We All Want to Live in the North West

Mohammad Almejel (MBA ‘26) reflects on risk and return in life.

As RC year winds down and internship season begins, I’ve found myself ruminating on a central graph from FIN1: the Efficient Frontier. That clean curve — risk on the x-axis, return on the y-axis — is meant to illustrate the optimal portfolio construction. But lately, I’ve started to see it as something else: a metaphor for life choices.

Photo credit: Sultan Saif Al Maiyahi

Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) offers a portfolio construction framework according to two central principles: risk and return. The goal, of course, is to live in the north west corner of the graph: the promised land of maximum return and minimum risk. Any portfolio beneath the curve is inefficient — a poor allocation of resources. Any portfolio on the curve is, by definition, optimal given its risk level. And the top left? That’s where everyone wants to be.

It’s an elegant framework and one that’s been rattling around in my head as I try to make sense of the year behind us and career paths ahead.

When I think about my pre-HBS life, I see a point plotted far to the right of the graph: a high-risk bet with uncertain return. In 2021, I joined the founding team of a capital-intensive startup operating in a region with minimal venture funding. We were building in a space dominated by entrenched incumbents with deep pockets and well-defended moats. The barriers to entry weren’t just high; they were also actively discouraging. And yet, I jumped in.

At the time, I could afford making bold, concentrated bets. I was young, eager, and, perhaps most importantly, comfortable with volatility. My risk appetite was high and, in a sense, inversely correlated to my age. The expected return of a successful exit looked attractive to me. Even if that exit never came, I reasoned that the experience would yield long-term learnings. I'd learn how to build. How to lead. How to navigate scarcity. In MPT terms, I was betting on a single, volatile, uncorrelated asset.

As the business started to grow and gain traction, its risk profile started to look more favorable. That said, no matter how promising that one investment was, it still exposed me to enormous idiosyncratic risk. A single pivot, market shift, or failed fundraising round could wipe out years of effort. There was no hedge. No diversification. I was all in on a single bet predicated on the thesis that Kuwaiti consumers want their goods delivered to their doorsteps in minutes and that our service would be sticky and reliable enough to reach critical mass and grow sustainably.

After nearly three years as an operator at Fiz, an early-stage business, I decided it was time for a change. One of the main reasons I came to HBS was to make the transition from builder to investor, from operator to capital allocator. It wasn’t just about migrating to the other side of the fundraising table; it was also about evolving my mindset. From a professional perspective, I wanted to learn how to evaluate and invest in valuable, profit-generating businesses and master portfolio construction. From a life perspective, I wanted to build a more diversified set of assets: friends, mentors, ideas, frameworks, and ways of thinking. I view diversification not just as a financial strategy, but a life strategy as well.

And yet, even in the investing world, there’s no such thing as a risk-free trade. Some post-MBA jobs may feel like safe bets (abundant roles, strong comp, clear outcomes), but as HBS professor Mihir Desai reminds us, safety nets aren’t always as safe as they seem. When everyone rushes into the same trade, the alpha disappears, and profits get competed away. The only way to stay ahead is to find your edge, do the thing others aren’t doing, or do the obvious thing better than anyone else.

MPT teaches us that diversification helps reduce idiosyncratic risk, but it also reminds us that not all risk is bad. Some risk is necessary to achieve higher returns. Taking out a loan to come to business school, for instance, is risky given the fact that they don’t hand out jobs with diplomas on graduation day. Future income to pay down the loan is not guaranteed, but we believe that the foundational education and strong network HBS provides will land us roles that will help us service our debt. The key is understanding your own utility curve — what tradeoffs you're willing to accept, volatility you can stomach, and version of “return” for which you’re actually optimizing.

At HBS, I’ve met people who are concentrated in passion and uncorrelated in ambition. Classmates who are writing novels, launching software companies, taking family businesses public, or quietly grinding in search of an edge that others overlook. I’ve seen how our RC portfolios start to take shape — how some rush toward perceived safe havens like PE, VC, or consulting (where the return is known and the risk is manageable), while others bet on more volatile assets, such as startups and search funds. Sometimes we anchor too much on the y-axis (comp, prestige, optionality), and forget to ask: how much risk am I taking on here? And is it the right kind of risk?

That’s where the metaphor deepens. MPT isn’t just about maximizing return. It’s also about making smart allocations across a basket of choices that reflect your unique profile. What are your goals? What are your constraints? What are you hedging against? Some of us came to HBS to diversify and spread our exposure across industries, geographies, and ways of thinking. Others came to concentrate and double down on a specific bet, credentialize it, and accelerate it. Some are here to rebalance; others to find new assets to add to their life portfolios.

For me, HBS has been a moment of reallocation. It's been a journey from risk-on to risk-aware. A shift from operator to investor, from builder to allocator, from betting big on one idea to building a career that compounds over time. The past three years were about taking bold swings. The next 30 will center around steady gains, smart risk-adjusted allocation, and a long-term outlook.

As we move from sectionmates to summer interns and from students to stewards of our own careers, I hope we keep asking ourselves the real questions: what type of risk am I actually taking? Market risk? Execution risk? Reputational? And more importantly, what kind of return am I seeking? Is it financial, intellectual, social, or something more personal? The Efficient Frontier doesn’t prescribe one right portfolio; it simply maps a range of possible combinations. The hard part is deciding what we want to optimize for and having the courage to invest accordingly, even when it means deviating from the consensus trade.

At the end of the day, we all want to live in the north west. But maybe the real win is realizing that the best portfolios (and the best lives) aren’t optimized for perfection. Rather, they’re built with intention, hedged with wisdom, and rebalanced over time.

Mohammad Almejel (MBA ’26) was born and raised in Kuwait. He studied structural engineering at the University of California, San Diego, and earned a master’s degree in civil engineering from Columbia University. Prior to HBS, Mohammad was the Co-Founder and Director of Operations at Fiz, a quick-commerce startup based in Kuwait.