Wen-Szu Lin: Lessons learnt from Franchise Failure to Scaling Uber in Asia - E696
episode
BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech: Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand & Malaysia Startups, Founders & Venture Capital VC (English)
34 min
1 speaker
8 chapters
transcribed 14 days ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Who is Wen‑Szu Lin and what is his entrepreneurial background?
Unfortunately we did lose money for our investors, so that's horrible. I was actually like Kung Fu Panda, I was like shaving noodles and making noodles on my own. My wife was like, hey, you gotta get your crap in order, positive mindset, because everything's gonna go wrong. Something's gonna go wrong. And you can really take it, oh this sucks. Or you can be like, oh you know what, that's a good learning moment. Growth mindset. Nothing we did in China we knew. Nothing I did in Uber I knew how to do before. But I literally went in like, not yet. Give me a few minutes. an hour or two, let me go learn it. I learned a growth mindset in consulting because I got thrown into so many cases and projects I knew nothing about.
I just sit there and Google how does aviation industry work? How does whatever industry work? And I realized that hey it's actually not rocket science for a lot of these things. You can actually learn it. Just three things I always ask our HR and our talent acquisition team to look for. Number one Welcome to Brave. Learn from Southeast
Asia's best tech leaders.
Why did Wen‑Szu decide to pursue a franchise in China before the 2008 Olympics?
Build the future, learn from our past, and stay human in between. No BS on success. I'm Jeremy Al, Venture Capitalist, Sarah founder, Harvard MBA, science fiction nerd, and dad of two daughters. Every week, we debate startup news, interview change makers, answer listener questions, and share personal insights. Join our movement of over 40,000 members and get transcripts, resources, and community at www.bravesea.com. Command. Stay well and stay brave. Hey, I'm so excited to have you on the show, Winsu. You're a respected author of two books. One on your experience being a founder in China and another on professional development and how to be successful in the workplace.
Thank you so much. I'm very happy to be here right now.
So Winse, could you introduce yourself?
I'm much older than most people I talk to when I'm in the tech world. But this at high level Taiwanese American, so born in Taiwan, raised mostly in the US, in the DC area, background like a lot of Asian American kids and engineering, electrical engineering. I've done a lot of consulting, defense contract work, and things like that. I went on to get my MBA. I went back to more consulting. Uh and at one point decided to start a business, moved to China. Uh ended up getting a franchise of Snack brand from the US, moved to China. Spent five years getting my butt kicked, trying to launch a business. Didn't work. Moved to the Philippines because my wife is from the Philippines. I had two kids by that time, didn't know what to do, so ended up starting a beef noodle restaurant.
I was actually like Kung Fu Panda. I was like shaving noodles and making noodles on my own. My wife was like, Hey, you gotta get your crap in order, get your shit in order. And then so I was like, Okay. So I ended up applying for some jobs and ended up taking one. One of the only jobs that came around, which was Uber at the time. So that was two thousand fourteen. And I helped build up one of their probably one of the largest organizations within Uber. No one ever knows about. It's called Community Operations. So I managed community operations for Asia. So it's basically customer support, back office operations. And recently, in the last year, ended up leaving. So now I'm looking at investing in new businesses, getting my hands dirty in a lot of startups again.
So it's pretty exciting right now.
What challenges did Auntie Anne’s face in Beijing’s malls and regulations?
Oh fascinating. What a incredible time. And I'm really excited to talk to you because you have so much experience. So let's go back all the way to the beginning, which is your Taiwanese American, you're building out this management consulting career in the US. And I empathize, right? Because I've also studied in the US. I've been a management consultant for many years. But you made a decision to build a company in China back all the way in two thousand and eight. Yes. So what was the driving that decision at that point of time?
One thing is it was interesting. I was an IT consulting, which is very different from management consulting, strategic consulting from what I realized.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Who is Wen‑Szu Lin and what is his entrepreneurial background?
0:00–0:52
2
Why did Wen‑Szu decide to pursue a franchise in China before the 2008 Olympics?
0:52–3:01
3
What challenges did Auntie Anne’s face in Beijing’s malls and regulations?
3:01–6:13
4
Why did the pretzel franchise ultimately fail and what did Wen‑Szu learn?
6:13–9:09
5
How did Wen‑Szu transition from the failed franchise to the Philippines?
9:09–11:43
6
What motivated Wen‑Szu to write *The China Twist* and how was it received?
11:43–14:19
7
How did Wen‑Szu build and scale Uber’s Community Operations across Asia?
14:19–16:52
8
What are the three core mindsets Wen‑Szu recommends for founders and tech leaders?
16:52–34:08
Speakers
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