I do X, Y, Z and I make enough money, blah, blah, blah. So I'll tell you what my criteria was. It was fairly straightforward and I would actually contextualize, right? I'm careful to use the word financial independence and not retirement.
Because those two are different terms, very different context and very different overall outcomes. For me, financial independence meant I could leave my corporate job and go work on my own and build something from scratch. When I was able to do that, I said I am financially independent because I can do what I want with my time.
So I earned that independence and I don't have to be beholden to a paycheck to do that or to something else. In this case, it was paycheck. And for me it actually, I'm an engineer after all, and I actually did a very mathematical thing. I figured out how much money I would need to sustain for at least five years so that I can build something on the side while not starving my family.
and i did some math and not super rigorous we are all pretty good at doing basic math and i did that i'm like okay five years our yearly spend is about this much my kids one of my kids is gonna go to college uh in this much amount of time so here's that and also while i build i will not have an income
So my retirement account has to be in a certain shape or form so that I'm not insecure about that. So that's going to be another amount, let's say X and Y is going to be the amount that is going to be needed for just maintaining and sustaining for five years while I build something. And Z is the amount that is needed to send, let's say one or two kids to college during that time.
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Chapter 5: How does Zillion help users achieve financial independence?
So X plus Y plus Z. I felt that once I reached that number, that would be my financial independence. And what I realized was that it was a number, right? I think the specifics are not super important. I think everybody's circumstances are different. And what I realized was that it was easy for me to do this almost like a mental math. But for a lot of people, it was a much hard calculation.
Not because the math is hard, but because I think the reason it's easy for me is because I'm able to keep track of things much, much better than an average person. For instance, I know pretty well what my monthly expenses are. I've known it since I was in college and I have always maintained spreadsheets. I can tell you what my monthly expenses were in 2005, for instance, right?
I'll maintain spreadsheets. So it's very easy for me to do that. It's just a habit. The second is I'm pretty decent at also managing cash flow and investing. So all of that combined, it became pretty, I would say, attainable and achievable goal for me personally, and me and my wife as a family as a unit. But what I realized is for a lot of people, it's much harder because
a lot of people don't know how much they actually spend in a b a lot of people some do not really start investing early enough to actually gain the compounding effect the magical compounding effect to actually see their savings grow and that actually also stops them or c This is relevant very much to the question you specifically asked.
A lot of people actually go in directions that they are told that will lead them to financial independence, but it's not. For instance, a lot of people are like, hey, I only buy real estate because somebody told me that's what I should do. If you're going to own only real estate, it doesn't yield cash returns, which means you'll be cash poor, but asset rate. That's not financial independence.
So understanding those things helped me build my viewpoint. And now my goal is to help others see that viewpoint and build financial independence in a way that works for them. And actually, in that respect,
Another thing that, you know, because you and I went to a really good school and some of the things were hammered into us completely while we were at Booth, which is the stock market returns, right? I think you can wake up any UChicago Booth alum in the middle of the night and say, hey, what are long-term S&P 500 returns?
And I think before they even gain a little bit of sense of the world, they'll be like 10%. Right? It's fit. That's one of the healthiest things. And I think what I realized is that very few people actually know this very fundamental thing that you can get these kinds of returns.
And also if you diversify a little bit better, you can probably get a little bit more, or if you're conservative, you can get a little bit less. But what we did at Zillion was we helped people visualize financial independence. So we built tools within Zillion and we actually call this tool financial independence tool, the FIT.
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Chapter 6: What role does knowledge play in achieving success?
How will that impact? We will show you how will that impact. You're like, oh, what if I have to pay 100% of my child's college education? How will that impact my financial independence? For those of us who are not very good at mental math, we built this tool so you can just plug that number in and say, okay, my child is going to go to some XYZ college, 200K expense coming up in five years.
How will that impact my financial independence? So we actually made the thinking part super easy and we took the assumptions out. Also, how will inflation impact my financial independence? I can say, oh, I need a million dollars to retire because that's the number thrown around. These days it's, I think, 2.2 million. That's the number that's thrown around.
But hey, if I'm going to live for another 40 years, is it going to be enough? How will inflation impact that? you can actually adjust for that. So the overall thing we have done is what I realized is some people are very good at this math, but a lot of people are not.
And what we did is we made the math so easy and so visual and so easy to understand and actually play with that now financial independence should seem like a tangible thing. So much so that a customer of ours, I was meeting with them and it was in a social setting and I was explaining what we do and I was talking to somebody asked a question, hey, Gagan, how do I know how much money I need?
I'm like, we built a calculator. Exactly. We built a product just for this. And a customer of ours, he was also in that. He was also right next to me. Oh, is that the number I see on the top right corner? I'm like, yeah. So the idea, the thing is that we made it this whole complex thing.
And we simplified it and we made it visually so appealing and so easy to use that people are able to now see what financial independence would mean for them and whether and when they are likely to reach that. And also once they reach, are they at the risk of running out of money or not?
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Chapter 7: What are Gagan's thoughts on the FIRE movement?
If somebody decides I want to send two kids to college and retire at 42 and I want to travel the world and I'm going to have no income, our product will show them if they're likely to run out of money, maybe by the age of 65 or 70, or they're not going to run out of money and they can comfortably even retire. For them, financial independence might mean retire.
For some, it might mean they go from full-time to part-time. Or it might mean they, rather than just working for money, they can now pursue a passion where they will have a lower income. Let's say some people want to, one of my coworkers at Square, he quit his corporate job and became a teacher. Now, following that passion, I'm sure he took a huge pay cut, maybe 60, 70, even 80% pay cut.
But my guess is that this person is really good at doing the math and they can say, yeah, I can do this. One of our customers, they both work and one of them decided after using Zillion, they're like, hey, listen, one of us is going to quit and focus on family and just take some time off because we know our financial independence is not at stake. Our tools help people do that.
Let me share my take on financial independence if you allow me. Interestingly, I don't actually believe in it. And my reasoning isn't about the math. It's about human nature and psychology. We humans have desires at every stage of our lives. Whether it's craving the latest iPhone when we are younger, or simply needing a functional phone as we grow older, our desires shape our financial behavior.
I believe as long as we have desires, we can never be truly financially independent because our decisions are influenced by our pursuit of these desires and the financial means to fulfill them. Personally, I'm not just about numbers. I consider myself a philosopher at heart. despite studying finance and accounting and spending a decade in financial institutions helping people manage money.
I'm fundamentally a humanist. Life is not only short, it is unpredictable. We might plan to achieve certain things by a certain age, but there's no guarantee we'll have the time. So for me, it's about focusing on the present, like building a good show here. Yes, I need to make and spend money to sustain it.
But I do stress over really long-term financial plans because the future is after all uncertain. To me, managing personal wealth is less about math. and more about one's life philosophy, psychology, and the ability to tune out the noise and adapt to changes around us. That's my perspective on financial independence.
I think we are talking about the same thing. Maybe we are talking about the two different sides of the same coin. What you are saying is living in present. One fact I think we both have to agree on. In the modern world, the concept of money and wealth is enmeshed with our daily lives. We just can't separate, right?
How we live our lives is influenced by money, whether we like it or not, but that's how the world is structured today. To your point, living in the present, I agree with you 100%. Knowing about independence does is it helps you define that present and it helps you be very conscious about that.
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