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- [00:00]
Sarah Lynch
With the Venture X Business Card from Capital One, you earn unlimited double miles on every purchase and with no preset spending limit, your purchasing power adapts to meet your business needs. Capital One what's in your wallet? Find out more@capital1.com Venture X business terms and conditions apply. I'm Sarah lynch and you are listening to your Next Move Audio Edition produced by Inc. And Capital One Business. On today's episode, host Aisha Bo talks with Ping Fu, President and CEO of Geomagic Inc. Who is a genuine luminary in the tech sector. In their conversation, they cover Ping's early childhood in China and her journey to the United States, her groundbreaking work laying the foundation for modern web browsers, and her hard earned wisdom around pivoting when it is necessary and what it can teach founders in the long run. But before we get to that interview, let's hear from Stephanie Mehta, CEO and Chief Content Officer of Mansuito Ventures, who has three key strategies to help founders persist in the face of challenges.
- [01:09]
Stephanie Mehta
Stephanie thanks Sarah. Founding a company is not for the faint of heart. Running a successful business takes vision, grit and determination under the best circumstances. And the past few years have held more than their fair share of obstacles stubborn inflation, a persistently typed job market and the pandemic and its lingering challenges. To overcome these and other challenges, founders need to be more resilient and adaptable than ever. But what makes some businesses better suited to weather stormy times? Recently, our partners at the Capital One Insight center, in partnership with Masters of Scale and Morning Consult, surveyed more than 1,000 business owners to explore that very question. The survey focused on how businesses have adapted to hardships and uncertainty since 2020. Nearly a third of survey respondents said the challenges actually led them to make useful changes within their businesses. They may have diversified their core products and services or redefined their target audience to help them find new markets or better serve customers. They have. Some business owners changed their management approach and others reexamined the tech they were using. Despite being faced with struggles, they looked for and found different ways to make their situation better. The bottom line Resilient businesses seek out new opportunities and aren't afraid to pivot when necessary. The second attribute of resilient businesses is that they listen to their customers. It gave them the information they needed to meet the needs of their customers. It helped them understand ways to adapt and change their businesses. And more than half of business owners surveyed said that listening to customer feedback helped them implement changes more effectively. The third attribute of resilient businesses is that they embrace digital tools 9 in 10 small business owners said that digital tools helped them find new customers, which was also one of the top reasons they made changes to their operations. They said that digital tools help them be more efficient and overcome challenges of the past few years. So to keep your company resilient even in tough times, be open to change, actively incorporate feedback from your customers and embrace the power of digital tools. Employing these strategies can ensure that companies are well equipped to persist in the face of challenges, no matter what the future holds for them. Back to you, Sarah.
- [03:44]
Sarah Lynch
Thanks, Stephanie. And now here is Aisha Bo's conversation with Ping Fu. Enjoy.
- [03:52]
Aisha Bo
I'm really excited to talk about your journey to learn more about Geomagic and the art of the pivot. Can we begin by you sharing a little bit about your story?
- [04:01]
Ping Fu
Okay, so I was born in China and I was raised by my aunt, which I thought was my mom. So in Shanghai I was the youngest in the family of six until I was eight years old. And then the China's Cultural Revolution started. So I was sent to Nanjing, which is where I was born. Actually my parents were sent away. So in Nanjing I found my younger sister Hong. She was four years old. So that started my journey. Of things that I can remember, I would say it was one day that I lost a mom who raised me, a mom who born me, and I became the surrogate mom for my sister. So that's how I started in China.
- [04:55]
Aisha Bo
Can you talk about your path from China to becoming an American?
- [05:01]
Ping Fu
So cultural revolution was 10 years long. Nobody expected that. So I basically missed the entire school K212. So fast forward, I went to college and I studied Chinese literature even though I wanted to be an astronaut, but I didn't have a choice. So I studied literature. As I was graduating, I got in trouble with the Chinese government because I did research on infanticide due to the one child policy at the time. So I came to us because I had to leave. I left China in 1984, in January, right after New Year and landed in San Francisco.
- [05:50]
Aisha Bo
Tell me a little bit about coming to the United States and the path that you took to get your degree.
- [05:57]
Ping Fu
So I landed in San Francisco. What's interesting is that I didn't have enough money to go to University of New Mexico, which is where I registered to study English as a second language. And someone in the line give me $5 so I can buy the ticket because the price changes in United States and in China there's no price changing. So I just had a traveler's check for the Fly. So my first lesson in US was generosity. And that man who helped me, I don't know who he is, I still haven't found him. But because of his help, I always remember whining doubt err on the side of generosity. So then fast forward. I went to University of New Mexico. I studied a bit of English. My English was very poor. I could like only speak a few words. I wanted to study comparative literature, but my English was not good enough to do that. So I heard at the time there's a new field called computer science. And I asked what it is and I was told it's a manmade language that you write code for people to use. I thought okay, great, I'll study that because I'm good in writing and I'm a maker. So I convinced myself that I will study a field to write a code for the future not yet imagined.
