0:00 live and we're recording oops well now we're recording siri tells us we're recording so well welcome everyone to the way to wow people making money thank you for joining us uh this is our regular thursday at 12 30 p.m 3 30 p.m eastern time uh time slot and um before i introduce our guest i wanted to just uh do do kind of my regular thing which is is recap you know for the last couple of weeks i talked
0:35 about how to market yourself and you know if if that's a concern for you if you've always felt like self-promotion is something difficult for you to do i encourage you to go to our youtube channel the way to wow show um on youtube take a look at those archived episodes and i think you will find a lot of great information there on on how to market both yourself and if you have a business really the same thing these days marketing a business and marketing yourself are very very similar so there's some ideas there for you and i would encourage you to take a look at that uh also um i want to mention coming up
1:12 next week my guest will be john rubino john is a navy colleague of mine and he started a real estate investment company with a partner called jid investments and in fact you know full disclosure i am one of john's investors and he's going to be talking about his path from going to the merchant marine academy to becoming the chief operating officer of a real estate investment company so i think you'll find that pretty interesting today we have someone that i mean we don't we haven't known each
1:48 other very long but i will tell you that to to talk to jennifer is really to be astonished at how much can be accomplished in a life in a relatively short period of time so i you know i i could spend the entire hour talking about her biography but i'm not going to do that because i really want you to hear what what jennifer has to say but i do want to highlight a few things from from her uh from her her professional background her work background so um jennifer really started her professional journey with some with some companies whose names i
2:24 think you will recognize uh kpmg one of the big four accounting firms as well as um the walt disney company and and apple see you know only the largest company in the world and the largest entertainment company in the world i mean kind of a schlepper there huh well actually um i while i was at apple they reached i think the two trillion dollar market cap and became the most valuable company in the world it was like my first week there but i still took credit as well you should as well you should right um so then you know in in the succeeding
3:00 years um jennifer held positions in in marketing in operations she was a ceo of a company um as well as in finance and and and funding of companies so she's um this term i think it's a little bit overused but a serial entrepreneur um and she uh also founded and co-founded several companies including the companies she's currently where she's currently the ceo playform.audio which i think you will find quite fascinating um and and we'll we'll get to that uh you know as we progress through uh
3:37 through jennifer's uh professional life so so jennifer chang first of all thank you very much for coming on the way to wow people making money appreciate having you here yeah thank you for inviting me it's always great to you know just talk and uh meet new people as well as just share my story in case it's relevant for anyone out there yeah i i think i think it will be i think it will be so start us out where did the desire to you know be in business to have your own company or be a serial entrepreneur where where do you think
4:12 that came from yeah so um i mean i come from a family of entrepreneurs for one um but i think really what um led me down this path is i i grew up in a you know immigrant community in southern california and so i grew up in this korean-american um community of uh you know recent immigrants um from south korea and um you know it's really common within these immigrant communities that everyone has a small business you know there's language and cultural barriers that will keep immigrants out of the corporate workforce um you know as well as just kind of
4:47 other you know systematic issues um and so i just i you know growing up i didn't know anyone with a corporate job i only knew people who were you know managing their own business or working for a friend or family member's business like pretty much that's how everyone in my community operated including my dad so my dad was a cpa within the immigrant community um he specialized in all of these small businesses um and he had a small little practice that he had built when i was a kid and it was um i think it just gave me such really interesting exposure into
5:23 what business is like um because these small businesses are just so accessible for children so my mom you know i mean my whole family had all these different businesses throughout the community you know they're then you know they didn't require a commute to get to and so often my mom would be you know running errands in an area and she would drop me off at my uncle's video rental shop so that i could hang out there um while she ran errands um you know i would tag along with my dad while he visited clients and we'd go to like liquor stores where they gave me candy or the dry cleaners or um you know there might be a factory and there's like a tiny little office in the back that he'd be having a meeting and
5:58 i'd like wander around and look at what people are doing um so you know just early on i got so much exposure to business on a really hands-on level um you know i love playing with office supplies i loved restocking you know the video rental shop was actually one of my favorites because it was so much fun to restock the shelves my grandparents had like a penguins franchise i would work the register um but all of these experiences um you know i think really made it that i um i had a you know unique insight into um what business was like um i wasn't really scared of the idea of starting a
6:34 business because everyone around me was constantly starting businesses um but you know my dad of course you know as the immigrant father always had these like bigger aspirations for me and you know i remember on our way to koreatown we'd drive by downtown and my dad would always point out the tall buildings and he'd go you're gonna work there one day um and so you know i believed my dad and i um pursued that path so i went to berkeley got my degree in business i i studied accounting and finance um you know very influenced by my father and uh you know true to my dad's vision
7:09 i did end up in one of those downtown towers at kpmg my first job out of college um and i you know i i worked you know i wore the suit and went to work you know like sat in a cubicle and um did all of that but i you know i always felt like something was missing and um i you know i continued through that kind of corporate journey going to you know other companies i was thinking like i want to be more creative so i went to disney um i want to you know try something else go to apple um but i think ultimately in the startup world that's where i found you know a
