Champion Story 22 | Eva Lau
Recorded on December 19, 2018
Biography: Eva Lau is a well respected entrepreneur-turned-investor and one of the few women leading a venture fund in Canada. She is the Founding Partner of Two Small Fish Ventures, a venture fund that invests globally in early-stage, transformative tech companies with strong network effects.
Before starting Two Small Fish Ventures, she was Wattpad’s Head of Community and Content. She helped nurture and scale Wattpad from its infancy to become one of the largest online communities with tens of millions of monthly users around the world. With a sharp focus on investing in companies with a strong network effect as their defensibility, Eva has created the ASSET framework that many entrepreneurs and accelerators have adopted in their developing business strategies. Eva is regarded as an expert in this area.
One of the things I was grateful for was the podcast we recorded for The Globe and Mail on mental health. I've been getting a lot of messages about it, and I saw you had tweeted about it. It speaks to what's happening in their industry and even broader around the world.
I am sure that everybody, when they are building a startup, experience a ton of stress, a ton of doubt, and a ton of frustration. It's only natural to experience that. If someone said, "Oh, I have built two companies. Oh, I was never having stress. I was never worried about it," I mean, what kind of company were you building? Tell me about it. You know?
People don't tend to share that kind of frustration because it's a sign of weakness. Imagine a high profile entrepreneur. Everybody said, "Oh, wow, they're going to be the next Google," or, "They're going to be the next Facebook." But then they turn around and say, "Oh yeah, I actually cannot sleep every night. I feel that I'm a fraud." You won't be sharing those kinds of things, and I think that's extremely unhealthy.
People who go into startups as founders must have a lot of drive to do that. If you're a couch potato, you have never dreamed up anything disruptive or changing anything, you kind of go with the flow, you won't have the drive to become a founder. If you do, that person must look upon himself with a very high stake, and then they will probably feel that they have to achieve certain things in order to feel that moment of recognition, mostly from himself or herself, not so much from other people.
People say, "Oh wow, you did that? Oh wow." The recognition is actually, I have to feel good about myself, not necessarily like, "Oh, Eva, you've done a great job." Obviously that makes me feel good, but I have to feel good about what I have actually done. When that kind of personality is driving an entrepreneur, they are very demanding of themselves, and if that's the case, will they accept that they actually have that moment of "I just want to give up."
Is there a safe place or is there a protocol that can encourage founders to express that kind of need for help? Especially without judgment. If I go up to you and I say, "Cherry, I really need some help," you may judge me, but more importantly, let myself not judge myself first.
That is what the mental health conversation should be in the tech industry. It is very different than the teenagers. Teenagers, obviously when they are very young, the peer pressure and the peer recognition plays a huge role in mental health. You may feel good about yourself with your pigtails and with your chubby cheeks, and you go to school everyday, and then all of a sudden there's a popular girl come to you and say, "Why are you still wearing pigtails? You're in grade nine." Then all of a sudden pigtails is a horrendous thing you've ever done to yourself.
When we're talking about the tech industry, I feel there is a slight difference, because a lot of that actually comes from yourself.
Something that came to mind thinking about my journey is the mindset of a founder, which very much self-inflicted. It is part of the reason why we can go out, do crazy things, and go into an industry and say, "Hey, we want to disrupt this." We know that we can do it because we're telling ourselves, "Hey, we have the drive. Let's keep going."
I've started to realize that even though I'm a high performer, there is a lot of pressure. You see all of your founder friends and nobody is speaking about what they're really going through in terms of the stress. You look at them and you're like, "Oh, maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm the one who's weak.” It becomes this cycle.
Not everybody has to go to the media to speak about their story, but it’s important to have a culture where founders who need the help could go out there and feel safe in doing that.
When you have an environment where everybody has this confidentiality that is in place, it creates a safe place for founders to express their frustrations, and it's necessary. It's important, but what else?
When a bunch of CEOs sit down and talk about their issues, whether it's the company issues, personal issues or their mental issues, it's great that you feel safe to be able to go into a forum and speak to your peers. Maybe some of them will share an experience of, "Yeah, when I was raising my A round, I was this close to a nervous breakdown and thank God I did this thing." People will be sharing this kind of personal experience to support each other.
I hope that kind of an environment will exist and allow people to feel safe to talk about those things, and potentially allow people to have support. I don't know how to implement it. I'm certainly not an expert when it comes to mental health. For me, I have had the privilege to be in the industry for so long that I kind of shrug my shoulders and it’s expected. That's what startup life is all about.
