He Built the World’s Biggest Free Mentorship Platform

Well, when you were 20, a VC in San Francisco told you Singaporeans don't build global companies. What did you say back to that? You know, wash and see, right? Brought my life.

I've always been doubted. My former CEO came to me. He sent me down uh during lunch time and he said, "I'm going to give you two choices. " And the second choice was you quit the company.

If you resign by the end of the week, I will be your first angel investor. He did not become my angel investor. In fact, he turned around and he said, "Oh, I changed my mind. " That was the start of the journey.

So, for anyone who doesn't know, what is KPI? So, ADP list is on a mission to democratize mentorship for the world. In March, you published the Claude Native Designer. It went viral.

As a designer, what did that feel like? Well, it's magical. I'll tell you that because I remember the days where we used to be our engineers to build something. By the end of it, you wasted like 2 days.

Today we got more than 40,000 mentors around the world making us the biggest marketplace for mentorship. We got over a million users uh today. We just crossed that a few months ago. And I think as if you're able to build an audience that follows you, it doesn't matter what industry you're in.

I think that's a huge win in tech that has a lot of followers. Those have audience but they do not have a community. That's a very interesting distinction. Audience versus community.

I didn't Oh my gosh, Felix. This is wild. This is wow, isn't it? This is wild.

Okay, I want to tell you something about this rink. Did you know that Alisa Lou trained trains here? Yeah, I I heard from the staff. It's incredible.

It's incredible. It's incredible. Yeah. The history of this rink is so Wow.

Isn't it? It's insane. And then kind of going back to your history a little bit, you're you were a professional uh you're a professional freestyle skater. So not necessarily on the ice, but you would train once a month on the ice sometimes.

But you were professional for 14 years in Singapore, right? In Singapore. Yeah. And that is really amazing.

Really cool connection. And again, even though we aren't uh in like on land. Yeah. Being here is just insanely wild.

When is the last time you skated? You freestyle skated? Well, you know, I I started skating when I was seven uh with my brother. And the story is that I didn't even want to pick up skating.

Uh so my my aunt had a leftover pair of skates and uh she she wasn't using it. My cousins wasn't using it. And so my my my brother already had a pair. " And we we trained and you know, initially it was really fun.

Uh, and we got into it and and years later, I think it was six years in, we got into the national team for Singapore. Oh my god. Um, and so since then, of course, we've been competing and I sort of retired from the game um right before my military service uh at the age of 20. Um, so the last time I skated, it was is probably about four years ago now.

Um, that was the last time I I sort of skated and and did some tricks. Yeah, that is really cool. And I don't know anyone who did freestyle skating, so on land. Yeah.

That is a Is it a lot more popular in Singapore than it is in like America? That I think it's a very niche sport, right? Like think of it like how Eileen Goo would do like all her skiing stuff and and tricks and stuff like that. I freestyle skating on land is really uh you know a niche sport where it belongs to the extreme sport, right?

It belongs to sort of like the the skate parks and it belongs to sort of the more aggressive stuff rather than things that you see on the Olympics. In the Olympics. Yeah, that is wild. Well, super glad that Oakland Ice Center lended us the space.

Yeah. For an hour. We have an hour. Shout out to Oakland Ice Center.

Shout out. Okay, let's get it going. So, everyone's talking about AI making design faster, but your whole thing is that great design comes from understanding human psychology. What people do, not what they say.

Does AI make designers better at that or does it just make them faster at producing things that miss this the point? Yeah, I I you know my sort of view on this is that AI sort of reviews the good and bad designers right because AI is able to do so much fundamental work to be able to help designers deploy and ship things without developers and I think it's becoming clearer uh who are able to utilize this new set of powers uh and ship things that actually matters right if you think about over the past um you know 3 years where LLM's really gotten really good coding agents are are great right now how many actual products has actually been shipped uh by designers that are actually good uh in my opinion maybe just one or two at best right uh but truly we have not really seen great products coming out from designers yet and I think the limitations of that uh really isn't uh you know by the LMS or coding agent uh but it's really by are we able to identify uh real problems and solve them uh in a way that uh uh humans would want it right and back to your point which is uh design is much more about human psychology than just the tools that that you're given because you know let's let's give you a really good example, right? Um let's just say uh today we we would walk into a fruit store and and everyone does this today without realizing. So you go to the fruit store and you would buy a a you know an apple and and this apple would have this annoying little sticker on the apple where after you buy it before you put a you know bite on it you have to find that little sticker just right on that apple right and I'm sure you face that Julia and so people are so used to that that they don't even realize that that is a problem they just find that find that sticker and they just peel it off but the really good designers would observe these bad habits and what they would do is that they would They would say why is the sticker even there in the first place.

They would question things that are bad by habits in nature. And so when you look at good designers I think they observe the things that has become habits and they try to say can we change this uh and and those are those are really good designers. They look at human psychology. They look at how humans operate and not just what people say.

Wow. Wait that is so that is really cool. Yeah. I didn't I didn't realize and I want to give you some more takes.

I want to see what you think about them. So AI is making all design look the same. Is originality dead? Oh, I mean yes, AI is making a lot of design look the same.

Um but the question is does that matter, right? Does that matter? I mean if you could look at OpenAI and and maybe OpenAI and 11 Labs, right? Um you know they their design is quite similar.

It's whitish. It's clean and stuff like that. A little bit like Apple. Um but you know the functionality are vastly different right and you could look at entropic and chache BT right it's totally different design as well uh different design taste um but you know it still have tons of users and it generates tons of revenue as well um so the question is does the visual actually really matters as much uh you know as long as there is a baseline of really good visual um you know at some point it really doesn't matter to the consumers you know they just want to get value off a product.

Yeah. Yeah. No, because I do notice that Yeah. like with these um websites like the you know you can design websites a lot of the designs look very similar but in terms of like function like you mentioned it's like really important as long as it's Yeah.

Yeah. Form should always follow function right like like we could go back in history you know just over the past 5 years with all the new AI companies and startups. There are tons where we could where that we could just blur out with really good design, arguably incredible design. But are they successful uh versus like cursor or some other companies?

Arguably not, right? And and this is not to dismiss the importance of like great visual design or just design in general. Uh but is that you know design truly follows uh a really important principle which is you have to first solve a really important problem. The design engineering wall is dissolving.

Is the designer role disappearing? So this is a a hot debated topic, right? You know there is a big difference between people who started as developers and then they became designers of sort. So those are like the true design engineers I call them because they do understand code at the most more fundamental level and versus you would see folks that are uh designers and they're moving into code right now because with all the coding agents uh and it's rather obvious as well that when you look into their code you know things are not as clean as it seems.

Uh I came from you know my high school uh in Singapore we call it polytechnic uh was in engineering. So I had a I have like a a vast experience in in engineering school right? uh and so you could really see the difference between pure designers and engineers and the way they think. Now are designers uh sort of gone and and is it really dissolving?

I don't think so. Uh my take is that design is more important than ever before if not the most important right now. Uh you could see that every single startup in the batch of YC for example I have a friend who is in the summer batch of Y Combinator right now the first thing that they're going to hire is a designer because they want to make sure that the brand looks good. They want to make sure the product looks great.

