How to make it in Southeast Asia as a foreign founder - Charles Lee

I think AI is still looking for that killer use case in a lot of in a lot of ways and I think education is like never one you need to double your Le this like that's impossible like dude this this guy is like building Rockets to Mars he's building a 7 bilon like come on kind of Bring It Back is like that's what I think people aren't just aren't just ambitious [Music] enough today I'm talking to Charles Lee a korean-american Founder who built coder School in hoim Min City uh it's great to meet you man I don't think we've had the pleasure to chat right uh we were in different cohorts uh so yeah like both of us basically uh iterative cohorts I was in the first one you were in the second one if I'm not mistaken and you're running coder school is that that's the name right Cod code is school yeah uh and I was going through your LinkedIn and I I didn't realize this you're actually fully American right it seems at the very least asly as fully American as one can be yeah American I'm Kore Kore I explain like uh I'm Korean American so I was Kore born in the US yeah so my parents were born in Korea I was born in the US my wife is Korean so I know a little bit yeah yeah she's full Korean though uh so I'm learning all the uh all the cultural differences between American Korean American and like Korean Koreans and how they you know how they see each other basically because it's a whole different culture at this point yeah it's amazing right like actually um I was talk about this so actually my wife uh is also full Korean so I'm getting married actually in uh three weeks congrats um thank you and it's funny that like um once you're like kind of similar the differences become much bigger so I feel like with you like uh I don't know about your situation but I would imagine like your wife's family would like not know exactly what to what to give some some s things but like with with my family it's like they know exactly like what city is she from oh she's from that oh that kind of stuff it's like yeah know I know what you mean it's more flagrant when you're assuming they'll be the same but they're obviously different is what you mean yeah I know what you mean yeah I've had amazing experiences in Korea man I have to say it's one of my favorite places to go to and one of the reasons why we're living in Southeast Asia is to be closer to her family and be able to travel more more often so yeah good stuff do you speak Korean some like yeah some enough okay okay I'm learning man it's such a tough language I I know a few languages but Korean has to be the hardest one maybe it's because I'm getting older but wow it's like night and day from any Latin languages or whatever I will say I think it's h it's not tonal which I think helps a lot but uh yeah read reading and writing quite easy right I mean you obviously probably were raised with that but for me it was something I could learn in in a couple hours and I'm I'm Legit saying that because there's like courses on how to learn to read and write Korean in an hour it's it's quite easy but yes speaking yet I'm trying every week it's just going to take a while cool so you live in Vietnam right are you in which city are you in h City hoim Min City Okay cool so you've been in hoim Min City since 2015 correct or were you there before starting this business business no so um before coming to Vietnam I I did come to Vietnam in 2015 and I didn't come with the idea of starting coder School uh I've come from San Francisco where obviously there was a lot of startup uh stuff here and there I was part of that crowd so my career started at big companies and then over time I I found myself drawn to smaller and smaller companies happy talk about that until eventually I tried to start my own company actually in San Francisco and so I did that for a year and a half two years maybe and uh it was a lot harder than I thought um so uh you know even moving from early employee to founder I was like oh this is this is a bigger jump than I realized perhaps my CEOs I was working for were not as dumb as I thought and so I was trying to take a break and that's how I ended up Vietnam I was like you know what like actually I was like this is not for me uh I was I'm I'm an engineer so I was like oh I was I didn't realize how good I had as an engineer I just foot all day get paid pretty well um things like that so the one thing I always felt though was that I wanted to live outside the US for a little bit so despite being Korean I was born and raised in America and I feel very American I visited Korea a bunch of times but I never like saw I feel like I've been on vacation places but uh people are always telling me things like when you live somewhere it's a totally different experience and so i' always been curious about that like what would it be like to be somewhere for a month or two months or three months not just there to like see the the Lonely Planet Guy totally um and just so happened that Vietnam was on the list and when I came here uh the whole story behind coder school was I think one is I was kind of a nerd and I didn't really know how to meet people like once you realize going to be here for three months or six months you're sort of like I need to like meet some real people it's not clear how to do that so what did I do I went to like tech people like meetings and stuff on Tech meetups.com yeah and so one thing leads to another and uh people ask me what I do and actually I didn't really know how to answer that question because I didn't have a job and I wasn't I didn't really want to get the whole thing of like well I try to do startup stuff and didn't work out uh that story got really um boring and tedious to tell so what I told people was I was a coding teacher because that's actually something I was doing so I was Moonlighting uh working part-time uh for a former housemade of mine actually who did start an online coding school back in 201 2014 or what it was so when I explained that the immediate reaction I got from most people in Vietnam I was like oh you should do that here like there's no coding school here very cool um so that's how Cod School kind of got started and like I know that Vietnam now is you know one of the top hubs or at least spoken in that regard as the top hub for developers at least in Southeast Asia uh it wasn't the case in 2015 I assume things are kind of moving quite rapidly so you're like like you said there was no coder school early adopter in terms of teaching people to code are you responsible partially for like the massive growth that Vietnam has seen in the last 10 years for for developers I would like to say that but no I I don't think it was the case uh not yet hopefully I can answer that question a little differently a few years from now but the thing you said is really interesting and it's something about southeast Asia I find uh I only appreciate after living here for a while is that each people tend to think about southeast Asia as like one country but obviously if you live here you realize that it's not one region right everyone's very different for sure but when it comes to talents I found that like particularly interesting like people sort of have this idea like oh Vietnam is good a coding um you know like uh Singapore is good at Finance or something Thailand's good at design like they have these different types things Philippines is good at customer service like y these kinds of uh these kinds of reputations sort of occur and I don't know if it's self-fulfilling prophecy or what but I think that's sort of like reinforced itself but specifically when it comes to Vietnam I know Vietnam had that reputation I think a long time ago uh you know Co are good but the thing I found really interesting is that despite this reputation I couldn't point to an educational institution that was like the best like oh Vietnam has the best coders is there a really good University or is there like what's the MIT of Vietnam this kind of how did it happen and there wasn't there wasn't something like that so interesting do you have an answer actually I'm curious how did that happen without a proper curriculum in place or like anything standing out from the rest of Southeast sta as you said yeah I think there is um I think uh compared to Southeast Asia I think maybe Vietnam maybe maybe Singapore both have sort of this like confusion math and science stem slant so I think like kind of historically people like you should be good at math and I think that's highly emphasized so I think that's probably r of it I think the venomous government has interesting things actually most uh people have to