The Entrepreneurial Journey is a Marathon, Not A Race | Michael Cheng, Lumen5

Hi, everyone. Welcome back to Bits and Bytes. Obviously, as of now, with the current circumstances, we have moved to a audio recording, podcast style. So unfortunately, that means that we won't be doing any crazy food challenges for our guests. But we do have a guest today. His name is Michael Chang, CEO and co founder of Lumen5. Michael, if you want to give maybe a quick introduction to yourself.

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. Happy to talk a bit more about Lumen 5. At Lumen 5, we're building the world's smartest video creator, designed for brands and businesses to create video content at scale by leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning. And. And really the goal is to make it so that anyone without any technical training or video editing experience can easily create video content in minutes for social media or wherever they choose.

Awesome. So, just out of curiosity, I know that you've worked on several startups now, from everything from like Sniply to Witty cookie and now Lumen 5. How did your ideas kind of start, especially for Lumen 5? Was this something that just kind of like came to you? Like, you know, while you're working on something, was it a problem you encountered? Like, what's your thought process? Like, how do you develop an idea for a startup?

Yeah, I always believe that the most important question to ask when thinking about a new business is why now? Why? Why is this idea unique to the world it is today? And why would this specific idea not make sense if you did it five years ago or five years later? So I'm really a big fan that timeliness is a key component to any successful business idea. For example, back in Witty Cookie days, where I was primarily developing websites for really local businesses, small businesses, people who are just starting out, and the need was such that there were businesses who didn't have websites when I knew that people were mostly spending their time online and making purchasing decisions online. And so the need was clear. And that's why Witty Cookie made sense at the time. But nowadays, where you have a lot more accessible tools like Squarespace and wix, the landscape has changed. So a business like, like what I was building at that time might not be the best business idea in today's world. And so many things change, and so ideas shift as the world changes. For Lumen 5, it was based on also a similar observation. The world was changing. And that specific change was about three or four years ago when I noticed that social media was really transforming into a video network. Everywhere you go, you go on Facebook, you go on Instagram, everything was starting to turn into videos. And in more recent years, even LinkedIn is now primarily video content. You start to see the emergence of pure video networks like Snapchat or TikTok and Instagram. Story wasn't really even a thing when we started Lumen 5. And so what I saw was really the spike in demand for video content. And the natural thing to do as an entrepreneur is where does the supply come from if people want to watch videos, who's making all these videos and can we play a part in that? And what we found was that although people love watching videos, it's extremely expensive and cumbersome to create video content. And most brands, most businesses just can't afford to do it. And that's where we intervene and developed a technology platform that allows businesses to be able to create video content to fulfill the needs of the consumers.

Oh, that's amazing. So kind of like, I guess, adding further to this, when exactly did you start coming up with ideas for Lumen 5 then? Was this something like, was it while you were working on at your previous startups, or was it just something that, you know, between startups that you decided, hey, let's start this new venture?

Yeah, I've always believed in the kind of idea that the eureka moment is never a single moment. It's just the point in time when everything clicked together. So although we came up with the idea for Lumen 5 about three and a half years ago and began building it three and a half years ago, I think the actual roots of the idea and the observations really were years before that. It's every single time I launched Facebook, every single time I launched Twitter, every article I read about the landscape and social media and digital marketing, and those were all just connecting signals that up until three and a half years ago didn't really make a lot of sense. And when it clicked that there's an opportunity, that's when we began building a solution for it. And the first version was very simple. We just wanted to create a simple user experience. We saw that video editing tools like Adobe After Effects or Adobe Premiere were very complicated and we just wanted to create a simple user experience. And then over time, we layered on automation, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and further push the what we call average creation time or average completion time down from what traditionally, if you want a video made, it could take weeks. Now we've successfully pushed that down to an average of six minutes. And we continue to push that threshold.

Using our, wow, that's really awesome six minute video.

So we could do like 14 videos in this conversation.

Maybe, yeah. We have large enterprise customers who produce thousands of videos on a monthly basis using our technology. So, you know, you might have seen some of our customers like Forbes, Time magazine or here. The Daily Hive is part of our customer base as well. And if you're ever curious how they're able to release videos multiple times per day across the globe, it's using a lot of the technology that we put together.

That's awesome.

That's fantastic.

Just to hang on to something you said earlier and to jump away for a second, obviously with we're doing this call virtually the world's changing again. What are you seeing now that you're trying to maybe keep half an eye on? Because I know in the way your mind works, you're always looking.