Um, and less so of like, hey, you know, a designer will be hired later on, right? Uh, because they they value the importance of great design. They know that it's going to benefit their branding. It helps them attract talents.

It helps them attract investors. Uh, and also with a great branding, it also helps them to, you know, attract customers that that that has a great experience with them, right? They want to be associated with a nicel looking brand. Yeah.

Wow. And so calm interfaces versus visual theatrics. So I was reading about design philosophies recently and it completely changed how I look about empty space. And so what I learned is that in some like in some Asian countries empty space is looked down upon like it's a failure to use all your resources.

Whereas in America we worship minimalism. we worship like the simplicity and so what are your thoughts on that and what does it tell us about how design reflects culture and is that true about the minimalism versus like yeah in America and then Asia look you know when you if you that's such a great uh question Julia and I'm sure you've done your research right which if you look at the Chinese apps right like wehat and Alibaba you know Alibaba and you know Alip pay and everything uh and mtoan right these are Chinese Chinese companies uh and you realize that it's it's super app right this is called super app in the east right and even in Singapore in Southeast Asia we have this app called grab which is the super app of Southeast Asia and it's basically a mix of Door Dash and Uber and and your Venmo everything in one app right whereas if you come here uh we talk about this right like Door Dash is an app by itself Uber and then you would have like uh Venmo is a totally different app and so I think the design philosophy uh is very different across uh these these countries. Uh yes, culture do play a part. I personally my my personal take on this is that you know great design is almost like a great uh piece of uh uh uh you know musical script right uh you you cannot have a musical note at every single part of the script right there has to be some blank spaces for it to sound nice and uh you know I I grew up playing violin as well for for 10 years of my life right so so you know pauses are important in in in good good music composing and so when you look at sort of a great design.

I feel like you know there has to be space given uh in order for for things to flow. Now in in terms of the eastern philosophy I I think it's it's true to say that uh Asians do prefer sort of uh more cluttered uh uh UI and and much more functionality so that they feel and it's a feeling that they get more out of it rather than uh you know like here in the US where if as long as it clean you know and it's minimal uh we we we like it. Yeah. So, it's a totally different consumer habit, I would say.

Oh, okay. Thank you. That's so interesting. And so, ethical design as a competitive advantage.

Ethical UX has become a brand signal. Customers recognize authenticity and honesty and they especially stand out in AI powered environments. Wow. If I see AI like being if I see there's a lot of AI now everywhere like a lot of like ads that are AI which I guess I guess they do the job but for example if I see a cafe with an AI generated poster I don't know I feel like it's less I just would prefer maybe more of like someone actually photographed something.

So what are your thoughts on like the I guess ethical UX is a little different than user like generally yeah so okay maybe I would to ask you a question again which is if this is a really famous coffee place right let's say site glassass uh and they just use an AI poster would that stop you from going there no exactly right like that's my point right I I think it's very hypocritical of a lot of people when they say that I do not trust AI but then you still see them using it at their work for their personal life they go to check GPT, they would seemingly call out a lot of uh things like, hey, you stole my data, you stole my content, right? Every single thing they would they would call it out. I mean, look, I mean, the whole entire model of of OpenAI and and Entropic is is is trained on on the millions and billions of data that is being scripted online. So, so if we're going to think about sort of like ethical, then we got to start there, right?

But unfortunately and fortunately or however we want to look at this, the world is a very realistic place. is a very practical place. Um there are going to be room for ethics, right? We need to be ethical when it comes to transparency on how we use your data and everything.

But at the end of the day, I think who provides the most value uh wins the market, right? I mean those people who are complaining about OpenAI and entropic, they are using those models. And if they're not, they are probably using the Chinese models which are also trained on the same things. Okay.

Awesome. And so now let's get into what you're building. So for anyone who doesn't know, what is ADP list? So ADP list is on a mission to democratize mentorship for the world.

Uh we believe that uh we should free humans to connect with one another. Uh growing up, you know, my parents uh work in a bakery. So we had no exposure to the tech industry and it was extremely hard because I didn't go to college and it was extremely hard for me to break into tech uh for my family as well. And you know I had so many mentors along the way who who brought me into this industry.

So, but what I realized was that not as not everyone is as friendly as as as those mentors who have guide me to today, right? There are some people who close their doors on me. There was this incident where I was uh 19 years old and it was my first time ever. So, I saved saved, you know, uh a long time for flight tickets to to fly here to San Francisco for the first time ever.

That was like maybe 9 years ago now. And so, I was here and I wanted to meet people. So I would I I texted this guy uh he was from Singapore and I said hey look I'm coming here I would love to meet you and your friends if you have anyone to introduce I'm just a student I want to learn right and I'm sure you can relate to that because you just graduated and so he just replied me something he said who are you for to ask this request for you know from me right like like you're not providing me any value you're just a student so who are you to ask of of me um and and I think that struck a very deep impression right uh there were also moments where I I would go to a conference as as a student and you know if you're a student you have no money some of sometimes these conferences will be like hey fine we we'll just let you in right uh but then again in Singapore I was turned away from a few places uh so I had doors shut on me and so I believe that this wasn't an isolated incident I think that a lot of kids who want to dream who want to fulfill their life's potential and their life's calling they all have mentors and and if if they all have doors shut on them, I think it's a failure of society that we're not able to provide them these resources and so so to me AD is this sort of sort of opportunity for for me to say are we able to break down barriers and open doors for people who want to learn from one another. Right?

Today we got more than 40,000 mentors around the world making us the biggest marketplace for mentorship. Uh we got over a million users uh today. We just crossed that a few months ago. M um you know we serve over 140 countries and we have had people from Nigeria from from Indonesia all the way from the US and Canada coming here to to learn from one another right and and this is the kind of world we imagine to be able to say we are democratizing access to these conversations because I don't want this uh you know to happen you know to someone who just wants to dream and wants to learn.

Mhm. Wow. That is that is like Thank you for sharing that too because I think what would you say that it varies from where you are? Like some countries would be a lot more like welcoming cuz I know like for for students here a lot of people say like use the student card like you have the student card use it to your advantage.

like a lot of people are more uh supportive of you or a lot more willing to give you opportunities just because you're a student and that probably so that probably evolved like yeah I mean I mean that's that's that's partly true right I mean even in the United States I I mean I've only been here for 4 months but I've came here a few times your pedigree matters right if you go to wateroo you're obviously look differently versus someone who go to community college if you go to Stanford or you go to Harvard MIT you are looked differently uh uh and And and that is the reality of life, right? Even in Singapore, right? Uh if you come from a wealthy family or if you come from a good school, the doors open for you are different. But the truth is this, Julia.

I mean, when you hang out with these people, sometimes you you realize that, you know, they in all that, right? Is what what they do have is exposure. What they do have since the very young age is exposure. And the question that we ask ourselves at ADP list is that how can we bring this exposure to the to everyday people to people like my parents right and I think that's important uh I have I have two friends who who just moved here from Singapore and they you know I'm not kidding sometimes when I have have dinner with them they remind me a lot like my parents and and I ask myself like you know I'm here I'm not I'm not here for a long time but then again like I'm here I know some people I want to introduce them to you because if those were my parents I would like them to have that opportunity, right?

