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May 30, 2024

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Welcome to another edition of AHN awaken*! Apart from our guest, I’m excited to introduce a new member of our team, Han Yue Yin! Han Yue is a current Stanford GSB student and was my fellow jazz bandmate in college. Although this article was written by me (Edwin), Han Yue co-interviewed with me and will be taking the lead on writing some great articles in the future. Everyone, please welcome Han Yue!

Our guest for this edition is Larry Liu, co-founder and CEO of Weee! (exclamation mark included). Weee! is the leading online Asian supermarket in America, think Amazon but for Asian groceries. Larry is an exceptional founder, and his journey of immigrating to America without any connections into founding a company worth $4.1 billion truly exemplifies the American dream. As an aside, Han Yue and I were especially excited about this interview as avid users of Weee! ourselves. Without further ado:

The Origins of Weee!

Our first question for Larry was how the idea for Weee! first came about:

Originally, we started as a WeChat (Chinese messaging app popular with the American diaspora) group-buying company. I believe it was really an opportunity we observed around the 2014-2015 time frame. This was when WeChat became extremely popular among Chinese immigrants and many people formed WeChat groups to buy food together, among other things. We found this to be a very interesting business model. As you may know, I was an eBay seller for more than 10 years and was familiar with the traditional e-commerce model, which is search-based. So, when I saw the group buys, I thought it was a completely new model, not search-based, but recommendation-based. I believed it was very promising. That’s when we decided to quit our jobs and start the business. However, it turned out not to be the right model. We pivoted in 2017 because social buying was not what we thought it was. It was not the ultimate solution to solve the lack of service experienced by Asian Americans for their food needs. The delivery-to-home model is a much better model. So, we pivoted in 2017. I believe it’s one of the greatest pivots in history.

The reason we pivoted was because we couldn’t grow the original group buy model. We couldn’t raise money because we didn’t grow. This forced us to think very hard about the fundamentals. That’s when we realized that the reason most people used group buys was actually because they didn’t have easy, affordable access to the food they love. It wasn’t apparent in the beginning because people were group buying all kinds of things. But those were only distractions. When we thought deeper, it was about the food. That’s why we had to pivot. 

Following up, we asked Larry what lessons they were able to port over from their group-buying stage into their current business model:

We learned a lot during the group buying stage. We had already built some warehousing and delivery capability during the group buy era. Many vendors didn’t want to sell to the group leaders directly, so we had to build a warehouse to buy a lot of products from the vendors. We acted as the supplier to many of the group leaders. This already made us into the warehousing and delivery side of things. We also learned that people were willing to wait for great products that were hard to find. This gave us the confidence to not do same-day delivery or on-demand.

Obviously, we had to ask what were these products that people were willing to wait for:

It’s usually the products that are hard to find even at Asian supermarkets. For example, super fresh fish, very fresh produce, and fruits. In the early days of group buying, the Pacific Black Cod was very popular. People were buying pork bellies together because they were not easy to find in mainstream supermarkets. During winter time, a lot of Chinese immigrants make sausages themselves, so they buy a lot of pork bellies. 

One of our most popular items was Kyoho grapes. Kyoho grapes are not always available in Asian supermarkets. Additionally, Asian supermarkets have issues with consistent quality, the range of products, and the fact that a lot of people live far away from those supermarkets. That’s why those kinds of products were very attractive. During the group buy days, we would never do tofu, soy sauce, or green onions. Those kinds of products were not considered exciting for group buys. So we only would do, like I said, super fresh seafood or produce or restaurant food or things not so readily available.

The Business of Weee!

One of the big ongoing initiatives at Weee! is adding storefronts for more ethnicities, complete with their own goods. We asked Larry what opportunities and challenges they’ve experienced expanding into more ethnicities:

All of them are very underserved, which makes our business very attractive to all these ethnicities. If you look at U.S. history, there was a very important piece of legislation passed by Congress called the Immigration Act of 1965. It really started this whole demographic shift in this country. It’s a once-in-a-century shift. That’s when the Asian and Latino populations started to grow in the U.S. Right now, if you look at the Chinese population, five to six million people in the U.S., this group is still quite small, less than two percent of the U.S. population, so it’s very hard for mainstream supermarkets to try to serve the specific needs of Chinese Americans. It doesn’t make sense for them to focus on this two percent of the population and try to bring in thousands of products to serve them. That gave opportunities for offline Chinese supermarkets, but the offline model is not the ideal model to serve low-density populations. That’s why there aren’t that many such stores. 