study coding in school okay I mean that's pretty that's pretty intense oh wow which is really out ofate so that's another issue that's a little bit out of dat perhaps um but yeah but that people get exposed to early so I think those things have really combined to it adds up it adds up and how's the um how's the geopolitical landscape for for businesses or startups in in Vietnam because I know every as you said you know Southeast St is super fragmented every country has their own rules and regulations uh and this is something we could talk a lot about but you know Southeast s should not be seen as one single region so how how is it to start a company in Vietnam right now is it easy I think that uh it is not easy but it's not because of the regulations so I think it's challenging start a business we can get all the different reasons but often people who are asking me about hey is it hard to start a business in Vietnam are sort of asking about the regulatory like you know like what paperwork do you need is it clear that stuff is super easy uh okay I mean I think it's certainly there's some some Nuance to it but that's not the reason that most companies fail I would say it's because of that okay um and you know there's as I mentioned earlier there's two types of Founders for for startups in Southeast Asia there's foreigners who come to Southeast Asia whether they're you know born in abroad but from a AG of of Asia and then there's locals who want to start a business um is it you know Foreigner friendly to to build something in Vietnam or not really yeah I think it's extremely foreign friendly so I was really surprised by that actually so um I I really don't think I've ever felt like sort of hostility from anybody like what are you doing here trying to like run a business here I think people are genuinely like excited about progress and development and okay it's a similar feeling I would talk about how it feels a little bit like sanco SK used to feel like when you just have an idea or something new people are generally receptive to it and it's not about like who where you're from or there just interest in the actual like output is cool okay that's very cool I think like one of the main things that you know foreign startup Founders would look at is how easy is it to to get a visa and things like that because certain countries that don't make very easy you know I live in Thailand and it's not easy to get a Visa if you want to build a startup here you you have to go through certain institutions and they they have a pretty high rejection rate and things like that so just curious if that's like it seems a lot more startup friendly in Vietnam in that regard I think the situ situation in Vietnam is a little bit Dynamic it is uh I mean I think if you've lived in the region long enough you realize there are often many ways to get to the output like there's like the official way there's like other sort of um ways that sometimes faster slower yeah it's defitely not um a huge concern I thought Thailand actually so by the way like I didn't realize you were in Thailand like I thought they had some like amazing program where yeah I mean they built an amazing program on paper on paper so I think early early on they really wanted to attract a lot of startups and I don't know if you know this but as much as the economy here is is really nice there's a big uh middle class the number of startups is one of the lowest in Southeast Asia I think Boston Consulting came out with a report a few months ago and they report an official number of 185 startups which you know you know this that it's like one batch at YC right now so it's kind of ridiculous so yeah they do have a program in place but I I I hear the rejection rate is is quite High they're very picky on what type of startups they want which you know it's fine they they should be picky but I think it's deterring a lot of startup Founders from building anything in in Thailand on top of the fact that you know the language the language CH like the language barrier um the whole culture is different from whatever they they might be familiar with um it's a lot easier let's say to start something in the Philippines where people speak English to to start with um so yeah there's a there's a few challenges in in Thailand unfortunately but I'm pretty sure they're working on that cool and what about uh fundraising um just to give you a bit of background I started a business uh five years ago in the in the Philippines a fintech business um it's now been uh exited but when we started getting money in the Philippines was close to Impossible um the only countries that were really um you know funding or like the that were targeted by VCS were Indonesia and Singapore uh it's a lot more common now but I'm curious about uh the the you know the funding in Vietnam I saw numbers where compared to the height of 2021 it's pretty much collapsed now but I'm just curious what you're feeling on the ground yeah I always have all these questions you're asking by the way like I have to be a little careful about um I do think that's maybe one thing that in the region like I don't want to I feel like in the US whatever you can't say whatever you want um sure here I want to be a little bit more like be as careful as you need to be yeah as you ask questions about sort of like government or landscape or these kinds of things yeah yeah for sure my feeling is actually yeah it's challenging for everyone across the board um I think perhaps like Venture Capital as like the traditional model of like you know the ones that made the grabs and that kind of thing is sort of maybe under some scrutiny I think there's a growing sentiment that hey like perhaps the US Playbook does not apply one to one with the southeast Asia Playbook like perhaps not going to the Ubers and the Wei Works um the soft Bank type model um at the same time like I feel super bullish about it for two reasons uh specifically Vietnam one is I mean you talk about this like Capital available Indonesia I think it's to me it feels like it's sort of crusted um how much more how are you GNA make 100x gains in Indonesia it's like it seems a lot harder now right so I think people can be drawn to where the sort of opportunities are Thailand yeah seems for for some reason like you know GDB growth is sort of not strong and the Outlook is sort of like I think mixed and so people are looking I think Vietnam as a viable option where else is the money going to be deployed uh the VCS have to eventually deploy their money somewhere so I think Vietnam's like a strong candidate uh so I feel pretty good about that but like underneath all of this uh for the stage that K school's at despite us being around from 2015 I think as a mixture of like both its leadership and the industry we're in it's a little bit of a small it's like a it's it's been a slower sort of progression so we're not huge now so our next round would be like an aish round so you raised 2.6 right a pre pre prea something like that pre right was that how long ago was that that was 2021 okay two two oh man it's been two and a half years now yeah flies yeah but uh for that reason I think that like we're so so much in control of our own destiny so I feel like if I can just double our you know our customers every month it doesn't matter if like Vietnam's not the coolest place to invest perhaps like you know series C Series D or trying to exit right that it would be a different conversation but right now we're so let's talk about that though like I'm curious about Koda school like where you guys are at right now if you can give me some numbers tell me a bit more about the business uh how you like obviously you're teaching people how to code uh you're placing them I believe like you have a placement uh agency style model uh what's what's the whole structure business model what are some numbers you can throw at me I'm very curious about it yeah before we get numbers let me just clarify um what we do so we're trying to build online education so it didn't always start online but for the past few years it's been a fully online experience the big observation is like look there are big companies out there for example I think corera is a great one uh I think 600 million Revenue every every year but still not something I would recommend to most people especially within the Contex South Asia like if someone came to me and was like Hey Charles I really want to be like a data scientist what should I do and I'm not sure I'd be like hey you should go sign up for perero that's like 10 out of 10 what you should do so um there maybe there's some context where that makes sense uh but I think at least in our