If those were my kids, I would not want them to have the opportunity. Not because of the school they studied and not because of how much their GPA is or how much they have raised. I I think that is something that we we actively want to fight against. Yeah.

Yeah. ADP list started as a Google spreadsheet during co you didn't set out to build a company with it. Did not. You just wanted to help people who lost their jobs.

Yeah. And so I mean you did mention like the point where it stopped being a side project. I mean like I guess like reiterate like when was the point where you decided to like quit your job to really just like start like expanding this for more than a side project. So this is such an interesting question because it counts as a very very fun story.

Okay. Um so James and I my co-founder uh whom I've not met in my whole life but we met recently for the first time in Estonia. It's crazy. We have a video of that.

Uh and so we met on LinkedIn and we started this side project as you talk about. It was back then called amazing design people list. It was just for designers but now we are across different categories. And so we were doing this side project.

We were having fun. We were helping people uh you know people just start start joining in. And one day my my former CEO came to me and he said Felix you're the head of design of this company. Um why are you doing side projects?

And I said you know I'm just helping people. I'm not making money from it. and and and so he he sent me down uh during lunchtime and he said I'm going to give you two choices. The first choice is that you stay here in the company but you cannot do any side project um and you are not even allowed to talk about it on your social media.

That was the first choice right and the second choice was um you quit the company uh and if you resign by the end of the week I will be your first angel investor. So he said that so I said okay. So I thought about it. I spoke to his other co-founder.

I spoke to the founding team. I said, you know, look, I I was 24 back then. I'm 28 now, so like back then, 24, you were still young and I said, uh, you know, why not just quit this job and do something for the first time. Um, so I left my job and and uh, you know, fast forward a little bit, he did not become my injury investor.

In fact, he he he he turned around and and he said, "Oh, I changed my mind. " So that was the start of the journey. Yeah. Uh we quit because we thought we had a choice to do something incredible.

Not because he wanted to be our angel investor, but because we felt like for the first time a kid from Singapore, a relatively small country, and a kid from Ghana, where my co-founder was from, we were from very unknown places in the world. If we could build something truly global, uh this would be it, right? This would be and this is meaningful. Yeah.

Wow. Wow. So he never became the angel of Esther, but like that was not the reason. You just like kept going and going and you just Yeah.

Like it was meant to like happen that way and Yeah. You know, doors get close on you, you know, and and just kind of have to run the next play, right? Yeah. Wow.

That's such a great great story. Thank you for sharing that. And so you reached out personally on LinkedIn to every single mentor accepted onto ADP list. Yes.

You think you covered about 98% of them? I think so. Yeah, I was just doing it today earlier. Why?

Well, I think you know there's something to be said about personally connecting to your users and your community. It's so important to be able to say that they have a direct access to you if something happens feedback, right? I can't tell you so like like like there's so many stories, Julia, where you know the platform was down and it was midnight and of course the team was sleeping, right? org Right.

So, but the truth of the matter is that when we raised our first round, um, a lot of people were saying, oh, you know, like they have changed their mission. They have changed their their the ideals, right? But we made a promise and we said we were never going to monetize 90% of the platform for mentorship and we kept that promise even now four years later, right? And I think that there's a lot to be said that when you treat people as partners and they look at you the same way and when they look at the track records of of what you have done with them, right?

Like it's it's very clear that that working with them as partners is is is a win-win solution. Wow. And still still today you send the messages today send messages. What kind of messages do you send?

Yeah. So I would say, hey, you know, we just approve your profile as a mentor. Uh I it's it's a personal policy for me to reach out to you and if you have anything you can reach out to me directly. Wow.

And the fact that you as a founder do that is still cuz you're busy, right? Exactly. Yeah. And also even on email, right?

I do that on LinkedIn and email I would do it for every single user that signs up and if they reply me because it's automated, right? But if they reply, I I would I would reply the next morning or sometimes even instantly. Yeah. And AI agents don't do that.

You do it. Yeah. Exactly. That is because you have to read the contents in the email and and this this to me is I mean call me oldfashioned or traditional.

I mean it's hard to replace. It's hard to replace. Yeah. Kudos to you to keep doing it because I there's people who just like send I mean it's AI agents for you.

Yeah. There there are so many instances where people reply back and be like I cannot believe the founder is doing this. A lot of people like I cannot believe a founder is doing this. And I said why not right?

Like why not? Because this is how we improve and grow. I don't want to be just taking decisions from the team or the executive team, right? Like that that is not fair for the users.

I think the CEO and the founder should always be on the ground and get a good sense. It doesn't matter, right? Yeah. How big the company is.

Okay. Yeah. You guys listen to this, take take his advice. Yeah, that's really amazing.

So, you describe yourself as a design founder and you think that's rare in San Francisco. What does looking at a problem through a designer's lens get you that engineer lens misses? So because I I practice design growing up and even while I was in engineering school I have always been a designer in the bunch of engineering students. I cared a lot about it and I I think the way that designers look at something is is fundamentally very different from engineers.

Right? So I will first speak from an engineering perspective is that when you look at something you immediately think about systems. you immediately think about how do I architect this entire system right and you think in code you think in steps by steps whereas for designers you don't really think in code you don't think in systems and and and architectures and stuff like that you think of like users you think of the people who are the end the end consumers right how are they going to benefit from this what problems is it actually solving um are we going to deliver to them in a in a way that they will accept it right in a way that they will be willing to adopt and and adapt to it. And so designers think a lot about from the end consumers, right?

And so the way that I would say is that designers are usually first problem solver and they're also first principles thinker, right? " I think you do have to be able to have a sense of what you're building uh in different departments so that you so that you can truly build something great. I think this is also how we hire people at ADP which is you need to have a sense of what you're building not just your own domain. Yeah.

Oo okay. So you have to think of design as a very core part of like the product of and not as like a a sec like an addition to it. Yeah. Everyone needs to be able to you know think in design.

Think right. Think in design. You need to be able to think from the user perspective. We people call this design thinking, right?

Which is which is was originated from Stanford D uh uh D school, right? Design thinking. And I think everyone who thinks in design thinking, they they will ultimately come up with better solutions than just people who randomly write things down. Have you read the design of everyday things?

Oh yeah, for Don Norman. Yeah, I interviewed him before on our podcast, which is incredible. You interviewed him? Yeah.

Yeah, I'll send it to you. Yeah, it's incredible. Oh my gosh, that's incredible. Okay, wait, this is perfect.

So what are the key takeaways that you get from him? Well, I think for him design has not changed much even with AI, right? I think AI does change the way that we we we use the tools. Um but design in his fundamental is about problem solving and design is fundamentals is how do we deliver a sort of great experience that fits the users's lifestyle without them having to change themsel for us.

Uh I think that's always been the takeaway. Yeah. Wow. Whoa.

Okay. That's incredible. How did you how were you able to interview him? Oh, I just wrote wrote him an email.