Ranch 99 is the biggest Chinese supermarket chain. The biggest Korean chain is H Mart. It took them more than 40 years to build less than 100 stores. The reason is that the population density is not high enough for them to build thousands of stores. All the mainstream supermarkets have thousands of stores. But these ethnic ones can never achieve that, which means they will always be more inconvenient to access. And that’s physics. You just can’t have that many stores when the population is so low. The good thing for our business is that our model is a better model. You don’t have to drive to us, we deliver to you. We have very large warehouses and we can cover a very wide range. Another big advantage for us is that we can be authentic to multiple ethnicities. An offline Chinese supermarket can never be an Indian supermarket at the same time. An offline Korean supermarket can never be a Filipino supermarket at the same time. No matter how you design this, it’s impossible. But online, you go to us, the first thing we ask you to do is choose the store. You choose the Filipino store, it’s all Filipino. You choose the Vietnamese store, it’s all Vietnamese. We can really be authentic to multiple ethnicities, and that can only be done online.

One thing that caught our attention was Larry’s point about how sparse populations inhibit additional stores which inhibit accessible stores, which would make more people turn to online stores such as Weee! We were curious if the converse was true, whether or not customers use Weee! less in Asian-dense areas where there are accessible in-person stores, like in cities such as Cupertino, CA:

That’s actually not the case. We actually have a lot of customers in Cupertino. Here’s the reason: our assortment is not the same as offline Asian supermarkets. A lot of things we carry, they don’t carry, and a lot of things we carry consistently, they don’t carry consistently. The assortment of items is differentiated. We also have a third-party marketplace. Right now, we have more than 50,000 third-party marketplace products on Weee!, these are all products that brick-and-mortar stores don’t carry. We have sellers in Japan, Korea, and China. Some other sellers are local restaurants and local bakeries. For example, on Weee! you can buy a local bakery product at the same price you would pay in the local bakery, and that is just not available in other apps. You can go to DoorDash, you buy the same product, you pay 40 percent more, 50 percent more depending on what’s your total order value. We have a lot of products that actually aren’t available from Asian supermarkets. In fact, we have slightly better prices than Asian supermarkets because our supply chain is more efficient. Even if you live in Cupertino, we have a better selection and prices. Plus, you don’t have to go out. You don’t have to spend your entire Saturday afternoon grocery shopping. You have better things to do. I’m not saying offline supermarkets shouldn’t exist. That’s not what I mean. We actually don’t see them as competitors. I think that they will exist for a long time and a lot of people like shopping offline. That’s totally fine. We just try to serve underserved communities and we believe we have better products and services than anyone in the marketplace.

A common customer behavior in Asia that hasn’t quite made it to the US is browsing online stores. For instance, most people who go on Amazon already know what they want to buy and only search for that, you generally don’t wander a disparate tab and scroll through those listings. Given that Weee! targets people from Asia, we asked if Larry has noticed such behavior on Weee!

Our customers tend to browse more. With our design, we actually want people to browse more. There’s a common belief that grocery shopping is boring and repetitive. Almost every single website prominently features a ‘buy again’ option. Amazon does that because it makes sense. If you think of shopping as a chore, then it’s logical. However, we see grocery shopping, especially for immigrants, as an opportunity to discover exciting new things that they may not even know exist in the U.S. We always try to create that excitement. That’s why we want people to browse. These exciting products are also important for our user acquisition strategy. People tend to tell their friends about the exciting things they find on our site. If you buy things from Amazon or Safeway, you probably won’t tell your friends about it because it’s the same old thing. But our customers actually tell their friends a lot after they buy something from us because we offer a lot of exciting products.

For our readers (and ourselves!), we asked Larry for examples of some of these exciting products on Weee!:

Nowadays, we’re really strong at seasonal fruits. We really care about flavor because our customers do too. We carry things like the Ori Mandarin from Israel, which is very tasty. Our dragon fruits and coconuts are super popular. In fact, we’re America’s largest retailer of fresh coconuts.

