Yuying Deng: Chiến lược lặp lại sản phẩm của Esevel, làm chủ việc ủy quyền và bài học từ người sáng lập công ty mẹ - E541
“What we did was that we kept a very open mind. We did know that this was the way that work was going, that work was becoming global. The geographical barriers between countries were disappearing because of remote and hybrid work, and all this was due to COVID, right? So we took it as a kind of step-by-step iteration, and I think that really helped as well. Because what happened is that before a company would go with something as fundamental a shift as changing their device management and security software, they want to know you first and they want to trust you—I think especially here in the Asia context. So that was how they started out with us. They came with us in a low-stakes kind of way, where they started doing procurement with us and then device lifecycle management, and then they're like, "I know this is a company I can trust." - Yuying Deng, CEO of Esevel
“So for us, what we really want is someone who can guide us on the fundamentals we need in terms of IT management and device security. They also need to understand that when companies try to increase their revenue, if they do not have ISO, GDPR, or SOC-II compliance, it's going to be difficult for them to secure government contracts—especially nowadays. I'm not sure whether my employees are updating their laptops, and I may be at risk of a phishing attack or ransomware, with the government now imposing very heavy fines for these issues. I don't want to be at risk of that.” - Yuying Deng, CEO of Esevel
“I think that for companies of a certain size and beyond, it makes sense to get a good IT manager on board. So, if your company is at the 200–300 people level, you should have an IT manager, especially if your teams are in-house. However, for larger companies, we describe ourselves as an augmentation of their IT teams. This means that while the IT person may be based here in Singapore, he has team members in the Philippines, Thailand, and Australia. Many tasks need to be done in-country, so he relies on us to extend support for those team members in terms of laptop procurement, onboarding, offboarding, storage, and even repair support.” - Yuying Deng, CEO of Esevel
Yuying Deng, CEO of Esevel, and Jeremy Au talked about Esevel’s IT service business evolution over the past few years. They trace the journey from handling simple device procurement in Southeast Asia (with a focus on Singapore, India, and Indonesia) to offering full IT life cycle management and cybersecurity support. They also discussed how customer feedback and real pain points drive service expansion, the importance of a targeted sales approach, and the need for clear leadership and delegation, especially for companies with 200–300 employees. They share personal insights on balancing startup life with parenting, noting that Yuying started her first company when her daughter was just two.
1. From Procurement to Full IT Support: Esevel began by helping teams in the APAC region procure IT devices and later expanded to include device setup, repair, offboarding, and cybersecurity support.
2. Customer-Driven Service Expansion: Feedback from clients in regions like Singapore, India, and Indonesia pushed the business to grow step by step beyond simple procurement, meeting broader IT management needs.
3. Targeting Clients at Their Peak Pain Points: The most effective sales approach emerged by reaching out when companies faced high-stress moments such as during rapid overseas hiring or critical IT issues.
4. Building Trust Through Incremental Engagement: Clients initially engage with low-risk services and, over time, entrust the company with more complex IT functions, proving that trust is built gradually.
5. IT & Cybersecurity Standards: Yuying emphasizes the importance of certifications like ISO 27001, SOC2, and GDPR to secure client trust, satisfy insurers, and mitigate risks.
6. Effective Leadership Through Delegation: Yuying learned that trying to do everything herself was unsustainable. For companies with 200–300 employees, delegating to trusted team members is key to growth.
7. Balancing Startup Life & Parenthood: Drawing a parallel between raising a child and building a company, Yuying noted that starting her first company when her daughter was two taught her the value of clear goals and simple focus.
(00:56) Jeremy Au: Hey, good to see you.
(00:58) Yuying Deng: Good to see you again, Jeremy.
(00:59) Jeremy Au: It's been over (01:00) two years since our last recording. I felt like it was a good way for us to catch up and talk about some of the things you learned along the way.
(01:05) Yuying Deng: Sure.
(01:06) Jeremy Au: So for those who want to know more about your backstory, about why you started the company, obviously they can refer to that audio recording that we made two over years ago.
(01:14) Yuying Deng: I believe there was a video recording as well.
(01:16) Jeremy Au: Who knows where it's still up, but at least it's still there. There's transcripts still there. I hope so. And we'll look to it in the transcript here so that people can look at it. And so we want to talk a little bit about me just like your business and go through a little bit that, and also the evolution of that business over the past few years, both on the professional side, but also maybe on the personal side as well.
(01:33) I think the formulation of how you define a company is different from how you formulated it two years ago, from my perspective, right? And I think for me, when I heard it two years ago, it was very much about taking over the devices, the IT support to some extent. And now you're mentioning the whole process.
(01:48) So can you tell me about how that shift happened?
(01:50) Yuying Deng: Yeah, the shift really happened as a result of what we learned from our customers along the way. So as you alluded to, when we started out, we really started out with procurement. We were helping (02:00) companies with globally distributed teams to procure IT devices, IT peripherals, and all the different countries around the APAC region, and then eventually globally as well.
