In this commencement address, Rich Robinson—an entrepreneur, investor, and longtime China resident—opens with self‑deprecating humor and anecdotes about learning Mandarin, then paints a vivid picture of Shanghai’s rapid transformation. He frames the graduates’ future within a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) world reshaped by unprecedented AI‑driven opportunities and disruptions, noting both massive wealth creation and massive job displacement. Robinson stresses that, despite technological upheaval, the single most reliable predictor of long‑term happiness is the quality of relationships, urging graduates to prioritize people over pure financial gain. He introduces a “regret‑minimization framework” to help them choose paths aligned with personal values, illustrating the pain of living a life dictated by others. He advocates “full‑contact learning” – embracing uncomfortable, hands‑on experiences as a continual cycle of unlearning and relearning. Central to his advice is the idea that only two levers are truly under one’s control: action and reaction (effort and attitude). Using the metaphor of sharpening an axe before cutting a tree, he encourages relentless preparation and mindset work. Finally, he reminds the audience that the only moment truly within our control is the present, urging them to live fully in the now.
Chapters
Thank you for today, Mr. Richard Robinson. Rich is a seasoned connector, tech entrepreneur, and professor, and has been based in China since 1996. He's the founding partner of Whip Wham Ventures, which has been accelerating and investing in innovations across China as well as Asia for many, many years. He's been with 8 startups during this time and dozens of others as an investor, advisor, and mentor. Previously a senior executive at 3 of these companies that have gone through to being listed, Rich has also founded 5 companies as well. He teaches at 2 of the top universities here in China as an adjunct professor at Peking University Guanghua MBA program, as well as lecturing at the BI Tsinghua University program as well. He's received an MBA from the Rotterdam School of Management, studied at Cambridge University in the UK, He holds a BS in Business Administration from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, but most importantly, Rich is a friend of Hult. So please join me in welcoming Richard to the podium.
谢谢啊！女士们、先生们，下午好，吃什么？ 这个毕业典礼是一个非常。哦，Are we doing this in English? It wasn't. Ah, so. All right. You know, I have some Donald Trump jokes, but they're a lot funnier in Chinese. All right. How about giving it up for Dean Goodfolk, everybody? Come on! I don't know where his name comes from, but I think it's. I'm just guessing.
The irony.
The irony of it all. Hey, just out of curiosity, how many people here actually did study Chinese who are not native Chinese speakers? So, you know, I've been in China, the mainland, for 19 years. I spent 4 years in Hong Kong, and those 4 years in Hong Kong, I studied Mandarin the whole time I was there. And then I moved to Beijing. I had a really nice thing happen, a really nice compliment. I get to Beijing, I do a phone call in Chinese, I use my Chinese name, and I do the meeting, and this businessman is shocked when he meets me. He's shocked that I'm this foreign businessman because he said on the phone— You're Chinese. I spoke just like a Chinese 5-year-old. Right? What an amazing compliment. I've been studying Chinese for 4 years. I sound like a 5-year-old? I'm like a year ahead of the average Chinese person. I'm so smart. Right? And so, yeah. So, uh, I got a call from Dean DeVolk, and he said, you know, Rich, we're Hult. We're one of the top Business schools on the planet. We hold the highly prestigious triple crown accreditation. Um, we're looking for a respected, smart, charming, and funny commencement speaker, but we can't find anybody. So would you just do it instead? Would you mind?
No.
You know, we live in China. We don't have much going on.
Take a look.
Hard train overnight from Beijing, we'll pay half the fare. And I said, I'm in. I'm in. As long as I can dress like Professor Dumbledore. Speeches, Commencement! So it's a pleasure here to be talking to Gryffindor. Don't look at those guys over there. But, uh, no, how about, how about a huge round of applause for your soon-to-be alma mater? I grew up in the city of Austin, and I've spoken at the whole campus there. It's amazing. Uh, campuses all around the world. And how about the amazing city of Shanghai? Wow, this place, one of the most amazing metropolises in the world. I first came First time I came here in '93, I saw when Pudong was still under construction. Such a surreal and awe-inspiring skyline. And the thing I love about Shanghai, against that skyline, it's the only place in the world where you can see elderly people walking around in slippers and pajamas backwards while singing opera and walking their pet parakeet in a cage. It's magical. I love it. I love this place. I really do. So, so here I am, and I suppose my task here today is to transfer some wisdom, some expertise. And I once read that an expert is a person who's made every mistake possible. And I have made more mistakes than all of you combined, for sure. I still have many more to make. I look forward to making new ones, but I guess taking some of those failures as scabs and calluses and scar tissue, kind of like armor, and to pass along some strategy and tactics as you guys enter into the battlefield of life and business. So that's why I'm here today, and this is where I insert an obscure, memorable, and useful quote that that I dug up that you guys can pull out of your back pocket and use anytime. So, I once read that impossible is nothing, so just do it. A wise man once said that, and not— I think it was Abraham Lincoln. I'm going to talk later about taking risks. That was a little bit of a risk right there. So thank you and enjoy your futures. That's all I've got for you. So speaking seriously about the future, here's the good news and the bad news for you guys. There's really never been a better time to be alive, right? We live better than kings of yore. Gratitude, as Dean said, gratefulness, gratitude for all that we have. We've already all lived really want in so many ways. That's also set against a VUCA world— V-U-C-A— volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous, which makes things really tricky to navigate and even more tricky for you guys to navigate in the future. On the flip side, the opportunities for technology are definitely unprecedented, and I think the biggest force is going to be artificial AI will transform the world and add trillions and trillions of dollars to the global GDP and add so much value and give you guys so much opportunity. But at the same time, it will cause seismic societal shifts and decimate tens of millions of jobs. So there's opportunity and threat right there. So also on the upside, a lot of you sitting here are going to live to be 100, probably by the time we You're going to live to be a healthy 100. But on the downside, you're not retiring at 65. That's a false construct anyway, and you'll be working much longer into your life. So let's fast forward 60 years to your future self. So let's start with the end in mind, so to speak, and just look at a couple of things. In say 2080, where the world's going to be a lot different than the world of your parents and grandparents. But well, actually in 2080, due to technological advances that we can't even imagine, there's one thing that's going to stay the same: the President of the United States is actually going to be Donald Trump's hair. Don't ask how, but artificial intelligence. But the good news is that. Donald Trump's hair is actually doing a much better job than Donald Trump himself. So, best, best job still. But 60 years from now, probably one thing that's not going to change is that your regrets as an older person are likely going to be the same as regrets of, say, your grandparents or your parents. And your happiness will probably be tied to the same thing. So there's a lot of good studies that show that happiness is directly tied to relationships. They did a study in my hometown of Boston, Harvard grads, working-class Bostonians, and they followed them for 80 years. What's going to predict your future? Money?