- [07:34]
Aisha Bo
Wow. I mean your story is just absolutely incredible. And so you come to the United States, you're in San Francisco, you end up being gifted with the money needed to go to New Mexico. And there you decide to pursue computer science. And it's my understanding that you originally wanted to be a writer.
- [07:56]
Ping Fu
Yeah, so when I studied computer science in early 80s, I was the only girl in the class. And most of the classes are projects at the time where we learned a language like Basic and Cobo and Fortran, but primarily it was projects and I was actually not a great programmer. So I leveraged my skill in writing and I started to do software design. At the time there was no field of software design. But I thought, well, you know, I know the writing which have a flow and that's how the data flow, how character flow. You have to make sense and there need to be outcome. This is very similar to what software is. So I just become a software designer for our group and end up with the professor really loves how I think and they invited me to apply for graduate school.
- [09:01]
Aisha Bo
That's amazing. So you naturally took to this field. Tell me a little bit more about your journey. And so you go to graduate school, do you then leave to pursue working in a startup?
- [09:13]
Ping Fu
When I was at University of New Mexico, my professor was a little drunk. He told me, he said, why are you in University of New Mexico? You should go to California. You know, you Chinese come to America, you just go study in graduate school, you graduate, you work in a cubic, occasionally you stick your head out. You never learn what American is. So I said oh wow, so tell me what should I do? And he says, well, go to undergraduate Study American Constitution, mingle with American friends, and go to California. And so I did. I left University of New Mexico, I went to San Diego, and I went to UC San Diego admission office. And I said, I'm here to enroll in your computer science program and the administrator's name is Barbara. And Barbara said, you applied. She was looking for my file and couldn't find it. I said, no, I just can. And then she says, yeah, but you can't just come to UC San Diego. You need to apply and you need to be admitted. And I said, but I thought this is a free country. And she said, yes, it's free to reject you. And I was so depressed, I went to the beach. I met this entrepreneur at the beach. I told him the story. He thought it was so funny. So he gave me a job at his company and he was doing IT support for the law firms. So I end up being the night, you know, on call it tech support person for him. Then I went back to UC San Diego and found Barbara. And then, and then she laughed and she said, well, if you just take a few classes, you can ace it out. We'll admit you. So I took a couple of class outside of the admission and I got admitted, eventually graduated from UC San Diego.
- [11:11]
Aisha Bo
Tell me about your transition to Bell Labs.
- [11:14]
Ping Fu
So after I graduated with undergraduate at UC San Diego, there were a lot of people come to recruit and I got 11 job offers. One of it was from Bell Labs. And they not only offered me a position, they also offered to fund my graduate study all the way to PhD. So I thought, wow, that is such a good offer. I've been working so hard, working two jobs on the side to put myself through school. So. And then also I heard about Bell Lab has the most Nobel Prize winners, very innovative place. So I decided to accept that job. Then I went to tell the boss of my startup and then I said, I'm taking a job at Bell Labs. He says, oh, don't go. Like, why you want to work for big corporation? I worked for big corporation. I quit and started my own company. At the time, I don't know anything about entrepreneurship. I don't know anything about startup. Actually, entrepreneur was not even awards back then. It was small business right at that time. And he said, I'll give you 5% of the company if you stay. And I had no idea what 5% of company means. I said, no, no, no, I really want to go work for startups. So yeah, he was very nice and he traded me a very nice dinner, gave me a really nice gift and sent me off to Bell Labs.
- [12:41]
Aisha Bo
What was being at Bell Labs like Bell Lab.
- [12:45]
Ping Fu
The area that I went in Bell Lab is called Area 1, which is the highly covered research area. My group had seven PhDs and they actually hired me because my capability of creating relevance and design software, design applications rather than just doing research. So I was actually there to help those researchers to bring their deep research into applications. Couple of them that we did there was C language, isdn, digital communication, digital tv. So that was. And then also relational database. Those were a few projects that I worked at Bell Labs.
- [13:37]
Aisha Bo
Wow. You've had incredible drops from Bell Labs to the national center for Supercomputing Applications. It's even reported that you were Marc Andreessen's boss in the 1990s. What prompted?
- [13:52]
Ping Fu
Well, the first pivot was personal. When I was at Bell Lab doing my graduate program at the same time I met the professor who was at the University of Illinois. That's where NCSA was. And we fall in love. And I decided to move down there to join him. That's personal reason. Professionally, it's because NCSA was such a cool place at the time. Like I went to Bell Labs thinking it's very innovative place. But when I went to ncsa, blew my mind. And my first job at NCSA was actually working on Terminator 2 Judgment Day. The early days of computer graphics. So I was blown away with that. I'm like, oh yeah, I want to work on this. So I took a huge pay cut to take that job just because it's that interesting.
- [14:56]
Aisha Bo
You worked in Terminator 2 Judgment Day?