(02:09) But then what we found from that gradually, was that people didn't just need help with buying devices. They needed help with setting up the devices. They needed help with like repair support when something went down and obviously, those who needed help with off boarding as well. So if an employee off boards in India and you don't have an office over there, you need someone to collect the device, to clean the device, to store it over there, eventually to redeploy it to someone new that you get in.
(02:35) So that was then where we expanded the services. And after we did that, we heard feedback from even more clients who say, Hey, now that you're doing this for us, we have also experienced some problems as well my employee got a phishing email the other day. We have discovered that some of our devices are missing in our Excel sheet that we're keeping and so on. So we discovered that, you know for our group of Client profile, a lot of them are (03:00) actually looking to outsource this management of it to an external party, right?
(03:05) So they may have a lean in house it team or maybe they don't even have an it team, but they really need help with the complexity of managing IT and they understand that they need this in order to scale their businesses as well. So now it's a very comprehensive suite of IT services, no longer just procurement and like device lifecycle management in other countries, but we also help them to manage their devices and the security of those devices. We even educate their employees on cyber hygiene risk and help them with endpoint protection as well.
(03:36) Jeremy Au: And I think what's interesting as well is that going through the stack where you're following the customers from a bottom up perspective, but also I mean, from a strategy perspective, it's just following the customer and, cross selling every module that they want. I'm just curious why didn't you envision this two years ago? That'd be the negative version of this, right? Because I think at the start, we all have this idea about what it is. So why do you think that you didn't see that two years ago? Or why is it that (04:00) you learned it along the way from your perspective?
(04:01) Yuying Deng: Yeah, I wish I did see it two years ago. But I think when we started during that period of time, what we did was that we kept a very open mind. We did know that this was the way that what was going, that what was becoming global, the geographical barriers between countries was disappearing because of remote and hybrid work. And all this was due to COVID, right? But we were not sure during our customer discovery at that point in time, whether companies just needed help with just procurement, and that was just what they were looking for, or whether they needed help just with device life cycle management.
(04:34) We did have a thesis that they would need something that is more comprehensive, that encompasses the whole but we didn't want to draw any conclusions and build, invest a lot in building up an entire platform only to find at the end that customers didn't really need it. So we took it as a kind of like step by step iteration. And I think that really helped as well, because what happened is that, before a company would go with you in something as (05:00) fundamental shift as changing their device management and security software, they want to know you first and they want to trust you. I think, especially here in the Asia context.
(05:08) So that was how they started out with us. They came with us in a low stakes kind of way where they started doing procurement with us and then device life cycle management. And then they're like, I know this is a company I can trust. They are very responsive. They are very professional and they provide great service. And then they ask us to do more for them. So I think that there's also a level of trust as well that we have earned with our customers.
(05:30) Jeremy Au: And I think what's interesting is that, I think it makes a little sense, right? Because from my perspective, as somebody who's an executive is in a bucket of things I don't want to manage.
(05:39) Yuying Deng: Yeah. Your time is much too valuable for this.
(05:41) Jeremy Au: Exactly. It's I don't want to handle where the procurement for what is the lowest price for a Lenovo laptop is. And I definitely don't want to handle it when they forget their password. That's the last thing I want to handle. And it keeps coming up over and over again. So
(05:54) I think there's a whole kind of like bucket of stuff that, I just don't want to touch it. I guess what's interesting is what's the sales (06:00) process for that? Because for me, I don't want to think about it and I probably try to delegate it as much as possible.
(06:05) So what's the right sales process from your perspective for, because I think it's different where I'm like, okay, Jeremy wants to do AI and he wants to automate this for revenue. So he's going to go out there. He's going to put a team together to do, like a task force to do, meet the demos.
(06:21) He's going to, I'm going to be there to meet vendors, I'm going to proactively choose and now I'm gonna call a few friends and I'm going to choose the one that's okay, this is the thing that's going to bring, I don't know, something, productivity or whatever it is, but this is something I don't want to touch. And it's probably also been passed down to a level two, level three manager already as well. So what's that sales process like?
(06:39) Yuying Deng: So it took us a while or so to discover the sales process for this, but what the sales process is, the most effective sales process we have discovered is actually to approach you when your pain is highest so not exactly to approach you but approach your manager to whom you have delegated this to when the pain is the highest, so as to when that is it could be you know a couple of (07:00) situations, right? It could be when you're ramping up your hiring of people overseas we would see that somewhere in some sort of job boards. It could be, when we know that you are potentially looking at some sort of certification to help your business to grow.
(07:14) So those are the points in time that we approach customers like you to say, "Hey, this is still something that you can totally outsource to us. We've done this for dozens or hundreds of companies before, and this is something that we can help you with."
(07:26) Jeremy Au: And in my head, would a cybersecurity breach, is that a moment of high stress or would it just be like, Oh, I'm going to look for some sort of cybersecurity resolution vendor.
(07:37) Yuying Deng: Yeah, I would think that at the moment of a cybersecurity breach, people's thoughts go mostly to, how am I going to pay this ransomware? How am I going to resolve this? How am I going to get all my servers back in order? So it is not something that they would automatically think about.