Wealth?
Status? Power? Impact? Whatever?
Relationships.
It all turned out to be relationships. All of those things are important. You're all business students, you're all ambitious, and you're all going to work hard, and you all will have the wealth and status and power. But never forget that that's not the top of the pyramid. The top of the pyramid is always relationships. It's always optimizing for that. Take an extra 50 grand a year, but not really be around for your family, or not being able to be with your with your friends. How about taking 10 grand less a year and having more time? You can't make more time, but you can always make more money. And I see people making that mistake in my cohort who are actually not optimizing for relationships, not thinking of that first, thinking like, oh, I have this opportunity, therefore I must take it. You can take the opportunities, but I think also ritualizing being with family, being with your tribe, being with your old friends, making sure that when you hit that age of 80, 90, 100, you look back and you say, I did that right. I optimized my happiness because of relationships. The second thing is regrets. The biggest regret usually is what people did not do. If I did it, I did it, and I've made my peace with it, but I really wish I did that. So I turned 52 a couple I have a friend, he's a lawyer. He never wanted to be a lawyer, his parents wanted him to be a lawyer. And now his parents are gone, and he's a lawyer, and he doesn't want to be a lawyer anymore. And he doesn't know why he's a lawyer, but he feels like he can't do anything else. And he really regrets that he didn't follow not only— what didn't he do? He didn't follow his values. He didn't go for what he knew that he needed to do in the beginning. He made that decision. But also making those changes later in life. It's really important to make those tough decisions and make sure that you have what Jeff Bezos from Amazon says, a regret minimization framework, so that you're being able to limit the number of regrets that you have when you get old. That's important also because you're going to have to make these changes. So that's the thing is you just finished your MBA, but you probably have another 3 or 4 MBAs Ahead of you, you're going to have to relearn, unlearn, learn again. With the way that the world is going, you're going to have to be continuously learning, but learning not just in a book. Learning like some of these kids walking around here learned how to walk, hitting their head on a coffee table, scraping their knee in the rug, wiping up, learning how to walk. Full contact learning that feels. Uncomfortable, that feels really awkward, that makes you not want to do it. And to be able to be comfortable with that discomfort, that's what you really need to be able to dig into. And I want to give you one tool, and it's something that Dean talked about, which is really nothing is in your control. Outcomes, people, companies, projects, situations— it's really not in your control. It's in your sphere of influence. The only 2 things that are in your control is that you 100% control your action and your reaction, your effort and your attitude. So if you know that those are the only 2 things that you can control, then what are you doing every day, every day to sharpen that axe? You know, one of my favorite Quotes is, if you give me 6 hours to cut down a tree, I'll spend 4 hours sharpening the axe before I do that. And that was President Trump. That was Abraham Lincoln, actually. President Trump would say, oh, I've been watching Fox News. Is it 6 hours already? I didn't know. There is no axe. Sharpen that axe. Be able to give the best effort and have the best attitude. Have the best intention and the best reaction to things that happen to you. Those are the only things that are in your control. And that's actually for me as an entrepreneur. How do I go to bed at night? There's always more stuff to do. There's always another problem. There's always something else that can be done. But then I think, did I give my best effort? And did I have the best attitude today? And was it better than the day before? And what am I doing to make it better the next day? So, you know, I've learned that the only thing that exists, the only thing that really exists, is right now. I'm sorry, right now.
Right now.
Now!
Now!
I think I got that one right. Right, the now exists. As you get older, as you have aging parents and kids and pressures of life, you can spend time ruminating about the past. You can spend time worrying about the future. And then in the now, for God's sakes, when you're in the now, do what everybody else does and go into social media and avoid the now. And how much better you are than them, and then compare yourself to how much worse you are than everybody else. Avoid actually being in the present. No! Look at the past, but don't stare at the past. Use the future as a guide, but don't spend all the time worrying about it. Leverage the now. That is the biggest power that you have right now. Get off of social media! Spend your time focusing on right now. What can I do right now? To have the best action that comes from Bahá'u'lláh's power? Have that intention. What can I do right now to have the best attitude and the best reaction to things that happen to me? And you can always bring yourself back to the now and know that I can go to sleep at night and sleep well and sharpen the axe by sleeping well and having the right diet and meditating. Meditation, journaling, and spending time with good people. Sure, do that, but enable yourself to be able to sleep at night by knowing that I took advantage of the now, and I did it in the profoundest way. Put your hands together, everybody, for our next speaker, Pablo Bonilla, everybody! Thank you!
