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  • Modernizing the Financial Stack for Couples: A Conversation with Plenty CEO Emily Luk

Awaken* newsletter

September 12, 2024

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In the half-year I’ve been writing this newsletter I have only interviewed established founders. This article is my first deviation from the pattern and I couldn’t have asked for a better guest. Emily Luk–though a first-time founder–is not new to startups, having joined Stripe as a founding member of their growth team back when the company was around ~150 employees.

Now, she is building Plenty, an investment platform for modern couples. Talking to Emily has convinced me of two things, first–that this is a very large and important problem, second–that Emily is probably the right person to build it. I’m excited to share my conversation with her.

TLDR; Key Takeaways

If you only have a few moments, here are a few golden nuggets from my conversation with Emily:

  • An exercise to find your calling: Write down everything that makes you happy, ~100 words. Keep cutting the list in half until you have five words. What’s the grounding/theme that goes through all five? That’s a good starting point to find your calling.
  • Address opportunity costs before starting a company: Running a successful startup is a long journey, the average time to IPO is 7-10 years. If possible, do the things you’d regret missing out on before embarking on your journey.
  • Aspiring founders should focus on developing taste: As a founder, you don’t need to do everything personally yourself, but you need to know what great looks like. Working alongside great talent can help you develop this intuition.
  • Being relatable is a core part of business: People are much more likely to do business with you if they can relate to you. Put in some effort to learn about common interests of the type of people you want to do business with.
  • We are in the middle of a generational shift: 33% of millennials got married or entered a long-term partnership in the past five years. This is the first generation where dual-income families are normal.
  • Financial products for couples need an update: Many financial products used today were built for single-income households and aren’t adapted for dual-income families.

Tell me about your journey, how did you end up in the Bay Area/tech?

It goes pretty far back. My grandfather started two companies. One he ran for 20 years, and the other for 25 years. Then my parents emigrated to Canada, started this company, and ran it for 18 years. Growing up, I thought most people started companies. It wasn’t until my grade seven careers class, where they walked you through all the different careers and had a chart about the percentage of people in each career, that I realized entrepreneurs are less than 10% of the population. I thought it was a much higher percentage because everyone around my parents was an entrepreneur. I have always been interested in starting businesses. I was that stereotypical kid who kept running side hustles.

I read that your first entrepreneurial endeavor was a fundraiser for UNICEF.

Yeah, it was grade one, and the teacher decided to have a competition to raise money for UNICEF. The idea was to go trick-or-treating using those orange UNICEF boxes to collect donations. I lived in Edmonton at the time, which is the most populated city that far north, so winter was basically already here by Halloween. We had this competition in class to see how much money people could raise, but my parents were really worried my brother and I would get sick if we went trick-or-treating outside when there was already a foot of snow on the ground. I really wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to lose in the UNICEF competition, so instead, I decided to take a bunch of origami, fold it into different shapes like planes and boats, and sell it during recess to the teachers. All the money went to UNICEF. This was my way of being like, “Okay, great, I can do this all the time during recess for a month,” and then raise enough money instead of going trick-or-treating as a workaround for that.

Let’s go back to your story.

I’d already started my own company in high school and had been really involved with startups in university, running a student-run venture fund that organized pitch nights. Because of these experiences, I had the chance to work at the largest VC fund in Canada when I graduated.  It was an incredible experience because we got to see a large breadth of startups during that vintage. Some of the companies I personally worked on included Sonder in their pre-seed stage and Hopper in the earlier days. About two years into my time in a venture, my younger brother told me he was thinking of moving to the Bay Area when he graduated from Waterloo. We’re very close, and I wanted to be in the same city as him. Around the same time, I was thinking about applying for jobs. My brother wasn’t going to graduate yet, but I figured I would start looking for a job there. And so I started applying for some jobs and just started talking to more people and getting more involved in the Bay Area. 

Right around the same time, Stripe ended up reaching out to me. I had met members of their team, and this was back when the company was like 150 people. The company was much smaller; they had just hired a COO and were just starting to build up their business and growth teams. We chatted about whether I would be interested in joining the stuff they were doing on the growth side. Around the same time, I had gotten connected to Gold House founder Bing Chen. I went to Bing for career advice because I had a couple of other opportunities that were also in the Bay which I was considering. I was 22 years old, trying to figure out what to do with these opportunities in front of me. On top of that, I was potentially moving to another country on the other side of the continent. I don’t even know if Bing will remember this, but it left such a mark on me. He walked me through an exercise he did when he was in university. It was something he found really helpful to understand your own values and what brings you joy. 

The exercise he walked me through was to start with an empty piece of paper and write down, in free form, everything that makes you happy. Anything that brings you joy—it can be an item, an exercise, or an activity. I jotted down like 100 different words. Then he said, “Now start to cut it down. Cut it in half. Take the ones that don’t matter. Now you have 50. Now cut it down to 25.” This is when it starts to get really hard. “Now cut it down to 10. Now cut it down to 5.” With the last five words, is there a grounding or a theme that goes through all of it? If those are the things that really bring you joy after you’ve processed this and wondered, that’s probably a very good starting point to think about what you dedicate your time to.