- [14:58]
Ping Fu
Yeah. So I was in our group and worked on it. I did most of the implemented. I implemented most of the mathematics behind the morphing of the T1 cells and melt down to a puddle. Back then to do something like that needs supercomputer. So while I was at ncsa, this student came in to interview and whose name is Marc Andreessen. And I asked him what he liked to do and he said he would like to work on graphic user interface. Now that is also very new at the time. Most of the software at the time was all text based. So I said graphic user interface. I was always a very visual person. What is that? He said he was working at IBM, intern at IBM and he studied that he would like to work on a project with graphic user interface. So we have to kind of think a project that has graphic user interface. That's how Mosaic, the graphic user interface based browser was born. Wow. @ NCSA.
- [16:13]
Aisha Bo
Wow. I mean, we have in the span of this short conversation, talked about you being there for the birth of C. Terminator 2, which is absolutely incredible. And Mosaic.
- [16:26]
Ping Fu
Yes.
- [16:27]
Aisha Bo
Wow. So you are pivoting again in 1996 when you start a new company. What gave you the idea for your business?
- [16:38]
Ping Fu
So in 1993, Jim Clark came to NCSA and hired six and seven of our students and went to start Netscape. And then two years later, Netscape went public. It was the first company that was valued at 7 billion without a single dollar of revenue. That was the, the beginning of the craziness of Web1. And the university went crazy. It's like, wow, this thing is big. So we had a venture capitalist, you know, horror, business school professors and lawyers, you name it. Everyone's coming here to teach us how to be an entrepreneur and how to start a company. And we had so many meetings. And one day my boss, Joe Harding, who's the manager of the software development group that's responsible for many of the innovation, Mosaic being the most famous one. But we also did the first image software for the Apple printer. We also did Telnet. We just did a lot of very early software. And he said, I'm so tired of this. Everybody's talk, nobody's doing anything. So I said, okay, I'll do something. So I put my foot in my mouth. I need to start a company. And at that time, everyone was a dot com company. It's a little bit like today everyone is an AI company. Okay. So I kind of feel like with the current AI craziness, I'm reliving the web one time what the New York Times called irrational exuberance. I remember you have so many.com like pets.com, laundry.com and some micro system says we're at the dotting.com and GE says we're at the destroy yourself.com, right? And I thought, well, this is really strange. Just because Internet was invented, not everyone is a dot com company, okay, I'm not going to start a dot com company. I'm going to start something else. But I didn't know what would be. And then one day I went out and I saw a demo from Chuck hall, who's the founder of 3D Systems, and he invented the first 3D printing machine. And he was printing this part, which I believe was the first Ford, apart from the first Ford car that rolling down the assembly line. And I asked him, I was so interested in the machine. And I asked him, what would be the biggest challenge for you to print Something out of a machine. He said, a software. He said, I don't have software to create models that I can use to print it out. The fact that he didn't have 3D printing software and he can print a part is a miracle. He did win the national medal for science not a few couple of years ago. So he gave me this idea of writing software for 3D printers. And at that time Adobe was a big company. Optical recognition, you scan the paper and then you come in and you can edit your documents. And all of this was already a commonplace. Desktop publishing was commonplace. So I thought, well, maybe I can create a 3D fax machine. So I went out, raised money. I was imagining I dreamed it. There's a microwave oven like a machine with a turntable inside. And I would have put a 3D object in the turntable. I push the button, it will scan it and I create a digital twin. Then I dial the phone number to somebody else and the data gets sent there and they have the same machine. They push a button, it gets printed out. So I call that 3D fax machine. And so I went out to raise money and I just said, imagine walking into orthodontics office, watching your daughter's beautiful teeth for the next two years evolve in front of your eyes. Imagine walking into Nike town, put your foot on the 3D scanner, come back to pick up a custom made hiking booth next day. So I give like a few examples like that. And I got $2 million from one pitch. And of course at that time it was Internet high. I was behind the mosaic, I was also behind HTTP server. So I had a credibility of being able to work on something that's very scalable. The venture capitalist on the stage actually came to me and gave me their personal money and said, you don't want a VC money? No, we would take 80% of your company. Why don't you take the initial money and then create a product? Once you have a prototype, then you go raise money, you would give much less of your company away. So that's how I got Geomagic started.
- [21:50]
Aisha Bo
What was Geomagic founded to do and did that evolve over the course of the company's life?
- [21:58]
Ping Fu
So when I was at ncsa, I was head of the computer graphics and visualization. So I did a lot of 3D modeling and I know how hard that was. So Geometric was founded to create a software between 3D imaging and 3D printing. So both sides are hardware, you have 3D imaging or you can call the 3D scanner. There's Lada, there's computer vision, there's many different devices. You could capture the image of house, car, object, and then you have the other side, you have 3D printer who can reproduce that. But there wasn't any software in the middle. So I was thinking, okay, I would create a software for desktop manufacturing rather than desktop publishing. So that was the initial vision and dream.