region this just not the right option and so when I think of what else can they do like how do people want to become data scientists or product managers or you know all the uiux designers when it comes to this whole Spectrum it just seems like there's no good options anywhere uh and that's kind of crazy to me especially in 2024 why why that's the case and so what cor school is trying to provide is that sort of relevant uh useful actionable Career Training right now we specialize in software and data science so we do like a development course uh and uh a data science course we're rapidly looking to add more catalog so 2024 it's really about adding more more things um before this call I was working on our new game development and unity course very cool next uh but there's just so many like new things to learn and you know there's there's all these trends that basically are sort of pushing I think education law faster like we're gonna you guys have anything blockchain related or not not yet we we we have done some blockchain stuff in the past uh like everyone else in 2018 actually I play with the idea of like we should pivot to be like the best blockchain school and uh I didn't I didn't quite do that we ran some blockchain courses so we have we ran some cility courses things like that but um it's something we're definitely looking at um okay and these are three month courses just like kind of the standard like there's a lot of them in North America as well right 3month program and then you try to place yeah so our model's a little bit different now so we've we've we've done that three three month thing before now the way it works is most of our classes are six months long and they're one-on-one Mentor Le meaning oh wow we have all these material on on corsera and stuff Corsair style like we have videos and exercises and a whole learning platform but then every week uh once a week you have to talk to someone one-onone like like this okay and to me it's like a really simple structure but it's also like like how most people learn most things like you know if you were trying to learn how to play guitar or Swim you wouldn't go to class for like8 hours day to to do these things you would you know have a lesson once a week and then in the meantime practice on your own yeah and that's exactly what we're trying to do with technical skills and the other thing I find really interesting is and I'm curious in your thoughts on this too as like as the market evolves uh sort of the difference between people often ask me what's the difference between engineers in silon Valley that you've seen versus Engineers here and I think the question is not even about engineers it's about like sort of like all start of employees and it's I I haven't found a better word to use than the soft skills piece although it's like that term is like really overloaded but it's just like things around communication critical thinking productivity like getting the right things done speciically when it comes to for example data science a really palpable example is anyone can sort of learn how to calculate the average of these numbers or like the standard deviation of these numbers but that's not really what data scientists are being paid for right they're being paid to like oh actually you should sell like this you should open an hour later on Sundays or something like that's what people want and when it comes to these things like I just don't know why but you can't learn this stuff from a book right you have to sort of talk to someone um same thing with startup founder education like right like he like there's no book out there that can really teach you startup stuff and it's not complicated it's like you should find product Market fit you should you know stay lean you should you know like be profitable like these are all very simple Concepts but it's like you have to sort of be in this conversations or have mentors or people to age explain it to you absolutely okay that's really cool um and so the the business model is that the students pay you upfront anything or you place them and then you take a cut for a year or some we had the students pay us up front we've done the other model too in the past and it's actually like one of the most successful experiments we ran uh but just it became sort of hard to sustain and I think more of an agency model at that point right it's a bit model it's big tricky also like there's no real guarantee that you're going to get that money back I guess like I mean true true true true can it scale to a billion dollar business like it's sort of unclear and a lot of schools that sort of thought they could have sort of been struggling I think also spefically for the Sur regen uh collection of debt is like a more complicated thing in southeast it would be in the US Europe and if you end up placing them or they Place themselves abroad how are you going to collect on that as well it's kind of and also as you think about like as you start a company right like what do you want the main focus of your company to be like um I think if you start so we we thought about going down the model and we did and there's certainly ways to solve all these problems yeah you end up being more of an agency or you end up being more potentially like the best case you end up being like a fintech company right and I was like well not sure that's like where we want to we want to go I've been there and yeah being on the collection side is not fun at all especially in Southeast Asia that's Lally what uh the fintech was doing I mean lending and collecting so yeah I'm familiar uh and in terms of numbers so I saw publicly that you had 2500 alumni probably a lot more now that's probably old old news so tell me about that yeah so fortunate I've had a lot of people over the year so um I always sorry I always hesitate when when I'm coining these numbers because we've just had so many different versions of the model so right actually the very the very first class we ran was like this free agency model so so we teach you for free but then we would place you and like you know make money on on the recruitment fees that's how we made our first thousand at coder school and I thought this is going to be great and so through that we've had and at one point we had a sponsored program so Facebook came and paid us to run like these large community programs at scale uh we taugh like 800 people that way 800 to thousand so we've had so that number is like high today what we have is we do about uh we do about this year we're hoping to get to, 1500 students a year so like roughly 100 grades a month uh amazing they're online programs yeah and how big is your team because I'm assuming you have quite a few coaches or teachers or Educators right yeah so the the Brilliance of uh our our model I shouldn't say Brilliance but like the really nice thing about our model is that a lot of our teachers can be part-time so you're teaching someone 101 two things kind of happen one is you don't need to prepare like for hours like the way you would need to prepare for like like this podcast like I didn't had to prep for it because I knew it's was just talking you 101 but if a speech in front of 100 people I would be like up all night like yeah get I get so many times so it makes a lot easier to hire people parttime so we have I think 80 roughly 80 people who are part-time now okay who are teaching between one and five learn this week and you mentioned earlier that you were thinking of raising series a is that in the like next few months or what are you thinking about yeah I think it's sort of like a wait and see approach I think um I'm curious how you you think about it and you've certainly sort of been farther down this road uh it's like if you need to raise money you can't so and if you don't need to you can so there's like this like sort of uh thing situation so then if you take sort of step back it's like well do I want to be in a situation where I need to and or do I want to I don't need to yeah so you have a you have enough runr right now that you're not stressing about it but you don't want to get in that position right yeah and then also as you forecast growth though it's like like well how aggressive do I want to be because I could be really aggressive and be like look if we want to bring those numbers if I want to you know I just said 1500 what if we want to make that 10,000 like what would that be okay like do you want to take those swings and it's sort of and and where does that you know in terms of forecasting where do you need to be to to be profitable basically that's what you're thinking right yeah question is yeah eventually and the question is like