interviewee #1
Transcript
Growing up in a traditional Asian family, the idea of entrepreneurship for my family meant being unemployed. They would always tell me that I should look more into “reliable” careers such as being a doctor, or an engineer. As an Asian-America successful entrepreneur and tech advisor, what advice would you give to young Asian Americans who want to start their own businesses but feel like they lack resources or representation?
“When I first came to paypal Delicious was one of the startups that we purchased from yahoo and a few other apps that didn’t work out. But I think that the start-up experience is just in itself, not looking at the finish line of whether or not that turns out to be a $1 billion acquisition or million dollar acquisition or just an outright failure. Just living through the day, just going through the experience of what it’s like waking up every day not knowing what to expect, reacting and responding to what your customer says, like thinking it through what is the best way to solve this and being able to implement that and incorporate it into the product. You can’t get anywhere else. I mean don’t drop out of school because that’s important, also don’t leave a good career path but also keep in mind that entrepreneurship is a life career that allows you to solve problems in the real world by using personal ideas and making tangible products based on your logic and creativity. For me entrepreneurship was one of the best things that happened to me. But, going back to your question, my one piece of advice to the younger generations is to pursue their dreams even if no one else believes in them. ”
Did you feel that being an Asian entrepreneur shaped how investors, partners, or the media perceived you? If so, how?
“That is a really good question and in fact I’m not trying to be humble but rather trying to be honest to say that even now twenty plus years later I’m still not sure what the real answer to that question really is. Especially after spending twenty plus years in Silicon Valley going through all the faces of the tech industry such as being an engineer at paypal, co-founder of Youtube, going through the acquisition process at google, paypal and youtube, making investments, being advisor to companies. Then in 2019 moving back to Asia, that was the exact same question that the government here in Taiwan had. We have a lot of Taiwanese Americans entrepreneurs who brought startups to reach success, yet, inside Taiwan for the last 30 years there’s companies that have done very well but relatively to other Asian countries, they haven’t seen any entrepreneurs emerge from this culture. When I first took my flight to Silicon Valley to start working at paypal I didn’t really get the chance to process much of the idea of my heritage as most of my focus was on learning how to think and work like the team that surrounded me. The idea of working with a group of people who were passionate about putting their ideas together to make different products gave me that hunger, that motivation to think differently. It’s hard to lose that desire to keep trying. To me that was the idea of silicon valley and not so much about my Asian heritage”
As an Asian American entrepreneur, did you ever face any challenges related to your race? If so, how did you navigate them?
“I think being an Asian American is both a curse and a blessing in some ways. Speaking from two perspectives; my own personal experiences but then just for America as a whole. America is supposed to be this melting pot but as we’ve seen historically that the same melting pot doesn’t melt everything the same way. Two hundred years after the civil war we are still having cases, it’s still coming up as like what are the top issues that are being discussed all the time. Things like affirmative action, things with DI, and all of these stuff are still on the news this month, and even this week. I think that I wouldn’t say that I would give up on that fight but I would also say that there’s something about being in an environment that requires strength to get by. In some ways you need the culture, or social surroundings to kind of prove your value. Something that is according to U.S culture is that if you have an idea then you should do it. It is an open field where you can either succeed or fail but regarding the outcome you should try. It’s not easy to succeed but at the same time that is not a bad thing because if it is too easy no one wants to do the work to get there.”