 Hello Tokyo. Today I'm talking about my startup story. The organizers told me there's a lot of early-stage startup here so that my story of finding Google Van and getting into several countries would be quite interesting to the audience. That's why today I'm going to talk about a lot of my background and the finding story of my company instead of the business model of Google Van. But just FYI, Google Van is a sharing economy platform for logistics. We match drivers and customers which is mostly business to move their goods. We have motorcycle, van and truck as you see on the screen. We are operating in Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea and now over 170 cities in China right now. On our platform over 2 million drivers are actively working on our platform. But today as the MC said I'm a high school job out. I job out from Hong Kong high school in 2005 and then I got a one-way ticket to California to continue my life. My dad spent all his living to buy one-way ticket for me to go to California and then by the time that I arrived in California by October 2005 there was no school took me in and then I the first thing I need to do is to find a Chinese restaurant to work and start to make a living. So today my story is going to tell you anyone here no matter what kind of background you are you can start a business. The company that you see on the screen called Google Van is a company I founded with only 250,000 yen. A lot of money only with 250,000 yen and then we became the first unicorn company from Hong Kong and they're operating in several countries. I've never written any mobile application. I'm not from a computer science background and I'm also not from a rich family. I scrubbed my public exam when I was in high school in Hong Kong that's why I need to job out. Okay with that background I got a chance to do something very interesting. I passionate about and then met myself here on this stage to talk to you guys in Tokyo. When I started the company I've never expected I can be in Tokyo to talk it with you guys and share my story. If anyone asked me I don't think my story worth to be shared when I was like five years ago I'm just a low body just like you guys maybe sitting down there as an audience but now I guess I have a lot of fascinating experience that can share with you how we started the company and how we scaling up and then it took one simple concept from Hong Kong which most of the VC most of the investor think a company from Hong Kong is not going to win the Southeast Asian market and the team from Hong Kong won't understand the Chinese market but we tackle that kind of challenge years over years and proven myself and our team that we can do it. You don't need a master degree or anything to do business but with dedications and passions just trying to solve the problems by yourself every single day find good team member that you can do it that is the background of my sharing. So I was saying that I have a high school job but by the time I was in California I made every single penny in school and the Chinese restaurant to pay off all my tuition. So my dad after he bought a one way ticket for me to California I started making money on my own. How did I do it other than being a delivery guy for Chinese restaurant? I sell a lot of stuff on eBay. I used to fix a lot of bicycle and then trade online on eBay and then sell it to my classmates because we have a lot of international students and then every time that I saw some new international student moving in and then I will go to their apartment hey do you need a bicycle go to school? Okay I have a lot. Okay how about I sell it to you like 20 bucks or 30 bucks with insurance. If anything warms with your bike you can come to me I fix it for you. Okay how I do it I did not have a lot of skills just because I ride a bicycle to school and work every single day and I broke a lot of bicycle and then how I fix it is I went to Walmart okay. Walmart is still quite big back at those days 2005 and 2006 and then I will buy a new bicycle take it out and then take the new parts to fix my bike and then return the bike to Walmart. Well you need to survive right that you keep thinking how to make money and how to be surviving and I use the same concept I start to trade second-hand car on Christmas and eBay I will buy a second-hand car like Toyota you know Toyota is very very sturdy and can run for forever right a lot of Toyota Camry Honda Civic all this type of vehicle and then most of my friend they love this type but when they have problems when I bought them I learned how to fix it by just asking a great teacher of ours his name is called Google and YouTube just ask how to fix a car they have YouTube video tells you how to fix it where to buy the parts which is on eBay and then you just build it step by step fix the car and then I saw it we sell it to my friends and and classmates that's how I started to make some money to go to school and then after two years in California I need to transfer to a four-year college which I apply for UC Berkeley Business School and then the out-of-state tuition for California like University is very very expensive all the money that I made is not enough for me to pay for school then what I did is by 2017 or 2007 Steve Joff got this iPhone the first generation and when everyone metal on boom but on New York Times wherever all this publication saying that Steve Jobs was insane who would sell a phone without button without keyboard no one is going to buy it but nowadays when we look at our phone which phone have button on it okay my phone is like iPhone 10 no more button anymore just wipe up right so in just 10 years a lot of stuff change and then what I did with the iPhone is I was the first