how eventually and yeah and it's like well do I hire do I hire these like do I grow the team really fast these questions for us I think we're operating the assumption that uh and this is sort of a debate I don't love it but I think fundraising is going to be hard so we're trying to operate an assumption like well what if we never fundraise again okay what does that and that's an option you have to be quite close to to profitability I guess right that right right it's only an option in that case right but then I mean it is definitely an option um but also it's like well there's this steeper question of well why did I didn't start this business to I mean I was breaking just sitting in my apartment by myself like that was I was zero zero burn there so I was like well after 10 years like right I finally got a break even like that is there's something there but also it's like oh yeah not exactly the aspiration house yeah yeah we we've definitely all been there like that's a that's something you've Ponder on quite a bit as a Founder so you were talking about growth right now so what's your biggest challenge are you trying to grow your I call it user base but I guess you call it your student base or like how how do you go about that right now yeah so that is that is our biggest challenge um and understanding sort of all the different pieces that go into it I think my background's on engineering and so I haven't ever been like really a growth guy but then I've had the fortune of sort of having some excellent people join the team who have taught me a lot about that uh I think you're also a growth guy so you could probably I'm a growth guy so I'm I'm nerdy about that stuff okay I mean I think there's some really basic stuff I've learned but just like number one is like this transition I think every company does this in in sort of everything but like the way that I used to sort of run is like very conceptual like I feel I got a good feeling about this and early on I think as a Founder you have to sort of make these calls you don't have the luxury of for sure investing everything right and then that but that breaks apart very very quickly when it comes to growth I think like um and so now it's like more understanding like oh these are the good channels okayy why are they good and then sort of understand that so for us specifically one thing I never realized uh until recently we started being more data driven about things was like how much of our growth was being driven by referrals so um that's a very healthy time for business I'm super happy to sort of discover that but I never really thought about it okay and then it's like well maybe we should have a thing where we offer people like a small incentive for referring their friends okay well what is that like what are the different ways like do we pay them just when people sign up when people when they give names like these types of things yeah none of this sounds like rocket science but just tracking this no I mean it's great like and it's cool that you're educating yourself on it as well I I'm I'm forgetting do you have a co-founder by by the way or is it just you it's just me uh they were co-founders for the very first part of the journey but it's been it's been like six or seven years yeah so it's good that you're surrounding yourself with some growth guys um because usually you'll have like two co-founders One Technical and one who's more passionate about growth and all the other business stuff right so it's it's it's definitely a little tougher when you're on your own whether you're technical or just business uh usually the business guy has more trouble than the technical at least you can build something that's pretty cool um so I wanted to know about your thoughts because you're looking to potentially raise a series a and we touched based on this earlier on but southeast Asia is not a country as we know and each country is very different but when you talk to VCS for some reason their interest when they're you know funding you especially when you reach series a uh you kind of have to have a road map into expansion um that's something that they're really keen on regardless of how big your country is and and you know Vietnam has a pretty large population on its own but that's a question that will come up I'm pretty sure when you raised your next round is what other countries you're looking at how do you want to plan how do you plan to go about that I know that that's a question we we received when we were raising um what are your thoughts on that overall I think overall uh you can be as careful as you want yeah yeah no like and maybe like Ed this later but I think there's like this sort of weird wink wink like um understanding between Founders and V's CU I don't think VC's are so naive to think it would be easy at the same time like I feel like there needs to be a thesis for them to justify investing in you right and I don't think there's any there's very very few companies perhaps outside Indonesia that can say hey we can bring 100x like we can be like even like even inia right even like you know tokipedia like like they had to like merge right to get to sort of the size they want to be so I think there sort of this wink wink like hey we'll figure out later like we'll fund raise now and then you know then the next is sort of like tiger Global's problem in the future like I think there's a little bit of that uh between two but also that's because I think it's it's not based on the business is not impossible it's not unprecedented right like if you have this for the right team like I mean grab did do it uh exactly I mean you can name probably five companies that did it successfully right yeah but but at the same time like man like can you to me like grab is like so operationally heavy such a like yeah it's crazy and and if they were able to do it okay like it's it's not impossible and like with enough if you raise 12 billion will you figure it out like possibly right like like rab did um when it comes to specifically a Cod school I think as long as you have a few reasons why it wouldn't not work meaning like are there anything that like for example I wonder if like if you're like in banking or fintech that could actually be a thing like oh there's like different regulations that make this potentially fundamentally impossible where you have to start over things like that um when it comes to education for for me I think the the one thing I've been mindful about is uh within Vietnam specifically there's this really strong focus on K12 so actually most businesses in Vietnam education and Tech you'll talk to will be primarily K12 there's a huge amount of household spending on on K12 education uh and a lot of really great businesses in that space so people always ask me like why don't you teach children to code that seems like a really good bet for the future I'm going to learn more and more my answer has always been like I think that would stop us from expanding regally I think that you know adult education actually does look more similar than like I don't think people in Thailand would learn that differently like it's the same website build your Instagram build your you know build your thing but CH but but the younger you go I think the more localized it needs to become like and I see that sort of in the edex region space like it's not like BYU can really come outside of India or you know the Indonesia the really big one R Guru who's who hasn't really made outside Indonesia either um so like I think for us there's like some thesis there that like this could be something that grows regionally and I think that's the series a that's the what investors need do going to be a discussion for sure like because you guys are an online teaching platform or learning platform and coding is mostly in English right so the curriculum is in the local language but then all of the coding components of your education are in English or like how how did you figure that out this is like an early interesting ongoing sort of like product discussion which is how do you sort of stay true to What Makes You Different while also like listening to your customers so the very first few coder School classes were all taught in English uh by me since I don't speak for at all um and people really like that people like like oh wow like he's like you know he's from America speing English it's like of course there's like this idea that that's sort of like worth more or more valuable at some point we're like look I think this is sort of limiting our growth um for sort of obvious reasons and then but at the same time it's like well then how do you still s cling to what makes you