It’s fascinating because this ties in with our multi-ethnicity strategy. We have a lot of customers from different ethnicities. People from Vietnam, China, the Philippines, Southeast Asia, and India all consume coconuts. We are the only place that aggregates so much demand for coconuts and our price is unbeatable. For instance, if you go to Whole Foods, a coconut costs $4.99 each. If you buy on Weee!, it’s $14 for nine. It’s the best price on the market and our volume is really big. We’re also strong in fruits, vegetables, and hot pot-related products. We have all kinds of sliced meat, lamb, beef, pork, and different sauces and vegetables.

Larry’s Personal Growth

Although Weee! is not Larry’s first venture (he did some dropshipping previously), it is the first business he has scaled. As such, we asked him about his process of learning how to be a leader:

It was not very natural. It was a very steep learning curve for me. I managed like two people before I started Weee! at my previous company where I worked in finance. So I had very limited management experience, but as a founder CEO, you just have to learn everything on the fly. Not just managing people, but also how to raise money, how to come up with business strategies, and how to communicate the strategies to your team. 

I read a lot of books. I like to read. So I guess I had some knowledge on paper. This was my opportunity to apply that knowledge to the real world. I also reflect a lot. I’m a huge believer in deliberate practice. So I think I approached the job as something I need to really break down into different areas. For each area, I try to have some mechanism to get feedback and to check whether I did well or not so well. One of the reasons I was really attracted to retail is because retail gives you a very fast feedback loop. If you do a B2B business or pharmaceutical, it can take years for you to get the feedback. But in retail, if you do something right, you can literally see the results in minutes.

Also, I later realized that my finance background gave me an unusual habit. I try to forecast everything. For a lot of people, if you ask them about their strategy, they can’t tell you the impact of that strategy. I think forecasting is important because it requires understanding the mechanism between the input and the output. It also gives you the chance to constantly compare your expectations to the actuals, allowing you to fine-tune your understanding of the business. That feedback is very beneficial for improvement. 

I also hired really good people and learned from them. Our COO is very experienced. When she joined us, she managed teams with hundreds of people. I learned a lot from her. A lot of our management practice is what she brought to us. It’s really a combination of learning from experienced leaders and your own curiosity to constantly get better, to seek feedback, and just a lot of hard work.

We followed up by asking Larry if wished that he had done anything differently in his journey:

I think everything that happened was necessary. If I went back and told myself 10 years ago the things I know today, I still wouldn’t learn from my own advice. There are so many management books, and so many wise people out there. They give talks. Can you really learn from that? Even this conversation, can you really learn from this? I don’t think so. I think it’s just one piece of information. When I read a book now, I see it as one data point, one piece of information. I have to actually do it or be in the process of doing it, then revisit the concept I learned on paper and try to connect that concept to my real experience to make it part of my own. But without the doing part, the information is just a piece of information, nothing more. I could go back and tell myself a lot of things, but it wouldn’t help me 10 years before.

I have the habit of reading certain books over and over again at different stages of my life. For example, one of my favorite books is Sam Walton’s autobiography, “Made in America”. It’s very interesting. Throughout my journey, every time I read it, I pick up different things. The book didn’t change, I changed. A lot of things I didn’t understand before, but now I can understand because my experience grew. Sam Walton, I think when he wrote the book, he was diagnosed with cancer already. He probably gave everything he knew and put it in the book, but unfortunately, most people don’t understand all those things. They have to experience it and then they can relate to that. That’s why I think reading a really good book over and over again is a good idea.

I had heard Larry talk about Sam Walton in other interviews before so I figured that Walton must be one of Larry’s favorite entrepreneurs. We asked Larry what draws him to Sam Walton:

There are a few things I really admire about him. Firstly, in his whole life, he only did this one thing. He started Walmart and then he just stuck to it. He spent his whole life working on that. I’m attracted to that kind of entrepreneur. I’m not attracted to so-called serial entrepreneurs. I admire people who just try to do one thing super well, the best in the world. Also, he’s kind of an underdog. He was in Arkansas, a Midwest town. For a long time, Walmart only served towns with less than 5,000 people. It’s like how we at Weee! focus on serving minorities.  But he, as an underdog, built a business against all the odds. He started in the late 40s, and early 50s. His company went public around 1980. It took him 30 years to bring the company public. But even going public was just the beginning. In the next 20 years, I think Walmart’s stock price grew like a thousand times. Now, I think it has the most revenue out of any U.S. company. He was the richest man in America, but he lived a very simple life. His values very much match my values. So, I do see the parallels with us. If you read his book, you will love him. He’s very simple. I like a simple life. I don’t want things to be so complicated. Just figure out one thing you want to do, and then go for it and spend the rest of your life pursuing it. 