Yeah, I think so. You're seeing the way people work, the way people purchase, the way those are all changing. There's talks of trying on clothes is now extremely dangerous because Covid can live on zippers and buttons. And so I think there's new opportunities emerging in E commerce. There's new opportunities emerging in making people feel safe. And this isn't the first pandemic and it's not going to be the last pandemic. And I think if anything, this is a wake up call that will give way to new practices. I think food delivery is becoming more normal than ever before. So the way people purchase, the way people live and work, you see zoom and slack, skyrocketing in their stock prices, Domino's and Papa John's hired 100,000 people while companies were laying people off. So it's not that the economy is on a downturn, it's that it's shifting and there are certain players who are winning and certain players who are losing as a result of it. And I think this, this, this pandemic has accelerated the rate of which we, we are adopting a digital lifestyle. And I think that's something to really keen into is what does remote work look like? What kind of technologies, what kind of opportunities are there for technologies to help people work better together? When you have companies like Twitter saying they're going to go remote optional forever as an entire organization, Google saying that remote will likely last until 2021. And right now it's just the zoom and slack combo. There's so many more opportunities out there. So especially around the remote aspect of work, I think there's a lot of interesting opportunities there.

And what about your guys at Lumen 5? Like, have you guys decided anything or. Obviously right now everybody's remote. But is that Going to be a long term for you or not decided.

It's interesting. I think if anything, the pandemic has created the opportunity for us to try full remotes and seeing how people are. And as with many things, people are great with adapting and things are fine. Company continues to grow. Our operations are good. What this allows us to do by being a remote company is we could potentially hire from all across the globe without that physical limitation. We could hire from any country in the world and still be able to work as a remote first company. But at the same time, we need to balance that with the social needs people. Not everyone loves to be at home every single day. And so there is a high likelihood that we would go into some form of a remote first working environment where there is an office that people will go to to collaborate a couple times a week if they need to, but be completely okay with getting a lot of their focus time at home. And that's still to be determined. I think it's just going to be a series of experiments to see what people resonate with. Yeah.

And speaking of adapting, with the current pandemic and lockdowns, how has this kind of kind of affected your daily routine? Like, what is it kind of looking like now for you?

I used to spend about two hours in total on transit. Getting to Mount Pleasant, coming back to Burnaby, that was a very time consuming process for me. It's transfer, sky trains, bus. So for me, getting the two hours back is actually very helpful. I do miss being in person, especially interviewing and hiring. Getting to know someone I find can be challenging if you're just doing it remote. But other than that, getting the two hours back gives me the chance to get a lot more done and I've appreciated that benefit. I think it would be nice to be able to meet some of our new team members. We've hired people that I've never met before. They've never seen the office before. And over the past two months, we've hired a few people. And I think there is that aspect that I miss. But from a productivity standpoint, getting those two hours back is really helpful.

Yeah, speaking of hiring too, like, so let's say like there was someone that was really interested in working for Lumen. Like, what are some of the key things that you kind of look for in a potential hire?

Personal development is a big thing. We definitely believe that company, any company at the end of the day is just a group of people. And if a company wants to grow, the people individually have to grow. So one thing we really look for is a demonstrated track record of personal growth. How aggressively have they pursued improvement or knowledge, be it taking courses, reading books, whatever it may be. I think there are certain individuals who are just really high performers who are always challenging themselves. And that's something that we look for in not just the work history, but also in school. Even for more junior talent who are looking to enter the workforce, we're always curious as to did they go the extra mile to pursue extracurricular and were they competitive in those endeavors? Those are things that I think are important qualities for us to do what we want to do, which is to build a much larger business than we are today.

Yeah, just kind of like adding in a little fun twist, like, have you ever had a really bad interview by any chance? Because, you know, no names, no names, no names need to be added in. But, you know, we kind of want to also hear, you know, the bad side of things, you know, especially for those that might be interested and joining. Joining the tech industry, like for sort of some backstory for myself, working at Launch was actually my first tech startup, so wasn't really. I was kind of aware of what I was going to get into. But Sam might say that my interview with him was quite interesting.

That's a story for another time. But we like her and she's here.

Well, whatever she did, it worked.

Yep.