special and and for us what we settled on was we'll do our written material in English uh so all like the online um EX exercises and everything you read and write is is in English and I think that's particularly important for technical jobs because you you like you need to Google for stuff you need to like for sure uh find stuff at least today um and so you need to be able to like Converse and that that makes your career options so much wider if you have some working English proficiency um right but we changed our our like speaking and listening to to Vietnamese so um okay unless people speci request to English like but like that's very few people like the the coach SL Mentor they'll be talking to them in in Vietnamese right yes and the and the videos that record are actually in Vietnamese okay language I'm just trying to see how much you know how much work will be needed to replicate this in country versus if you were purely an English platform in that in that case you'd basically be able to expand pretty fast right yeah so it's also a good question there too which is like how much of localization is just like language and it's actually I think the more you do it I this why companies fail it's like it's not just actually translating everything to different language um alth that's certainly a big part of it uh one thing that's really interesting is we have tried these like AI tools to automatically translate our videos actually it's like not bad it's it's 80% right yeah it's surprisingly good so but when we like launch it it's it's not people aren't like super into it right and maybe it's at 20% it's not as engaging or something well I'd say like you know what I've found especially like creating content if you're going to if you're going to use translation tools like automatic using AI you'll get 80% of the content kind of right and it might be a it might be enough versus the amount of value or like the amount of effort you've put into it like what value you're getting for it right but in your case it's like a professional setting and the output is your it's your entire value right so probably not something you want to cheap out on the 20% that lacks there right um but but actually it's like yeah it's like partially it's a factor of the translation not being exactly on but yeah it's actually like this what you said like this professional setting somehow like if you like you can imagine like we could translate uh I think they have like AI tools to like you know change people's lips or whatever like you could translate like the most famous whatever Professor speaking your language but like it doesn't feel it still doesn't feel right like and and one of the sort of Concepts that c school is pushing is like we're trying to really localize experience in more ways and what like this one experience is super intimate like you feel like it's that inefficiency actually that like makes it meaningful it's like oh this person's listening to me I can ask some questions and things like that so once you start like breaking that uh then then you get into this other like type of product which I think is more like like Master Class it's like oh I can learn from Steph Curry or I can learn from this but it's a very different feel and so that's I think that's like why I think our experiments haven't really worked out that well okay um I'm a big nerd in terms of you know using AI to automate a lot of your business um we that was one example have you tried to explore or are you actively using AI for anything else in your business um regardless of what it is I think I think like I think AI is still looking for that killer use case in a lot of in a lot of ways um and I think education is like number one so I think that's the biggest one and you know what's what was like the first controversy when AI came out it was that kids are using on their essays in school right like those are the first things it's like all this sort of like BS like that that we sort of have to do can like certainly suddenly be automated um and so when it comes to like coding and especially and like this type stuff I think I think AI is gonna be huge particularly for for me it's just like um I I was just doing this today it's like I've explained what a variable is in coding like I don't know a million times at this point but like there's still like new ways to do it there's still like there's certain analogies that work for some people that don't work for other people people like just like these different like customized View and that's like what I'm really interested in using AI for is like how can we explain things in different ways and like AI is what's most so amazing about AI is like it's just infinite patience right we've all been there with a teacher who like we appreciate you can just explain like I still don't get a teacher well no it's like this and eventually you'll get it right but it's like that patience that's a good it's like how do we bring that into the educational experience and like so much of what we are trying to do actually is it when you talk about engagement engagement is just like the student feeling safe to ask a question and then bam like the learning is almost guaranteed to happen afterwards but people are just for various reasons like mainly because people aren't infinitely patient like can't ask questions and things like that so that's where I see AI helping a lot and it also helps a is like right so you've already started embedding like you know educational co-pilots into your curriculums or are you is that something you're looking into that you know looking into yeah okay yeah we haven't launched it just yet that's like it's funny a lot of my a lot of my developer friends are building their own sort of educational co-pilots for for coding like they want to teach themselves a new language or something like that they'll just build a co-pilot that will help them teach this language or whatever it's pretty cool um so I know that's coming I agree with you I was curious like you know you're talking to coders you're teaching coders and coders are probably or developers are probably the ones that use AI the most right now like the it's incredible how much of the code can be either uh emitted or reviewed by AI so are have you created like a completely new uh curriculum around using AI as a coder is that something you've done yet or is that something you're looking into it's not can so there's like two aspects of this there's one is like how do you build these actual applications themselves like you have to call the open API open a API and there's like different ways to call it streaming true or false like these things so we actually have buil some stuff around that so how to use it how to build these things but specifically like how to search for things like how do you ask questions how do you prompt engineer the right answers we haven't done that yet uh it's something I really want to do but I think the corollary that um I don't know if it's a s loan skill and the example I have is like before AI I mean we've had AI forever which is like we've had Google forever and the number one thing that I used to teach people when they join class is like how do you Google for the right thing like you can't just like in Google you can't just like say my code doesn't work right like you have to be like oh here's like what right and and here's how you search sflow and here's like how like if you look at an experience engineer that will just like Google slightly different than you be agree yeah and so I think like AI is sort of like that where I don't think it's like a people think that there's a magic skill but like how do you Google better like there's probably some like principles that people use but I don't I don't think it's like a a skill of itself that makes sense I yeah I think it's it's more about having the uh foresight of using Google for certain things that other people might just like be stomped on you know what I mean yeah so same thing for for AI right I try I try to integrate into basically everything that I'm doing just because yeah I mean over like whether it's personal or for work um I interrogate it and I try to structure my questioning like within a certain framework because I'm looking to Output X and I think like coders have the most use out of it because now the amount of code base you can feed your your AI and and query it I think is is incredible so just this the reason I'm curious about that yeah and specifically people I mean like the way that this question is may be leading to is people inevitably will ask like oh do you think a is going to replace coders or does it still make sense to learn coding