You just wrote Okay. Yeah. Just like just like what happened here, right? Yeah.

Wow. Okay. So, wait, how long ago was this? This was like a year or two ago.

Okay. A year or two ago. Did he release any other like books other than I think he did release one book, but I haven't read it yet. Okay.

And so, what other what other key takeaways from his book that you remember that you could share to everyone who is very new to design? Yeah, Don Norman has a very interesting sort of analogy of the push and pull door, right? Which is uh you know, let's say if you put a door handle onto a door, some people would like push it, some would pull it. Oh, I remember reading that in the book.

Yeah. Right. And so it's very interesting because because design by itself should when you visually look at the thing, your brain should already know how it works, right? And so when you think about a a push door, you know, you should probably take away the handle and it's just like a push door, right?

So you wouldn't be able to pull it, right? So it's intuitive, right? So I think that is a very good example in his book that I that I remember it and and also brings me back to an example of uh uh Steve Jobs and Johnny I designing uh I believe it was the the iMac, right? One of the first iMac, the colorful ones.

And I remember like uh back then, you know, PCs were very expensive, right? And so people were afraid to touch the computers, right? People were afraid to touch personal computers. " And so you know what they did?

They they cleverly designed a handle on top of the iMac, right? And so that a handle actually invites and welcomes user to touch it because a handle it's a natural invitation for you to touch it, right? And so they they put that on top of the Mac so that people would touch it. So to me, these are the invisible design details that designers really need to think about.

And far more than often not, this set of thinking comes from industrial designers. These are people who design physical products because in the R&D world you you cannot reverse engineer a physical product. You have once you manufacture it it's done right whereas of software you could always roll back the code. So when you think about designers I think the best ones are always industry designers that I personally learned from like the examples I gave you.

So you convinced 30,000 it's probably more now 40,000 40,000 people to volunteer their time to mentor for free. Every investor asks you the same question. How? Yeah.

You know, we have to go back to one of the first questions you asked about design, right? And to me, as I mentioned, you know, as you talk about, which is great design is about noticing the things that people miss and the bad habits that people miss. " And it's as simple as that. No one is going to ask you for $100 before they have a coffee chat with you.

Right? " So we started ADP is we designed a platform where people could easily set up their calendars like coffee hours like you know and basically we say hey we're going to make it easy for someone to say yes as long as people put in good questions and book a time you could choose to accept or decline them it's just going to be a really simple solution and that was the idea right but the idea truly stems from observing that people didn't want money right people who provide mentorship and give advice they did not want money what they wanted was convenience. " So that's the behavior that we observed, right? " And that's exactly what we did, right?

We did we did the impossible by looking at the invisible things. Yeah. way. That's amazing because yes, I've had this too like where people when people message me or when I message people there's all this like this back and forth and then what if you don't have a calendarly link or it's just a and then it's also hard to reach out.

So like ADP list like it's allin-one like you can search people up like you can you have your profile it's amazing. Exactly. Yeah. I mean I mean look like it's it's a simple problem like when you it's a simple problem to solve but then when you look at it I think you know we have so many competitors who monetize the the the platforms right and the question is why are they not as big as ADP list and and the the point is that look you know you could build a platform you could build great technologies you could have all this AI stuff great design or whatever but the truth of the matter is that if you don't quite understand the art of sort of humans and and and and and building a great platform by itself as a community then you know uh uh all these things like like good visual designs is not going to help and so for us we kind of prioritize like how do we serve the people and build a platform around their needs versus like just our own business needs.

In March you published the claude native designer. It went viral. You described opening cloud code to build an ADP feature and watching a working appear in hours. As a as a designer, what did that feel like?

Well, it's magical. I'll tell you that because I remember the days where we used to beg our engineers to build something and they would have push back. You know, engineers are a a really opinionated bunch. I would tell you that they're opinionated.

Sometimes they don't want to do something or sometimes they would have a lot of questions before something. By the end of it, you wasted like two days. 48 hours is gone to to to produce something, right? And that happens when I'm not in a room.

Of course when a CEO is a room you kind of push things faster but you can't be in every room right and so that was a major major problem because we had a lot of great hypothesis a lot of things that could have been done and so what happens is that you know when when I published this cloud native designer uh my thesis and my thinking was very simple is that designers with great taste can now command uh you know coding agents to build things that they actually really wanted and put it directly onto the main platform and test Um and and and coding agents today are so well trained, right? They are trained on trillions of token post training and any engineers who tell you that they are smarter than an AI is probably lying to you or they have a huge ego, right? Because they don't want to lose their job. Let's be real.

So, but when you look at Fable, right, uh it's just an incredible model across the board. It's insane, right? insane sort of metrics that that you're looking at. And so any engineers who tell you that oh you still can't replace me with fable has a huge ego.

That is my take right and so for me cloud native designer is telling you that as the models gets better as a designer you you will be able to produce more things uh uh for your customers without going to the engineering department and justifying uh what you want to build. Speaking of Fable, it just got re-released. Yes. What kind of things have you been able to make with Fable so far?

So, you know, I am such a fan of Fable, I'll tell you that. So, I before I arrived here, I was playing with Fable a lot uh for the past few days, even on July 4th. And so, you know, the first thing for Fable is that you know that it's going to go back to API usage, right? It's not going to stay on your plan forever.

So, what you what I have been doing is to is to tell Fable to replicate itself, right? So Fable is so good one because of the model, but because of the harness around the model. So you cannot replicate the model, but you can replicate the harness. So what I've been telling you to do is that hey, you can interview me for my goals and my needs and how I work and I want you to create the harness around it.

Right? So even if Fable gets retired, it's going to run uh using different models at a same level of efficiency somewhat there. So that's the first thing. The second thing Fab is really good at is sifting out uh uh security issues, right?

So we have been getting it to run security stuff. And then third one is a what we call the ultra plan right ultra review which is um basically looking through the entire codebase looking through the repositories and our database and tell us what are some of the inefficiencies right because it's such a big code base such a big database there are going to be a lot of inefficiencies where it's slowing down engineers or it's slowing down coding agents is costing us money that we don't even know. And so I I got, you know, Favor Five to re-review every single thing. I think that's that's been the best.

And then last but not least, of course, building out new features, oneshotting new features. I think that's that's been something we're trying. Yeah. That's so wild.

I haven't used Fable yet. Like I really need to. Yeah. Take your time.

Are you saying so with the like is it going to be gone? Cuz I I've been seeing some people say like we have to hurry up. Okay. Yeah.

So I'll explain that to you. So I explain basically uh Fable 5 right now can run on your subscription plan. So 50% of your subscription plan can be dedicated to Fable 5, right? Um so after July 7, what happens is that you even if you have a subscription, you will not be able to sort of use it based on your subscription.

You have to have an API for it. So it now charges your API keys, which means that you know like it's going to be more expensive basically for people. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense.