group of seller unlock it and jail broken the phone and put it on eBay to sell it to the world and then I make several hundred thousand US dollar so that I can go to school that was me that was my my my my very entrepreneurial background I'm not a very smart guy that I am I don't know how to do computer science program anything I'm just a typical guy but the environment forced me to do something very very interesting so that I can survive and the same concept actually we can put it in any startup when you start your company just like my company with 250 thousand yen what kind of things that you can do I'm not a guy that know how to program I told you so the first question is not about money if I know there's a questions it's a problem that I want to solve you just need to take it to a logical step how to solve that questions or problems the first problem that we want to solve is there's a delivery problem in Hong Kong we have a lot of call centers and a lot of vehicles on the street which is the truck and van that you see on the screen and then most of these vehicles and drivers working with call centers to get business and then before I find a Google van I started another company called boss ad advertisement on a boss what is that company do is we put advertisement on a takeaway boss on top of the boss only the boss and no food inside right okay it's not it's similar to the bento in in in Japan but without the food inside so we run that company very very successful within nine months of time over 600 restaurants we're using our bosses and then we have been having a lot more credible advertiser to put advertisement on our bosses and then that is where we started scaling up the boss ad company but we find a great problem for us to make this company great it's the delivery problem every day we spend hours and hours to call the call center to our ring truck and drivers to help us to do delivery and then after nine months of time the running the business the scale is big enough every day we were delivering over 100,000 buses per day to over 600 restaurant so either we are going to build our own logistic fleet or we have to hire a lot of part time or or regular drivers there to serve us every day then we call this call center to arrange all this vehicle the capacity and I find out there's a ping in the there's a huge ping-pong that this industry is exactly like the taxi industry like five years ago ten years ago they have their small group small company to operate under one radio channel and then after a while the radio frequency that the call center couldn't solve our problems then we started to think how we build our own sharing network of drivers and then we started to put all our drivers that we know put their phone number into our WhatsApp group and then we start to WhatsApp the drivers every day on our delivery schedule and then over time we have a lot of WhatsApp group and then it become a very chaotic problem is because how to manage all this WhatsApp group is very time-consuming is not very very evasive and then that's how we naturally a questions how can we solve the problems of getting a driver with multiple WhatsApp group that the answer is one gigantic WhatsApp group but at that time one group in only allow like 10 people 20 people in one group we cannot change WhatsApp because of our need then we can only solve it then it led to the idea of how about we building our own platform then we spend years and months and months to understand the market and then we started in 2013 July in Hong Kong by just getting 300 drivers on board to use our app the question behind at this stage is how we get a very very good technical guy to build a very very sassy functional mobile application platform for us to use and then that is one of the core idea that I want to share with you as a entrepreneur your job is to solve problem when there's a resources problem you source you solve the problems of getting resources if you don't have the skills to build whatever you need accounting finance okay product engineering then your job is to get the right person right people to do it with you not for you when you are in early stage because if you just hire people or getting people do it for you then your journey may not be last that long because everyone have an objective and your objective is to ask someone to help you out that's it in the early stage all you need to get partner that willing to go through the ups and down with you I was very lucky enough I got five co-founder including myself and each of us have different skills at that time we we don't talk about market shares we don't talk about how much shares you own how much share I own what's the obligation responsibility all we did is to set a goal and objective we agree that is something very sassy very good that we should achieve and we think it's very interesting we if we can solve that problem and then all the co-founders think yeah I think it's very very good idea and then let's try and then at that time our objective for ourself is within one year being the largest platform in Hong Kong only and then we can generate enough revenue and income so that five of us can make a little bit money to pay or give it back to our family our parents to kind of shut their mouth off okay I have a job okay don't ask me what I do okay and then every day I just hide in the office to pay PlayStation export whatever monster hunter right recently so that's my goal and that was me and I surprisingly the company has been doing really well because we solved the right problem white ping-pong that only not only myself experience it a lot of people have the same ping-pong in the industry with the logistic industry so we started scaling up the company first of all I told