Asian Representation and Identity

Given that Weee! is the largest platform selling ethnic foods, we asked Larry how he sees Weee!’s role in enhancing the representation of ethnic food in the broader American landscape: 

We actually have a lot of mainstream users, and they’re growing very rapidly. We are the top seller on TikTok Shop in the U.S. in the food and beverage category. Almost all our customers on TikTok are mainstream Americans. I think it’s a less intimidating way to shop for products from another ethnicity if you do it online. Let’s say it’s a Middle Eastern store. You just want this one thing, you really like the lamb, what do you have to do? You have to drive to the store, go in, and it’s very unfamiliar. The barrier for mainstream Americans to try Asian supermarkets is a lot higher if they try to do it offline. It’s a lot lower if they do it online.

Personally, I found this extremely insightful as I had never thought of that. When you go to ethnic grocers such as Ranch 99, the store employees sometimes don’t speak very much English. I never thought much of it since I can speak the language, but I can see how the experience could be a lot more intimidating than buying online. For our next question, we asked Larry how being an Asian immigrant has impacted your founder journey:

I’m a first-generation immigrant. I came to the U.S. 20 years ago. My experience really put me in the position to do this business. That’s why I want to be like Sam Walton. I think this is almost a perfect business for me, and I want to keep doing it for as long as I can. There are so many smart people in the world, but what you can accomplish has a lot to do with what position you are in to see and recognize a great opportunity. I just felt like I was at the right place at the right time and I had the right experience and I met the right people. I owe everything to my background as an Asian immigrant to do this business. There were a lot of challenges in the early days. It was very difficult to raise money because people in the VC industry, the mainstream investors, didn’t really understand this opportunity. They couldn’t relate to it. But we were lucky enough to find Asian partners from those investment firms in every round of financing. I think I counted eight or nine rounds. In every single round, there was at least one Asian partner in the deal. They understood what we were trying to do.

Shoutouts

If you ever find yourself looking for Asian groceries, please consider joining millions of other users and trying out Weee! You can order on the web at https://www.sayweee.com/en or through the app, which you can download from all major app stores.

Weee! is also looking to grow their exceptional team across all functions. If you would like to work at the fastest-growing ethnic e-grocer, please check out their available job openings at https://www.sayweee.com/company/careers.

Thank you Larry for joining us!

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Humphry Slocombe Launched Filipino-Inspired Ice Cream In Collaboration With Popular Eatery Señor Sisig

There is nothing quite like a scoop of ice cream on a hot day, as we’re sure you’ll agree! And what better way to enjoy one than with a tasty serving of delectable creations alongside your best dishes?

This summer, the renowned Filipino food truck now restaurant Señor Sisig will open a branch in the food hall of the San Francisco Bay Area and collaborate with the Filipino-inspired experimental ice cream Humphry Slocombe.

They have been starting to develop a new ice cream flavor that evokes childhood and promotes the favorite dishes with an accompanying dessert. According to SFGate, both businesses have decided to work together as they get ready to become Ferry Building tenants.

It may be a new flavor for Humphry Slocombe customers, but it’s not for Filipinos. Made with cinnamon and bananas, the ice cream is as delicious as it sounds. Named “churron”, a mash-up of “churro” and “turon,” a Filipino caramelized fried banana roll.

The new Señor Sisig restaurant will serve drinks with Filipino and Mexican tastes including ube, pandan, and calamansi.

Stop by one of the six Humphry Slocombe locations around the Bay Area to enjoy this new flavorful ice cream before it sells out!

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Melody Hahm on Shaping a Diverse Venture Capital Landscape for Entrepreneurs

Melody Hahm has held many roles as an acclaimed business journalist for CNBC and Yahoo Finance and a platform and community manager for venture capital firm Harlem Capital. But her Twitter bio begins with “unapologetically Korean.” That’s a good indicator of the kind of person Melody is. 

In her interview with AHN, Melody is unapologetically honest about her experiences as, often, the only Asian in the room. She shares her journey of finding value in her work and, as a result, recognizing her self-worth to advocate for herself in traditionally male-dominated newsrooms. 