- [22:53]
Aisha Bo
How did that initial vision and dream evolve?
- [22:56]
Ping Fu
When I started the company, it was actually a shock because I was first time entrepreneur, I didn't go to business school, I have no idea what it means to run a company and suddenly you don't have anything. You don't have an office, you don't have payroll, you don't have healthcare, you don't have. It's just nothing, right? So I have to very quickly learn how to actually get a company started. And I did raise $2 million. So I could, I could rent office and hire people to start working on this. I noticed There was like 200 different scanning 3D imaging system out there. So there's plenty of people we can go to tell them that we can write software from their output. And then there's plenty of CAD software, computer edit design software that we can take our data and give to them as input and they can do more design and that goes to the manufacturing. So I was filling an empty space, a gap that no one was serving. And so we started working on that. And initially the early adopters are the creative people. You know, you find architects, the designers, the fashion, the fashion and artists that we have. All these people come to use our software, but there's not enough volume. So when you serve creative people, they only want to use this once or twice. Once they can demonstrate that they can do it, they want to do something else. So there's no way to scale the software to build a business. So I have to pivot. So the question would be, how can we find a market that people could afford to pay for expensive software? Our software was expensive. There was a lot of R and D into it and there's volume. So I asked my sales team, go find me high value, high volume markets. And they said, you gotta be kidding. It's either high volume low value or high value low volume. What do you mean by high value, high volume? I said, I don't know, but that would be the kind of market we could serve. So they found two. One is the dental industry, dentistry. The other one is turbine machinery. And the interesting thing is if you look at teeth and turbine, they actually look very similar. And what People don't know is dental is also rocket science.
- [25:33]
Aisha Bo
Seeing that you need to serve these markets is one thing, but how did you actually accomplish the pivot?
- [25:38]
Ping Fu
This is the first pivot in the start of a startup company. And in fact every startup company, when you have a business plan or if you have a product, the first time you meet the market, you fail. So you need to really get customer to give you feedback. People usually say the product usually is more successful when you have the third version. So this was our first version. So pivoting wasn't as dramatic. It feels very natural. So what we did was we picked the dental. One company in dental and one company in aerospace, which is Boeing, as our, what we call launch partner. So when you have a product, if you have a launch partner, they would work alongside with you and then you have to meet their requirement before you can launch your product. And then we thought this would be really interesting to launch partner. With dentistry, every shape is unique. And with Boeing Aerospace the quality and precision requirement is very high. So if we can fit the requirement of one of the kind also to very high precision, very high safety requirement, then our product would have the breadth that we wanted.
- [27:02]
Aisha Bo
Tell me a little bit more about working with Boeing. I mean you mentioned that you picked him as a launch partner. Was this a pre existing program or was this you going and saying, hey, I'm Ping, I've got this amazing software and I really want to work with you.
- [27:17]
Ping Fu
Well this is the good thing about being first time entrepreneur. You don't know what you don't know and you're not fearful and not thinking you're doing something stupid. So I did, I walk into Boeing and I say, hey, I would love to have you as our launch partner. And we have this software, we can scan the part that it's very hard for you to design and then create a digital twin from it. And I was thinking of turbine machinery, this what I told them. And I was in Boeing Mathematic Group, they actually had a math group to meet me. Part of it is they know the reputation of my ex husband. He's a very well known mathematician and computer scientist. So they said, okay, they give me a cube cube. Literally they said scan this and then create the digital twin force. And I did not know that was a trap because when you do scanning, even though you can do very complex shape, but cube is the hardest thing to do. Of course this is a Boeing mass group, right? They know what they're doing. So I scan the cube and then I create a digital Twin. But it looks a little bit like a cheese rather than the sharp cube because the edges was not as sharp. But in reality, why would you need to scan if it's a cube? You could just put the math formula in there and create that perfect cube. Right. And I look at the cube and I knew that I wasn't doing the perfect cube. And I was a little depressed and a little embarrassed and they just laughed and they thought that was so funny too. But at least I got the cube of a cheese. They thought that was not bad. So I passed actually.
- [29:05]
Aisha Bo
So the cheese passed, the cheese passed. And all of a sudden Boeing is your launch partner.
- [29:09]
Ping Fu
Yeah, they agreed to be my launch partner because they do have these issues. So turbine is a very interesting thing. The turbine is half the price, half the cost of the airplane. And they are operating in the temperature higher than the material melting point. Right. So when you have a turbine machinery, you need to have right airflow. It goes to the space and there's always something gets bent or little damaged. So they need to, they need to repair it. Now with airline repair, there's a 48 hour rule. It's actually 72 hour rule. If the airplane don't fly, they can't make money. So the repair must happen within three days. And with turbine, what they used to do is if one turbine is bad, they replace the entire ring of the turbine and each one is $7,000. So it's very expensive repair for that industry. What we can do is we can scan the damaged one and then and turn it into the perfect compared to the perfect design and then make it the right design. But that's not good enough. It's like aligned teeth. Because the turbine, when the engine being flown for many hours, every teeth gets changed a little bit. So you don't actually want the original design. You want this one fit in with the right airflow with the rest of them so you don't have to change all of them. And that's what we can do. We can scan all of them, compute the golden average, and then make the new one to be that golden average. So they can repair only the one that's damaged. That's saving them hundreds of millions of dollars in repair. So that's like a big problem to solve.