So what were your last five words?

For me, I remember really thinking about how I loved making and empowering. That was one of the words that came out. It was empowering, teaching. I really believed in it. At the time, I had done my CPA and CFA when I was in venture, and I really understood and saw how in the world of finance, things were so opaque. I had also thought a lot about family and friends, and I started thinking about how those words could formulate into almost like my North Star. Big credit to Bing; after I went through that exercise, the answer was very obvious to me. What was so exciting about joining Stripe back in 2015 was that we were really focused on helping SMBs and startups in this opaque world of finance. At the time, payment companies were used to dealing with massive enterprises, so if you were a startup or an SMB, you basically didn’t matter. The products were terrible, it was hard to integrate, and the process of using the product was terrible. For many entrepreneurs, being able to accept money for your product or service is a critical part of running your business. If you don’t have revenue, nothing else works.

For me, it was so obvious that of all the opportunities I had been looking at, Stripe was clearly the best one. Ironically, now in hindsight, I can say this: the other thing that was really crazy was when I decided to join Stripe, I didn’t know my title. I actually forgot to ask what my title was until I received the offer letter. I didn’t even bother asking. I knew what I was going to work on, and I knew who I was going to work with. It was also by far the lowest salary package compared to all the other companies. Given how much Stripe has grown, it’s definitely turned into the best decision. At the time when I joined, it was so clear that it aligned with the things I cared about most. The other things like compensation or title just didn’t matter as much.

You took a sabbatical from work before starting Plenty in 2022. What inspired the sabbatical?

When my parents started their business, they ran it for 18 years. My grandparents ran their businesses for almost 20-25 years. So, I never thought of starting a company as a quick two to three-year journey. I thought it would be a very long journey, and I wanted to feel like I was ready to commit that kind of time and have that kind of endurance. That was one part that was really important. Travel is very important to me–being able to see the world. I knew that if I didn’t have this period of travel, I would always wonder if I missed out.

Part of how I thought about the mental preparation to become a founder is being able to think about how it might feel. One of the parts that helps with the mental endurance of it is being able to realize what might make it harder and, if possible, try to solve some of that earlier. The sabbatical year was basically that. If I didn’t have it, I would look back at the very hard moments when you need to keep going when you’re starting a company and think, “Oh man, maybe I should just stop. Maybe now I can have my travel year because I never had it. Was it worth the sacrifice?” I think it just makes it so much harder instead of getting ahead of it.

What made you feel that it was the right time to start your founder journey? 

I think of myself as a lifelong learner. When I experience anything in life, I immediately start to think about what I can learn, what I can do differently, what I would do in the future, and what might have changed the outcome. That is deeply ingrained in who I am. I realized I would probably always feel like there was more to learn and never feel ready.

My mother had a philosophy when she was running her company: you don’t need to do everything personally yourself, but you need to know what great looks like. You need to have enough exposure to know what great products, sales, and marketing look like and have that intuition. You don’t have to do every single thing personally, and frankly, you can’t. There was a point at which I realized I had been exposed to enough people who did their jobs great and did really great work. That shift in mindset was really valuable. I thought, “I might not ever feel ready, and that’s okay, but I’ve also had some experience, so maybe it is time to take a bet on myself.”

For young people who aspire to start their own business in the future, would you say that the function of what they are doing is secondary to who they are around?

Here’s how I approached it when I was at Stripe. I was really lucky because Stripe had an incredibly high talent bar. I was surrounded by so many people. I was also the youngest person on the business team, so I was surrounded by all these people who were 5, 10, 15 years ahead of me career-wise. They were at the top of their game at what they did, and I just tried to be as much of a sponge as possible. I also moved teams a couple of times, which helped with getting exposure to a lot of parts of the organization.

One of the things I’m most grateful for is that Stripe used to have this policy where every email that is sent across teams or externally, is copied to an email list so anyone in the company can read it. It’s complete email transparency. They don’t do this anymore, but for the entirety of the time that I was there, that’s what they did. Also, every single team had to send meeting notes at the end of every meeting to these email lists, and anyone in the company could read the meeting notes. Every one or two months, I would really focus on understanding what another team did. For example, when I was on the sales team, I’d really focus on what the partnership team did and read every single one of their meeting notes for two months. Then I would rotate to another team. I spent a month thinking about risk and compliance, a month reading everything in the world related to the legal side of things, and then I would rotate to what product is doing, what engineering is doing, and how infrastructure works.

It felt like I created my own mini-MBA because I got to see not just the theory but how all functions actually work in a company. I took being a sponge really seriously. It was honestly so fun for me. I know it was rare to have access to all of this knowledge, to have that quality of thought and quality of people around me that I could easily learn from.

Could that be replicated at larger companies?