(07:52) It is like maybe a person receiving a critical illness kind of diagnosis. Immediately after that, they'll be looking for (08:00) the surgeon, but they are not necessarily looking for a personal trainer or nutritionist to help them get their health back in order that is something that will happen maybe a couple of months after the cyber security breach.
(08:11) Jeremy Au: Right, makes sense. And I guess one question I have for you is that if that is the case, how do you generate leads? Because right now, it's all about, I don't know, is it like LinkedIn? Like you said, is it based on conferences? Cause I think a lot of folks find a struggle, right? It's like B2B, it's such a slog. B2C is okay, it was my ads. Everybody likes coffee and like sugar. I did like fat and you put them together, right? But B2B you're like, wait, this is this a CEO? Is it a CFO? Is it the head of it? Like, how do you think about it? Yeah.
(08:41) Yuying Deng: So for us, we actually do have a methodology for doing it, which is proving very effective. It's something that we have, came across like about six months ago. So I can't reveal like the secret sauce of this on the podcast, but suffice to say it is based on trigger points. And it's also based on us understanding our ideal client profile very well. (09:00) And also profile matching our current client pool against a prospective client pool. So it's really a triangulation of all these things.
(09:09) Jeremy Au: Yeah. And I think when you think about that, obviously you've evolved the company. I think not just in terms of products, but also in terms of geography. So in the start, I remember it was like primarily Southeast Asia. Now I think it's much more of a global field. So could you share a little bit about that evolution?
(09:24) Yuying Deng: Yeah. The evolution was also natural and driven by customer base, customers as well. So when we started out, we mainly had Southeast Asian, I would say Singapore kind of clients, but slowly over time we have had clients based overseas who came to us because of our APAC expertise.
(09:41) So I think you understand as well, Jeremy, if you travel a lot around the region, it is not exactly easy getting a laptop from Singapore into Indonesia or from Singapore to India. It's actually very difficult, harder than getting a laptop from Singapore, say to the US. So APAC is really our sweet spot (10:00) in terms of our knowledge of navigating all these things, the very strong local kind of partnerships that we've had.
(10:06) And coincidentally, there are many companies in the US and in the EU who are hiring in India and in the Philippines and in Vietnam and Indonesia as well. So what we're really helping them to do is to equip their teams in like the Philippines and India in a very seamless kind of way. And when we do that for them, they then get us to also then support their team members who are in the EU or in the LATAM kind of area.
(10:30) So it's a very natural extension of what we were doing in the beginning.
(10:33) Jeremy Au: Pardon me if this is a silly question, but what's so hard about moving a laptop from Singapore to Indonesia from your perspective?
(10:38) Yuying Deng: Customs and also lithium ion battery as well.
(10:41) Jeremy Au: Really? Okay. Yeah, that's fair. Wait, lithium ion battery, isn't that into your check in?
(10:45) Yuying Deng: Sorry?
(10:45) Jeremy Au: Isn't it good when you just put it in your check in?
(10:47) Yuying Deng: Yes, but you're not going to send someone flying with every laptop that you're going to send overseas, right? That's going to be a very expensive way of doing it. That said, we did have one client who was actually getting the IT manager to fly with every (11:00) two laptops that they were onboarding.
(11:01) And that was actually how we got started with this business because he was doing it from Malaysia into Indonesia and he was married and eventually his wife was like, what are you doing? Why are you flying into Indonesia every single week? So yeah, it created HR kind of issues. So it's not something that is possible to sustain going forward.
(11:19) Jeremy Au: Yeah. Okay. But he was basically like being a mule for two laptops.
(11:22) Yuying Deng: Laptops. Yes.
(11:23) Jeremy Au: It's I'm a laptop mule.
(11:26) Yuying Deng: But it's something that you cannot easily explain to your wife. Imagine if you were flying to like Thailand, right? Every single week.
(11:32) Jeremy Au: I'm not smuggling drugs, dear. I'm smuggling laptops.
(11:34) Yuying Deng: Yeah, but tough time explaining it to family members.
(11:36) Jeremy Au: Yeah. It makes a lot of sense. And, I think what's interesting is that when you think about this, do people think about it as replacing an IT department, or is it like augmenting how do people think about it from your perspective?
(11:48) Yuying Deng: It's definitely not replacing an IT department. I think that for companies of a certain size and beyond it really makes sense to get a good IT manager on board. So I would say that, if your company (12:00) at like the 200, 300 people kind of level you should have an IT manager on board, especially if your teams are in house in one country.
(12:07) However, how describe ourselves is for the larger companies, we are more of an augmentation of the IT teams. So what that means is that the IT person may himself be based here in Singapore, but he has team members in Philippines Thailand and Australia. How's he going to manage them? A lot of things do actually need to be done in country. So that's where he relies on us to extend that support, to support those team members over there in terms of procurement of laptops, onboarding of people in terms of off boarding and storage in those locations and even repair support as well.
