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Right after college,
my parents took me back to China to
visit extended family.
It was a blur of banquet dinners,
celebrating my newly minted diploma
and the fancy New York City
job I lined up.
If you grew up as an immigrant kid,
you'll recognize these telltale
signs of a victory tour.
>> [LAUGH] >> Near the end of my
tour, we made a stop in Xinhua,
my dad's ancestral
village in Hunan Province.
At the top of a dusty hill,
my dad showed me a crumbling brick
schoolhouse where he had learned
to read and write.
This schoolhouse was where he dared
to dream beyond his means,
to become the first person in our
family to get a formal education
and go on to earn a PhD.
It was a warm day, but
I felt a chill run up my spine.
I was standing in the exact spot
where the trajectory of my lineage
began to diverge from millions
across rural China.
I stared at that decrepit
schoolhouse and
scanned the horizon.
My eyes landing on
a white Mercedes-Benz my cousin
had driven in.
There was something unsettling
about the juxtaposition of
that school house and the Mercedes.
The Mercedes seemed to represent
the kind of success I had been
chasing.
But the schoolhouse seemed
to represent the lives of so
many people around the world still.
In that moment, my definition of
success began to change.
I realized I didn't want that
Mercedes, I wanted to help tackle
large societal challenges in
economic development.
And ever since that moment on
the hill, I have been obsessed with
this question of how to tackle
big societal challenges and
make meaningful change.
I've served as a consultant to
Fortune 100 companies, conducted
research at the World Bank, worked
with nonprofits across Africa, and
founded a Y Combinator-backed
company.
Today, I want to share what I've
learned on how to make meaningful
change, tackle big problems,
use startups, and
partner with government.
First, use startups to tackle big
problems.
Why use startups, you may ask?
Because startups are designed for
speed, to test new ideas quickly,
adapt to changes, and
prototype solutions.
This iterative approach is
extremely powerful when directed
towards a North Star.
Here in Silicon Valley,
we often hear the mantra,
test fast and break things.
I've lived and
breathed this ethos when my startup
went through Y Combinator.
I co-founded Hive Health, the first
digital health insurance company in
the Philippines.
We provide affordable,
quality healthcare to small/medium
businesses whose employees and
loved ones currently are uninsured.
Fixing the broken healthcare system
is the crumbling schoolhouse.
I relish the feeling of being
scrappy and testing fast.
We will launch little experiments
to test our value proposition,
doing things that definitely
didn't scale.
For instance, to lock in our first
customer, we drove across Manila in
a thunderstorm to do a live demo.
Would kind of recommend.
[LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] >> Testing
fast is still my favorite part
of entrepreneurship.
It enables me to think creatively
to solve a problem using whatever
resources I have in my disposal.
It's innovation out of necessity
to solve a problem that really
matters.
As I got deeper and deeper into
the test fast break things world,
I started to wonder, is breaking
things really a good guideline?
I see two flaws with this approach.
The first issue with test fast
break things
is the potential of breaking
things that shouldn't be broken.
In healthcare, this could literally
be a matter of life or death.
Maverick disregard for rules meant
to safeguard well-being can also be
detrimental for business.
The second, more insidious issue
with test fast and break things is
it may limit entrepreneurs to focus
in on niches where the cost
of breaking things is trivial.
Startups that focus on problem
spaces where the cost of breaking
things doesn't matter may be able
to profit from arbitrage, but
it limits their potential for
meaningful change.
Instead of building something
custom fit for the sidelines,
it's better to step onto the field
to meet the challenge head on.
Instead of test fast and
break things,
we should test fast and fix things.
Startups can be effective in
tackling big problems.
And startups are uniquely
positioned to do so because of
the ability to test fast.
My second learning for
tackling big problems is to partner
with government.
I have seen firsthand what is
possible when entrepreneurs and
policymakers view each other as
collaborators instead of enemies.
Flashback to 2021,
I'm in my Cambridge apartment,
fiercely clicking refresh.
No, I'm not waiting for
the latest Netflix release.
I was waiting for
something far juicier.
The publication of a new regulation
on the Philippine Insurance
Commission website.
Juicy, right?
>> [LAUGH] >> After months
of discussion with the government,
we had co-developed a new
regulatory sandbox framework.
This sandbox enabled us to test new
innovations in healthcare financing
for the 100 million underinsured
population in the Philippines.
A regulatory sandbox is a way for
government to allow private sector
to test new innovations within
the safeguards of
a controlled environment.
It started in the UK and
it's spread globally to places like
Singapore, India, and Kenya.
Without the sandbox, we would not
have been able to fundamentally
design a new patient experience.
On the other hand,
the consequences of not partnering
with government can be detrimental.
For instance, Uber poured in
millions, but failed to capture
the Asian market because it tried
to bulldoze through regulation.
While its competitor, Grab,
proactively engaged government in
each step along the way and has
flourished to become the largest
super app across Southeast Asia.
What I've learned from partnering
with government is that it got
us to the place faster and
made us more ambitious than
doing it by ourselves.
Startups can be effective in
tackling big problems, and doing so
with government is more efficient.
Government has the scale advantages
that a startup can only dream of,
but not the organizational model to
test quickly.
Startups can innovate quickly,
but we don't have the scale that's
needed, necessarily.
Now, back to tackling big problems.
There is no silver bullet to
address universal and societal
challenges like health care,
inequality, or climate change.
Entrepreneurship may not be for
everyone, and
startups exist within an ecosystem
of other important stakeholders.
There are also regulatory
environments that are truly
byzantine.
Like the US healthcare system, for
instance, where progress
may take a bit more time.
But my experience in
the Philippines has taught me that
success is possible,
potentially at a large scale.
It first requires finding a problem
that's worth solving.
Starting a company takes a lot of
effort.
And if you're going to spend that
much time on something, why not
make it worthwhile by directing it
to problems of consequence?
And I will bet problems of
consequence will require partnering
with government in one way or
another.
I hope you'll each reflect on what
is your version of
a crumbling schoolhouse, and let it
be the North Star that guides you.
You never know where you'll may go.
So don't aim for
the shiny Mercedes,
fix the crumbling schoolhouse.
Do it with a start up and
partner with government.
Let's test fast and fix things.
>> [APPLAUSE]
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