Yeah. So. And it's not always the candidate. Sometimes it's me. And it's. I think so much of interviewing is about that fit. And you can have a bad interview even if both parties are very high performers, but if you're not speaking on the same wavelength and you're just not connecting on the right value, sometimes it just makes for poor interview. So it's not always the candidate. But specifically with what we look for, going back to the earlier point about personal growth and that constant learning, I think where the interviews tend to fall flat are people who are. Who aren't really able to articulate how they've pushed themselves to learn or to just be a little more than who they were yesterday. And those are the interviews that I think don't tend to end up in an offer. I wouldn't say they're bad by any means, but that is something that I've noticed on a recurring basis. And we try to identify that earlier on from the resume or from the phone screen. But yeah, we have a very strong culture of learning. Even after a candidate is selected for the job, we have learning budgets. We have kind of lunch and learns, and we always encourage this Idea of constant improvement.

That's awesome. And then for just those people that are listening that aren't in our industry, like, I feel like, I don't know if you agree with me, but there's certain, like, romanticism to working in tech. I don't know if maybe it's like it's Silicon Valley or, I don't know, other shows or stuff like that. But like, what do you think people outside that are maybe interested in joining the tech industry? What are some of those unspoken truths or challenges?

Yeah, I think as you mentioned at perhaps the beginning, I've built a number of startups. There's a lot of news stories being written about Lumen 5 and not as much written about all the times where I have failed. And that's the side of startups that you don't hear often about. Yes, Lumen 5 is a successful company with where it is today, but it's something like my 11th or 12th company. And there's been a string of failures along the way leading up to the learnings that made this possible. And I'll bet that it's the same for any success story you hear about. It's always a string of failures that kind of lay down a graveyard to set up the success for one company or one idea that works out well. So the romanticized part of the startup world is I think people talk about and think about that end success, whereas most companies are the stepping stones and it's the failures along the way that build the entrepreneurs and the people to be able to do what they do. And it's the same even within a single company is we make tons of mistakes on a daily basis. We work on features that don't go anywhere and occasionally we have disagreements about nothing and the conversations don't matter. And it's not like we've perfected this whole operation. It's a constant experimentation and learning process. I think one mistake is definitely to focus too much on the end results. I think startups are really about the journey, and if you don't care about the journey, you're not going to be able to build 10 companies, 20 companies and keep going. And I do it because I love the journey. And it doesn't matter how many times I failed, as long as I'm learning from every mistake that I made. And I think that's the same regardless of whether you're a CEO or a junior developer who's just entering the tech world for the first time. And the journey is what makes the path worthwhile.

Do you think that Failure gets easier.

I don't know if easier is the right way to put it. I think it's. For me, failure is fun. If I'm not failing, then I'm not being challenged, I'm not being challenged, then I'm more or less wasting my time. If anything, failure is an indication that I'm spending my time on the right things, that there's a right level of challenge that I feel like I'm being pushed to overcome. And so I don't think it ever gets easier. I don't think you want failure to get easier. You want it to remain at that perfect level of flow where you're just adequately challenged and energized to overcome those failures.

Makes a lot of sense. I think that's how Gene and I feel when we play video games.

Just wait until the release of Valorant. Yeah, speaking of journeys, too, I just wanted to ask, like, I feel like, you know, from reading a lot about you, you started your entrepreneurial journey quite for some time now. Like, what kind of sparked that passion or like interest to kind of get you down that road? Like, was it just something that you've had since, you know, you were a kid, you just wanted to experiment with things, you were building stuff up and it just eventually kind of turned into more of like a tech entrepreneurial journey, or was it some specific events?

It's certainly a bit of a childhood wonder that I think everyone should struggle, strive to preserve. It's just this idea of challenging why things are the way they are. And often I'll see a certain system or mechanism or the way certain things work that just don't make sense. And I think entrepreneurs are people who see something that doesn't make sense, ask why it doesn't make sense, and then try and make it make sense. And I think that's all it is. A lot of people look at things that don't work or don't make sense, and they move on and they don't feel the urge to do anything about it. And I think where children and entrepreneurs perhaps share the same thing is we ask why? And why is this the way it is? Why does it matter? Why should it be? Why isn't it any other way? And then taking that next step and actually making it the way that it should be. And the world is changing so rapidly that problems are always emerging. Things get deprecated and obsolete. And that's the role of the entrepreneur, is to bring that childhood wonder into every problem. Really keep asking why a thousand times until you get to the Bottom of whether or not this thing makes sense. And if it doesn't make sense, then make it make sense through a business, through a project, through a piece of technology, whatever that may be. And that's always the spark that starts every journey from business to business.

