Thank you for coming to talk to us.

(Thank you Dominic) I know you have been an entrepreneur

for a number of years now.

Could you share with us a little bit on your journey …

how you become an entrepreneur?

So, I first started about four years ago. So, the company

basically started because I used to work

actually with an NGO that worked with a lot of

students across China.

So we did a lot of mobilization campaigns and I realize that students

have a lot of passion and they want to do

a lot of projects but there may not be lot of

access to funding for them to actually make

these ideas happen. So, after working with the

NGO, I thought maybe we can find a way to

sustainably match students with sponsorships

and that's how Launchpilots started.

So, you actually have worked in a NGO that already

doing something similar and you discover a gap,

in this case, the student community. Right.

But why would you want to become an entrepreneur

because that’s quite a big step from, e.g., from working for a corporate?

Em… honestly I didn't want to become an entrepreneur.

(Okay) I always thought I would work in the

social sector. But … even after working

with some sort of social impact organizations,

I felt like nobody felt strongly enough about this issue of empowering students,

like university students especially, to do

anything about it. So, yeah, kind of out of

frustration I decided … somebody needs to do

something and I started.

Interesting, you thought you were going to work for company …or

like, at least work for NGO and so on, not

actually becoming an entrepreneur. So, it’s

almost by accident in that sense.

Yeah, actually when I first started Launchpilots,

I thought we were going to be a non-profit and

we started as a non-profit. (Interesting.)

And it’s funny cos a lot of … we got a lot of

feedback in the early days that oh, people didn't

understand whether we were for-profit or non-profit and then we

gradually tried different models and we found that

actually a profit-making marketplace work the best. So, that’s

how we ended up.

Now, you also met a lot of other entrepreneurs through a number of

programs. I know there are accelerator programs

and then there are also like some competition

and pitch events. What about other entrepreneurs,

do you think they are … what about

their stories, do you think they are more,

like, by design, by default, or accident like yours?

Hmm, I mean I think there are portion,

but maybe a smaller portion of entrepreneurs

who, I guess, who are inspired by a problem

that they felt very strongly about. (Right.)

And I think definitely there is a large

portion of people who are more opportunistic.

They see an opportunity in the market so they

decided to do it and then there's another

small portion who just thinks that entrepreneurship is cool

so they wanted to try it.

Ms Jah Ying Chung, Founder and Air Marshal of Launchpilots (join.launchpilots.com)

Entrepreneurship

Meet the Instructors