(12:38) We are like an extension of his IT team there. But conversely, we also do have other clients with smaller headcounts where they're like, we're still too early to hire an IT manager. So for us, what we really want is someone who can guide us on what are the fundamentals that we need in terms of IT management, in terms of device security.
(12:57) And they also start to understand as well, (13:00) when they try to increase their revenue, that, "Hey if I do not have ISO 27001, if I don't have GDPR, if I don't have SOC2, it's going to be difficult for me to get government contracts," increasingly, especially nowadays. I'm not sure whether my employees are updating their laptops and I may be at risk of a phishing attack or ransomware. And the government now has very heavy fines for this. I don't want to be at risk of that. Esevel, can you come in and help me and help me set up this IT infrastructure to make sure that these things don't happen.
(13:29) Jeremy Au: Yeah.
(13:29) Yuying Deng: Yeah.
(13:29) Jeremy Au: What's the point of ISO 27001, SOC2, GDPR, I think I understand is about the privacy side. For those two, obviously not many folks understand the value of that. So can you explain what the value of those certificates would be?
(13:42) Yuying Deng: Yes. It may seem just like paper certificates, but it's really not that, right? It's about how you want to treat like your own internal IT security.
(13:50) So for one, yes, you could treat it as a nice mark to have at the bottom of your website and you could tell all your clients, right? So usually if you have MNC clients. They are either going to (14:00) give you a 200 page IT security questionnaire that you have to tick off and it makes certain declarations about, or you can just show them your ISO certificate and say, I'm certified, right? And you can trust me with regards to this. So it's all about revenue generation. If you want to get bigger contracts from bigger clients, these are the kind of certifications that you need to get. Otherwise, you need to endure like lengthy IT security contracts. And you also need to take liability as well, if certain things were to happen.
(14:26) Jeremy Au: Yeah. And, how does insurance play into this? Because obviously, like we're talking about ISO 27001, SOC2 like these are security certifications. GDPR obviously is more about respecting privacy data, but I would say that this tranche is really about security and obviously the next is attacks, right? And after that, it's I don't know, insurance. So how should companies be thinking about that?
(14:47) Yuying Deng: With insurance, I am guessing that you're alluding to cybersecurity insurance, right? So in many cases, and we have seen from our clients as well, the cybersecurity insurers wouldn't even allow you to apply if you do not have the (15:00) basics set up.
(15:01) So definitely if you have ISO 27001, SOC2, the insurers are going to be like, okay, you can take a lot of the buckets, but if you don't have those certifications and you don't have the basics set up. So for instance, you do not even have a good antivirus kind of system, don't track your assets. You don't know whether your laptops are updated in terms of the operating systems or in terms of the software, they are not going to insure you like in terms of cybersecurity insurance, right? Which also means that you are then potentially exposed as well to a lot of liability if something were to happen.
(15:32) Jeremy Au: Yeah. And I think the interesting piece is that there's this linear, I think, part where every company has to think about it. What are the thresholds you think that people need to be thinking about like a hundred employee mark? I think you mentioned 200 employees is another threshold. How should people thinking be thinking about in terms,
(15:48) Yuying Deng: In terms of iSO?
(15:49) Jeremy Au: ISO, but also general practices around cybersecurity and IT management.
(15:53) Yuying Deng: I would say that at any stage companies should actually be thinking about it. I mean, there was a recent Bloomberg article that came out (16:00) and we were just writing a blog post about this. The majority of victims of cyber attacks are actually SMEs. are not MNCs. And why is that? It's because SMEs are low hanging fruits. Most of the hackers out there, they know that SMEs do not have an IT team that has set up a IT kind of defense perimeter around the company. You could send the employees phishing emails or someone clicks on it, there you go, right? You are potentially maybe going to ask for a mil or two of Bitcoin from that company. So it's a very lucrative thing for those kind of companies. So I would say that SMEs and startups are actually more at risk as compared to MNCs for these kinds of things. But the question that you're asking is when should companies start thinking about ISO 27001 and SOC2?
(16:42) So for this, it depends, I would say on size and on industry. So certain kinds of industries, especially in the financial services. So think about FinTech companies or payments companies, or even VC firms or PE firms as well. it is actually an MAS rule that you would need to fulfill a lot (17:00) of requirements which are the same requirements that an ISO standard would require you to fulfill.
(17:04) Healthcare companies, very similar. So there's a bill coming out soon by MOH which also requires this kind of like cyber security guidelines to be fulfilled. And these kind of like industries that are handling a lot of PII, which is like personally identifiable kind of information, they would need to have these kinds of certifications. And these are part of like industry standards, but for companies that don't fall under these kinds of industries, I would say that they should start thinking about it, not necessarily going to the extent of saying, okay, I need to get an ISO cert, but definitely to the extent of saying, okay, I need to have proper antivirus. I need to have like proper it security measures in place. They should start thinking about it when they have revenues that they feel should be protected, right? So of course if someone had just founded a company, maybe less than 10 employees, not generating revenue, but trying to find product market fit, they don't really need to bother about this at this stage, but once revenues come to a point where you (18:00) say, I have something worth protecting, right? Then that's when they should start thinking about it. And it doesn't need to be difficult. So you can tailor your it security requirements for the stage of your company.
