This month we’re all about the future of technology! From NFTs to AI and the metaverse (among others), digital entrepreneurship is THE trend for 2022 – especially since the future of tech is female. Yup, we said it! And to emphasise this even more, we’re super stoked to announce that we’re only 3 days away from our BIGGEST virtual global summit yet – the Future of Digital Entrepreneurship summit! If you haven’t registered yet, click here. Trust us, you don’t want to miss out on 9 international experts and speakers sharing their insights into the world of tech!
Listen to the Future Females podcast: Lily Wu shares “Everything you need to know about NFT’s and why we need more female representation in Web3” here.
You can also read more about the summit and the speakers here.
Speaking of women in tech, ex Future Females Singapore Chapter Ambassador, and one of our brilliant summit speakers, Lily Wu, recently co-launched WOW Pixies, a female NFT project which sold out (or minted) in just three days after its launch! WOW Pixies is the first venture DAO to invest in women-led projects in the NFT space. How amazing is that? To tell us more about herself (and her VERY impressive background as an entrepreneur), we’ve asked Lily some questions.
Q&A with Lily Wu
FF: You’ll be talking about NFTs at our Future of Digital Entrepreneurship Summit. Why MUST summit goers tune in for this session?
LW: Web3, NFTs, DAOs are all new ways of harnessing unrealised potential, income and communities through the use of technology. We need more women coming to this conference so that they can also play a part in shaping the future.
READ MORE: The Future of Digital Entrepreneurship Summit 2022
FF: Your LinkedIn bio is (very!) impressive: Startup Partner Lead, SEA at Stripe | Co-founder of WOW Pixies NFT | Two time 7-figure entrepreneur… Tell us more about your background as an entrepreneur.
LW: I’ve always been in the startup space. I founded my first business at 16 arbitraging shoes from the US and selling them in Australia. By the time I finished high school, I had profited $500k. I then founded an education startup called Austern International where it was running career accelerator programs globally in 7 cities, helping thousands of students create career portfolios by working with startups and corporates to solve problems using design sprint. After 5 years, I joined edutech startup NewCampus in Singapore, where I helped set up their business and build their education curriculum and programming. I stayed for 2.5 years until they raised Series A. I was also previously a Future Females ambassador in Singapore as well! Now, I’ve joined Stripe as Startup Partner Lead SEA to help grow the startup ecosystem and provide resources and knowledge to help grow and scale startups in the region. I’ve started WOW pixies as the first social DAO to invest in women and diversity led projects in the web3 ecosystem.
FF: You discovered entrepreneurship at the age of 16?
LW: I grew up in an artists’ family and we really struggled during the financial crisis. I first discovered entrepreneurship by accident because my parents had taken a trip to China and I needed to make more money. I got rejected at every retail job I applied for so I turned to first arbitraging Adidas shoes from US retail outlets to Australia (where my friend’s parents owned an outlet).
FF: You are passionate about solving real world problems. Why is that?
LW: I’m passionate about solving problems. Whether it’s my own problems or something bigger, it’s filling a gap that I see in the world right now. Being entrepreneurial means that you are solving problems and leaving the place better than before you have helped solve it.
FF: I would like to quote you. You said that your experience selling shoes (where you ended up making half a million dollars) taught you that “entrepreneurial thinking is really just about solving problems and it’s an adaptive skill I use whether or not I’m working for myself or for someone else.” What is your advice for women who are just starting out as entrepreneurs?
LW: I would just say that after my first business with no prior knowledge of what entrepreneurship even was, is that, you just have to start somewhere. My MVP was just one word doc, one excel sheet and a facebook page (all free). I gained traction through asking my customers to prepay before I spent money. This taught my creativity in the face of boundaries (where I have no money to begin with). As problems arise, you just need to face them as they come rather than try to anticipate and plan everything in advance. It’s basically impossible to try to prepare everything before you leap. Just take the leap.
READ MORE: Understanding technology: A beginner’s guide
FF: What is the biggest piece of entrepreneurial advice you ever received and how did it change your business thinking?
LW: The biggest advice I’ve received (from Tim Ferris’s book haha) is that it’s easy for a founder to try to control everything and do everything ourselves. I learned that I should be valuing my time and doing the most high impact tasks and delegating and outsourcing things to other people or empowering your team to take things over.
FF: Tell us more about your most important values.
LW: My most important values where I guide my life are on 5 aspects: curiosity, adventure, freedom, relationships and creativity. I use these as a compass to evaluate every step I take – whether it’s starting my own thing or working for someone else. By making decisions with your values, you are always one step closer to the person you want to become.
FF: How does one become a (two time) 7-figure entrepreneur?
LW: Always ask the question “What can I do to create the most amount of impact with the least amount of resources?”. I had bootstrapped 2 businesses from nothing and that comes from 1. being resourceful 2. being unafraid to be shameless/ go for what you want and 3. being creative with what you have.
FF: Your most recent AMAZING project, WOW Pixies NFT, is the first venture DAO to invest in a women and diversity led NFT ecosystem. Congratulations that it minted out in less than 2 weeks after it was introduced! Tell us more about this project.
LW: Here is the whitepaper (click here).
Fundamentally, after having been in the startup space for the last decade – and working with VCs on a day-to-day basis. There is currently not enough money going to female founders as typically the gatekeepers to funding are men. NFTs is a chance for anyone to put their money where they value and onboard more women to a space that can circulate more income and revenue potential to women creators and founders. That’s what WOW pixies is doing – we buy up women-led projects and become an amplifier and extension of their communities.
FF: We believe the future of technology is female. Do you agree?
LW: Yes, as our technology evolves we need more diversity at the helm of steering these changes. We need more empathy that comes with harnessing technology and embracing the feminine traits that actually make leadership, technology and business better.
FF: What does the future hold for Lily Wu?
LW: I can’t control the future but whatever the future holds, I’ll make sure to make the most of it.