7:45 way to apply the strategic expertise that i've learned from working from you know through all my business degrees and i'm working for these massive uh very successful enterprises but i got to bring it back to my roots um and you know really also apply that like scrappy operational um you know skill set that you see within small immigrant businesses so for for people who i mean just i mean you you saw the same thing in the you know among jews you know probably
8:20 100 years ago right i mean again like you said we couldn't get into corporate america right there there's a famous you know woody allen story about how he was the token jew at this big firm he was working at and he'd read his memos from you know left to right or whatever it was you know um so so you know and and yet by the time interestingly enough by the time i was um getting ready to launch my career so a lot of jews by that time worked for big companies and i had no experience um you know with with relatives who own
8:55 their own businesses my grandfather did but he had passed away when i was just a child so for for those of us who um don't have that sort of built-in ability to be around small businesses and such what what do you think people can could do to to get that hands-on experience that i think is so important over and beyond what you could learn in business school yeah and i mean um it's it's interesting you bring up the jewish community because i do notice throughout l.a like um a lot of koreans have bought the businesses from the jewish families that
9:30 have gone on right um and there's definitely been kind of that pattern there um and so you know and that's the really beautiful thing about america right like one community comes and they establish something they they they work their way up and then another community comes in behind them and does the same thing um so i do you know credit the jewish community for also like helping create a handbook for a lot of uh the other immigrant communities that came after um but in regards to what other people can do um you know i i think it's all just about exposure it's about you know getting involved um so i mean for example when i started off in the startup world
10:05 i don't know what the hell i was doing right i had been around all these small like mom and pop shops and restaurants and stuff like that as well as these massive corporations but you know the idea of going into a tech startup i mean i had no clue what that meant um but you know the way i found my route was i just you know would look for any opportunity i didn't really care what it was um my first startup was with a bunch of guys i met on facebook um none of us knew what we were doing um but we all wanted to try it and um you know my second startup was with um
10:41 my old boss from disney he wanted to start a company and i was like yeah i'll work for cheap why not um i think it's really just about raising your hand and getting involved and just jumping in um you know it's like people think often like i have a lot of friends who often kind of like look at my startup business experience and they go oh you must have learned that in your mba and i'm like no they did not teach me this in the mba program at all um you know the best way to learn this type of work is really just to jump in get exposure you know in a lot of ways i think you um you know having
11:16 an apprentice type of mentality um or if you find other people who are successful at it and just ask them like what can i do to follow you around you know i i worked for like nothing i worked for equity um i worked way more than anyone um would have paid me to at these you know or could pay afford to pay me too at these companies um but you know that also came with a lot of opportunities to like follow the ceo to a meeting um to a sales call to you know investor meetings and as a result of just kind of following people around and just being that like kind of early apprentice just kind of absorbing
11:51 everything i could i was able to pick up the skills and um you know really you know take apply that into my own career as well so i'm and i think that's that's terrific advice i have a friend who works at nasa and he says our our kind of slogan should be um just say yes just say no environment for you know marketing you know you hear that a lot but but just say yes to these kind of opportunities and see where their lead and i look i think the worst thing that happens is it's it's too much or it's not where you want to go and you say
12:27 okay well i have that experience now i'll move on to the next one yeah absolutely i mean i i don't think entrepreneurship uh is necessarily a fit for everyone you know it is a very risky um kind of just chaotic journey and um you know it suits certain personalities and it doesn't suit others but i would also um you know caveat that by saying there's just so many different types of businesses you know even if maybe this one category like a tech startup might not be for you um you might find um that you're fit for some other type of business and so you know it's really just about exploring
13:02 you know and doing um constantly saying yes and raising your hand and you know doing anything that might interest you and seeing it through so if you would talk to us next about how you made that transition from corporate america to you know being involved with your first startup and in particular if this was the case maybe it wasn't um how did you deal with the shall we say um disappointment maybe that your parents might have felt one of the reasons i said is i i have a friend who
13:38 interestingly enough is also um asian american and she she was in a very state corporate job and she decided to leave and it was like an atom bomb went off in her house you know so i have the same story for sure yeah please share that with us well i mean the timing of my decision i mean when i look back i'm like i i i would say it was just all horrible decision making but in the end it turned out to be the right path um so in my case i had a job at disney uh in 2008 you know um the digital team
14:15 survived all the layoffs um we you know no one got laid off after the crash um so i had a stable job you know i was in a really great position and um you know it was fun but you know the problem you know at the time i was around 25 years old and uh when the recession hit um that also just dropped you know i didn't get laid off but it dried up my projects it made it so that the stuff i was working on was just not as exciting um the division i was in at disney was really unique um it was a disney abc digital media team which at the time was the team that put television online so um you know the the company was
14:51 treating it like a startup within a big company and essentially prior to the crash we had these like unlimited budgets where you know if we wanted to try something we could whereas after the recession it became well you have to find a sponsor for that and you know advertising dollars were also drying up and it was just a really tough time you know for businesses overall um so i got bored and some guys reached out to me on facebook and he was looking for the wrong jennifer chang from berkeley but like yeah step two have a generic name um but yeah like you know he reached out he told me about his business and i was