- [31:02]
Aisha Bo
I love that you walked in and you had the courage to be tested and transition that into a partnership that worked for you. In your book there's this quote that I absolutely love that puppies don't know yet to be afraid of tigers. Tell us some more about Knowing what you don't know and how arguably that makes it easier for you to operate in challenging conditions.
- [31:26]
Ping Fu
That's a good question. When I started the business, I realized I don't know much of anything. And I actually read a lot of books. And then the more I read, the more it scared me. Even though people could not see that I didn't have the confidence, but inside of me I didn't have the confidence to lead the company. So I actually hired a CEO and I was very proud of myself, thinking I don't have the ego, I know what I don't know, I'm hiring the CEO. And then he came in for two years and then left. I did learn a lot from him, but he left at the time when the company was like really in the verge of dying. Every entrepreneur has a near death experience. So my CEO left when the company was near death and everyone thought we're just going to shut down. But I thought, no, I'm going to fight. And I went to the board and I said, how about I came back to be the CEO? And they said, well, if John cannot do it, that was my former CEO. Why should we trust you can do it? I said, well, he's not here and I'm here. Who else do you have? And so they let me try. Now I think that experience helped me a lot because when I learned from others, I realized that my insecurity was unfounded because what they can do, I can do too. It's just that I didn't trust myself that I could do it. And so at the time when the company was near death, I was basically backed against the wall. So I have to use all of me and more to save the company. I wasn't thinking about what I know or what I don't know. I was just thinking about saving the company. So when I came back to be the CEO of Geomagic and first thing I need to do is to save the company. Paul Rizzo was one of the board member of Geomagic. He came from IBM. He was the one that sponsored Apache when I put HTTP server out there for public domain software and he loved my work. So he came to join Geomagic and then he said, ping, right now your strategy needs to be drone. That means don't run out of money. I said, okay, got the whole company together, told them I was going to go out to get $3 million to float the company and then if everybody could stay with the company, I will make sure that if I didn't achieve getting those money in the company. In six months they will all get servants pay and they can leave if they want. And then I ask who's with me and every hand went up. First thing I did was to hire a really strong VP of sales. I feel sales is like horse for the wagon and I actually learned a lot from my head of sales. His name's James and he came in and he said you got a great product and I definitely can sell but I need you to bridge me for six months. If you can bridge me for six months, I can double your revenue and then within 18 months the company will be profitable. At the time of the struggle when everyone agreed to stay with the company, everyone is engaged, fully engaged. And at that time I also met an entrepreneur from Inc. Magazine, Jack Stark. I think he wrote a book called Great Game of Business and I invited him coming over to give a talk and then we learned a lot from Jack and then we started to create line of sight by having employees to create great game of business. And that was a very helpful pivot. Instead of just saying okay, I'm the boss, tell you what to do here and here and here, but rather to engage everyone and get their idea and they design the game, they design the reward and they go out and they win it. That was one of the pivot point that I realized it's the team that makes the company, not the founder. So I also changed my leadership style. Instead of try to be right and try to always figure out what's the right thing to do, I try to be clear on the direction we want to go or the vision or the dream that we try to realize and then let the people to come in and either help me to achieve that dream or correct me if I'm wrong.
- [36:39]
Sarah Lynch
We're going to take a quick break and be back with more from Aisha and Ping. Here's a little tip for growing your business. Get the VentureX business card from Capital One and earn unlimited double miles on every purchase. Plus, the venturex Business Card has no preset spending limit so your purchasing power can adapt to meet your business needs. And when you travel, you'll have access to over 1300 airport lounges. Just imagine where the Venture X Business Card from Capital One can take your business. Capital One what's in your wallet? Terms and conditions apply. Find out more@capitalone.com venturexbusiness.
- [37:22]
Aisha Bo
By leading a technology based company, it seems like pivoting is part of the DNA or part of the framework of the organization. You're constantly innovating and Having to transform yourself, how did you put that directly into practice with Geomagic?
- [37:38]
Ping Fu
So innovation is the DNA of the company, but we do more than innovation. When I had Geomagic, we also had like a company value. One is make magic, which means everyone we touch, every product we make need to be magical. And the second is don't shoot the messenger. So we want people to be able to talk and be able to give their ideas or criticize. We said don't shoot the messenger. And the third one is celebrating individuality. So we don't just accept it, we don't just embrace it, we celebrate it. So that's kind of the core DNA of the company. And for me, to make the company innovative is about creating the space and environment where people love what they do and they love each other. When you have good people love what they do, then they will create something great. And I usually, I'm usually not so specific about where we need to go. I let the customer lead us on where we need to go. But I want people to make magic. Whatever they do, they need to make magic.