(18:10) And you know, it's kind of like slowly changing texts here is like, how have you evolved as a founder, over the past two to four years?
(18:18) So when I started out, I would say that I felt that I had to do many different things and I had to do them well. And that made it difficult for me to handle like all the responsibilities that was coming in at the same time. At one moment I will be doing sales and another moment doing marketing and so on.
(18:37) But what I've found over the course of a few years is that it is really about knowing how to delegate well. And what I mean by that is, the person that you hire, are you hiring someone that you can trust? Are you hiring someone that can grow? So really the definition in the very first place of what are the type of people you want to hire? What is the culture of the company? Can you trust the people that you hire? And then can you (19:00) define like the job that you're going to give them? And can you define what success means when they have that in the job?
(19:05) So how I've really grown is that, I have started to understand the importance of this and put a lot more emphasis on this in the beginning, like rather than, trying to make everyone run a marathon with me to the end as well.
(19:20) Jeremy Au: Yeah. And when you think about that change, it almost feels like a no brainer, right? In some ways, right? Because you're like, you hear that all the time, right? It's you can't do everything, you have to delegate. You have to find the right people to do it. So I'm just curious how that evolution shifted. Because, I hear that all the time and frankly, I also do everything all the time. So it's not as if I'm, I practice what I preach, but I just got, I just kind of, you know.
(19:43) Yuying Deng: There's a difference between intellectually knowing something and actually believing in it, in your bone and in your heart. So I think that was what happened. Like when you realize that it's no longer possible to pull the entire sling by yourself and you have to (20:00) enlist people that are even better than you to come along with you to help you with it. How do you motivate them? How do you select them? How do tell them when they have done well and when they can improve? Yeah. So that is really, I think a process of leadership that I've learned over the past one, two years.
(20:17) Jeremy Au: And I think what's interesting is that there's a set of changes that you have to make. Has there been any particular moments or examples of that lesson coming into play for yourself?
(20:28) Yuying Deng: Yeah. It has a, I would say a couple of months ago. So we were experiencing some challenges at a point in time with a team within the company, I brought in a friend of mine who is very experienced. Also lucky to get her in because she had just recently retired from a very high level position, in that exact same like scope of responsibility. I brought her in to see how my people were doing. And at the end of the session, she turned around to me and she said, you should stop trying to do so many things (21:00) yourself, right? She said instead, configure the team and tell them that, what you're aiming for is a high performance team and that you have high expectations of them and you have high standards. Set those standards and make sure that they abide by it and then reward them for that.
(21:15) And that was when I realized that even though I intellectually understood the same thing that you did, I wasn't actually practicing it myself. I needed a third party coming in to see what I was doing, what the team was doing to tell me that, Hey, even though you think that you're doing this, but actually you're not right. But it also took a certain amount of humility for me to accept that from her as well. And I could, because I did know that she was very experienced in that area. And I was like genuinely looking for help in that area as well.
(21:43) Jeremy Au: I think what's interesting about that story is that these are two female senior executives talking to each other, right? So you're a female founder. And I think we've talked about it briefly in the past, but I think what's interesting for me is I think you're very much one of the first way for female founders and executives that I know building startups. Obviously since then, over the past four years, (22:00) many more female founders emerging. But I'm just curious, like, how have you seen that aspect of domain from your perspective?
(22:07) So I was quite heavily involved with the female founder groups and everything until we got really busy, like maybe a year or so ago. So what I think about it is that as at that point in time, female founders, they do have certain characteristics that distinguishes them from male founders. And what I see this as a rule of time, I'm not saying that every female founder does this, but I see it in myself. I see in some others as well is that we do tend to undersell ourselves to a certain extent. And we do tend to maybe underpromise, but overdeliver. I think that's actually great for investors, right? So we are actually an arbitrage opportunity if any investors are listening to this out there.
(22:46) Invest in underconfident women.
(22:49) Yuying Deng: Ties in, ties in very well.,
(22:50) Jeremy Au: Okay, fine. We'll say that in a way, invest less in overconfident males or overpriced with a brand premium because the arbitrage opportunities in women.
(22:58) Yuying Deng: I need you to sell this into (23:00) the investor community. But I do see many very positive characteristics of women founders. And that is that they have a lot of grit.
(23:08) Jeremy Au: Yeah.
(23:08) Yuying Deng: So they really, you throw challenges at them, they thrive on it. They chew it. They eat it up for breakfast. I wouldn't say what it is for male kind of founders, but, in general for female founders, that is true. There are things I feel that female founders can improve on, but there are things that I feel that they're already currently very strong at. And I see a lot more female founders nowadays than, the point in time where I first started out. And I do think that it's a very good evolution.