It’s really only startups where you can get that level of access. Another thing that benefited my learning was that Stripe was growing rapidly while I was there. It grew from a couple hundred to a couple thousand people during my time there. Because it was growing so quickly, I saw many chapters of a startup during that time. There was such an emphasis on communication. Because the company was growing so quickly, documentation was especially critical so that work was not duplicated. That, I think, is one of the unique growth opportunities of being in a startup that is harder to get access to when you’re at a big company.

Given that you come from a family of entrepreneurs, do you find yourself asking your parents and grandparents for business advice?

I definitely talk to them about work a lot more after starting my company. Before I started Plenty, when I talked to them about work, it was sometimes a little frustrating because they’d say, “Why don’t you just ask for the promotion?” I’d be like, “Mom, it doesn’t work like that. You have to earn it and wait your time.” My mom, being an ultra-entrepreneur, thinks it’s exclusively merit-based. In reality, in a big organization, there are performance cycles, and you have to wait six months. You can’t just suddenly say, “I want to be promoted today,” and have a multi-hundred or multi-thousand-person organization just say yes. It doesn’t work like that. 

At that time, it was much harder to ask for career advice. But now, it’s really helpful because my parents deeply understand. It’s not even the practical business advice, frankly; it’s the emotional journey. It’s so hard to hire, support someone to perform, deal with a supplier not living up to expectations, or have a backup plan in case things don’t work out. These are all fairly generalizable pieces of advice that have been incredibly helpful. More than anything, starting a company is an extremely lonely experience. It’s been incredible to talk to my parents, not about the specifics like our cost per click, but about the emotional aspects. It’s hard to feel the pressure of needing to have all the answers and supporting your team’s families. They instinctively understand it on an emotional level, which doesn’t need to be explained.

What is the core problem that inspired you to start Plenty?

If you look at the two generations that are going to undergo the largest amounts of change in the next decade, it’s the baby boomers (who we are not optimistic about being able to sell software to), and then the millennial generation. The reality is that millennials are now turning 30, and this chapter from 30 to 40 years old is generally when you find a partner, buy a house, have kids, and get promoted. There’s so much change that happens. If you navigate your finances well during this chapter, you can set yourself up for the rest of your life.

We saw that it’s also the chapter where people want to take their finances more seriously. They’re actively looking for things to do, but if you’re building up to your first million dollars, there aren’t great products or services meant for that. Once you get over a million dollars, there are lots of financial advisors who are really good and can help you, but why would the best financial advisors want to work with clients with less capital? What we saw was that this industry doesn’t have the best people working with the people who arguably need the most help.

The other aspect of Plenty came from personal experience. When Channing and I got engaged, we couldn’t find any products that made it easy for us to manage our money together. We believe very deeply that the best decisions we make as a partnership are the ones we make together, and that financial decisions are very important in unlocking optionality down the road. If there aren’t great products that make it easy for you to work together, then you’re probably going to have a much harder time trying to figure out things in the future too, right? Those two things were the core motivations for starting Plenty.

Why do you think there is a gap in products to help couples manage their finances in tandem?

Nowadays, it’s normal to be dual-income because both people are educated and everything costs more. It’s more fulfilling to feel like you both have careers and jobs, and it might be necessary in order to support a family. At this point, about 80% of this generation are dual-income families and couples. 

This used to not be the case. In the two generations before us, the majority of people were single-income families. A lot of the financial products we use today were designed by people who were single-income household members of other single-income households. So it completely makes sense why they designed a lot of joint products the way they did because it used to make sense, but it doesn’t make sense anymore. 

One example of this is if you look at American Express or Chase, there is no concept of a joint credit card. You are both legally on the hook for paying the bill, but both of you don’t get to see what you’ve spent. That doesn’t make sense. So if you get a credit card with Chase and add your partner to it, your partner doesn’t even get a login. They can’t see anything, even though they have a credit card with their name on it. American Express is quirky in a different way. We have both of these cards and from personal experience, when you add your partner to an American Express card, they can only see what they spent on their card. They cannot see what you’ve spent on the main card, even though you both share the card. 

There are all these little bumps related to access or permission, but it dates back to a time when it was very normal for one person to earn an income, but it’s not very normal anymore. People and couples nowadays expect to have fairly equal access to understanding their money together. It’s not the same as, “Oh, if they know everything, that’s fine. I don’t need to know anything.” That’s just not nearly as common anymore. Nowadays, conversations around family finances are happening with both people being more equal than ever before. 

What we also noticed is that because people are getting married later than ever, they are already used to having their own financial accounts. Even after getting married, maybe they open up some things that they share. But it’s a journey towards sharing more of their finances. They still have things under each of our names. A lot of the financial system was built around the reality of the single-income family that had everything fully joined. But that’s just not the case anymore. That has changed especially quickly in the last five years. Five years ago 33% of this generation was married, and now almost 60-70% of this generation is married or in a long-term partnership.

How do you think being Asian has impacted your founder’s journey? 