15:27 like this is really interesting they were doing something around online video and making it social um and i had wrote my thesis on youtube and online video and you know social was kind of one of the trends that i had identified um you know the idea of um you know people being able to participate in content and so um i you know i flew up to berkeley i met them uh there was a bunch of dudes in a house you know it literally looked like hbo silicon valley like it couldn't be more factual to that um and yeah um after a few months of working on this i decided to quit disney
16:02 and join them full time for no salary because you know i thought it was interesting i was getting bored at work and i wanted something stimulating um yes and yeah that was like an atom bomb in my family um you know my parents were really you know i think my dad had some context to why i was like this because you know he was like that himself my mom had a really hard time of it my parents are divorced um and you know my mom had a really hard time with my dad's entrepreneurial journey and uh yeah we did get in a big fight i didn't talk to my mom for a year after that just because like i couldn't um i
16:39 couldn't handle the criticism of like why did you do this and like you know i and you know on top of that the business had failed and um you know it was just a really difficult time um but that being said you know it was um you know if you if you really stick to what you believe in eventually people come around um and you know i i did make up with my mom and you know things did get back to normal and um you know i continued to pursue the startup path and um you know eventually i got to an exit and i did make some
17:15 money and i took my mom to paris so that's kind of the full story and you know now my my my mom's very encouraging of what i do um you know she's kind of come to the place where it's like you know she understands you know she trusts that i know what i'm doing now um but yeah it was a very difficult transition and it was very difficult for my family because like i said my parents they went through this immigrant journey of entrepreneurship because they had to there weren't that many other options and to then raise a daughter who goes on to berkeley and gets these jobs like
17:51 kpmg and disney and watch her go yeah i'm not gonna do that and i'm gonna go start a small business and take on all the risks that you guys have to take by force what i'm doing voluntarily um you know it was difficult for them to process like why would you do that we struggled so much to get you here um i carried you in my body for 10 months exactly um but i would say all's well that ends well i my mother oftentimes will watch these broadcasts and i i do have to say that when my business my first business finally did well i bought her a tv so you're making
18:27 me look horrible by taking your parents now you mentioned that first business failed so one of my i don't know dictums is oftentimes we learn more from our failures than from our successes were there any lessons you learned from that that first you know startup opportunity not working out that you've been able to apply you know to succeeding opportunities yeah i mean i i think having early failures is just really a
19:02 blessing um you know i'm so glad i did this when i was young and dumb and didn't think twice um you know like i said it was horrible decision making but it led me down a good path um so you know my first startup you know like i i really went into it not knowing anything um and you know my team was also as inexperienced as i was um and we all you know came out of that failure and have really thrived it's it's really awesome to kind of see where my co-founders have ended up because they've all done really well themselves um you know my biggest lesson from that is i walked away from it just realizing that um you know starting a company is
19:38 especially these types of companies where you want to grow really fast and you have you know you have to build a team you have to collaborate there's only so much you can do by yourself and i found it incredibly difficult to just you know our working relationship was a disaster just because as things were happening you know things would happen you know there was um you know disappointments and like you know we just unravel you know we were humans and um particularly me i would cry on so many conference calls it was it was just really a disaster and i i walked away from that um you know really devastated uh don't get me wrong failure sucks
20:14 um but that being said you know it really i felt like it exposed to me everything i didn't know i finally could kind of identify like what i did know which was like i could put together good presentations um you know i made really good sales decks um you know i was i was good at like you know hustling and like reaching out to people i find everyone on social media because it was just so early back then it wasn't as like cluttered and i would just like reach out to people and say hi and like you know get them to talk to us about the business you know i was good at some of those things you know i i could i identified that through that process but then there was this whole other area where i was like i need to
20:49 learn how to work on a team um and actually you and i kind of uh were introduced to our mutual friend elliott um who's also part of the story because after that failure i decided to go to business school at usc and um you know my my real focus there was i i want to work on everything that i've identified that i don't understand right like i wanted to understand things like you know kind of more tactical things like how does funding work valuations and stuff like that because as we were fundraising i realized i don't know what anyone's talking about um but as i mentioned i also identified that i i realized like the most crucial thing about a startup is the ability to
21:25 work on a team and so when we went to business school day one they put you on these teams of six people they kind of divide up the entire um mba class that way and you're stuck with that team for the whole semester and you have to learn how to work together and i saw it as an opportunity and actually elliot was on my team um and uh you know and elliott and i are still really good friends this day because our team was awesome uh we had just such a great team and you know from the start i told my team that like you know the one thing i want to get out of this mba experience is to learn how to work better with other people
22:01 um and you know i was really intentional about it throughout the entire semester and you know i think that was just one of my biggest accomplishments in mba um to walk away from that experience with a team that i worked with all semester and actually at the end of the semester we had to like do some kind of survey about you know like team satisfaction and our team came up uh number one in our core and so yeah was you know so i think out of all these failures you learn what you don't know which then identifies what you can work on um and then you can work on that and you know be more successful in the next round