(23:33) Jeremy Au: Yeah, definitely. I think I agree with you. I think over the past four years has been a big shift from my perspective as well. I think it's interesting what you said about underselling as well, right? The truth is anybody can be inconfident and anybody can undersell regardless of gender. But I think I have noticed that as well. I think one case I had was I was doing like a podcast interview and at some point, I just paused the interview and I said, you need to stop self disqualifying because you say something really good, but before that she's this might be (24:00) wrong, but, and then you say, this is a really good point. I'm like, you've got to delete this phrase, because it's just it was like, it's this is really good coffee, but.
(24:07) Yuying Deng: Yeah, it's, you may not like it, you, so it's a weird disqualification phase. Yeah. It's stranger, 'cause you're a father as well, right?
(24:13) Jeremy Au: Yeah. four years old and two years old.
(24:14) Yuying Deng: Yeah. Two daughters. So I have three kids. One is a boy, two are girls. And funnily enough, I see this in my own kids as well.
(24:21) Jeremy Au: Interesting.
(24:21) Yuying Deng: Yeah. I, like for the boy, he may say things with a lot of confidence, which may not be correct, and, the daughter may say things without much confidence, she's correct every step of the way, right? So I do not know whether this is something that was inculcated in them from young, from preschool onwards I consciously do try. Yeah, to correct it when I see it But yeah, I think it's just built in from young.
(24:45) Jeremy Au: Yeah. I think it's an interesting piece, right? Because we're both parents as well. Obviously your kids are older than mine. But I'm just curious because a lot of founders as well, they really struggle with the concept of being a founder and being a parent. So many times I have met founder friends who are like, not a lot of (25:00) time to be a parent because I'm so busy at work. And I've also met so many other parents was like, I want to be a founder, but I'm a parent so I'm busy. So I'm just curious from your perspective, any advice that you have for folks who I don't know, I decided, founders who want to be parents or parents want to be founders.
(25:14) Yuying Deng: So it's interesting, but I've not experienced this thought before. In fact, I think I founded my first company when my daughter was like two years old, one or two years old. So I do think that founding a company is very much like having a kid, right? So I am pretty sure you can attest to that as well.
(25:30) So if you can actually have a kid and the kids thriving, I think that there's no reason to doubt why you can't also be a good founder. But I do think it also depends on what kind of founder you want to be and what kind of parent you want to be. So if you look at me as a parent, I'm not a tiger parent, right? The reason why I'm not a tiger parent, first philosophical, I don't believe in that, but okay, maybe secondly, because my husband is a tiger parent, so he's like complements to that, but
(25:55) Jeremy Au: Now I know. I'm like, it's a cool, Bernard is always cool, Analyse (26:00) Asia, obviously Dorje AI, but now I know who is a tiger parent.
(26:03) Yuying Deng: Now you know who the tiger parent is.
(26:05) Jeremy Au: Yeah.
(26:05) Yuying Deng: Thirdly, I don't have time to be a tiger parent. And I think that many founders don't as well. But I do intuitively believe that it's good for my kids that I'm more of a lassez-faire parent, right? I set goals for them. I help them set goals. I help them set guidelines if they need help. I help them see the rationale why they should be doing things in a certain way. It does take more effort in the beginning but then it becomes a lot less effort towards the end because they become very self directed and independent.
(26:32) So that's that on the parenting side and then also on the founder side as well as I mentioned, it depends what kind of founder you want to be. So I can imagine if I were the same type of founder that I was four years ago where I was trying to do every single thing myself, it is going to be very difficult to cope with that kind of workload and the workload of being a parent. But if you're a founder who is able to set clear goals, clear expectations for the team, clear OKRs, have proper measuring (27:00) standards, tracking standards, and you let your team get on with it, you hire good people, you let them get on with it, then that also reduces the amount of like day to day kind of things that you have to do. So I think that these two are good combinations and are quite complementary as well. It is basically about trusting the other person, whether it's your employee, whether it's your team member or whether it's like your child.
(27:21) Jeremy Au: Yeah. And I think this would be fun to discuss, right? Because I think for the founders who want to be parents, from my perspective, I'll often tell them, I said first of all, it's a 2% decision. And if you're adopting, sometimes it's often the spouse who wants that. And I said, if you don't fulfill your spouse's life dream of having a kid, you're in deep trouble.
(27:37) I'm just saying, right? Cause like if the founder wanted to have a kid, he would have the kid. But he or she will have the kid. But if you're saying like, Oh my, I don't know if I should have a kid or not. I'm thinking like, what does your spouse think? And if your spouse wants to have a kid, then you pulling back for the sake of your business is destroying the life dream of your partner. And so you understand there's a cost to the marriage as (28:00) well. I think that's one side. And that's like a part of what I would like to say is there's a once in a lifetime opportunity to have a kid, so if there's a, you want to be a parent, because I think there's so many startups you can build in your life, right? I don't know. How, what do you think about that?
(28:11) Yuying Deng: Out of curiosity, the founders that you spoke to who expressed reluctance to have kids, were they male founders or female founders?