- [38:54]
Aisha Bo
So you've worked on everything in Geomagic from aviation to space applications and toys with Mattel.
- [39:04]
Ping Fu
Yes.
- [39:04]
Aisha Bo
Can you talk a little bit about how you learned to meet the needs of such a wide variety of customers?
- [39:10]
Ping Fu
Underneath one corporate umbrella, there's common technology that we use for any industry that we serve. And that's very important for any industry that we pick, we will always ask the question is what problem do they have? Are we the best to solve their problem? Right. Do we have what they need to solve their problem? And then why should they buy our technology? And if they do buy, can we survive on that? So we ask those questions unless the answer is yes, we don't pick that industry. There are many, many industries we could pick, but we picked industries where we are the best to serve their need. We solve significant problems for them and the core technology are the same. It's the application that are different. And so that's one way of picking because we are more of a platform company than application company. The application is more for the industry or the customer. So we are more horizontal company. That's why we can serve many industries.
- [40:19]
Aisha Bo
In 2013, Geomagic was purchased by 3D Systems where you became the chief entrepreneur officer. Can you talk a bit about why you chose to stay on and pivot to a new role?
- [40:29]
Ping Fu
Yeah. And that there's actually an interesting story behind that one. When I first started the business, I noticed most of entrepreneurs are serial entrepreneur. And I asked them why you keep starting new company again and again. And the answer is it's not fun when the company gets bigger. Once it's more than 100 people, we don't get to do creative things anymore. It's all people problem. So the entrepreneur tend to sell the company and start another one. Sell the company and start another one. And I thought maybe I should try a path less traveled. I wanted to be a founder CEO and take the company all the way to public. And I want to see how that journey looked like. And so I kind of did that. And I was the founder CEO of Geomagic. I had three rounds of venture funding and usually the venture will out you and bring their own CEO to survival. Three rounds are very unusual. And I was the exit CEO of Geomagic. And when I went to 3D Systems, most of my friends bet me a dollar that I won't stay longer than a year. And I wanted to stay longer because I wanted to see how public company operates. So I decided to stay. And there's one lesson that I learned that's quite interesting. That is entrepreneurs usually value their company more before acquisition. It's their baby worth more. And after acquisition they typically value their company less. Because entrepreneurs often don't learn how to leverage the bigger company's platform to bring that business to next level. They tend to operate in the same way as founders.
- [42:26]
Aisha Bo
We always tend to keep our finger on the pulse of industries we're serving. How do you know when it's time to pivot?
- [42:34]
Ping Fu
Near death is obviously a pivot point. When a company stale, when the revenue isn't growing, order is not coming in and you notice your solution is no longer really serving the industry customer and also excited about your product anymore. It's time to pivot. That's on the product point of view. On the business point of view is you need to watch the market. Sometimes our hypothesis of how the market would develop could be wrong. And if that's the case, then you need to pivot based on the market needs and market trends.
- [43:14]
Aisha Bo
You've been the advisor to a wide variety of organizations from Burning man to uae. Can you share some of the advice you've given to your clients when it comes to learning how to pivot?
- [43:27]
Ping Fu
Yeah. So UAE is a very interesting case. When the Prime Minister of UAE who is also a ruler of Dubai invited me to to be advisor for the UAE government and I started with innovation. Actually most of the advisory board that I'm on, I started with innovation and I pivoted. To something else. Initially, they just wanted us to help them to make government more efficient. But when I was at Dubai, I realized they are the most innovative country already, even compared to Singapore. They are moving so fast. And there is a tendency of wanting the best, the greatest and the latest. And very similar to the Silicon Valley, right? Everybody's chasing the next shining object. And I thought, as a country especially, I'm advising the government, I need to help them to pivot to be more holistic for the people of that country or for other people that they serve. So I was able to convince the government to change their direction a little bit. And it came from. We started the Government Summit, which is all about government innovation. But we did a happiness day and invited all the happiness experts there. And it become the most attended day of that conference. And then so Dubai next year, they started the Year of Happiness. And then from there they pivoted every year. So there's a year of opportunity and there's a year of tolerance. And so each year they all pivot to a different subject, Year of health, different subject that is beneficial for people. And that was an interesting way for government to pivot and just picking a theme and focus on that. So that's Dubai. I also advised both the Lang no Foundation and Burning Man. And Burning man is very much of a maker's culture now, right? It's temporal culture. The art gets burned or moved away. There's no permanency there. Whereas long now it's about 10,000 years of long thinking. How do you instill the deeper thinking beyond your lifetime for people? So there's like two very opposite foundation or nonprofit organization. I managed to get them together and learn from each other. So for long now, I think just being a think tank is not enough. What can you do? Say, let's start with local community, just San Francisco. What can you do in San Francisco? And so that is not just abstract thinking, but more visceral. People can feel it in their body. And we started the Interval Bar. And one of the reasons is because bar is the longest institution that exists in the world. If you look at how long company survives. And the longest single family or single lineage of business is bar. That's why we started a bar as a salon. And so they started doing things that are more that people can feel it, touch it and be there, rather than just thinking 10,000 years, that's a pivot. And for Burning man, my question is, what happens 100 years later for Burning Man? And can we see a longer term? And how do we Survive. What would it look like if the founder moves away? What Burning man would be. And so that's also kind of a pivot in terms of a organization that was only thinking about now to start to think about long term.