22:38 so there's this idea out there that rather than um working to improve on your week week weak skills if you will um we should double down on our strengths and make them even stronger to be honest i've always found that to be somewhat specious because i think it it depends what our weak skills are right some some weak skills are just going to kick us out well i'm sorry go ahead yeah i think it also depends on what you're doing right i think if you're working in like this corporate environment where
23:14 there's other people around that can fill in those weak skills for you then yes you can double down on your strengths right because you just want to be really good at the one thing right like if you're in sales well there's other people in the company that will handle the other areas so you can focus on sales as long as you know you're really awesome at sales and you're pulling your weight um for the team everyone else can make up for the uh you know kind of the weaknesses that you have um but that's different when you're an entrepreneur um when you're like you know person number one or two and you know you're getting the ball rolling and you just
23:49 don't have the luxury of having all these different people around right like at a startup we don't have uh you know or traditionally a startup you don't have someone that's there for hr and culture that's able to kind of put together the workshop so that we can all sit around and talk about how to work better together and so it's something that the ceo has to do um and that everyone on the team has to just you know pull their weight you know some level um you know and so i i think i think there is benefits to doubling down on your strengths and there are you know also other you know situations that call for you to be more well-rounded
24:25 um i think in my case because i pursued this entrepreneurship angle um and i um you know i i just also just enjoy wearing lots of hats um i i do feel like i really kind of went down that route of like jack of all trades type of approach more so than the doubling down on my strengths yeah so for a lot of people i think it's difficult for us to um be candid with ourselves if you will about what really are my shortcomings
25:02 and and you mentioned you were very intentional about that process um can you tell us a little bit more about that how did you how did you oh i think there's it's somewhat of a human reluctance not to want to look at you know our shortcomings so how did you sort of get yourself to really look at those on in an intentional way and then you know from there figure out okay how am i going to um you know improve my abilities in in the areas that you identify that you need to to
25:37 work on i mean i think a lot of it was just my um was due to motivation right so you know i i came out of that first startup failure um with this feeling of that sucked and you know failing sucks but i wanted to do it again right like i it was something i wanted to do and i had a recognition that if i want to do this there are things i need to do um to adapt myself and to grow myself so that i could be successful right um and so you know i think going through
26:13 that early experience kind of gave me uh insight into what are the success factors of starting a successful you know scalable tech company um and since i want to do it again i had the motivation to do that i do think there's a lot of people who don't want to look at their weaknesses that's true um and you know i i i guess in my case that just hasn't really been a thing um but one thing i would also question is like you know you might have a weakness in one area but you know you might not want to address it but it's also like do you need to address it is it something that's holding you back
26:49 right um in my case i felt like this is something i want to do and i don't want to allow my weaknesses to hold me back so how do i work on those areas so that i can move forward um and if you're not if you're not identifying those weaknesses you might also just want to look back and think about your motivation and intent maybe these aren't things that you don't really want to do right like um i think a lot of times people um don't necessarily or i think a lot of it kind of comes with the fact that people are not honest about what they really want um you know people say a lot of things like i i you know i want this job i want
27:24 to do this i want to do that but it might really be shaped by societal and outside pressures and not really from you um and the reason that you're not making the steps towards become you know achieving that is probably because you don't really want it because in my experience if you really genuinely want something you will do anything to get it um and so in those you know when i identified weaknesses in areas of things that i really wanted i find that i would work on myself versus other areas of my life where i might say like oh i want this but i don't and so you know i i don't really
27:59 work on anything but i think in those cases you have to learn how to accept that's not what i actually want and i'm not going to spend my time addressing a problem that's actually not real because i don't need to fix this about myself when i don't want that and very yeah interesting very interesting uh very insightful so take us now if you will to to the next step so you've you've you've got this one company kind of under your belt it didn't work out you you know you went to um you know usc became a trojan fight on
28:36 my alma mater as well all right exactly um and and so then coming out of um i assume it was an mba program um where did you go from there then um on kind of the next step of your journey yeah so um during my mba i did an intern i did a lot of internships i did an internship with uh apple over the summer you know kind of that formal internship you do wonderful company amazing place awesome people like really just some of the smartest people in the world are at that company um and i i you know i i admire apple as a brand and as a consumer um
29:12 but i i you know once again i felt like oh this just isn't right um you know i i don't feel like i want to be here um and then when i got back from my internship um someone forwarded me an email that idealab this incubator here in pasadena was hosting an open house because they wanted to find candidates for uh job openings and so i was like oh that place sounds really cool like idealab like you know i mean the name on bill gross and all of what he's done um so i went there and i just kind of went around i was still in mba and i'm just like walking around talking to people and i just met some really great people that i i i'm still
29:47 actually friends with to this day um including um one of the portfolio companies the cto and i were talking and he was like you know you're awesome like we'd love for you to work here we don't have a job opening but like let's create one um and you know he took that to the rest of the team and they agreed and they actually ended up creating a part-time job for me while i was an mba um so you know as you kind of go through the mba experience you you know usually your summer internship comes back with an offer for a full-time job um but i i really just uh loved my experience at um at this idea lab company and on top of that the ceo of the company was actually