For better or worse, I have been on the other end of bias, but not because I’m Asian. At least, I think not because I’m Asian. But for other reasons, like being part of a husband and wife team. I’ve even had a VC comment about how he would never report to his wife. I don’t think anyone has ever explicitly called out the fact that I was Asian, but it is something that I am aware of. And here’s the reason why. I feel like I have to work extra hard to be relatable, and frankly, there are assumptions that people have.

My husband is from Virginia and his family’s been in the US for a while. Lots of people are surprised when I mention that I’m the sports person in the relationship. I watch basketball, I watch football, I know the players, and he doesn’t watch any of it. Even when we’re in conversations with potential investors, they’re surprised by that. I don’t know why that might be the case, but I joke about it. I say, you probably wouldn’t have expected a short little Canadian Asian female to know this much about football, right? 

I do think what you like to talk about is important. When it comes to attracting business partners, of course, the way you think about business and strategy makes people want to work with you. But there’s another aspect to it. If someone feels like you have something in common with them, they think that you can be a friend. Whether or not they want to spend more time with you is actually really impactful for whether or not they want to back you.

I think I’ve always been aware that I have to work extra hard to be relatable, but I don’t try to spend too much time thinking about it beyond thinking of ways that I can support other Asian founders, because it’s not something I can change. Frankly, I just focus on what needs to be done. I’ve always enjoyed football, but I’ve definitely put in the effort to stay aware of what’s going on because I know it is something that is unexpected when I talk about it.

I’ve talked to a few female CEOs whose husbands are also part of the company. Can you comment on what that’s like?

I think it might be happening more frequently as we go along. I mean, it makes a lot of sense, right? There is no one else in your life that you respect, admire, and trust to that degree. Building a startup is not an easy or linear path. In those moments where you’re like, “Oh gosh, what should we do?” not needing to doubt if you’re building with the right person or if you can trust that person is actually so important. It helps stabilize you through the hard moments because you know they’re in it with you, you can trust them completely, and they care about you. That psychological trust is crucial.

–

Plenty is hiring! If you are interested in working with Emily to build financial tools for the modern couple, check out the available job listings here!

Emily has also graciously offered a 3-month free promo code for our readers. If you are interested in trying out Plenty, use code AHNCommunity to get 3 months free. Thank you Emily for joining us!

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We had the privilege of sitting down with Adam Steinle, CEO of Hona, to delve into the inspiration, challenges, and achievements that have shaped their journey.

The Trio Behind Hona

For Adam Steinle, the entrepreneurial spirit runs in the family. “My parents met by building a software company together. I quite literally wouldn’t be here without tech entrepreneurship and it’s always something I aspired to do myself.” he shared. This early exposure to the power of technology and entrepreneurship set the stage for Adam’s own career, which has seen him move from biomedical engineering to roles at Goldman Sachs and Facebook before founding Hona.

As for Danielle Yoesep, Hona’s COO, she found her entrepreneurial path through a passion for building. She fell into entrepreneurship in her last venture within research and wanted to get back to the building. In her last role, she realized that she’s super energized by the early stages of company building.

Shuying Zhang, the CTO, brought a unique blend of technical expertise and a desire to make a real-world impact.  As a former big tech SWE and biomedical engineer, she wanted to find a way to apply her skills to improve healthcare. Further, entrepreneurship allowed her to work in a faster-paced environment with more ownership.

Overcoming Challenges

The journey to success is rarely smooth, and Hona has faced its share of challenges. One of the most significant hurdles was pivoting from their original AI-automated patient intake product. “Despite initial success, we realized it wasn’t effectively addressing provider burnout. We improved one workflow aspect but added complexity with another portal to manage,” Adam explains.

The team made the tough decision to end existing customer relationships and explore more fundamental problems. After a month of interviews and brainstorming, they identified a significant issue in speech pathology that resonated with them. This led to a full pivot into developing vertical software for speech pathologists, aiming to support every aspect of their work. This experience underscored the importance of user feedback and adaptability in product development.

Proud Achievements

One of Adam’s proudest achievements is the ability to consistently surround himself with inspiring and talented individuals. “I’ve consistently invested in my network – from my Facebook RPM program to B-School to YC – and this has paid great dividends. I’ve been able to use this network for resources, advice, and sourcing great teammates.”

As a team, Hona takes pride in the difficult decision to leave comfortable jobs to make a meaningful impact in healthcare. Their dedication to improving the lives of speech pathologists and their patients is a testament to their commitment and vision.

A Vision for the Future

Hona’s mission is clear: to empower speech pathologists to operate independently without the burden of administrative overhead. “We aim to create a dynamic marketplace that efficiently connects speech pathologists with various opportunities, including cash-based services, school contracts, and insurance-covered treatments,” Adam explains.

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Empowering the Asian Community

While Hona’s primary goal is to support speech pathologists and improve access to speech therapy for all, they recognize the potential benefits for the Asian community. Their initiatives provide flexible work opportunities for Asian speech pathologists and increase access to culturally competent care for Asian patients. By reducing language and cultural barriers to accessing speech therapy, Hona is making it easier to match patients with therapists who understand their specific needs.