Since joining Harlem Capital in July 2021, she has helped female entrepreneurs and people of color make their mark in history. She leads off-site and operator networking events and content strategy for the firm’s portfolio companies. But she’s doing so much more for the BIPOC community of entrepreneurs by giving them the resources and platform to succeed. 

A CHILD OF KOREAN IMMIGRANTS FINDING HER PASSION FOR JOURNALISM

I was born in New York City and raised in the tri-state area in Connecticut and Jersey. I was a lifelong east coaster. My parents are Korean immigrants who met in the States, and I’m their only child. It became my passion early on to become a journalist. 

I had a dream of telling international stories, given my background as a child of Korean immigrants. Starting in elementary school, I took a liking to my Spanish class, and I performed the best in English reading and comprehension. So, pairing those things together, I was like, I’ll think I’ll figure out what this journalism thing is. It was after a journalism and writing summer program that I did after eighth grade that I realized this is the area I want to focus on. 

I started to write for my school newspaper and contributed to my local newspaper, the New Haven Register. There weren’t necessarily Asian bylines I could look to. There was Connie Chung and a few token Asian women on TV. But I could not envision what my career would look like. 

I’ll never forget what my mom said. She said, if you watch TV or go to a Broadway show and see someone that looks like you, it’s probably the stereotypically nerdy character who has a line or two, but you’ll never see someone who looks like you as the main character. She didn’t mean to discourage my dreams, but I think it was a reality check that perhaps it wasn’t the most practical route. 

“There weren’t necessarily Asian bylines I could look to…I could not envision what my career would look like.” 

-Melody hahm

FROM PRE-LAW TO BUSINESS JOURNALISM AND VENTURE CAPITAL

I went into college pursuing pre-law, but all my internship interests were in journalism. Then, I got a grant through school to go to New Delhi, India, for two months on a broadcast journalism internship. That was a turning point for me. Until that point, I didn’t understand what a real career in journalism could look like. When I got back, I tapped into any potential connection I had in the journalism world. It was through an alum of my school, who was the managing editor of Fortune magazine, who connected me to a couple of folks, and one of his contacts at CNBC reached out to me in my senior year. 

They said a news associate position was open and asked if I wanted it. I had no idea what financial and business journalism was, but it seemed like an opportunity I couldn’t pass on. So, I began my career in financial journalism on CNBC’s flagship morning show, Squawk Box. I produced segments and pitched ideas for startups to be featured on the show. At the time, it was very markets-driven, and I carved a niche for myself. 

I recognized that there wasn’t a platform for women and people of color running interesting startups to share their stories in a mainstream way. I took it upon myself to prove that these companies were going to be meaningful one day. I also wanted more experience on-air and I ended up finding an opportunity as an on-air reporter for Yahoo Finance. It was a great transition because Yahoo Finance is all digital. I got the chance to create content in a medium that I consumed. I hosted a show called Breakouts, which focused on entrepreneurship, especially among women and people of color. 

In July 2021, I left traditional media to join an early-stage venture fund called Harlem Capital which invests in diverse and women entrepreneurs. I lead their community and platform, which essentially means working with the portfolio companies and founders. As well as expanding our purview and reach as we think about democratizing venture capital for people who deserve it. It shouldn’t matter what you look like. 

It’s been a wild journey so far. There are a lot of different hats I wear. Some of my media expertise and savviness does play a role at Harlem, but I’m getting to flex my muscles to help entrepreneurs in a different realm and world, which I’m excited about. 

“I recognized that there wasn’t a platform for women and people of color running interesting startups to share their stories in a mainstream way. I took it upon myself to prove that these companies were going to be meaningful one day.” 

-melody hahm

TAKING STEPS TOWARD WHERE SHE IS TODAY

I would love to say it was well-thought-out, squarely defined, and manifested, but it wasn’t and never is. It’s always messy. Oftentimes, there are little signals along the way that remind you maybe this is not where my attention should be. I initially did not pursue a business or financial journalism career, the opportunity found me. I recognized that it was not my passion to report on the market’s daily moves. I can talk about it, but did I feel like I was getting value? Probably not. Making the 1% richer was never part of my mission. I obviously never went into journalism to make money. 

Being in that corner of media made me reconsider and reflect on who my audience was. Both Yahoo Finance and CNBC served the investor class, which tends to be more affluent and privileged. During COVID, I started excavating a bit. I asked myself how I could play a role in helping entrepreneurs, especially people who look like me, succeed. 