And do you think that anyone can be capable of being an entrepreneur, or do you think that there's a certain type of mindset that you might need to become an entrepreneur?

I personally think that everyone is capable. And I think the only characteristic that prevents people from being entrepreneurs are probably perfectionism. And I think it's because if you strive for perfect, you'll just never end up launching anything. You'll never end up taking that first step. I think the very essence of being an entrepreneur is to be comfortable launching or building something that's incredibly embarrassing, that almost delivers no value. And that's what a minimum viable product should be. It should be something that you're very embarrassed about. But when you put something out there, you gather insights, you learn from it. People are not going to like your first version, but they'll tell you why they don't like it. And that gives you your next step and your next step and your next step. And it's always one foot in front of the other. So I think that's really all it is. If you are a bit of a perfectionist, that's the thing that's going to hold you back from taking that critical first step.

What kind of advice would you have for those that are looking to start their first startup, or those that maybe have been in the game for a while, but find themselves kind of struggling to keep that motivation or passion going? Do you have any words for them? Maybe.

I think it really helps to find something that you actually care about. When I find entrepreneurs or when I encounter entrepreneurs who lack the motivation to take that next step, it's usually because they selected an idea that maybe they assumed had commercial opportunity or commercial potential, but they didn't really care about the idea. And really, it's the passion for the problem. It's not the passion for entrepreneurship, it's not the passion for business building. It's really the passion for the problem that drives an entrepreneur. You can put me into a completely different business solving a problem that I don't care about, and I wouldn't be motivated to pursue it. It has to be a problem that I'm passionate about solving. And I believe that's the case for, for every entrepreneur. If Elon Musk doesn't care about going to Mars, he's not going to dedicate his life to doing it. And if there are any entrepreneurs who are out there feeling unmotivated, I would seriously question whether or not that idea is something that you really want to do something about or a problem you really want to solve.

Speaking of, just came up with a really fun question idea. So if you are able to kind of create your own dream team of three people, whether it's someone from the past, whether it's someone that's currently existing now, celebrity CEO, what would your dream team be looking like and who would they be?

Sure, I guess I name dropped earlier. You need someone crazy like Elon Musk. So when I'm thinking crazy, someone who really thinks out of this world, literally, he definitely comes to mind. And I think with every business, you need someone with that moonshot mentality who really wants to do something that nobody's even thinking about, like bringing humanity to a different planet. That's the level of craziness that I think you need. Then I think you need to pair that with a bit of pragmatism. Someone who can actually take those grand ideas and plan out the execution and be meticulous about it. I think with something like that brings to mind someone like Bill Gates. If you've watched his documentary, you can kind of tell that he's that meticulous type. He's not quite as crazy as someone like Musk, but he's meticulous enough to be able to execute that. If they were to work together, I think Gates could actually balance Musk in many ways from that perspective. And then I think the third person you need, you know, Gates and Musk are both technologists and execution oriented, but you need someone, someone with a lot of charisma to bring people together, to bring, whether it's investors or customers and just the people. So I would throw in someone like Barack Obama. So you've got. You've got Obama, Musk and Gates, which has the kind of crazy vision, the pragmatic execution and the charisma to bring people together. So that'll be my fun dream team.

That's a team.

Yeah. I was just trying to say imagine if the three of them did combine forces. Maybe we'd be landing on Mars sooner than we think.

Maybe. Maybe.

Yeah.

So, yeah. So I guess some of the other questions you want to kind of touch base on is like, first off, like, congratulations on winning the New Ventures PC competition last year. Aside from the cash prizes, what kind of other opportunities and kind of benefits did you get from receiving this recognition?

I Think it's helpful to put Lumen 5 on the map. We are a relatively young company, which means that even within the city, not that many people know Lumen 5 as a company exists. Within the past two and a half years or so, we've grown from really just the three co founders to now almost a team of 40 people and that you don't really hear much about. Lumen 5, we're a very inward facing team. We really focus on building products. We don't do a lot of PR and such activities and that can sometimes be challenging when it comes to employer branding or attracting talent if we're not spending time telling our stories externally. And I think New Venture BC was just such a great opportunity for us to put ourselves out there and really announce to the city and the community of British Columbia that we are here and we're here to build something significant and we're looking to grow our team constantly. We've more than doubled our team over the past 12 months and we want to double again in the next 12 months and that requires us to put ourselves out there and tell our story.