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  • 4 min read
Wendy Wen

Awaken* newsletter

From Dreams to Reality: Wendy Wen on Founding Senreve and Building Antelope

Wendy Wen, founder and CEO of pet CPG platform Antelope and co-founder of luxury handbag brand Senreve, shares insights on the early days of building the Senreve brand with her co-founder Coral Chung, creating their first iconic Maestra bag, and overcoming the challenges of scaling a startup. She reflects on the importance of focusing on vision, strategy, and hiring the right people, as well as maintaining resilience and equanimity as a CEO. Wendy also discusses her new venture, Antelope, her excitement for its potential, and the lessons learned from her Asian upbringing and entrepreneurial journey.

HanYue: Tell us a little bit about the early days of Senreve. And then what was the biggest challenge you had to overcome?

Wendy: You know, it was really just me and my co-founder Coral sitting across from each other in an empty conference room. We were borrowing an office space from one of our investors. And a lot of it was just kind of dreaming: thinking about what the brand could be. It was actually really, really fun. And I think because it’s before you have any metrics, any real product, anything. So anything is possible. In the early days of us, we were literally just trying to figure out what’s going to be our value proposition, positioning, and how we’re gonna get started. It was super fun. 

HanYue: That sounds fun. Tell us about your first “IT” bag, as you call it.

Wendy: Our first bag was the Maestra bag, which is a convertible bag that becomes a backpack. You can wear it in different ways: you can hold it over your hand on the handle, you can wear it as a crossbody, you can wear it as a shoulder bag, and then you can also wear it as a backpack. It fits a laptop, it’s water resistant, and it’s 100% made in Italy. It has all these nice compartments on the inside, so you can keep everything organized. It’s a beautiful bag that happens to be really functional, especially for the modern working woman who needs to carry a laptop. 

HanYue: Tell us a little bit about how you and your team created this popular bag.

Wendy: So I loved bags. Coral loved fashion. Personally, we just wanted something that was really beautiful and also worked with my busy professional life. So it kind of stemmed from a personal need. 

HanYue: Wow, that is amazing to hear. You really found a way to personally connect with the product that you’re building. Let’s switch gears a little bit, to what you’re currently building. Do you feel better prepared for a second go at entrepreneurship?

Wendy: Absolutely. Yes. There are always ups and downs in any startup journey, and I think I made a lot of mistakes with Senreve. 

I think, first of all, I didn’t necessarily focus on the important things. I was always kind of doing urgent things. Graham Weaver (a lecturer at GSB and founder of Alpine Investors) talks a lot about that matrix of important, not important, urgent, not urgent. As a founder, you really want to be operating in the non-urgent, important bucket. 

An example of what I didn’t focus on enough before would be our hiring culture. Instead, I was focusing on getting things done, which in retrospect, might not have been the best use of my time. For Antelope, I’m much more disciplined about how I spend my time. I really believe that the founder and CEO job should just be vision and strategy. Setting that vision, getting alignment across your team on that vision, helping your team truly understand how their work and their outcomes tie up to the grand vision, and what the dream outcome needs to look like. That’s one big rock for me. 

Another one is just hiring the right people. The people who are going to be better than you, at each division, at each function. Hire the best people who will help you dream up something better than what you can dream of, and then make it into a reality. So now I am always pushing for the dream candidate. After that, it’s about developing them, keeping them motivated, and building the culture so that they can thrive.

When I was at Senreve, I was younger, more junior, and much more just about blocking and tackling and getting things done. Now I try to think more about scalability. I think the third piece that I’ve learned, and just gotten a lot better over the years, is just being resilient. 

Part of being an entrepreneur and a CEO is maintaining a certain equanimity in the face of problems. I have to maintain an objective distance from the company. Because if you hold on to it too tightly, and it becomes life or death, then every problem can catch you off guard. Versus, if there’s a natural kind of distance, then you have space to treat everything as just a small problem or puzzle that you have to fix.

It makes you as a CEO think a lot more clearly, and a lot more strategically. Because at these higher levels, your main job is making decisions. It’s not fixing the problem. It’s about finding the right architecture, the right people, the right processes, and structures so that your team can fix the problem. And so having that equanimity as a muscle, to deal with the ups and downs, is a really important part of my job as CEO. 

HanYue: That’s really powerful. I love your learning about equanimity. Looking forward, what is your biggest challenge right now you want to solve?

Wendy: Our biggest challenge right now is to hire a chief supply chain officer. I have a big gap in operations and supply chain. So if anybody is really good at that kind of stuff, come to me! 1

I am also learning along the way, from 10 different colors to now 500 SKUs of pet treats, supplements, food, and dental treats with expiration dates. You have to get your planning and forecast super accurate. Every piece of the logistics needs to be precise and accurate in order to meet your demand. And it also has to be efficient from a cost perspective. We really need a C-level executive who has enough experience and lots of great attributes, so she/he can continue to learn and grow with us.

HanYue: Amazing. We hope someone in our subscriber base has this special talent! What are you most excited about next? 

