Vince Chan
speaker
6,989 appearances
347 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard Jun 2025
Vince Chan’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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I knew or felt that was the area I had to focus on if I were to dedicate a decade of my life building a venture. And hence, today I'm building an education technology business.
So as I was listening, it seems like you have a scientist's mindset. You're intrigued by things you don't fully understand, but you're drawn to them. Your way of finding out more is to dive deep, collect data points, and explore. You might start with a hypothesis, but as you gather more data, you either debunk or validate your initial theories.
continuously refining your understanding until you reach a point where you discover your true passion. Would you say that's a fair summary of your experience?
Yeah, I would say I would agree with like 80-90% of what you share. The only thing I would say is I think oftentimes when you think about the scientific mindset, the one caveat is people then often spend a lot of time like creating the underlying theory on which your hypothesis is formed. And then you go into the idea of validating in a very scientific way.
Whereas I think for me, especially when it comes to career, one, I think it's hard to be that scientific. And two, I think if you overthink about what is this theory underlying my preferences, I'm not sure if it's that helpful. So I agree with most of it, except I would say I'm a scientist that theorizes less when it comes to careers, I would say.
A few episodes ago, I talked to one of my guests, who was actually my former professor at Chicago Booth. We themed her series Love and Logic. She studied computer science as an undergrad. but went on to earn her master's and PhD in theater history, a unique blend of art and science.
Later, she taught entrepreneurship at the business school Chicago Booth, which made for a fascinating life experience. We discussed the balance between love and logic. As you shared your journey with me, I see a similar blend of art and science in your approach. I always believed that career development is a form of craftsmanship.
Some people overanalyze and calculate every step, while others are more free spirited and go with the flow. But ultimately, it's about finding that balance between art and science, feeling our way and figuring things out as we go.
Yeah, that resonates with me.
You mentioned agtech, education technology, as your focus. When I first got involved in the agtech space, and I still am, I was particularly active on the investment side. Every time I met an entrepreneur from any part of the world, my first question was always, why are you founding an ag tech company? The reason I ask is that when it comes to education technology, passion is crucial.
Of course, you need to be smart and have the business acumen, the head, but the heart has to be there too. I found that in education technology, that fire inside your heart is essential. Especially in those days, venture valuations for other types of tech like fintech or blockchain were much higher, while agtech was relatively lower. That's why I really care about the why behind the work.
What kind of impact do you want to make? And do you truly mean it when you say impact? So back to you, my question isn't just about why agtech, but also out of all the issues and opportunities in the learning space, why did you decide to focus specifically on live group learning?
A couple of things. So in terms of why group learning, which I guess for people's context, SparkWise is a platform that really scales live group learning where professionals come together. They'll be real time video solving problems. They are practicing judgment. They are giving each other feedback and they're really growing together and building skills together.
And there are two things that I would say that really underpin this approach. One is I mentioned I started my career at McKinsey, and then I spent my time in a lot of different organizations across all sectors, partly through work through McKinsey and then work through the international development stuff I did everywhere. And
One thing I really appreciate about McKinsey and consulting was that they invest a lot of resources into developing their people because people are truly their core asset. And it's a place where people fight to get onto training programs. And that's the first thing I experienced. So I just thought that was actually what training looked like in corporates. I thought, so they put you into teams.
So you work together, it's super interactive and it's really engaging. And I thought that's what training was until I saw how different training felt like in other organizations that just don't have the resources to invest at that level and at the scale that McKinsey was. And so and a lot of making the training that I really loved was in this live group format.
So part of the motivation is that's in my mind what really great looked like. And I wanted to build a way to really scale that approach. And then coincidentally, their pedagogy is quite similar to Harvard business school does case studies. And there's a lot of similar adult learning principle underpinnings. And also I think it's quite research path in the way that how people learn.
The second thing I would say that made me want to start this is I felt like there was a really strong founder market fit when it comes to like my unique abilities or what I thought are my unique abilities that could help. build this product. So throughout my life, I've just been involved in a lot of things that involve live groups.
So when I was in Korea, I used to be on TV and I hosted a lot of live TV shows. So I was often a show host where I had to facilitate conversations. Then I, throughout my life in school, would often play some sort of a role in class, whether it be class president or social chair. So I was often again facilitating a lot of experiences for people.
In work, I've facilitated a ton of really interactive workshops for clients where I also got insight into what it means to bring people together. And finally, I emcee weddings a lot. And so like a lot of the things that I do and I really enjoy are around bringing people together and somehow creating this dynamic that gets everyone to really engage.
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