- [47:32]
Aisha Bo
You've been quoted as saying, life is like a mountain range. You have peaks and you have valleys. And from our conversation, it sounds like pivoting is more than just something that you do. It's like a mindset for you. Can you talk a little bit about how pivoting is a philosophy and how you apply it to your life?
- [47:52]
Ping Fu
Yeah. So the Mountain Ranch is like pivoting as a philosophy. I like how you put it. When I came to us, I especially at Bell Labs, I had a lot of trainings. I find the metaphor has always been peak climbing up glass ceiling. Everything is about up, up, up, up, up, more, more, more, more, more. Right. And I didn't feel that metaphor being sustainable or even interesting because, like, if you think about traveling, you don't want to just be on one peak with one view. You want to go to different peak and to. But there's no way to go to another peak without going down. So going down doesn't need to be a negative connotation. And when I was coaching younger people, and I always find them when they look for another job, they want more pay and bigger title, rather than thinking about whether or not this is what I love to do, whether or not this applies more of my skill set. So I have taken different jobs in my life, and each one I have taken less pay because I like it more. And looking back, if I didn't do this kind of pivoting or have the philosophy of Mountain Ranch, I would not have accumulated the knowledge or skill set that enabled me to be an entrepreneur or to be an advisor or to be able to do so many things, because everything eventually all accumulate into a path that I could easily walk.
- [49:40]
Aisha Bo
As a founder, I resonate with high highs and low lows. And something that you just said really struck me, which is when you're going to peak to peak and you're transitioning and you're going down, that that low doesn't necessarily need to be low. Tell me about how you would advise someone that you are coaching to deal with these sorts of periods of time where maybe things don't feel like they're going your way. As an entrepreneur.
- [50:07]
Ping Fu
So when people kind of feel depressed or stuck and they went out and talking to people, I have a few, like, simple way of having people changing their mindset sometimes we also set attitude. Attitude is a little thing, but it makes a big difference. So a few of the things I would say is, I would say I like to think of happiness or life or joy in a very simple way. There are three words I use. I call it pleasure, flow, and calling. Okay. Pleasure is I do something for myself. You know, get a massage, go walk in the park, whatever you like to do. You give that pamper effect of being happy and joy. Flow is doing something you love. Right? That's the concept of flow. I love it so much, I forgot time. Calling is I do something bigger than myself. And you ask yourself, when you're stuck, which one's missing? Sometimes people get stuck. They love their job, and they're doing the. Doing a lot of things that they Very fulfilled, but they don't take care of themselves. They're exhausted, right. And now they don't like anything because they're exhausted. Sometimes it could be, you know, they do take care of themselves. They have plenty of time, rest, and they do a lot of volunteers, but they don't find something they love to do. They never had a flow, right? Which one is missing? And maybe that's where you should focus on to increase that. But not just one thing. It's all three things. That's what makes life feels exciting to live. So that's one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it is I was trained in Taoism. Taoism is all about empty space. So if you think about building house, you buy materials, you do design, you build a house. But it is in the empty space that we live, right? Furniture is the same. Without the empty space, everything else didn't matter. So I always say, behind every closed door, there's empty space behind it, which means there's some other opportunity behind it. And if you think that way, then maybe you don't feel so stuck.
- [52:27]
Aisha Bo
I love that. There was something that an entrepreneur said to me once that resonates with me in moments where things might feel like they're contracting when you want them to expand, and it's maybe. And I remember hearing the maybe and kind of going, what do you mean, maybe? And what he said to me was, maybe, maybe it's good, maybe it's bad. But in that moment, you don't really know. You have to wait until you have the benefit of hindsight to determine what role that thing that's happening to you plays in your overall story.
- [52:58]
Ping Fu
Yeah, maybe it's about being curious.
- [53:00]
Aisha Bo
Yeah.
- [53:01]
Ping Fu
Yeah.
- [53:01]
Aisha Bo
You've spoken a lot over the years about resilience what role does resilience play in being able to weather a pivotal.