Wendy: So many things excite me! I think Antelope is the next P&G/Honest Company of pet products. And we’re just getting started. And there’s just so much low-hanging fruit opportunity that we haven’t yet tapped. Every channel we are in can be grown by 10x. And I think that’s super, super, super exciting. It’s exciting to continue to educate pet parents. So many pet parents are not aware of the preservatives in their existing dog food, what the right content and makeup should be in their food, and what supplements they can give their dog to prevent cancer, arthritis, and joint pain. So I am super excited by this potential. 

HanYue: I think that there’s really nothing that compares to the potential as an early-stage founder. You can see this big dream just slowly unfolding in front of you. A lot of our new founders will be fundraising and thinking about working with their investors. I know you work very closely with Graham and Alpine Investors. Would love to hear a bit more about that partnership, and your advice on finding great mentors. 

Wendy: The relationship I have with Alpine and Graham has been just 20 out of 10 if I had to give it an NPS score. It’s beyond my wildest expectations what great partners they are. They provide the right level of support, but then they’re really hands-off. They’re empowering and trusting. And oftentimes, honestly, I think about how Alpine is treating and managing me, and how I should train and manage my executives and my direct reports, because they’re a really unique private equity fund that truly, truly has a heart of gold and focuses on people first. 

In terms of advice for how students can go out and build mentorship, and relationships with professors and people in their career. It’s simple –  just talk to them. Don’t be afraid to reach out. Make sure you follow up. That’s what I did to fundraise for Senreve. And those relationships have followed me through to Antelope.

I met Graham, in an MGE (Managing Growing Enterprise) class when he was practicing to become a lecturer at GSB. He was shadowing Dave Dodson back then. And I just had a conversation with him about what I wanted to do after school. That’s the most common question he gets nowadays, right? The students always go to a professor at Stanford and ask, what should I do with my life? Should I go back to private equity? Should I do this? And I remember, I think he actually offered me a job at Alpine as a CIT (CEO in Training), but I just didn’t want to move anywhere location-wise. So I politely declined.

Graham told the story about the genie goal in his class: if you have three wishes from the genie, what would your goals be? So when I was getting started with Senreve, I called him and I said, I think I’m gonna go pursue my genie goal – to cofound this handbag company. And he angel invested. It was really nice that he was willing to do that, and I think it came from the fact that I just asked and I had that prior relationship with him and reached out. 

After Senreve, when I was starting Antelope, I reached out again. So I think it’s just making sure you keep in touch with your professors. I remember going through every single person that I might have interacted with at the GSB. I was co-president of WIM (women in management), and I organized a ton of these speaker events. So I would email every one of the speakers I’d come into contact with. Many of them became mentors and some knew people in the handbag industry that could help. I was shocked that some of them remembered me. Most students don’t realize that all they need to do is a little bit of legwork and follow-up. Every time you go to a networking event, follow up. Even after a few months, send them an email, updating them on where you’re at. That’s how you build a relationship. It’s really not that hard. 

HanYue: That is really inspiring and empowering. The notion that a really good mentor relationship is just a few emails away is so powerful. 

Wendy: Definitely. Diane Von Furstenberg came to Stanford to speak once. After that, I was like, you know what, I’m just going to send her an email. And I said, “Hey, I loved your talk. I read your book, now I’m starting a handbag company. Would you mind talking to me?” And she replied, the same day, and said: “Here’s my number. Call me tomorrow at 9 am.” And that’s Diane Von Furstenberg. I think students overestimate how often these people get reached out to. I think you are probably thinking that – oh they get so many emails and pings. But the reality is that they probably don’t get that many. 

HanYue: Amazing. I want to switch gears a little bit again. If you don’t mind, we’d love to hear a little bit about your upbringing. How has being Asian impacted your entrepreneurship journey or maybe just the mentality of life? 

Wendy: I am Chinese, I grew up in Southern California to immigrant parents, who wanted me to be a doctor just like every other Chinese family. I remember doing like my freshman year summer internship in medicine and just being so bored. I was stuck in a lab all day. I think I was too extroverted to follow that path. I’m really dynamic. I love meeting people. I love talking, I love pitching. I get a high from pitching – probably why I enjoy entrepreneurship. And something just clicked. I realized that that medicine path wasn’t for me.

I think what my Asian upbringing helped with though was, that my parents were really good about rewarding effort and not outcomes. They always told me, “Hey, Wendy, it’s not about the grade that you get, if you get an A-minus, but you didn’t try, we will be disappointed in you. But if you got a B plus, and you tried your absolute best, we will be extremely proud of you.” They just wanted me to maximize my potential. And I think that notion really propelled me to just give it all to everything I do. If I’m going to put my mind to doing something, I want to knock it out of the park and do it really well. 

In terms of pursuing entrepreneurship, though, that is really not in my parents’ DNA, I think what happened is that they provided me with so many opportunities, by coming to the US and allowing me to have this American education, so that I just got so inspired and absorbed all these American thoughts. And I’m very American, obviously. But I still had the work ethic from my Asian upbringing. That, coupled with such family support, gave me the confidence to pursue what I really, really want to do, which is building companies. 