When we first start, you're working a lot of hours or there's a lot of personal investment. I know I have invested a lot of money into my startups. Many founders too have even mortgaged their houses, sold their cars, their condos, those kinds of things.
How does that affect your family or affect relationships?
It's a very important topic. When I was at the verge of selling the house, I was like, “Okay, if we need to sell the house to keep Wattpad going, let's do it. We're young. We're in our late 30s, early 40s, and if we have to sell the house and even if things don’t work out, what's the worst case? We find a job and we just build it all over again.” It was quite naïve of me, but at the same time it meant that I had that kind of risk tolerance.
But not a lot of people have that kind of risk tolerance. When I was sharing the stories publicly, a lot of people kind of looked at me like, "What? You would even go all the way to sell your house and do all those kinds of crazy things?" If you have so much conviction about a business, going all in sometimes feels right. It felt right for me so I had no problem, but it may not feel right for you, so you probably wouldn't want to do it. There's no right or wrong answer. That I had that kind of guts didn't mean that I'm a hero. It just means that I had that kind of risk tolerance.
Even if we lost everything, Allen and I would be looking at each other and say, "You know what? We had a good run." We hug each other and we move on. But some people may not have that kind of risk tolerance and it's not for them.
I remember one founder came to me and it was a very interesting conversation. Initially I thought he was pitching to me about his ideas about his company. But then he's like, "No, I actually don't want to talk about my company."
I was taken aback. I'm like, "Okay, so what do you want to talk about?" He said, "My company's going okay. I'm doing everything, pulling all the stops and making it happen, but I just wanted to ask you, how did you manage the relationship with your kids? What did you tell your kids? I always have this fear that I may be letting them down or screwing their lives up because I'm literally betting their future on my venture."
Fathers are usually the breadwinner in the family. The wives bring in money as well, but we're looking at the world of pay equality. I'm generalizing it now. A lot of men tend to have a lot of anxiety, like "Am I screwing up my family here?" Which is a natural and normal way of thinking. Even for me, when I'm building my business right now, I'm actually putting my personal money in investment. It could have been my kids' college fund. Am I being irresponsible? I have that question all the time.
So that guy was asking me, "How did you manage? How did you have that conversation with the kids?" Especially when they continue to grow, they will be asking for things. Can I have the latest iPhone or can I have this and can I have that? How do you resolve that mental conflict? I'm like, "Welcome to the world."
The personal and the professional, there's not that much difference. When you're playing this game and you want to take it all the way, you want to be successful, it's that decision that comes into play and it does affect other people.
It does. I remember in early 2009, late 2008 before Wattpad raised the seed round. Allen was taking a risky bet on Wattpad, and at the time I was doing something not in the tech field. I finished my MBA so I thought, “Hey, why don't I put my skill into something else and just kind of explore the non-tech world and what was this like.”
During those years, it was tough. We were on the verge of selling the house in order to keep the family going. At the time, my eldest child played the piano, went figure skating, and was in a private Montessori school. All of that required a lot of money.
I remember I had this conversation with her when she was that young. I said, "Sweetheart, mommy and daddy are running a business right now and it's not doing too well. We may not have a lot of money anymore. I may not be able to afford to send you to the school that you're going to or continue to send you to piano or figure skating lessons. If out of the three, mommy needs you to choose one to give up, what would you choose?"
I have to include her in a conversation. People said that I may have been a bit cruel to be exposing my children so early to the concept of family finances, but I think I'm actually being responsible.
It was the most painful conversation I had with her. I was forcing a seven year old kid to give up something out of the three things she loved. It's not like giving up a barbie doll. I basically forced her to look ahead to the future of what these three activities actually meant for her. She said, she was then young at the time, she said, "Mom, I know I'm very good at playing piano. I'm so-so with figure skating, and school is very, very important because if I have no education I won't be able to get a good job. Why don't I give up figure skating then?" Out of the three, that was her most favorite. I knew that was her most favorite, and yet she was willing to sacrifice that for the family.
Imagine if a founder has to have that conversation with his wife and then with his children. It may not be as smooth a talk as I had, and where do they turn? How do they resolve that kind of a conflict?
Thank you for sharing so openly about that story. I didn't know about that and that really moves me. When you said it, I was thinking about my own family and my upbringing. When my parents first started their tech company, it was tough. That share about your daughter is powerful.
Mind you, when most parents start the business, they set out to make a better living. No parent will go and say, "We're going to start a business with all my kids' college funds. If we screw it, it doesn't matter. Let me bet my daughter's future on this venture and if it fails, so be it." No one would have that kind of a thought to start off with. So when you actually have to have that conversation, imagine the kind of devastation that is actually happening within you.