when all this AI stuff is happening and S sort of uh I want to preempt that question because it's very common and and the argument I make which sounds a little self- serving is actually it's more important to to no coding now because in a world where AI is doing most of the things for you when you make a Mist when it makes a mistake or not likea makes a mistake but just does like something that's not quite there like if you don't know what's happening at all if it's like a magic wand that waving you are like so doomed and so there have been times when you know we've we've done some experience like we've had sort of beginners like build code like just all entirely with AI and stuff and it often works but then like an experienced person look at it be like well let's let this is going to cause you problems like later right or you need to understand why or like can you change this and they're like oh I don't know how right so they start over again SC right things like that um and and we've all had open ey hallucinate on us um sure for for for non-coding things and so like for coding things absolutely hallucinates all the time too of course there's actually a thing where you can sort of almost predict I don't know I've now developed a feel for like hey it's G to get this thing wrong but like or oh they made this type of error like I can't like like oh I know how to fix that like it's it's actually it still helps me a lot but yeah if I had no coding experience it would be questionable whether it it's helping that no I agree with you for sure um I mean a trend to to keep an eye on for sure uh speaking of you know you probably saw in the news uh Sam Alman trying to build his own chip facility trying to raise seven trillion dollars like any thoughts on that uh let's do it man I'm I'm all for it um I look I think like it's it's so amazing how how fast it's become so how it affects me personally is not so much that like you're going to build a factor or something but just like inspiring to see other people like doing stuff uh I feel like one thing I was talking about with sort of one difficulty with starting a startup in Southeast Asia I think is just because people aren't as used to crazy things happening so when I live in San Francisco like I mean I think the best thing about San Francisco is I have several friends who are like billionaires now because they started random companies right and then became super smart and it's not like they were some sort of superhuman people they were like they're people that I thought I was smarter than and turns out I was not right but like but people you just see people doing extan stuff everywhere and like when it comes to Sam Alman and stuff like yeah he's trying to build like seven trillion like most people would never imagined that right and yeah and in the face of that when I go to my marketing intern I'm like yo like you need to double your lease for next month like that's impossible like d this guy is like building Rockets to Mars he's building bilon like come on y yeah and it's funny that you mentioned that that's some a conversation I have all the time with uh investors and other Founders in Southeast Asia is like why southeast Asia is considered behind in the startup SE there's like so many factors but one thing that stands out to me and you can let me know your thoughts you've been in in Asia for quite a while is that you know first of all like there's a very small middle class overall so most children who do go through University will have to support their families later on and that's the expectation in Southeast Asian families and the rational way to do that and the expectation from families is for them to work a corporate job something steady and as much as they would have the ambition to build something and maybe the you know the brightness and the intelligence and and the idea to do it they're just like held back by family traditions and family requirements to fulfill and to me like that's the number One driver I've spoken to many people but I'm curious to know your thoughts if you've seen anything similar or if you think there's something else that I'm missing I heard this amazing story from another founder in Thailand um and it was really funny goes that uh sorry it's a little off topic but I think it's related he they us said this problem in Thailand where uh they were a startup and they would interview these people and people wouldn't show up for the first day of work and it was like why is this happening and they realized that um it was like a family obligation like these people would find this job you really good but then when they went to their family like oh I'm starting work on Monday it's like this new startup their finally like you know you need to go work for CP grou or something like that yeah so they had this problem so then this founder thought about it and what he did was then he like made like a little booklet flyer thing and in that he talked about his company it was a picture of him like standing next to some famous like minister or something and just everything that made the company look like really amazing on paper and the purpose was not for the candidate at all it was like Hey take this like that's your family and then bam like 100% And then he took the next step which was once a year he would host like a family day uh and they had nice office and stuff it it was a startup but they were you know they're doing well so they had nice office and stuff and so they would invite all the mothers and fathers and grandparents stuff to come to the office and then they would come see like this really nice office and see like all this stuff and then like he said his retention just went to the roof like people never want to leave and people would want to quit and then their mom or dad would be like you can't quit that compan is amazing stay work at that company right and this is like a very tyent I think that's a very Southeast Asian thing like have you tried that it's it's brilliant yeah so it's uh uh yeah it's hard to maintain like it's it's it's so weird right but like no I think the thing I did I didn't do this year I now I'm telling you the story I realized I should done this year but uh a couple years ago what I did was um one tradition in Vietnam is every lunar year you make a sort of gift basket um it has like some nuts but then like the one year ER you always like write a letter and then you know one one year ER letter to the parents of the people who are taking their stuff home and I think people love that that that really was like well received yeah and that's like we're talking about culture differences and all that Founders need to adapt and it's like it's a harsh kind of learning curve when you move to southe I'm talking about Founders who want to have the ambition to come and build something here you really have to be on the ground you have to spend time like there's no way you're going to come up with your Silicon Valley idea and be like hey I'm going to replicate this here and it's going to work like I I would not bet money on that to be honest but if you spend six months a year learn all the ins and outs you'll see that your startup idea will probably evolve like 180 so that's a really good story uh it definitely it definitely explain like uh the sort of how startups are kind of looked down on by families overall for their kids to work at it still doesn't answer for me like the lack of you know startup Founders and the creation of of companies so um it it kind of fills the Gap in terms of the the the perception of startups but I think there's still like a a big mystery around why there are so few Founders you know what I mean um I don't think it's that mysterious I think um well there's a couple things I think one is it's just hard hard right like like I I would imagine if you're trying to start a startup in the US in 1980 like you know like whatever the Apple guys were like before like when whatever silicon value was becoming silicon valy I'm sure people are like what the hell are you doing like you know like uh and you just like and and I'm sure there's like for all the companies that we hear about like all the microsofts and apples out there there's a billion companies that we just Le never heard about um of course sort of preps in that like earlier so we're still like kind of lagging on the rest of the world or like at least the Western World right there's lot experience right and I think that um what the real C of I think happened was that all the people who were there at Apple and Microsoft went to start their own companies and like they went to start Oracle and then all Oracle people want to start a