Mark Leslie, he’s another one of my angel investors and mentors, said, there are only three reasons why people want to start a company: one, it’s to make a lot of money. Two is to make a difference in the world. And then three is to build something of lasting value. He said usually people fall within one of these three camps. And I think for me, it’s definitely the last one like I just love building things. I love building culture. I love building a team, and I like building products. 

I also think being bilingual helped us expand into other regions for Senreve. We were in Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong. I think having multicultural blood and experiences in me, makes me more adaptable and flexible, and more resilient, potentially, because I know how to learn about a different culture. You know how to build a life somewhere else. That’s the entrepreneurial spirit. 

HanYue: So to sum it up, it’s like that notion of ‘give it your best’ that coupled with a little bit of risk-taking that allowed you to find out what you want to do and really go for it. On top of that, being open-minded and flexible when it comes to like, new obstacles, different experiences, and new regions. Those are amazing takeaways. You have accomplished a lot already. Do you have a few favorite moments from the past or favorite stories that you want to share?

Wendy: There was a time at my last company retreat for Antelope when I celebrated my birthday and the team surprised me with a birthday cake, a sash, and a crown. All 80 of our employees celebrated my birthday with me. And I thought that was really special. Because our team is so talented, they’re so smart. And for them to choose to contribute their talent, to Antelope’s vision – I take it very personally, I take it as a favor they’re doing for me. Seeing everybody in that room, working towards this Antelope vision was so inspiring. Running this company is the best job I could have asked for. 

HanYue: That is really heartwarming. You really build a great team and a great culture. And then you got to observe it taking on a life of its own! 

Wendy: Yeah, it did take on its own form. That’s the thing. I think seeing the moments when Antelope is taking on its own life just makes me so joyful. Our social media team is amazing. Last year, I remember seeing an Instagram post pop up on Bocce’s Bakery, which is one of our brands. The post was like PupChella – it was a play on Coachella. And they had a lineup of all these artists that were like, dog-named. Like Bark Pink, and Tailvin Harris. It was so cute. It was so funny. And I was so proud of my team. This team is so creative. And I was so proud to see their creativity come to life. 

HanYue: Wow. That sounds phenomenal. I think that is actually all my questions. Thank you so much. Wendy! 

Wendy Wen’s journey from Senreve to Antelope exemplifies the power of vision, resilience, and strategic focus in entrepreneurship. Her insights offer valuable lessons for aspiring founders on building successful and impactful companies.

  1. Since the time of this interview, Antelope was able to hire a great Chief Supply Chain Officer. ↩︎
  • 15 min read

Stories

Creators Podcast: Ryan Alexander Holmes Embraces Multiculturalism With Comedy and Storytelling

AHN and Meta Prosper have partnered on a new podcast series highlighting API creators. Meta Prosper is dedicated to amplifying and supporting the API community and driving economic growth and equitable representation. The Creators Podcast series delivers stories on how creators achieved success and created impact through their platforms, serving as an inspiration for the community.

Venture into the fifth episode of Creators Podcast for an insightful exchange with Ryan Alexander Holmes, a Los Angeles-based actor and content creator. With his multicultural background of Chinese and African influences, Ryan shares his thoughts on content creation, creative process and his journey to embrace his mixed heritage through comedy and storytelling. 

The 34-year-old from LA makes comedic videos that celebrate both his African and Chinese blood. However, it was never an easy journey of cultural reconciliation. 

Being the only Black child among his friends, his Asian roots were mostly neglected but rather, he was told to conform to African American stereotypes, even though he still spoke Chinese and celebrated Chinese festivals at home. 

This story has a happy ending. Ryan now has fully embraced his biraciality and proudly shares it on his social media content. The acceptance was the long-established cultivation from his family and community. Ryan’s fraternity, Kappa Alpha Psi, was where he retrieved a vivid sense of Black excellence and discovered his passion for social advocacy. 

Family is also another driving force in his life. “I grew up with my Asian side in LA. My Black side lives in Jacksonville (Florida); we visit them often.” Raised by his Chinese grandmother, he still had a cherished bond with his Black grandmother who lives far away from him. These relationships have taught him different expressions of love, both valued and cherished by Ryan.

With a mission to advocate for broad minority representation in Hollywood and encourage self-love, Ryan utilizes social media to highlight the harmony and beauty of multiculturalism.

Amidst movements like Black Lives Matter and Stop Asian Hate, Ryan’s content emphasizes unity, showing that diverse communities can coexist harmoniously.

“I don’t necessarily want to disrupt or change Hollywood. I just want to be myself… I’m not really interested in watering down what I have to say to fit what Hollywood thinks what people want.” 

CONNECT WITH RYAN ALEXANDER HOLMES

Instagram: @ryanalexh

Threads: @ryanalexh

Website: ryanalexanderholmes.com

  • 2 min read

Stories

This AAPI Female-Run Startup Pioneers Accessible and Affordable Photography

Photography is not just about capturing images. For some, it can be about preserving memories, telling stories, and expressing emotions.