And so maybe, you know, for the listeners that may be interested in applying for this year's New Ventures BC competition, like, do you have any advice for them, any tips to, to help them apply and get themselves ready for that?

Absolutely. I go back to what I said earlier, which is that problem that you're solving is so important not just in your own passion in solving that problem, but is that problem big enough? Is this problem worth a billion dollars to solve? And I think the size of the idea is really important when it comes to competitions like New Ventures PC or any kind of conversations with investors. People want to know what is the Google size vision, what is the Facebook size vision? I think there is a tendency to solve small problems and that usually is a great starting point. Solving a small problem is easier to execute on, it's easier to make progress on. But when it comes to something like New Ventures bc, I would really challenge any applicants to think critically about. After you've solved this small version of the problem, what are the next, what are the larger problems at play? And how is your solution going to impact millions of people or hundreds of millions of people around the world and definitely challenge yourself on that size and potential of that problem.

Do you think it's helpful to join competitions like New Ventures BC even with, you know, quote unquote, you're not, you feel you're not ready yet or maybe you're pre product or just MVP or Whatever.

Absolutely. I think it goes back to my earlier comment about being a perfectionist is you're never going to enter any competition if you're always waiting for this perfect business or perfect idea. And it's all about putting something out there, getting it torn apart, getting feedback. And the judges are not there to make fun of you or insult you. They're there to give you feedback and tell you what you need to work on, what you need to think about. It's always a learning opportunity.

Awesome. Well, yeah, that was, like, fantastic. That was so much information. And I think a lot of our listeners will definitely see a lot of insight from everything that you've talked to us about. I guess my final question for you is, like, for those that, you know, were hesitant about kind of stepping in and beginning this entrepreneurial journey, like, do you have any words of encouragement for them?

I think in the great words of Nike, just do it.

Just do it.

Yeah. And there's so many. And I've certainly gone through that myself, which is there's so many considerations. What are you giving up? What are people going to think of you? How many years are you going to waste doing this one thing? And those are, in my opinion, not the right questions. The right questions is, what is the next step? What is the immediate next step? How do you take that step? And again, one foot in front of the other. And it's always going to be a long journey. It's a marathon for sure, but you have to take that first step and then the next step and then the next step. And they. The famous saying goes, mastering anything takes 10,000 hours. And it's the same thing for something like entrepreneurship. And I've been doing this for over a decade to have a company now that's still nowhere near the size of a Google or Facebook. And so this kind of craft is like any other craft. It takes time to build. So I would look back, challenge anyone to think about what is a craft that they have actually spent hours honing, whether it's a musical instrument or a skill. You know, everyone has spent hours honing some craft and got good at something. And really, entrepreneurship is no different. And I think sometimes we can. We can play piano or guitar really well. And then when it comes to entrepreneurship, we just feel like we can't do it. But it's important to think back to how many hours you spent doing those things. And that's just the same thing that you have to do here to hone a new craft.

That's awesome. So, yeah. Before we let you go. I think we'd be remiss if we didn't ask you what are you guys currently looking for? And for all our listeners out there that may be interested, what are you hiring for right now?

We're currently and I don't know when you would be listening to this podcast or this episode, but we're currently here in May of 2020 looking for a number of front end engineers react and we have some finance positions that's going to be opening up soon. In the near future we're going to open up an email marketing position as well. So there's something for everyone and we're always opening up new positions. We usually hire three to five people on a monthly basis and so definitely keep a lookout. All of our job positions are on our website, lumen5.comcareers so whatever background you come from, a fast growing startup usually needs people of all discipline and departments.

Awesome. And then how can people connect with you or just follow your ongoings or Lumen 5's ongoings?

Sure, yeah. Twitter is definitely a great place. Facebook also welcome that as well for both of those. My username is Michael hsc, so feel free to tweet at me, send me a DM if there's anything I can help or words of advice that you want to in private. Happy to deliver that.

Awesome.

Amazing.

Thank you so much, Michael. So that was Michael Chang from Lumen5everyone. We hope that you listened to this episode and found a lot of great value. And thank you Michael for taking the time to chat with us for this episode of Bits and Bytes.

Thank you for having me. Had a good time, Sam.