30:22 a woman um who had you know like you know decades of experience in startups you know as i was pointed out like just you know find people that you um aspire to be and just like follow them around and so that julie schoenfeld um she really became that person for me uh she's just a phenomenal entrepreneur i really haven't met anyone um who's just as smart as her and capable as her in this field um and you know she basically made a full-time offer and i was kind of like you know there's apple or i could stay here but ultimately it was julie um that was the reason i decided to stay at a startup rather than go back to apple
30:59 um and you know during the next year that i was there um i i like i said i got the opportunity just follow her around i got to sit in on meetings i got to see how things worked she let me sit in board meetings you know i helped her prepare the board decks and so she would let me sit in them um and you know i just got a lot more exposure and learned like you know how to do this in a way um just on another level than what i had gone through in my first few startups as well as you know even what you can learn in mba um you know i just got kind of this next level of exposure and so from there it kind of cemented this is where
31:34 i belong and this is where i'm going to stay so it seems to me there's another factor building in maybe along this route and that is you're gaining confidence in your own abilities is is is does that sound right yeah i think that's that's really true you know um i i think um the more you do anything you become more confident at it um and yeah i definitely think it was a journey of um you know building confidence and i was really fortunate because i had so many great mentors kind
32:10 of rallying me on um you know also while i was an mba you know i i you know had the internship at apple i was doing all this like entrepreneurship stuff as well um and like interning for the tech coast angels and you know i was doing a lot of different things um but um you know i i had a professor at uh at usc cathy allen um who was just really important um an important person in my career at that point because she encouraged me so much she you know i had come out of this failure and i was thinking like oh i'm terrible at this like you know i really want to do it but like i see all these
32:46 weaknesses and i don't know if i can make it um when i met her she's like no i mean like ninety percent of these fail like that's amazing that you've already started doing this and um you know she was just so encouraging making introductions you know and you know kind of like um just like yeah she was like my cheerleader throughout my mba um and i think that really helped me um gain the confidence to take the next thing which built even more confidence to the next thing um and so i would say like that journey you know a lot of where that confidence came from was not just even like um learning and growing in what i'm
33:21 doing but also the people that i met that encouraged me along the way oh so so that's a perfect lead into my next question which is throughout you've been talking about various people that you met many of whom you're still in touch with to to this day so how did you um initiate those relationships how have you um for one of a better term groomed them over the years talk to us about that aspect of it if you would yeah so people will always say mentors are the most important thing you know
33:56 aspect of your career and it's really like it's the most true thing i would say um and you know in regards to like how do you attract mentors um i would say go be useful right like i said um you know i would help julie prepare the board decks so she let me into the board meeting um you know also i was an mba i i met my other mentor sarah weinheimer who was an angel investor that was part of techos angels at the time and i just worked on deals with her i i wanted to learn and i you know i helped her with due diligence and you know she that that helped you know her kind of understand my capabilities and you know from there
34:32 working together was so much fun and that's developed into a really amazing friendship um but i i think you know my advice to people who are seeking mentors like find a way to be useful you know usually the people worth be worth having as mentors are very busy people you know um the people worth having as mentors tend to be successful successful people are busy they have a lot of things going on and so it's not necessarily easy for them to be able to just kind of make time to mentor you um but if you're able to come in and say like okay how can i be helpful so that you have time to mentor me
35:08 um how can i work alongside you um you know that tends to you know open up and free their time so that they can do this um you know they will spend time teaching you how to do something when you're going to make their life easier and so then it becomes a mutually beneficial relationship versus just like you know the younger or less experienced person kind of going to someone and saying please mentor me please spend time on me um rather it becomes look i'll help you find time so that you can invest in me okay wow wow great so now
35:43 you're you know you're moving on in your career um would you talk how did you get from shall we say sort of the the mid-level positions to where now you're an actual founder right and you're the one now trying working to inspire other people to come and join in your vision yeah that's true so um after the company that i was with at idea lab which was called perfect market um you know um i got cut like they kind of had a massive layoff and then sold the company um and then since then it's gone through a
36:18 great exit um uh so um you know at that time i was kind of like what do i do next and i was kind of wandering around and once again more mentors showed up and really encouraged me like um there's a guy andy wilson um who encouraged me to just set up my own consulting practice he was like you know you're awesome like you can do this for a bunch of startups including me so come you know come work for me for a few hours and then like you know go find some other clients and so i just kind of started doing that and um one of the people i met as i was kind of walking around going hey startup consultant for hire um uh was a guy named carl who was working
36:54 on uh an idea that he had for influencer monetization platform um called fan bread and uh you know as i mentioned i came at disney i did a lot of early work for them around on youtube and social media and so it was an area that i was really interested in and um you know carl was starting this business it was just basically him with the powerpoint deck at that point um and i i just once again said yes i raised my hand i said i want to be involved in this like how do we make this happen you know like what can you pay me because i don't care whatever hours you're gonna give me i'll do more um and so i just kind of hung out there