In today’s visually-driven world, high-quality photography has become more important than ever, yet it often remains out of reach for many due to its high costs.

Enter Shoott, an AAPI female-run startup co-founded by Jennifer Tsay and Jennifer Yeh, redefining photography with an innovative, affordable approach. Their pay-per-photo model offers free 30-minute sessions, allowing clients to pay only for the photos they love, creating a win-win situation for both photographers and clients.

Jennifer Yeh (left) and Jennifer Tsay (right) co-founded Shoott after recognizing the financial struggles many photographers face in the gig economy.

In June 2018, they tested this idea in New York City, and it worked. Clients loved the convenience and affordability, and photographers appreciated the improved logistics and reduced travel time. The company grew rapidly during the pandemic, expanding to over 60 cities in the US and increasing revenue from $807K in 2019 to $9MM in 2023.

In an exclusive interview with Asian Hustle Network, Jennifer Tsay shared Shoott’s inspiring journey, the challenges they faced, and their vision for the future.

The Inspiration Behind Shoott

As an actor and creative, Jennifer Tsay saw firsthand how most artists struggle because their lives are gig to gig. You may have one gig a week, two in totally different places, or sometimes none at all. This led them to develop a business model with two complementary goals:

  • Goal #1: Improve logistics for the photographer.
  • Goal #2: Create a hard-to-resist offer for clients.

This blossomed into Shoott’s unique model which offers free photo sessions with clients only paying for the photos they want, and photographers benefiting from Shoott handling all marketing, scheduling, and logistics on top of a minimum hourly rate plus commissions.

A joyful family of four poses together, captured by Shoott

Early Challenges and Indicators of Success

Starting Shoott came with the typical hurdles of first-time entrepreneurship. The team had to learn quickly, constantly test hypotheses, and maintain strict alignment on goals. They also faced skepticism from photographers who feared exploitation. Shoott navigated this by ensuring transparency and creating a model where photographers’ earnings were directly tied to the company’s success. Positive client feedback and growing demand confirmed they were on the right track, with Shoott maintaining a 4.8 star rating on Google and expanding to over 60 cities in the US.

Staying Relevant in a Changing Industry

Shoott stays ahead by engaging with photographer communities, reading industry trends, and listening to feedback from clients and photographers. This constant evolution helps Shoott remain relevant and meet the changing tastes and demands of its clientele.

According to Tsay, “It’s also crucial to always stay sharp on what’s trending on social media in terms of tastes and demand. What do people like? What do people value? What are people trying to convey about themselves? This has so many implications for what we provide as a service and also how we approach our brand as a whole – to run a brand is to be continually evolving!”

Community Impact and Contributions

Shoott’s mission is twofold:

  • To support freelance photographers in the community by providing a reliable source of supplemental income so artists can stay artists if they so desire; and
  • To help people in the community capture their life moments both big and small with a beautiful and affordable photography service. 

“We truly hope our offer creates more demand for professional photography – anything we can do to promote and normalize the habitual support of artists is a major win in our book!” Tsay shared.

A Memorable Client Story

One touching story comes from Lydia, a solo parent who praised Shoott for capturing authentic moments with her daughter. Despite financial constraints, Shoott’s affordable model allowed Lydia to obtain high-quality photos that she otherwise couldn’t afford.

Diversity and Inclusion

Shoott is an AAPI female-run startup that prioritizes diversity and inclusion. They ensure varied representation in their marketing and hire team members from diverse backgrounds. Understanding the different personal commitments of their team, Shoott offers a flexible work environment, accommodating various needs while ensuring dedication to the job.

Personal Rewards

When Shoott started, their primary goal was to see if they could create a business model to balance all parties and create an ultimate win-win-win for clients, photographers, and staff. “We didn’t know if we could do it, but we had to try,” Tsay shared.

“What’s been personally rewarding is to see that we could start with this really ambitious goal and actually make it a reality. It sounds nuts to be able to make a business that offers free photo sessions work, but we just achieved profitability last year for the first time. It’s so gratifying to see that when we put our minds to something, we can make things work. And on top of that, we provide a service that is fundamentally about gratitude and love – how many people can say that?”

Shoott co-founders Jennifer Yeh (left) and Jennifer Tsay (right), celebrating their journey from an ambitious goal to a profitable reality, provide a service centered on gratitude and love for all parties involved.

Message from Jen and Jen

In addition to our free 30 minute consumer offer, we’re so proud to be building out our headshot and branding offer for teams, organizations, and conferences. We realized how many people hate having their photo taken and we wanted to provide a fun and empowering experience for folks while delivering high quality photos to support their endeavors. If your team is in the market for new and affordable headshots, please let us know!

Connect with Shoott

IG: @shoottphotos

TikTok: @shoottphotos 

Facebook: Shoott

LinkedIn: Shoott

  • 5 min read