you I shared we started with 250,000 yen and then when we raise our first series a run it was a really painful process and this progress is actually similar to when I apply for university you just keep talking to people you keep applying until one city guy or crazy guy city enough to believe in you I guess that is the mentality every entrepreneur has to keep in mind when it's early stage it's extremely hard but if it's not extremely hard that entrepreneurial journey is not that meaningful in my point of view because you got all the help from the beginning what is the fun part of doing pieces the fun part of business is you keep building building building with your team if the team that you love working together you don't mind working for 24 hours without sniff with this team you put yourself like you are the Michael Jordan is this team but all the other guys are the Michael Jordan in their own field what can be more exciting than that you get to handpick which Michael Jordan to work with you and to fight the war together to me that is why being entrepreneurs so so so interesting but we couldn't waste a lot of money in Hong Kong we have to run into a lot of institutional investor and they said our ideas were kind of stupid it's only work in Hong Kong and then we took it to Singapore and we prove it and we raise use a from Singapore and then for us to launch in service Asia later on we expand our model to China and other places and then last year we did a one of the largest merger in the startup history in the Hong Kong we merged with a Chinese space sharing platform company called Wu Ba Su Yun 58 transportation in English and then that was a leap of faith for myself a lot of people asked me especially on my friend in service Asia asked me hey Stephen why don't you keep building by yourself and you have to work with this 58 transportation I said they are the leader in China and we are building up our market share in China there's a one philosophy one of our shareholder or director taught me when we are a startup very small startup if you want to win the war but not every single battle you have to learn how to build or buy if you have the capacity and the resources you can decide you want you build it but if you don't have it how can you leverage your connection relationship and buy whatever that you need so that it become a bigger animal to do much more for your company to win it big and fast a lot of sitcom very entrepreneur also share the same view okay how to build a company fast enough to escape the velocity of the of the traditional startup or other companies then we we chose to do it and at that time our competitor 58 transportation in China they are operating more than 60 to 70 cities in China already and we were only in eight and they were they love our team they like our team because we have been put up at some good fight and our team the execution is very very good so when you scaling up the company no matter what kind of resources that you have the key is about your execution if you have $1 what is the $1 execution plan comparing to 100 million execution plan if you are our eye on $1 comparing to a hundred million one it's much much more effective you will still able to grab some market share and sustain your pieces all you need to do is to make sure your burn rate your cost structure is much more healthy than the larger competitors then we can put up a fight we raise a 6.5 million csa but what our competitor at that time raise 300 million for their series a a lot of us always entrepreneur we believe we are very positive we are always optimistic about the future and we are always thinking the David and Goliath case that we will win the game we are the champion at the end but facing market like China is not something that is all about your your your international ability or your team it's also about the execution speed and the resources that you have by leveraging this competitor resources and they are working really work willing to working with us then that makes things very very interesting and then we took that leap of faith to merge with them became a unicorn company and then since then we were operating in in 70 cities in China now in just nine months of time we are operating in 170 cities in China that is the power of this network and at the same time as an entrepreneur and the founder of the company I gave up something but in exchange I own a bigger pie bigger opportunity to build and to achieve my vision so that that was my background and how I started the company how I build it over the years I have a lot of interesting story when we were in Singapore I hired the taxi driver who drove me Iran to be my first team member for Singapore as the operation manager and then I hired a X IBM executive to have like a 90% pay cut to join us in South Korea all the story are very very interesting if you want to start your company or one in your company racing angel run CSA is one of the stage as soon as you decide you want to build a company that's a good start don't stop keep fighting my little story hope to inspire some ideas on your mind and keep you moving motivate you in the future Japan is a great market service Asia also a great market the future is full of possibilities it's all rely on how we want to do it don't complain I started with a very little amount of money if we I I campaign the amount of money that I had to to run the company I guess I probably won't be here today but anyway the story and the resources don't limit us what we should achieve in the future and I want to take Google van here in Japan very soon and so that you guys can enjoy our service here and achieve a greater height and share much more story next time I see you guys on the stage thank you thank you