Salesforce like the mafias right yeah the PayPal Mafia exactly but you actually like have to learn the thing by going through it and then then it becomes sort of easy so I think there's just like a very not a lot of people who have that sort of trajectory but I think the other thing is just like this is a personal pet PE of mine like there's um sometimes people try to be like the Silicon Valley of something like oh this is the Silicon Valley of whatever of this country and and to me it's like well that's like that's why you you can never do that right like in a deeply Innovative field when you're trying to M something new for the first time like if you're trying to be like someone else like you're not going to make it and that's what I love about s Sil valy is like Sil valy like they were like there's they are the silic valley right there's no they're not the something or something else right um and so often in s Valley I feel or sorry in Southeast Asia you're trying to sort imitate other people and people aren't like thinking I think you've already lost that point because you're like I want to be the I want to be as good as that guy like you'll never be the person you want to be as good at it's good inspiration though but I I agree with you I completely see it it's it's hard to be fully original though um especially when you want to like we're talking about building an ecosystem of something that already exists you can't reinvent yourself completely like you're still a copy of something else unless you're building a whole new industry out of thin air you know you know what I mean yeah it's like it's like how can I be the best like you need to want to be the best you had that confidence that you can do it right I think part of it is like oh we could be like the we could be a smaller version of that for this country like just like this kind think he already puts you a s disadvantage it's like you know you wouldn't want to become like the Roger Federer of Vietnam like you don't want to be like Roger Federer right like you wanna you want to win um and I think that's like when it kind of Bring It Back is like that's what I think people aren't just aren't just ambitious enough um like hey like yeah they're opening a$7 trillion do like Factory like why can't we do that and of course there's like a lot of stuff in the way but like let's try to let's go to Mars let's like do these things I I completely agree with you but let you know you mentioned a few names earlier and you built a company and when you present yourself to an investor you present yourself as the something of something else right I mean we're all victims of it it's just so much easier to explain even though that's not the end all it's just such an easy way to explain it and for someone else to to to understand it right yeah totally no I I get it and we go tell it but like I guess like the the one thing I mean you talked about I'm a little triggered because like the thing you're saying is something I I I think about a lot which is like you're not going to come in as looking value founder and just be like here's a Playbook Let's Do It um and yeah I can't agree with you more and like the sort of naive arrogance of people do that yet people do it at the same time like one thing I I hope that I never lose is yeah the thought that we can be there's nothing like maybe like to put in concrete terms like one thing I see a lot in Southeast Asia is like these companies who hire so many people right because cost of Labor is low and like like you raise a million dollars you can you can hire like 100 people if you want uh you know it's like a value that's like two engineers and but like people do this because there's like sort of assumption that oh like people aren't as good or like I can't get as good talent or you know there's like there's something about that and I'm like yeah like we have to like demand Excellence at every level I'm like look why are you not as productive as that person like what is what is stopping there and of course there's like there's like real reasons here right but like can we dig into those can we not can we just stop accepting that we need to hire five times as many people here than we were somewhere else like I could not agree more yeah that's that's a really good point and I've been a victim of it um so I completely understand where you're coming from uh I didn't know it was that common uh so I'm glad that you you you make me feel better that I'm I wasn't the only one doing that but it's hard like I like how do you get more out of someone that's actually a really interesting topic how do you get more out of people is it something you have to do Upstream in your hiring process or do you like mold them to to what you're expecting of them like what's your what's your strategy with that yeah I wish I had figured it out and I think I've been all over the map on this and um I just keep going back to like what worked for me and I'm not like the most amazing person but I mean like you and I probably like uh also we subject to like how do we perform better and like that's what sort of led us to start own companies but like to me it was just like people assumed I could do it like my my my first my first job I remember like like I used to work for this real company called Palm it was like we made the first uh smartphone before before the iPhone but like on my first they were like yeah I the P pilot yeah oh was sick yeah it was cool it was awesome I love it um and they were like they were like oh you're in charge of this screen I'm like a fresh College graad like oh you're in charge of like this screen it was not a huge screen I was working on the Wi-Fi settings panel so like when you go to Wi-Fi and like you search for Wi-Fi networks like that list I was I was the guy in charge that list but then I was like yeah but it's super cool right I'm like dude I have no idea I'm doing like holy holy I to like learn but like that pushed me I'm like man like I gota like I'm in respons this thing and I was kind of like why do they think I can do it like I've never I don't even know like like like the whole new but they were just like you can do it like go like of course it's not just like is is there was support and stuff for like just that assumption where people started like you're in Char of this thing you got figure it out um and when it comes to startups and stuff I think like you know like I think the interesting thing about iterative right like in the more YC style it's not like the Venture Studio which is like here's the three ideas you work on them and we'll pay you this much money like you know it's just like what do you want to do like you have to come to us and tell us what you're doing right not the interet program is not about telling you like you must do these three things right it's like you you have questions check them with us and we counsel you but ultimately it's like we expect you to build a $100 million dollar company or billion dollar company whatever it is um and just that mindset shift I feel like is just so uncommon it's it's one of the other sort of it people Le she always talks about how sometimes you feel like startups here are like trying to still get a in school they're like Professor like what do I need to do to get a It's like got to get out that yeah so I had lunch with suken yesterday actually so we were talking a lot about all these different ideas like how different VCS handle startups differently right uh and you're right like iterative is very hands-off uh like they'll of course have all the interventions that they do but like if you have to come to them basically and there's all these other funds A6 Z and all that are much more like an a a talent agency whereby you know you have this idea you're a brilliant founder we'll provide you all the tools like you need this here use this this is the best in class you need you know you need a chief of staff we'll provide you one we'll hire the best and because of our reputation we'll bring them on and basically like they they leverage their Network and their their knowledge to Hype you up Build You Up um so two different models right and seems like in Asia because of like maybe there's still a very big hierarchy there's the family traditions and all maybe the Asian Founders need more of this kind of like handholding VC that will you know have the founder will be great the idea will be great but they'll cater through all the other needs to make sure that they perform at Peak like Peak Performance essentially I don't know yeah it's interesting um I I forgot how we got on this topic uh originally but yeah why there why are there not more Founders yeah