(28:16) Jeremy Au: I've met both male and female. I think if a male wants, it would be primarily because they feel like they should be doing more at work. I think that's one. And I think that in the scenario of the two female founders I've talked about this issue, I think they're more about the fact that they feel like they're not, I think it's a mixture of they don't feel like they'd be a good parent because of the business. which is a bit of a different flavor from what I just talked about.
(28:38) And the other part is they also feel like, how would the landscape or VC's view a pregnant founder? I think that'll be the. Different type of flavor.
(28:47) Yuying Deng: Okay. Sorry. And what was your question?
(28:49) Jeremy Au: I'm curious, what advice would you give to founders who want to be parents?
(28:53) Yuying Deng: I would say that, especially for women, it's going to be a lot harder to be a parent, the older you get, right? As (29:00) opposed to doing it later, they should probably consider doing it earlier if the circumstances allows, right? That is one thing because I think beyond a certain stage, it becomes very difficult and maybe almost impossible to become a parent.
(29:12) Yeah. Or there may be certain like consequences or side effects. So there is never a good time to be a parent, I feel, and this brings me back to the Nike slogan, right? Just do it.
(29:23) Jeremy Au: That's so funny. I think it's true. The thing that you remind me of is yeah, as a parent, like the earlier, it's obviously like a bit of I don't know, it's I don't know what, I don't know what a curve is, but it's like good. And then there's a cliff effect.
(29:32) Yuying Deng: Even for men as well.
(29:33) Jeremy Au: A cliff effect for men as well. So, to some extent, it's okay for a certain time window and after it falls off a cliff, it just gets really hard. And so to some extent, time is your enemy becoming a parent. But actually for a founder, it's actually also the opposite, right? Which is that as you get older, you have more financial resources, you're more stable, you're a better manager. So to some extent, time is a friend in becoming a better manager, a founder over time.
(29:53) Yuying Deng: That's a really good point. And I think that is, contrary to a lot of the popular Silicon Valley kind of belief (30:00) that you have to be a founder in your early twenties. Yeah now kind of thing, but exactly what you said. And I think statistically as well, it has been shown that actually the most successful founders are those that actually did it later in life when they have more financial resources, or actually when they also have more experience in an industry and a better network of contacts.
(30:19) Jeremy Au: And I think that's really the crux of it is that, I think, it's very fair. I think people feel like they have to do the startup now and they feel like they want to push back the parent decision later, if that makes sense. Versus, now that I'm a parent and I was in a startup, I mostly like the other way around, because like you said, I have so many friends who struggling or going through IVF now. It's not that IVF is not succeeding, right? Because it's just biologically, not the right situation like the window for becoming a parent disappeared without them knowing it disappeared. And that's what the IVF process is not as if it's like, by the way, it's Oh, if I'm later, I'll just do IVF.
(30:50)
(30:50) Yuying Deng: Very expensive and painful process. Exactly. So with a high failure rate.
(30:54) Jeremy Au: Exactly. So you don't think it's like safety, which is, I think people always say that. And I'm like, "Dude, like it's not (31:00) easy for the woman and it's definitely not easy for the man either," because it's just like all the pain that you're both going through as a family, as a emotion is this.
(31:08) Yuying Deng: Yeah.
(31:09) Jeremy Au: What a nightmare. So I think that's one side of it. How about for those who are parents working to be a founder right? The other side of it is, like any I don't know, is there like productivity hacks? Is it like, work at 8pm at night, after kids go to sleep. I don't know, how?
(31:21) Yuying Deng: Parents working to as founders, whether there are hacks, I think it's better to tell you I'm not a big believer in hacks. I'm a big believer actually in reduction of the amount of things that you are trying to do so that you can focus on what the most important things are. So I actually do spend a lot of time every weekend thinking about what other things I should not be doing, and then taking those things out of my calendar or out of my to do list or delegating them to other people. Yeah. So that's my Sunday kind of habit. And that helps me to clear up the week. Hopefully to focus on things that I really should be doing in order to get the ball rolling.
(31:57) Jeremy Au: Yeah. And I guess the interesting part (32:00) is, from your perspective, people often say like something like, "Oh, parents tend to be much more efficient or effective about their work." is that, do you think that's true from your perspective?
(32:09) Yuying Deng: Of course, that's true. And I would say that probably mothers are the most efficient people of all, because you just cannot afford to waste time on things that are not going to yield results. So yeah, I would say that is definitely true. I would believe that parents would be quite good at delegation. Parents would be quite good at seeing what is essential to do and what is not essential to do. And, therefore save both themselves and also their team members, a lot of wasted time and effort otherwise.
(32:36) Jeremy Au: Yeah. I guess one interesting dynamic here is that there's a certain set of decisions to be made in life, right? Just like being a parent, being a good parent, which is two different things.
(32:47) Yuying Deng: It depends what your definition of "good" is.
(32:52) Jeremy Au: Yeah, exactly. So those are two different decisions of course, and then obviously being a founder and scaling a business. Do you find that friends ask you (33:00) for advice about this? Because you are both, right? Yeah. I guess you're a parent, you're a founder. I guess in this case of the conversation we had, you're also your mother, you're a female founder in that context. So people ask you for advice or what kind of advice would people look for you from?