If you wanted to cover a startup in mainstream media, it was always about who backed them. That’s when I first started covering venture capitalists. I interviewed a lot of VCs and participated in conferences to interview VCs and the startups they funded. My mind was open to the opportunity to work at a venture capital firm where I could play a role in the process of helping entrepreneurs and equipping them with tools so they can have a fighting chance in making their mark on history. 

RECOGNIZING SELF-WORTH IN TRADITIONALLY MALE-DOMINATED WORK ENVIRONMENTS

I think my experience working in two traditionally male spaces has only fueled my fire to identify opportunities where I can change the narrative. I am very fortunate to have had mentors and direct bosses sticking their necks out for me, including the person who connected me to CNBC. I met him when I was a college student in 2011, and he ended up becoming my boss at Yahoo Finance. I’ll never forget this one conversation we had. It was our mid-year check-in, and I was so nervous. I knew I deserved a raise, but I didn’t want to be disappointed if I didn’t get it. 

I even went to seminars coaching women on negotiations. So, I was like, “Melody, you can do it. He’s always believed in you.” During the conversation, he gave me a 24% raise. I was going to ask for a third of that. My walkaway number was going to be 8%. That illustrated to me: Why was I valuing myself so little? Part of it is systemic, but I was selling myself short. That was an inflection point for me to recognize that even if this macrosystem is stacked against me, I know my worth, I know my strengths, and I know that I work hard. There are very clear and measurable things to show that makes you believe you deserve more. I recognized that even if the landscape is so male-dominated, that will not deter me. 

Tying it back to the venture capital world, so much it is bleak. Very few top-tier firms have BIPOC partners at all levels. Then, I joined Harlem Capital, which is founded by Black men. We have three Black men who are partners, and four of us are women of color, which is unheard of. You don’t see that in venture capital. I’m the only Asian woman, so it empowers me to know that they value and invest in people of color. I have a seat at the table, and I recognize my fight for my community. 

Our tagline is that we want to invest in 1,000 diverse entrepreneurs over the next 20 years. I think the only way you can do that is if the investor class and the people in the firm reflect the type of people you want to empower. We have the upper hand in understanding the problems and queries facing diverse founders. We’re the ones trying to solve the issues and provide the resources to feel the gap. It feels like a unique position to be in the venture landscape. 

“Even if this macrosystem is stacked against me, I know my worth, I know my strengths, and I know that I work hard. There are very clear and measurable things to show that makes you believe you deserve more.”

-melody hahm

NAVIGATING THE NEWSROOM AS AN ASIAN WOMAN

There were so many incidents of micro and clear aggressions from my colleagues, especially at Yahoo Finance, where I was, for a long time, the token Asian. Over the nearly six years I was at Yahoo Finance, our newsroom really blossomed. We had a flurry of people of color and lots of Asian women who joined the team. But the first couple of years were really difficult. If there was news related to ongoing issues in the Asia continent, I was expected to know the answer. I’m like, I was born in New York. I’m connected to my Korean heritage, but I don’t know the ins and outs of the dynamic of Japan and Korea. The assumption that I would have these answers definitely messed me up a little bit. 

In light of the hate crimes facing Asians, it was difficult for me during the work day because we wouldn’t cover that news. It was only when there was a business angle or organizations pledged tens of millions of dollars that it became a story in the business world. I understood that we weren’t working under a general news system, but at the same time, the lack of care felt disappointing to me. I felt I had to advocate for myself and the Asian community. 

In my current role in the venture world, it’s night and day because my colleagues are all people of color. Even when Michelle Go passed, against this influx in hate crimes was happening, they would check in on me, asking how I was doing on a personal level. To be honest, Harlem Capital has grown over the last couple of years, alongside the deaths of Black Americans like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. My colleagues recognize how hard it is to compartmentalize pain and trauma as you experience professional success, trying to reconcile the two. I think there’s empathy in my current role and organization that gives me a little bit more strength and hope. 

THE FUTURE OF VCS

I think 20 years from now, we’ll see a magnificent diaspora of Asian, African, and Latino founders who go on to raise future rounds of capital, take their companies public, maybe start their own VCs, and become angel investors. It’s beyond my wildest dreams to think about what that diaspora looks like. Tier one VCs are already investing in Africa and Latin America. We’re seeing people choose to operate in international landscapes, and they’re all contributing to changing the face of entrepreneurship. 