was more startups right like essentially yeah that it's because it's hard I think that it's hard yeah that's hard it is hard it's super hard uh and speaking of hard like if you weren't working on what you're doing right now uh which I'm sure you're going to be working on for quite a while is there something else you'd be working on like a startup that you have in mind that you know it's itching your it's itching you but you can't work on it because you're obviously committed to this yeah yeah obviously committed to it um I think like ultimately one thing that's really interesting about starting company is you start to think about why you're doing it a lot so I kind of this before like why I could be just seeting my shorts uh making same my money break even um or actually losing less money um so you think about why I did it and and it's definitely changed for me over time but uh I think ultimately what one thing I really enjoy is just solving things that annoy me like why is the world not this way and you sort of like dig into it you're like I don't understand why it's not this way to me like education is like the biggest one of those things like how is it that everything in the world has gotten so much better like you know like the Palm Pilot to the iPhone is like thousand million times better right and yet like the way that I learned to program on it is maybe worse like I don't understand why that's happening and like education in general over the past what hundreds of years has not gotten better um like I said I think I think cor it's not like intensely better than whatever came before um so I think that's why I motivated to work on education there's also some other things about why I I find it meaningful but if you ask me like on that similar thing I think uh especially with like sort of my experience a little bit with the this Venture defense stuff I think this is common for I'm curious if you have the same feeling like I might want to solve smaller problems next time around if I wasn't doing this like perhaps you could say lifestyle business but I would just want to solve like smaller problems well and like just have a very clear like value proposition like this is exactly what we do um my one of my Inspirations in life has always been this guy the inventors so particularly like my favorite coffee maker is the Arrow Press I if you're with the AR this guy like he just ran around inventing stuff so he like one day he was like you know what like making a cup of coffee is like way harder than it needs to be let me invent a machine that that does it cheaply before that he built like the Frisbee thing he's like oh white frisbee seem like they should be able to to go farther like let me uh build one so like he's like always just kind around solv these small problems and I found that really interesting uh to me that's the thing that I would like love to think about with AI so all the different things we can automate like we've all run businesses like we all see like how crazy inefficient so many things are around like HR I think particularly like for me it's like oh my God like this is why why why do we have such huge HR organizations right like and that's been one thing for me that I think I would love to tackle uh small things like you know there's like everything I do around HRS is like why is it so difficult uh for example like we just went through performance reviews and I was like oh my God this is so hard to do performance reviews uh I sure that there's ton of stuff there and the other thing that was really really hard for me recently which I found really interesting was taking wedding photos Okay so to me I was like there cannot be a better use case for AI like think of all the training data all these wedding photos that are super high-res and look exactly the same and are all in the same studio and you want me to pay how many thousand dolls and see here for how many hours to take that to try to recreate that other photo like that's literally what yeah I can do that's what that's actually a really good like an ex extensional question around AI because like that's a it's like a very like real life sort of application but to me like I got married already uh you're you're getting married soon right yeah yeah or yeah so I know where you're going like you're recreating these photos and you want the photo to look as good as possible and you're going to be paying a few thousand dollar but the end of the day if you used AI to create that photo and you just face swapped or like use you know used your face the the whole point of that photo is like to bring a memory right it's not just to illustrate the fact that you're married in my opinion so that like it won't elud to any memories it'll just be a momentum of you being married somehow because it's an illustration of marriage but there's no memory to it you know what I mean so I think I think AI is still like far from it it doesn't generate memories at this point well neural link is is looking into that probably for now for now we're not there yet but yeah that's a really cool idea I mean for for the people who do it for the pure sake of the illustration I think there's definitely a market there and there's always a market for everything yeah I'm not I'm not gonna actually do this idea but so I don't need to convince you I'm not pitching for investment but no the way I would do it actually is I I'm with you I actually think it can't I think a lot of these AI things are not going to replace our experiences just augment them so for me it was like like I had to like Chloe and I like my wife and I like there were like five different sets and three different outfits and stuff that's five or six hours I was W maybe we could have taken like one photo and then like we could have like you know maybe aund of the photos could have been real and then we could have had a thousand generated yeah yeah okay that's actually a really good that's a that's a really good one it's like oh I really like the face from this one I looked in that photo but like that suit like you know all these like different combinations of permutations that like just were so painful um I think did you do the Han Boke photos or not like the traditional Korean oh yeah yeah is a is a Ken wedding Studio thing yeah did you do those too no I I'm so pissed I would have loved to do them uh but look we were we met in Canada we got married in Canada like uh but then we got married in Bali our families came there and then we're going to do another wedding in Korea and then another wedding in France because I'm I'm French and Canadian and once we got through the wedding Bali were're like hell no we are not doing anything like even the photos in Korea we were not not keen on doing anymore but I kind of miss it because I'd love to see that I I love the tradition there I think it would have been cool we can always go and take them like it's not a big deal we haven't aged that much since the mar is the wedding so it should be okay it's still legit uh so you know before we we close here do you have anything you want to plug in the Pod uh anything you want to shout out to I I guess like the one thing I would like to plug is uh if there are a lot of people who are sort of feel like they have something to share on about their technical Fields I would love to get in contact with them so I think the biggest thing we talked about actually here is that there's not that many people who are very experienced uh and so I think that if we can cre that cycle going a little faster so people like yourselves who've been through a startup you have so much to share with with people so thanks for doing stuff like this um but if I could somehow one thing we want to C school is try try to build up a better Mentor Network so okay if someone wants to become ahead of growth what's the career path of that and there's no again there's no book that I can do it I think chat can sort of help you navigate some stuff but really ultimately come from people like yourself so of people listening if uh you're interested in helping try to share your experiences with people I'd love to get in touch um I'm just really looking for the people who had the real experiences the real War Stories and if we can productize that experience somehow schools where they can to do this year okay yeah definitely make sure to to find some people to introduce you as well so uh oh that'd be great yeah yeah of course of course anyways that's the pot but it was great having you on man it was really cool talking to you and great meeting you as well yeah great meeting you too next time you're if you're ever in seon hman City please please look me up.