- [53:08]
Ping Fu
Well, I had a lot of resilience training when I grew up and so that kind of built into me. But resilience is actually a very interesting word for company also and also for design. So robust design is about how do you make things not to break. And resilience design is about that you know it will break, but you design the fault into it. As such, when fault happens, you can recover very quickly. So that's the resilience, whether or not you think about people or business or bridge, for example. And today the bridge design are resilience design. So when earthquake come, they would break. Exactly. It's supposed to break so you can fix the bridge within 15 minutes. And the resilience design is actually very much ingrained in today's business or even in the environmental movement is about being resilient. We human need to be resilient, to live together with the nature. Nature is resilient. They don't need us, we need them. I think resilience requires curiosity to know where things would fall, requires being humble to admit things will fail and also requires ingenuity so you can innovate out of the things that will fail.
- [54:49]
Aisha Bo
You've now coached and mentored a wide variety of individuals. How do you see the next generation of entrepreneurs approaching pivots?
- [54:59]
Ping Fu
Yeah, it's interesting because the leadership in business getting younger and younger every year. So we'll see like much younger generation of leader in business, especially in the news. That's what influence a lot of young generations. They pivot much faster than we do. I guess they grew up in the Internet and cell phone and short video culture. And then companies also like faster and faster company can reach audience faster and faster. And this is what we see in the media all the time. So I don't see the young generation leaders have any issue pivoting. I think the question is do they need to pivot that fast and then do they sometimes sit back and look at things that are not working and realize the direction is still right and things could be fixed without pivoting. So always pivoting is not necessarily good nor the most efficient way to run business. I do believe the younger generation has the courage and also they are armed with a lot more information and they are not afraid of pivoting. Questioning the other side of the pivoting, which is more stability and more of maybe sometimes the path that you're on is right path. And if you not have the grit to go through it, the greater things will not happen.
- [56:44]
Aisha Bo
You mentioned that the younger entrepreneurs pivot, they pivot fast and there might be situations within which they should have just stuck it out and waited longer to pivot. What would you suggest that entrepreneurs do to evaluate whether or not they should stick at it or whether they should pivot?
- [57:02]
Ping Fu
Yeah, that's a really good question. I think the fast pivoting come from the philosophy of faster and more is better. And my philosophy, and I like to say that I want all but not more. So I think to be an entrepreneur today you have so much responsibilities, more than just driving revenue and growth, but also social responsibilities, that today's business people place much more in everybody's everyday life than it used to be. So to have that 360 view, to have that wholesome view of business before you pivot, would be a good measure to be added to fast and more.
- [57:51]
Aisha Bo
Peng, you focused on pivoting from being a business leader to being a mentor and an advisor to many. Looking into the future, what do you see as your next move?
- [58:03]
Ping Fu
That's a really interesting question. Many people ask me that and I actually thought about that. I'm on a journey. What I call from doing to being, and I would call that my next move. Being is much more chosen. That's not saying doing is not part of being. But I think I've been on the fast lane for so many years. I've been CEO for so many years. I'm still on seven boards. So even though I said, okay, I'm retired by seven boards, it's a full time job, I'm looking at, I need to slow down a little bit. I wanted to create more time and space so that I could sense more about life, about me being part of nature. I had several readings that was interesting because I always asked the question of what would be the most impactful act of the next stage of my life. The answer has from Chinese reading or to Indian reading, the answer has always been your last act is not an act at all. You just need to be you. So my next move is interestingly about how to be that person who has sensory literacy rather than just doing literacy. And you know, sometimes we say you don't ever stop to smell roses anymore. But I think when we see the nuances in life, we make different kind of decisions on the impact that you wanted to make in your life, how you want to pay forward. Because I don't want to just be on the trajectory or inertia of what I have always been doing because there's a lot of ego and I want to let that go. I want to pass the paton to the next generation. I want to get out of the way, but yet at the same time, just being me would have that impact anyway. That's actually interesting because I did go on that journey for a while now and part of it is what I wanted to see and hear better. And then what I learned is a seeing is no longer seeing from my eye to the outside of world because that's a very limiting because I'm just reflecting what's in my mind. I'm trying to learn how to have that universal eye, the seeing everything, including seeing myself. We don't like to have the mirror towards ourselves to see that. I wanted to see that. And through that I learned a lot about my relationship with my daughter and how unconscious I have been being a mother. Actually, that's a conversation I haven't had with her. And I really wanted to like, find an opportunity to sit down with her and tell her the things that I thought I was doing right, but I wasn't. That's an interesting angle that I started with my own family. You know how we always say we love, you know, big love, small love. Love is everything. But when it comes to family, most people complaining about their family and I always thought, actually I told myself, if I cannot love my own family, who am I to say I can love the world? That's not measurable. So I start to reflect a lot about life, my place on this earth, and what next stage of being should be rather than doing should be.
- [62:17]
Aisha Bo
That's powerful. Ping, thank you so much for sitting down with me and talking about the art of the personal pivot.
- [62:25]
Ping Fu
Thank you, Aisha.
- [62:31]
Sarah Lynch
That's all for this episode of youf Next Move. Our producer is Matt Toder. Editing and sound design by Nick Torres. Executive producer is Josh Christensen. If you haven't already, subscribe to your Next Move on Apple podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen, your Next Move is a production of Inc And Capital One Business.