37:30 and i i you know even when there wasn't really much for me to do i just kind of stuck around i found other works so that i can you know pay my bills and i just i was really just passionate about this idea um and so as we started the company and as it started to grow since i was just there first um you know i ended up in the role of coo where eventually you know it turned out that i was running marketing operations and finance and you know just i i had my hands on all kinds of things and i was just applying everything i could into it um but it was definitely a very different experience this time around because now i was the leader now everyone was looking to me for what to do
38:06 um now i was setting the culture um and you know i had a really great business partner in carl he was um you know just a phenomenal person to work with um and we built a really amazing team um and you know through that role i really gotta flex and stretch in a way that i had it prior to that and you know we actually did get it fired so i had to work through an acquisition as well which was like a whole other adventure um and you know i i think it was just kind of this progression but it all came with that same attitude that i had which was i wanna you know i had a growth mentality of i wanna do something
38:42 more this time um and once again me just kind of following around people that i found interesting that i wanted to work with and learn from um and i you know it took a lot of patience right like this company took a while to build um and like i think it was really like a year and a half until they brought me on you know full time um and you know i didn't have to have other jobs to help support myself um but it was something i really wanted to do and it was a really great role in which i got to really step it up to another level yeah there's i don't i know can't remember
39:17 who said this quote but um somebody is probably back in the 70s said something in the lines of um you know always you know work toward what you want to do given everything you've got just you know don't run out of money basically right you thought to support yourself so you mentioned you know you had you had other ways of of you know keeping the cash flowing would you would you talk about that just a little bit because i think for a lot of people the prospect of you know going to work for startup and and and even saying look pay me whatever you can pay me but i'll i'll
39:52 give you everything that i've got that that all by itself seems if not frightening somewhat you know almost crazy because why do you want to give away your time for free right it's all in the end it's all we really have yeah and this is a real challenge and i think why we don't have a lot of diversity in the startup world like i think this is a real problem you know um i wish there was more government funding or some programs that could really help people who want to pursue this path and might not have the finances to do so um because i mean for me it was a huge challenge as well um but a couple of things that i did do i was um i i
40:28 while i was working on fan bread i also worked for a bunch of other startups and so you know i would just kind of find um all these companies that were early stage might have a little bit of funding um but couldn't afford you know to pay me a full-time salary and so i would just kind of put like a few hours here three hours there a few hours there um and you know across all of that managed to make enough to pay the bills um and you know it was very you know i had to deal with a lot of instability though um and a lot of like that you know income insecurity because you just kind of never know um but that being said i also found that there was a little bit of security in
41:04 the way i was working because i had so many different companies i was working with so if one cut me there was another one that might have more hours where i can replace just one you know like a percentage of my income versus the entire income um so you know there was that benefit of that as well uh another strategy that i actually um also pursued was america and especially los angeles and some of these big cities is incredibly expensive and there is an arbitrage to be had by just leaving the country um so during this time actually one of the things i did do in regards to cash
41:39 flow is i sublet my apartment and i went off to southeast asia for a while wow um and so yeah like i i uh went up to bali um you know this was back in the days uh this is 2014-15 um when people were just kind of starting to talk about digital nomads and you know these people that were wandering around the world um i had already done a trip around the world um back in 2007 and i i was just kind of comfortable with travel so when i read about these people that were going off to bali and like you know being digital nomads and they have
42:14 co-working spaces there i was like okay i could do that too so i just like packed up my bags uh rented out the you know um expenses uh you know sublet that out to someone else um and i just went off to bali and you know hung out in the jungle on a island and worked out of a co-working space that monkeys would visit um i you know i also spent some time in korea which was also a really interesting experience because i am korean american and bilingual and then at the time there was just like this burgeoning startup scene out there and i was able to you know also work with some of the korean
42:49 startups i met um i was like in the philippines like you know kuala lumpur like you know these were all really cheap compared to america so you know based off the income that i was collecting in my bank account you know from american clients and then living at the cost of living in southeast asia i was also for like able to kind of further stretch out my finances um to help me kind of get through that um that dry part of you know income wise yeah wow wow so let's we're don't have a whole lot of time left so i
43:24 want to make sure we have some we take a little bit of time to talk about your current venture playform.io so if you would tell us about tell us about that how you got involved with that what it's about and and kind of where what is the next you know uh phase of of jennifer chang's professional life yeah so play from io is actually incredibly exciting um and we're working on you know just kind of things that feel like science fiction it's it's truly remarkable um so you know just a little context um you know there there was the dot-com which we'll call web one
44:00 and that was when kind of the internet started right like i was in high school at the time and you know i was um steve case got america online including me and um you know and then there was web 2 which was really marked by social media that was the ability for us to interact through the internet um and you know that actually was like kind of the driving force throughout my career all the different companies i was with um i you know i was kind of that social media expert i you know i had worked on social media strategy at disney and you know throughout all the different companies i've started um you know they were all