I have no doubt in my mind that when hopefully my child is growing up that if they were an entrepreneur, they could look at the options and say, ‘There’s a partner who looks like me and understands my story.’ It won’t be tokenization as a poster child of diversity. It will be an integration as the DNA of up-and-coming VCs, VCs that have yet to be created, and existing firms where it won’t be an option anymore to not be diverse. This is a one-way street, and if you don’t buy into it, you will get left behind.

“It will be an integration as the DNA of up-and-coming VCs, VCs that have yet to be created, and existing firms where it won’t be an option anymore to not be diverse.”

-melody hahm

HOW TO REACH OUT

You can reach me on Twitter @melodyhahm, on Instagram @melhahm, and on LinkedIn. If you want to learn more about Harlem Capital, or if you want to learn more about my journey, I’m always excited and happy to chat with folks. If anyone is contemplating a move, career or otherwise, feel free to hit me up because I love to talk about those kinds of transitions. 

Interview credit: Tiff Soga

  • 12 min read
Image Source: Chell Diaz Fernandez Facebook

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‘Mompreneur’ Turned Her Hurdles Into Success And On A Mission To Help Other Moms Start Their Businesses

Filipino entrepreneur Chell Diaz Fernandez is on a mission to inspire other mothers to persevere in pursuing their dreams, regardless of how simple those businesses are or how difficult the road lies ahead.

The “mompreneur” has tried over 15 businesses since 2016 — she has sold in bazaars and had “sari-sari store” or a neighborhood sundry store. She’s also created a party supplies store, started selling secondhand clothes on Facebook live, and even vlogged.

Chell is currently a full-time Ultra Green Coffee business consultant, helping other mothers start coffee enterprises. She aspires to show that being a mother doesn’t limit success in business. She encourages stay-at-home moms to contact her for financial opportunities. “I want to inspire my fellow moms out there that if I can do it, you can too.” she said.

She described how difficult it was initially because her husband insisted that she should only take care of their children and would not allow her to work or start a business. She had to stand up for herself and realize that even as a stay-at-home mom, she is capable of more than she currently does.

As Chell expressed on her journey, she was aware of the many hardships she had experienced. Nonetheless, she pushed on, thinking of her loved ones and not giving up, and would forever be grateful for the pain and adversity she had endured.

She was hopeful that this would pave the way for her future development and success. In the end, she hopes that those who are discouraged will be able to find strength and hope in her motivational story about her business.

  • 2 min read
Image Source: Dollar Hits Instagram

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Filipino $1 Street Food Restaurant In LA Highlighted On Netflix “Street Food: USA”

Filipino food in the U.S. is heating up with a flurry of news reports, viral videos, and social media posts about a Pinoy-owned street food eatery in Los Angeles after it was featured on the popular Netflix show “Street Food: USA”.

One of LA’s best and most interesting eateries, Dollar Hits, is owned by Elvira Chan from the city of Pampanga, Philippines. Given how fiercely competitive the market is in Los Angeles, this is quite an accomplishment. 

She is drawing a lot of attention due to the eatery’s excellent food, welcoming crew, and affordable prices. In fact, a lot of people, particularly her “kababayans” or fellow countrymen, have backed and really patronized her business. She stated that her food business was called Dollar Hits because all of her 33 different types of street cuisine on a stick cost “one dollar”.

Having a Kapampangan root, Elvira was exposed to the different Kapampangan delicacies and even barbecue specialties. She and her sisters began their business as a food truck that sells Filipino cuisine to a loyal customer base. 

They decided to buy the market space in order to expand their eatery and accommodate more Filipino diners as their patronage grew.

They have been diligently working to expand the business and expanded locations around LA. Their California locations in Temple and West Covina have already been operating. Another expansion will be located in Woodside, New York, and will be highly anticipated in August of 2022. 

Elvira wants to help out other Filipino-owned businesses in the area, so she wants to buy the entire strip mall where Dollar Hits is now renting space.

The mission of Elvira and her Dollar Hits is to provide an exceptional experience through the food nostalgia of barbecue specialties and other Filipino traditional cuisines. This is a major accomplishment, not just for their perseverance and tenacity, but also for the Filipino-American community in Los Angeles. This is something they can all take pride in.

  • 2 min read