This conversation is refreshing. I wish we had more conversations about what's real, what you're really going through. How do you bring it up to somebody, like a family member or a friend or a partner, who's been by your side all these years, and then you have to ask them for even more. It's tough.
What I actually want to say is that the founder who reached out personally to me that to me is brave. I'm not suggesting that he must be struggling. I'm not saying that, but at least he had that cognitive awareness of "I need to talk to Eva to actually understand how she did it with her family."
A lot of people come to me, "How did you build Wattpad? So what did you do? How did you start the community?" Like 1,000 people have come to me to ask me that question, and only one guy who said, "How did you manage your family?"
My family has been such a cornerstone. I know Keane and I would not have been able to do it without my parents. Building our company was hard and it was the craziest thing. One of the feelings that I had to work through was a dark, heavy emotion when Keane suddenly passed away.
Many people experience these feelings and we don't voice it enough. It gnaws at us inside, especially as founders. We carry this image of what we're supposed to know, thinking we need all the solutions all the time. That gives me a lot of hope for what's possible.
This is where I started off the whole conversation, as founders, we're very driven people, and we always want to come out as a shining star in a way. We have moments of weakness. We do. Everyone does. But allowing us to feel that and allowing us to have that vulnerability to show others, that's the challenge.
I know there's people out there who are reading this article or engaging with the platform that may be struggling. They may be scared to ask because it's their first time asking for help.
I want to ask: what moves you to be able to have those conversations? What helps you to initiate the conversation with people like your daughter and with Allen [your husband]?
My faith helped me a lot. My life has not always been easy. I grew up in a grassroot family. I came here as a visa student and I had to wait until my parents' paper got done until we immigrated, and then my dad passed away very young. I had to take on the family responsibility. I actually paid my sister's pocket money throughout university until she had the ability to find a part time job and that kind of stuff. My paycheck, before I got married, the moment I had it, half of it or more went to my mom.
Even though my life was not easy, because of my faith, I’m Christian, I have hope and peace. When I'm at the pit of everything, all I have to do is to look up and take a deep breath. I'm just here to run a journey. As long as the journey is fun and fruitful, then my job is fine. I have tasted the peace and the serenity when I actually call myself knowing that my god will help me through anything. Help me through doesn't mean solve the problem.
There are many times that he didn't actually solve the problem, but I went through it. He didn't heal my father. He's still dead. Knowing that he will be with me when I'm going through any problems, it gave me hope and peace, so even when I said, "We have to sell the house," we sell the house.
I appreciate your share. When people ask me about how I got through this year, I'll tell people it's because of my spirituality. Trust has been so important to me. When I started in the tech industry, I was very different. It used to be all, “Oh, I have to know everything. I have to calculate everything” and it was a lot of pressure.
I don't think doing the work that I'm doing because there's something about trusting the journey that I'm on, that brings peace in my life. I wanted to thank you for that.
That's a great way to put it. When my dad passed away, I was just fresh out of university, and I keep asking what's the point, why. It's so difficult. Is it meant to be, and all those kinds of things. But I just felt that I asked the wrong question. I think the question is “now what.”
People have illness, people die. Companies go bankrupt, people lose their jobs. It's good to ask why if it helps you to do better next time, but if you hold your fists and go, "Why, why, why? What's the point?” I think when it comes to adversity in life, sometimes, to tell people that, "Oh, it's meant to be. It's the right course," may be quite hurtful too. If when my father just passed away, people say, "Oh yeah, it's meant to be." What do you mean it's meant to be? The way that I look at it is, “ that's just life.” We know that as we continue moving on, we can make a difference and there will be a better day.
I recollect myself and ask, "Now what? How do I move from here and out of this rut?" Without judgment, without expectation, without anything, just a very genuine question that's like, "Okay, now what?"
I love the way that you framed that. In our drive to create all the things that we want, we're hoping that things go in a linear way. Part of what I have been humbled by is the joy and the loss in my life both came very unexpectedly.
The nature of life being unexpected, when I think about the losses I have had. It's not even personal. There's something there, like acceptance.
Knowing that this is just life, and not to be too harsh on yourself and others.
I thank you for your honesty, courage, and sharing not just the fullness of your journey, but the fullness of yourself. When I'm sitting down with people one-on-one, I carry the intention of, “I would love to discover who you are, not as a founder, not as an investor, but who you are as a human being.”
This conversation deeply moved me, and I'm sure it's going to move other people as well.
I hope it's useful to others. I keep saying “whatever I do, I'm just trying to be helpful.”
Thank you for doing this.