44:35 really in that social media space and so um you know as i as i mentioned like you know i i kind of figured out this new strategy after um you know that led me into fan bread which was go work with a bunch of different startups and then just try to find you know one that you want to really stick around with so um throughout the pandemic i was working with like i think i worked with like a dozen companies during the pandemic um i was really busy and it was really i actually really enjoyed working throughout the pandemic in that way because i was able to work with companies all over the world um you know location didn't matter
45:11 and you know everything was through the internet um also i had no distractions so you know i was pretty much working 24 7. uh which sounds horrible but not if you really enjoy what you're doing and i was really having fun you know i was working on all these cool new ideas about like you know what could happen in this post-pandemic phase um and so one of the people i met through that was uh ahmed elgamal who was a professor of computer vision at rutgers university and had raised money from coastal ventures to start playform um and uh the the basis of the company was his early r d in regards to
45:48 ai generated art so ahmed created the first autonomous ai to create artworks that passed the turing test in 2017 which sounds like science fiction and that was and that's why it was massive news and it was kind of in all the major publications um caught the attention of coastal ventures who invested in the company um and you know when he and i started working together in june 2020 you know he he had built a product and he was trying to figure out what do you do with this where is the product market fit um and as i was talking to him he was like yeah there's like you know the most active users are these like people that are doing something called crypto art
46:25 they use the ai to generate all these different artworks and then they go sell it on these websites like super rare and it's for ethereum and cryptocurrency and he was just like i don't know what they're doing but that tends to be like who's on the site and so uh you know that really intrigued me i was like okay like this you know we were you know we're a tool for generating ai art and you know it made sense that you know these early crypto art you know nf which now we call nft art um artists were you know really gravitating towards the software and so um i created a residency program
47:01 um so that we can get to know our users a bit better um one by one and we brought in one of these artists that we had recognized was using our platform specifically for this type of crypto art and we collaborated and learned from him um and as we were doing that we launched our exhibition um late 2020 and uh it went up on super that all of us the eighth price starts climbing like crazy and we ended up selling out the entire collection um so at that point you know i was i was pretty much like oh wow okay this thing can actually go somewhere like it you
47:36 know it kind of came out of nowhere um and this was this is kind of like serendipitous because this was when nftr was working um just kind of starting to take off and then in march 2021 um it was kind of like the nft you know shot like the shot heard around the world kind of thing where there was an nft um created by people um which sold for 69 million dollars at a christie's auction which just got the entire world excited about nfts after that you know um um shortly after that i was watching snl and they did a skit on it on nfts and i was like wow you know i had been talking about nfts
48:11 during thanksgiving and my family had been making fun of me like what the hell is she talking about because i was like the next thing is crypto art guys we're gonna sell like digital files with cryptocurrency and my you know my family was just kind of like oh it's so funny and then actually after the snl skit aired my brother-in-law like reached out to me was like oh my god how did you know about this um you know he thought i could tell the future or something um but yeah so you know the the company has just been on such an exciting journey because we already had you know
48:47 these early adopters of nfts on our platform and over the last year we've been experimenting with the def uh with just a bunch of different you know um strategies kind of like learning um from the artists that's just watching this industry develop because it's just been chaos i i would say unlike web 1 and web 2 web 3 has hit us like a mac truck it's just kind of accelerated by covid and it's just been faster than any other tech trend i've ever seen you usually get an on-ramp on whereas with nfts uh-uh like it's just like straight on and 0-60 in 10 seconds
49:22 kind of feel um so over the last year you know it was just really a steep learning curve where we've been um experimenting and learning and just i'll talk to anyone um who will reach out just because i'm like what do you know um and then from there earlier this year we launched our nft marketplace um which is called art mine and it's a new way of buying uh ai generated um art as a keys um and that's kind of in a beta right now and we're working on getting to the full launch um but the company is just in a really exciting category
49:59 um and as i've been learning more and more about nfts the technology and just watching the market behavior around them um i'm you know i'm increasingly convinced that we are on to something really massive um i recently shared an article on linkedin where i talk about why i'm bullish on nfts from a woman's point of view and i wrote it because when i talk about nfgs with you know majority of the market is male at this point like when i go to these crypto events nft events like i'm one of a very few uh number of women
50:34 um and so you know the guys like you know the big use case that has come out of nft so far things like nba top shots and you know um there's all kinds of new cool art that's coming out but a lot of you know a lot of it's very like male centric tastes um and then there's things like the board ape club and you know so people hear this stuff and they go like yeah that's not for me like this doesn't make any sense and you know i i could i totally relate to that because i look at nba top shots and i'm like wait what wait you put a ball through a hoop and then you want to collect this why um lebron okay sure like great i know
51:12 he's important like but i mean i just don't really care um so when i you know the way i wrote my blog was i wanted to talk about um you know reference points of you know regarding this technology that women could understand because even while those use cases aren't really live yet in the web 3 world i know they'll come right like this is the same trend we saw with the dot com and what um went to as well where you know a lot of the early adopters tend to be men but then you know like with social media for example the early adopters were men and then women became the majority users of social media over time