Okay. Okay. what are the cool like new features that you're shipping for ADP list right now? So we cannot review a lot of stuff but then the one thing I would say is that we just did a lot of customers call and I I'll tell you what what what we're building uh which is we realize there is a there is this really important uh problem that uh a lot of people are not solving which is you know uh this job market problem right a lot of people are looking for jobs transitioning from one job to another we think there's a big gap there uh we look at our data and we say look most people coming on ad are career transitioners and I mean transitioners does not mean from one industry to a different industry.

It's more of like one phase of life to another, right? Maybe you're a college student going to a first job or you are jumping from first job to second job or second to third job during this transition phase. It's very interesting. I think that's where we are uniquely to uh positioned to solve as ADP list and so we we realize that one people are putting in a lot of job applications they're not hearing back.

That's one problem that our team is experimenting on using fable. The second one is that people are using a lot of time with mentors to practice interviews right mock interviews and we've been experimenting with the idea that you know what if you have a AI interviewer coach right that's able to coach you through at every single time you have a 5 minute 10-inute session with an AI interview coach after that it's able to sort of gamify it and tell you like oh you know you're improving on communication and everything is able to kind of follow you through your entire career these are some of the things that we are looking to build uh you know like ADP list today we are also running internally on a lot of AI agents. So, we kind of uh know that hey, at some point we will have to transit our mentors into maybe cloning them at some point or even making them an agent by themsel as well. So, we're expecting a lot of crazy ideas.

Yeah. Oh my gosh. And yeah, like speaking of mentors, like this is amazing because I feel like I don't really have many mentors in my in my life. It's cuz it's really hard just like in everyday life to like meet them.

And um yeah, ADP list is perfect for that. Also, I'm learning French right now. Do you think I could find a mentor who speaks French? Well, I mean, they speak French, but then they would be talking about design, product management with you and everything.

Yeah. So, so they would talk in French and I would just like you can talk to them in French. Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

You have a lot of uh mentors in in France actually. In Okay. Yeah. What other countries are, you know?

There's a lot of countries anywhere you name. anywhere. Anywhere you name, like China, United States, uh Canada, Nigeria, everywhere. Yeah, that's so cool.

And so you grew from 6,000 to 33,000 on Twitter in one month without being a marketing person. What happened? Like what did you try? What worked?

What surprised you? So that was uh 6,23 that is uh Instagram. Oh, Instagram. Instagram.

Yeah. But that is like one and a half months. Yeah. For Instagram.

uh and X maybe like X is like maybe like a few monthsish. Yeah. So there some some time. So what so I'm not a marketing person you are right um and it you know by any sort of counts I am just a design founder right um I'm a humble design founder and I think the one thing is truly going back to sort of design thinking which is human psychology right are you able to write things design things because even the words that you speak and the words that you write is by design so are you able to say um write something that actually triggers hear certain emotions by people, right?

And and and usually the best things that go viral or the best things that actually make sense on the internet are things that are either helpful or entertaining. There's only two ways to do it, right? So if you look at Clo's uh royally, right? It's entertaining as hell, right?

Like people watch it. This is a guy in the in this arena as a gladiator. We love watching that, right? In fact, Americans are probably the the gladiators in the arena that that people like like watching uh in the in the in the Joe, you know, Joe uh political landscape of things, right?

Um and and to me, social media is the same way, which is if you are, you know, someone who's educating the world, people will follow you. Or if you're someone who is doing something entertaining, people will follow you as long as it relates to them, right? And I'm sure out of our podcast today, uh, the clips that might do way better are the things that are either they strongly agree or they strongly disagree, right? Um, if it's somewhere in the middle, like I agree or I just disagree, people won't comment on it, people won't engage to it.

So, you want to kind of trigger that reaction. Yeah. Wow. That's such good advice.

That's Yeah, that is so amazing. And I mean, you also have 155,000 on LinkedIn. LinkedIn, which is wild. What like what posts do really well for you on there?

Personal posts, right? Personal personal stories. Yeah, personal stories. Yeah, I think on LinkedIn it's been a little bit weird and iffy on the algorithm, but then I I do think that personal stories work very well on on LinkedIn.

So personal stories on LinkedIn it's kind of more of those like spectrum of like agree very agree or disagree a lot of like you know rage bait a lot of like controversial topics trending topics and and then Instagram what do you post on like what kind of like things do you like to post on Instagram? So Instagram I post a tons of things right like I I post how I personally vibe code I post my opinions on designers I post my opinions on Singapore as a country where I grew up I post my opinions as a founder. So maybe these four topics, right? Yeah.

Um and on Twitter I I I post about vibe coding as a designer and my journey as a founder. You know, I I think to me is that uh you know that the fame that comes with it and of course the followers and everything uh has not mattered to me as much. I think what I realized is that you know distribution is the most important thing like what you're doing right now, right? And I think as if you're able to build an audience that follows you, uh it doesn't matter what industry you're in.

I I think that's a huge win, right? Because there's a difference between building just viewers versus a community, right? Mr. Beast has community, right?

He he pays people like people come to him, that's a community. Taylor Swift has community. Uh but I think maybe people like uh you know like in tech that has a lot of followers. Uh those have those have a audience but they do not have a community.

So what I'm trying to build here is a community less so of uh like just viewers. Whoa. That's a very interesting distinction. Audience versus community.

I didn't realize how different it was because with audience it's like you're just like watching like an audience. It's entertaining. It's great for me so I'm just going to watch it but then they wouldn't die with you, right? You want people to die with you.

It's like building a cult, right? Like like like what Lulu said, right? It's building a cult, right? And so you have to give people a reason to believe in uh and and they want to jump with you.

And not every podcast, not every famous people is able to build that. Uh and if you're able to build a cult, then it goes a very very long way. Yeah. Shout out to Lulu, too.

Yeah. Shout out to Lulu. love her podcast. She's definitely an amazing marketing person.

She's she's amazing. I follow her all the time. And you Yeah. You learn.

She actually So, so I want to share a story about Lulu. Okay. Please. Because there was once where I got into a huge PR crisis, right?

And the first person I could think of was Lulu. " Oh dear. " So, first of all, I was so surprised she replied because she's probably very busy. And so she she said like look if anything comforts you if the mainstream media is not reporting this or that if I'm not hearing about this you should be fine.

And I think that gave me a lot of relief right and I think the reason why I want to share this story is because there's a lot that also comes with being public about opinions uh but also you know comes back to mentorship and someone like Ludu who opens her doors for people like like me. Yeah. Oh that's so amazing. Oh my gosh.

Thank you for sharing that. Okay let's talk. Okay. So, when you were 20, a VC in San Francisco told you Singaporeans don't build global companies.

Mhm. What did you say back to that? Well, I say, you know, watch and see, right? Watch and see.

Watch and see. Yeah. Watch and see. I mean, I I have always throughout my life, I've always been doubted.

I'll be honest, right? Um, you know, even before we made it to the national team, my brother and I, uh, you know, we've been we've been doubted. " Right? because I my mind was always focusing on work not not the not the whole whole military operations right so uh but I I think that's also a curse and also a gift for for people like myself who see beyond just the 5 years horizon who see beyond the 2 to 3 years horizon we often see the next 10 20 years horizon and we say we want to be part of that so you know sometimes we are a lot more patient with our progress uh it might look like oh this guy's no going nowhere.