(33:13) Yuying Deng: With regards to whether or not they should be a parent, I think once or twice in the past. But I don't hear that too often. I think most of the time people are asking me for advice on like, how do you grow the business? How do you scale the business? Those kinds of things. How do you get leads in and so on. So usually, I'm very willingly share with them. What have I learned up to that point in time?
(33:34) Jeremy Au: And when you talk about the business advice, it's slowly to wrap things up here is what has been the best advice that you've ever given, in regards to the business side.
(33:43) Yuying Deng: I have given?
(33:45) Jeremy Au: Oh, I mean, you could have reshared it, but I'm just saying if people ask you for advice on a professional side, I want to hear what's like,
(33:49) Yuying Deng: I thought you're going to ask me what's the best advice that I've given?
(33:52) Jeremy Au: I think both are fair game. So best advice you've given versus best advice you've got. I'll take either of them.
(33:59) Yuying Deng: Okay. (34:00) Best advice that I've got is basically, focus on the right stuff, right? And don't always be looking at shiny new stuff. Focus on the fundamentals. Know very well what the fundamentals are, what is going to get you from A to Z. Just focus on that and just focus on that every single day and focus on getting better at those kinds of things. So I would call it, it's not sexy, but I would call it incremental improvement. And actually I think that is the key. It's fundamental to building a real sustainable, like high growth kind of company because improvements everyday compounds, growth compounds as well.
(34:36) Jeremy Au: Yeah.
(34:37) Yuying Deng: But going after something bright and flashy and raising a whole ton of money at a high valuation and having to meet an even higher valuation, like 18 months later, that could kill the company right in the infancy.
(34:49) Jeremy Au: I really agree about that. And last question I have here is, could you share any personal stories or, inspirational moments that you've seen over the past few years?
(34:58) Yuying Deng: So I would say, I think that (35:00) the biggest recent incident of bravery that I've seen, is someone who's very close to me, who had to start all over again. And this person, it's in his mid thirties, like recently married, recently bought a house and everything.
(35:12) The previous business didn't work out. And he had to start from the beginning again. And most recently, he was doing, I would say person to person kind of sales. And he was doing it with a lot of vigor and doing it well. And that is something that really struck me, stands out to me as, a very brave kind of action, right? To say, okay, I understand that I've reached rock bottom now, but I'm going to start climbing up from it.
(35:37) Jeremy Au: And I think that, is that midlife crisis or is that considered like a retrenchment? How do you see that reinvention?
(35:45) Yuying Deng: I see it actually as something that anyone might have to go through at any point of their life, because they never know what's going to happen to them. It could be a health crisis, right? if it's a health crisis and someone does suffer a critical health issue, they will have to climb out of it (36:00) again with like physiotherapy, with treatment. They might have to learn how to walk again and so on. It could happen with any entrepreneur because the business could at any point in time. how do you climb up of that financially, emotionally, mentally, and so on? It could be someone who has been working in a big corporation at any point who's retrenched and that's a very common incident going on now. And they might not be able to easily find another high level executive position elsewhere. So how do they reinvent themselves, retrain themselves for something new, send out hundreds of job applications and go for all these interviews and try to climb out So I think it's something that, in this period of chaos that really defines our world right now and all these industries, it's really something that a lot of people would have to go through.
(36:42) And I think that the more often we speak about this, the more often it is made known publicly that other people are going through similar things, the easier it makes it for these people to climb out of the hole that they're in.
(36:55) Jeremy Au: Yeah. On that note, thank you so much for sharing. I'd like to summarize the three big takeaways from this conversation.
(36:59) First of (37:00) all, thanks so much for sharing about the evolution of Esevel in terms of, I think not just the geography in terms of the reach, but also in terms of the products and the strategy behind it, and I thought it was fascinating also to hear your personal decision maker reflections right, versus hindsight, versus forward thinking, and actually really it being an iterative process built upon the customer's trust. I thought it was a fascinating piece.
(37:22) Secondly, thanks so much for sharing about your own personal changes as well over the past several years.
(37:27) Yuying Deng: In addition to my haircut.
(37:28) Jeremy Au: Yes. In addition to your haircut. Your red color. Yes. Hair color, which if we do have a video recording from the past, it would be a difference, yes.
(37:35) And so I thought it was just interesting to hear about your own, I think, like professional evolution in terms of how you decide to really be focused on delegating, but more important thing about what are your strengths? Why are you playing towards? And I think also getting some of that feedback from your peers and team as well.
(37:52) And lastly, thanks so much for sharing some advice for a common question that I've received, which is about, parenthood and being a founder. And I'm glad that you and I (38:00) got to have a discussion about hypothetically that advice, then, this would be some of the key points that we'll cover about that there never been a good time and thinking to yourself, parenthood, is time your enemy, your friend? And that, in startup life, actually time is your friend in terms of building your experience and skill set. So I think it's really helpful. So on that note, thank you so much for sharing.
(38:18) Yuying Deng: Thank you so much for having me, Jeremy.