51:47 and i believe the same thing is going to happen with nfts and i think it's important that we get more women into this ecosystem um so that they can benefit from that activity and so i wrote my article like talking about you know different reference points that are more relevant to women um really centered around the birken bag um the irma's handbag that if you're a woman you have seen you know it's been featured on sex in the city they had a whole episode on it um you know it's this um and the way i see it is like the activity that we're seeing around nfts today is very similar to the activity that we've seen around exclusive products at um you know throughout history right you know look
52:23 at the birken bag it's a bag that's really hard to get if you want to get one you have to pay tens of thousands of dollars and sit on a waitlist and um you know the really exciting thing about nfts is that there is an automation of a smart contract that can essentially artificially restrict scarcity the contract says only 100 of these nfts can be sold well then only a hundred of these nfts can be sold the contract is immutable you can't override it and so there's kind of you know and it's also living on a distributed ledger that no one has the ability to override and fix and so you can trust that this network
52:58 is going to make sure that only a hundred of these nfts are ever available um similar to the way that you know hermes will control the production of birkenbags so that yours will always be rare um you know the blockchain also provides the ability to resell this stuff because you can transfer it under these smart contract terms so if you have one of those hundred nfts well they could only be a hundred but you can sell it to someone else similar to you know i mean every woman i know who invests you know invest not purchase a 20 30 000 birkin bag justifies it to themselves that they can always resell it um and that is
53:35 and that is also you know kind of how you think about nfts you can always resell it and then last the you know the really exciting thing that i'm seeing right now is just that um you know the transparency of this technology is also really interesting um a lot of people might not know this but like every single transaction on the blockchain you can look up on the blockchain ether scan or polygon scan or whatever you know ledger visibility that exists within that blockchain and so you know when you own a board 8 everyone can see that you own a board 8 that it's going to your wallet just as if i carry a birkin bag out
54:11 everyone can see it's a birkin bag and they're you know and the associations with that are massive like if someone sees um a twitter phone you know twitter profile pics now um can be nft verified so you know a lot of people have their you know nft board ape which is i don't even know how much it cost now but i think it's over a hundred thousand um you know it's a hundred thousand dollar nft it's a it's a picture of an ape but what you know and it's like that in itself is not worth a hundred thousand dollars i agree but what people don't understand is what that access gives you when you verify your board ape on twitter and people see
54:47 oh they have a board ape like within the nft community that's a big deal that means people are going to reach out to you and say like hey like you're an influencer can you help me out or they're going to invite you to a party um you know there's a lot of other nft projects out there that will just basically give a free nft to everyone who's already in the board 8 club um and so there is this like actual value because everyone can see that you own one and you know just as if you have a birkin bag people are going to be a little nicer to you at that party you know if you have a board eight people are gonna be a lot nicer to you on twitter
55:22 and um you know so i'm i'm seeing this kind of like uh i'm seeing a lot of potential for this technology that i just don't think um a lot of people fully understand yet and i'm really trying to share it because um i think this is a massive opportunity um for anyone who's in the creative field it's a massive opportunity for enterprises with brands um you know but like just the opportunities here it's just another gold rush and i would i would love to see more people be able to benefit from that and you know work their way to wow there you go well i you know
55:57 unfortunately we are almost out of time but i i i have several questions rolling around my head things about you know no longer having you know issues with provenance the way you do with art and and and so many things like that that seem that this technology is is dealing with and yet there's there still must be opportunity for you know forgeries and but unfortunately we'll have to say that for another time well but just to that point of course there's gonna be forgery right um but that's the thing like this is just so early like there's as forgery becomes a problem we're going to build tools for that right actually my company has some
56:32 technology we know we can apply on that in the future uh right now you know there's really no reason to stop and focus on that because nfts are just kind of flying off the shelves and we're focused on getting new people into the market um but you know these are all like as we're identifying all these problems within the blockchain and nfcs i see them all as okay that could be solved that can be solved that can be solved um you know i'm not really focusing on what it is today but what it can be in the future well we're going to have to check in with you um you know in the future just to see how how this is all developing because it is quite fascinating and and
57:07 i agree with you there is a there there and and and this is really early stage so jennifer i cannot thank you enough for coming on and talking with me today it was i i knew you were going to be fascinating and you exceeded all expectations so thank you very very much i just want to wrap up the show by reminding people that we are here every wednesday at 12 30 the way to wow people making money next week again my guest is going to be john rubino of jib investments and he's going to be talking about his journey from uh from student
57:42 at the merchant marine academy to running a real estate investment company so if you uh know of someone who has a remarkable way of of making a living and you think they would be a good guest on the show please go to our website the way to wow show dot com drop me a note and if you have an idea for a show one of the one of the new initiatives is we're expanding the way to wow brand i mentioned last week as well my my friend leia siegel her show will be launching on march 3rd and her show is called the way to wow securing your financial
58:17 foundation so leia is a financial advisor and she's going to be talking about how to um be financially secure and how to build wealth so and i'd love to have someone who really can dig into creating relationships talking about that and and all the other subjects there in the uh three pillars of attainment that you can see over my shoulder so again thank you all very very much for watching and as i make it my practice i want to sign off by just reminding marie
58:52 darling up in heaven you are still my bow thank you all