Uh but at the end of the day, we will make it there. I'll give an a good example, two good examples. I used to be uh when I was in high school, I used to be one of those students that was really naughty and you know, always getting kicked out of class by by my teachers and uh I would never had good grades and I I don't think anyone would have expected but by the end of high school, I was a top student of my high school, right? I was offered scholarship by the government by by by by you know by by anyone, right?

I had near perfect score. Um, so I was always underrated in that even in sports as well. Um, and then you know back then at 16 years old I say I'm going to make it to San Francisco. It took me more than a decade to be here but I'm here right now.

And I think the truth is that people that I tell them this story uh back then 16 years old I tell them I'm going to be in San Francisco. No one would have believed me, right? But it's 10 years and I'm here right now uh with my own money, right? And so sometimes I think believers might seem delusional but they see it and and it's a choice if you choose to believe in them or not but then if you look at certain track record and if they have constantly prove it like Elon it's so hard to bet bet against Elon and the reason for that is because he has consistently proved it to you.

So it almost feels scary to not back him to it almost feels still feels stupid to say that the mass is not going to happen because we we know he will somehow make it happen. It will take a long time. So I think throughout history you will consistently see people like that. I'm not saying I'm in the ranks of Elon or whatever.

Even Jensen Huang, right? Before the whole AI thing, no one cares about Jensen. No one knew who is Jensen, right? Oh my god.

No one knew who was Jensen. like 2020 2019 like Nvidia right like it's a big company but no one knew like he wasn't famous oh and now he's a rockstar now he's a Taylor Swift of uh of tech right but in 2019 no one no one really wanted to join Nvidia right and so before the whole AI boom so there are people who I think are extremely patient with long-term progress and then you know you would have people you would have to need to believe in these people yeah at some point wow that is that is so inspiring and So you wrote that the Facebook design culture created a toxic mentality that designers started refusing to design for business metrics because they're afraid of becoming the next Facebook. Why is that hurting designers? Well, I I think metrics are are great to begin with, right?

Like designers first of all needs to care more about metrics, not less. I think in the recent years designers have become more uh have become more open and more progressive to the point where they are not caring about the metrics and I think it's bad because there is this ideology in the design community that if you are a designer and you care about money and you care about business you are an evil designer. It means that you are working for the corporate. It means you are a corporate evil.

But that is not true, right? Like design is here to serve a problem and the problem will have to serve number one the users and two have to serve the business. Now we cannot be naive and say that look I just want to serve the users and then I don't serve the business and if there's no business there's no jobs, there's no designers, right? So I think I think there is always often something to be said that you know if you were to design something you have to be careful about first what you're designing who you're designing for but at the same time you do have to care for the metrics but not to the point where you do unethical things to to sort of you know uh bring up the metrics.

I I think that's that's kind of like where my argument comes from. Okay. Everyone's asking whether AI will kill mentorship or make it better. I mean, you've been pretty clear with it.

AI enhances matching and discovery. Yeah. But must not replace human conversation. How long do you think that's going to go on for?

Maybe like 3 years. Three years. Five maybe. But interesting thing is that even after Chachib and Claude, the bookings of AD has gone up tremendously and continues to do it.

Right. We even launched an MCP recently for Claude where you could book mentors directly from Claude. Oh my god. 2 ADP list, right?

It's incredible. So I I think it's hard to replace a human connection at the end of the day, right? I say 3 to 5 years in the sense that some things will change drastically. I don't know what but I think as models get better things will change.

But people crave for a sense of belonging. People sense for crave for a sense of uh you know community. And when we look at sort of mentorship, I think it's less so of the technicalities, but it's more so of the reassurance that you're talking to someone who has been there and done that. Yes.

And that's exactly kind of what people are looking for. If you talk to an AI, you know that it is an AI generated answer. You don't get the reassurance. I think this is exactly the kind of things that AD is providing for.

Now, if you don't work in the mentorship business, you would never be able to describe what I'm saying because to you it's like, oh yeah, you know, it's just straightforward. AI is going to replace because you're getting answers, but truly that's not what people come here for. They come here for reassurance from a a different human being. Yeah.

And speaking of that too, like I feel like you know the next generation of like kids too, they're going to they might not know they might not know how to distinguish between you know a person talking like on the phone for example or an AI talking too. And that's like scary. That's a little bit scary. And I think having like so with ADP list I mean having those like people that you can turn to maybe you don't have like um you know parents who might share you know your experiences having people like that and making sure they like kids know that they have mentors and not just AI to turn to for like help.

I think it's important right like we see different people doing like AI clones and different things. I mean the truth of the matter is that how many of that actually take off right in the world. How many of it became mainstream? AD police is mainstream like one in three designers if not one in two designers would have heard of ADP because we started in design right and in tech as well.

People know about us. So so how many of people actually heard of the AI clones? A lot probably in Silicon Valley but outside of Silicon Valley probably zero. Yeah.

And how many of them actually use it in Silicon Valley and use it outside of Silicon Valley? Likely the number is really really low. So the the point of this is is say you know we need to go back to the reality and we say these are great technology but is it serving the fundamental human needs. I had a call with an AI clone company today just today earlier and we wanted to partner up right of course it could be a feature as part of ADP list for example before you meet someone you could talk to their clone but could it be a whole platform by itself I have my doubts I have my doubts and as LM evolves you know we we never know right uh these are the things where it could evolve but at the end of the day we are serving a different need which is this sense of human human connection and this sense of reassurance from a different human being.

Yeah. Yeah. So, you were a professional freestyle skater like you mentioned. You competed, but you also lost a lot.

So, what did that relationship with failure uh teach you that most founders just don't have? Yeah. I I I screw up a lot in in my sports life, right? I I represented Singapore, you know, in the Assean games, in the Asian games, and and uh you know, we we we lost a ton.

First of all, Singapore is not the most sporting country like unlike America of course uh relatively um but we try our best right and I think there are two sort of sayings that I that I really uh like and one is a book called the score setter itself by uh Bill Welch I think uh it's like is a NFL coach. Yeah. Okay. Talking about that I just had a podcast with someone named Jacqueline.

She also loves that book and refers to it. the score takes care of itself, right? And I I think I think it's like do everything and the score takes care of itself, right? Do your trading, be disciplinary, everything.

Um, and the other one is I I I believe it's is recently, you know, New York Knicks won and I think one of the things that they say is like next play, right? They call it next play. That means that look, if you fumble an opportunity to score a goal, you you don't hop on that. You go on to your next play, right?

As simple as that. Next play, right? You have a plan, stick with it, right? Next play.

So with I think with sort of sports and and and and my failures in in sports I think is to is to be able to say like what is your next play, right? What is your next play? Are you putting in the work, right? Uh and and are you continuing with your next play, right?

Because at you know the freestyle skating that I did was called sliding. And so sliding you you take you have five turns and you do different tricks whenever you run, right? You do different tricks whenever you run. And so you could screw up the first one, the second one, the third one, but you need to keep going until your fifth one, right?

Until every single score is is is tabulated. So to me, you know, the idea of next play is so important because in life, you're going to in your career, probably at work, you're going to make a lot of mistakes. And the question is, are you going to hop on it or are you going to go to the next play, right? That that is really what I what I took away from it.

Thank you. Some some more great advice. 5 year mark. He's still one of your best friends.

How do you make a co-founder split feel like that instead of a disaster? Yeah. Um, so James from Ghana and I'm from Singapore and you know many co-founder breakups are bad, right? Um, I've heard breakups where people go in lawsuit um and you had to pay a lot of money Yeah.

to get out of it or to, you know, fight for whatever shares. I think James and I are just grateful to be here. We're just one of those people that are happy to be here. We came from nothing, right?

James grew up in a village in Ghana. Um, I grew up in a bakery with my grandparents and my parents. We never had a lot. They have never come to America before.

They have never even been to Europe or whatever. Um, same for James. So when we did ADP list and when we got the funding that we got look we have never seen this amount of money in our lives I'll be honest right uh we did not go to prestige schools I did not go to university even or college and so we are just grateful to be here and we look at this as a learning journey so even when he left and do his thing he's now at Milifi um yeah as the founding team uh designer um we just look at this whole thing in life as a adventure. It is adventure and we say that you know we're going to do a lot of great things and ADP is not the end of it.

Uh to us the friendship matters a lot more and why we started this matters a lot more than just fighting for a few dollars because this dollars does not realistically does not make our lives better. I'll be honest. Yeah, that's really sweet. So you talk about the culture of excellence and you point to VCs investing in math Olympia winners not for pedigree but as a signal.

So what does excellence look like in your daily life? Yeah. So to your point you know uh what we talk about which is VCs invest in these pedigries as a form of signal and I think that is largely largely true and the reason for that is because these signals are basically saying that this person is the best in their field and they could translate that attitude into something else right into startups into into into investings or whatever and so how I show sort of excellence in my day-to-day life is do I show up with a level of zest and do I sure have a level of discipline, right? I go to gym every day.

m. Or even if, you know, I had to wake up really early tomorrow because I have a long day ahead, I would still try to make it to the gym every single day. And I think just to say that discipline is a big part of your life is is a huge thing. There are so many people around me, especially a shocker when I come here in in San Francisco where everyone talks about, you know, biohacking, right?

And trying to be healthy and everything, but barely anyone has the fitness to cannot keep up with a lot of things, right? Like not going to the gym and trying to go to office in the morning and stuff like that. Um, but discipline is being able to excellence is being able to be well-rounded across, right? Uh I I don't like the idea of saying that you know because you're good at something you have to give up something right like if you are disciplined you should be able to manage a lot of things there are cases where people are parents and they make really good founders does that mean that you have to give up your personal life I don't think so and then the idea of single to series B I don't get that right I I truly don't right like how short-term can you be and and should you be to to say that you are going to be series single to series B realistically how How many people even reach series B in the first place, right?

Maybe 1%. Or lesser. So how naive and how unrealistic do you need to be to say these things, right? To sacrifice the rest of your life for for something.

Now, it's not to say you're not obsessed, but it's to say that one, you should be obsessed. And second, you have to be also grounded in reality, right? As delusional as I am, I'm also grounded in reality. I think that's the power of Singapore and Singaporeans which is we are very idealistic bunch but we are also extremely extremely practical and we learned this from our founding father Lee Kwanu I'm sure a lot of people hear about that the whole Silicon Valley is glazing Lee Kwanu because of like his his his thinking and everything right but that's what I'm going to say right which is excellence is a track record of and and a display of everything in your life not just startups or not just in the gym or everything else You've made a lot of hiring mistakes.

Yeah. What's the worst one and what does someone look like who you would like never hire again? So, I will say something that Lulu has tweeted which is she said that it's seemingly the bad employees who always are the loudest and call out their former bosses. I think she tweets something along those lines but it's accurate is along these lines and I can tell you that that is 100% true because I have made mistakes where you know I believed we had done our best we had did the right things.

We were true to our words and and and we provided what we needed to provide. But to some people of course we still did not live live up to their standards. right now. Whose fault is it?

I think it's a it's simply a communication issue that both people can learn from. I think but for some people they they do like to point fingers. And so the the the shittiest hiring mistakes that that I made were hiring people who were really good at fingerpointing uh who were not good at taking accountability that everything goes wrong is in the fault of their manager or in or it's the fault of the founder or it's the fault of the company culture they like to blame it. Um, I I think those are really bad hires because they could perform well across the board, but then they would have zero accountability when it comes to when something breaks, right?

When something breaks, they seemingly don't take a lot of accountability for that. I think we need extreme ownership in people. That's kind of what I realized. Um, and extreme ownership, it means that, hey, I screw it up.

I'm going to do better. This is my plan to do better. And also you do need a forgiving boss and a CEO to say okay I believe in you. I believe in your potential and I'm going to help you see it through this journey.

Right? So I think that was one big hiring mistake. The second one was when we hired people who are really experienced. I know this is talked about a lot about but I think it's worth highlighting is that we hire people from big tech companies into our startup and that really did not work out well.

um they came in you know like my impression of these people look some of them are really good but my impression is that a lot are quite performative right because it's it's just in the way that big companies work big corporates you have to be performative to get your promotion to get through the politics of things so they come here they would bring the same attitude that they have bought throughout their entire lives you know I had a I once hired someone who was a CEO CBO, chief business officer and he he came in of course he did a lot of things like planning and everything and stuff like that. That was all great because we needed that. But what really went wrong was when I say look he was trying to push for this initiative and I said go for it you know um but my only request is before I put in resources I need you to sign a contract from those guys so that I feel confident to deploy engineers and people right so it took weeks that never got signed and I think it's an execution problem right but everything else was well done right because everything else was like planning and stuff like that he was putting things in order and when he left the company I realized oh there were a lot of plannings but there wasn't a lot of doing. Oo.

So that that was kind of like that kind of shaped my opinion on a lot of like big tech people. We had a few and I think most of it was were sort of like that experience. Yeah. Oh my gosh.

That is that is so true. That's the reason why I transitioned from corporate to startup too because there's just less planning, less like reviewing, less of this like higher key like approval and more just doing. Let's experiment. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And not first of all like kudos on you Julia because not a lot of people are like you right. Some people some people would come in and be like hey there's no structure.

I really hate this place. It's a culture problem. We have had those people as well right? They come in here it's like this is shitty.

You guys have no no system. But this is realistically how things are moving. At some point we will get out of it but realistically this is not the point where we get out of this of this whole chaos right. uh chaos breeds a level of like speed and you have to say that they come together and so you cannot decouple that.

I think some people come in too early and they say let's put a process on something and then it takes a company off real. Yeah. So why is it so hard to predict a company success because you would have people like this that comes in. So a company that could have been on good trajectory hires a really bad like CEO or whatever it gone off rails.

There's so many startups like that. Yeah. You you've been in San Francisco for 4 months now. Mhm.

You came from Singapore. What is different here that you didn't expect and what is exactly the same as you imagined? Oh, I I think what I didn't expect was for people to be so open-minded. I mean, I have heard about Americans and the culture of it.

I've been here a few times, but I think to be to say the least, Americans are a very interesting bunch. Of course, Americans include the immigrants here like you and I, right? Um, you know, the the one thing I would say about this is that, you know, because of the open-mindedness culture in San Francisco, um, a lot of knowledge and informations get shared, a lot of network as well get, you know, pollinated, cross-pollinated, and I think it's a good thing for the ecosystem, right? Uh, in Singapore is a very different place.

In Singapore, first of all, back to what what we're trying to build at any place. Like in Singapore, you have to know someone. You want to get to a place, you have to know someone. You have to bring a certain set of pedigree.

You want to get invited to the party. Your wife or your boyfriend or whatever has to come from Ivy League or whatever. So, it's hard to get through doors in in Singapore. I am sure there is some level of that here.

based on my observation there is certainly a level of that here with who funds you or which school you come from Stanford MIT whatever there is some level of that but I think it's largely largely better than the rest of the part of the world so relatively better right now where where I think sort of like uh you know expected the same I I mean I mean was was mainly like you know this system just works it's public transit is okay is good uh Singapore I think overall is still much better when it comes to like as a society, right? Uh it's a small country, so it's it's much more easy to to to to sort of govern the whole city whereas compared to San Francisco in the US, I think it's so much bigger and things just happen more unpredictably versus Singapore. Yeah. Yeah.

And so like about like Silicon Valley, so they tell you to raise money and spend it in two years. You think that's terrible advice? Why? Yeah, I think so.

I mean, I didn't come from money. So, spending money to me is not a concept that I would be comfortable with. Mhm. If it's just randomly spending money in the sake of the timeline, uh there's always this growth at all cost mindset.

I think that's true. Um but again you know I have a friend who who runs his e-commerce company is a AB testing tool and you know he's making a million ARR by himself one person okay and growing how many of startups actually here that raise 3 to 5 million maybe 10 even has 1 million AR per employee you know it's probably very very you right a lot of them has negative balance sheet because they keep thinking about uh let's raise more money first but if you look at the old business and how business is done you know it's always a little bit more has a very good fundamental right on on the business right side of things so I've always believed in a little bit more of hey let's build a strong fundamental in this business rather than let's just spend the cash of it now if we do have a strong fundamental in the business then let's spend spend a lot of money on it, right? You want to spend fewer on a rocket ship, not fewer on a broken rocket ship, right? The problem is that if you spend fewer on a broken rocket ship before even it even takes off, it's going to blow up.

And I think that's what's happening. Um, so yes, I think you need to fail, but you need to fail while building the parts of the rockets, not fail at entire rocket because if the entire rocket is blown up, you have nothing to work with anymore. You're going to end up like depressed. you're going to end up like, you know, having no money or whatever and then it's a whole it's a whole thing, right?

You you much rather say, let's build something clear, strong, and then let's put fuel onto it, right? Instead of rushing the process. Okay. So, let's touch a little bit about you were in the military for is it two years?

Two years. Yeah. Right after your first acquisition. Yeah.

And you said you felt you said you felt very alone because your heart was still like in the in the building. Yeah. How did you go through that? It was a very depressing two years.

I was bullied a lot. I was bullied in the military a lot. " In in Singapore, they call it chalking. And what it means is that he's a slacker, right?

He's not doing his work. And I I I I get where they're coming from. Look, I wasn't trying to contribute to as much as I could back in the army, but my heart wasn't there. I was clear about it.

You know, I was clear about give me the minimum amount of job in the army and I can get through it. Um, but I think people didn't like that, right? It's almost like a hurt mentality. They're like, you know, you got to push you and whatever kind of thing.

Um, so but I was very grateful. There was a officer, the commanding officer who believed in me, right? There was a meeting where he asked everyone and said you know I spoke to Felix he's a great guy he's a smart person why not give him a different task why put him on the same things that you all are doing right put him a different task if he doesn't he if he don't want to and he cannot contribute in this place put him a different place where he can actually contribute and that to me is leadership right and for me you know like the two years was depressing because I think no one quite understood that my heart just wasn't there and I think I had a first of all I have a I had to have extreme ownership and say I screwed up as well, right? It's my country.

I could have put my heart and soul in there. Sometimes when I look back, I say, okay, there are moments where I really can step up. Um, but to me, I I have always believed that the way I want to contribute to my country is different, right? I want to come to America.

I want to build something great as a Singaporean and that the kids, the people back home can look at it and say someone from our place has made it out there and that's the way I want to contribute to to the country, right? And and so I think it was just a misalignment of intentions at some point. Uh it was tough like because your heart is just not there. It's like almost you're working in a company and your heart is no longer there.

Yeah. " The fact is that you're not a lousy contributor. the fact is that you just don't want to be here and you want to change the place, right? So, I'm sure a lot of people would understand this as well.

Uh, and so to me, that was that sums up my two years in army. Yeah. Felix, final question. So, if you could send this episode to one person who just doesn't who doesn't know you yet, what do you want them to walk away believing that they didn't before?

I want them to believe and and I want them to believe that the world is not a linear place. There's no straight answers. There's no right or wrong. Someone could be doing something and successful and someone could be doing the same thing and not that as long as you think really long-term in something and you play in in the words, you play long-term games with long-term people, you are going to win at the end of the day.

Uh, and and I hope that people start playing long-term games. Um, just because there's just so much short-term stuff happening in San Francisco and around me. And I often say, let's not rush, right? Let's be clear.

Like, we rather be clear than to rush. and back to Singapore and how we were founded and how we became such a you know miracle country, great economy, great society is that we were always very patient with ourselves. We did not want to be first but we were always very clear and we say this is our strategy. We studied all across the board.

We weren't always the first and we say we are very clear and eventually we made it out to be one of the greatest. And so I think that that that to me is hopefully what people can take away. Wow, I'm getting goosebumps. It's amazing.

Thank you. This is so incredible. Felix, I really appreciate this conversation. I learned so much.

I felt like you were mentoring me. Like you are a true mentor and I really appreciate everyone's going to enjoy this. I appreciate you for inviting me here. Thank you.

And huge thank you once again to Oakland Eye Center. Let's read out some of the programming cuz there's a lot of cool programming here for Oakland Eye Center. Yes, let's do it. Yeah, I mean this is Alyssa's uh Lou uh you know.

Yeah. And also Christy Yamagotchi. Yes, Christy. Yeah, Christie is a great ice skater as well.

Very great. m. There's also learn to skate classes held every all year round. m.

There's skate competitions that happen here. Hockey, people are just playing hockey before we came. Also, an adult league with 50 teams. That's amazing.

Hosting birthdays, corporate and group events such as broom ball, which I've never heard of before, with a broom and curling. And then new to our to this rank is a pickle ball on ice. No way. That is crazy.

I would love to see that. Yeah, I've just recently started playing pickle ball and so this on ice is insane. So definitely check it out. com and you guys try out something.

Yeah, come to Oakland ice rink. It's amazing here. Yeah. Thank you again, Felix.

Thank you.