A year after the Houston Rockets failed to draft Jeremy Lin, they began to measure the speed of a player’s first two steps: Jeremy Lin had the quickest first move of any player measured. He was explosive and able to change direction far more quickly than most NBA players. “He’s incredibly athletic,” said Morey. “But the reality is that every fucking person, including me, thought he was unathletic. And I can’t think of any reason for it other than he was Asian.”

- Daryl Morey, GM of the Houston Rockets
The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds by Michael Lewis

Last fall, a friend reached out to me about helping to finance and produce a film project commemorating the upcoming ten year anniversary of Linsanity. He knew I was a huge Jeremy Lin fan, so there was only one answer to that request: an emphatic hell yes. I did everything I could to make sure the documentary 38 at the Garden could be made by Oscar-winning producers Samir Hernandez and Travon Free with the talented director Frank Chi. That stretch in February of 2012 was one of the best and most exhilarating times of my life (I also proposed to my wife during Linsanity!). It was a seminal moment for me to see the impact that one person could have to inspire so many. Let me share why it was so important to make this film:

I was born in Queens and grew up in New Jersey, a die-hard New York Knicks fan, because my dad loved the Knicks. He grew up playing basketball in Taiwan and immigrated to the US and moved to New York in the 70s. He started following them back when Walt Clyde “The Glide” Frazier and Earl “The Pearl” Monroe were kings of The Garden. I grew up playing one-on-one with my dad in our driveway and watching Knicks games on NBC with Marv Albert. As a teenager, I had a Patrick Ewing jersey and a poster of John Starks dunking over Horace Grant and Michael Jordan. The other poster in my bedroom was the only Asian American athlete I had to look up to was Michael Chang. He won the French Open in 1989 and inspired me to play tennis competitively. Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that, on the night of February 10, 2012, I would be sitting in Madison Square Garden, five rows behind the Lakers bench wearing a Knicks jersey of a Taiwanese American player, who would go on to score 38 points against the legendary Kobe Bryant. I was memorialized holding up a sign that was on televisions around the world; this image would go on to get me on SportsCenter for the next week.

Watching Jeremy made me, and other grown men, feel like we were kids again. Around the world, our eyes were glued to the screen, watching every game he played and every move he made. He captured the hearts and minds of people all over the world, because he made people believe the impossible was possible. To do this as a New York Knick, with one of the most notoriously tough — if not toughest — fan bases in the world, made it that much more impressive.

Jeremy Lin is as close to a real-life superhero as any Asian American has ever had, because he transcended his Asian identity. People of all colors, ages and backgrounds were rooting for this kid because it was an impossible story. Impossible because he was an Asian kid from Harvard that wasn’t even supposed to be in the NBA (in the minds of many). Jeremy made Asian Americans feel seen in a way we’ve never been seen before in our own country. He made people feel visible who’ve always felt invisible and forced to blend into the background. He was all over the covers of Time and Sports Illustrated and celebrated on prime time television like no other Asian American had ever been. This was the NBA, not figure skating nor baseball. And he wasn’t a 7’6” anomaly from China, he was a kid from Palo Alto, California that we could relate to because he grew up like so many of us. He flew completely under the radar and defied the odds to shock the world. Even the term “Linsanity” is derived from the disconcerting fact that it’s crazy to think that an Asian man could do what he was doing.

Why is it so impossible to believe that an Asian guy could do this? Because it doesn’t fit the box of what Asians are “supposed” to be able to do. Jeremy broke out of the box and the stereotype that everyone had put him in. A box full of limitations that many Asian Americans are often placed in, simply because of the color of their skin. Sadly, it’s a box that many of us put ourselves in, because we’ve been gaslit to believe that we have no business playing in certain rarified air. Jeremy is the embodiment of defying others’ beliefs and being told it was a fluke. People, from colleges to NBA teams to security guards to his own teammates, doubted him his entire life. Even after Jeremy proved it was not only possible, but fated, others continued to cast doubt on his true talent. ESPN’s Pablo Torre told me that the Knicks had the data that showed Jeremy was the fastest player on the team but even then, they couldn’t fathom it to be true. Jeremy exceeded every expectation that everyone else had for him, because he always believed he was good enough to be there.

I went to three games during that stretch of Linsanity and thought I knew everything about that time, because I lived it. But it wasn’t until I saw our film, that I realized there were perspectives about those moments that I had missed. Hasan Minhaj, one of the most insightful comedians of our generation, talked about “the wave off” when Jeremy waved off his teammates to take the game winning shot in Toronto against the Raptors. I must have watched that moment dozens of times, but I never fully realized how significant that was. As Hasan noted, we rarely if ever see an Asian American man wave off others and say “I got this” with the confidence Jeremy had. Not in sports, not in film nor television and certainly not in the workplace. We have been programmed to believe that Asians are meant to be in supporting roles, never playing the lead. But in taking that one game-winning shot, Jeremy literally and metaphorically changed the game.

Many Asian Americans are first-generation immigrants or second-generation Americans (the children of immigrants). Our immigrant parents often raise us with a scarcity mindset, so we feel like anything we are given, we should deeply appreciate, even when we are the ones who worked and fought so hard to earn these successes. We are taught that we should play within the boundaries and not to rock the boat or draw attention to ourselves. We are told by others in this country that we should feel grateful that we are even in this country. We are programmed to believe that it’s a privilege just to be here, to never complain, and to never ask for “more” than we may have a chance to achieve, despite the systemic barriers. We make ourselves small for others and try to take up as little space as we can, because we don’t think we deserve to take up space; or worse, we fear the repercussions of trying to take up more space. By shrinking ourselves, we start to limit our own dreams and expectations, so much so that we don’t even try anymore. We become numb and accept what we are given.

“How many times in my own life did I pass the ball or hold myself small.”

Hasan Minhaj, 38 at the Garden

Asian Americans are told we don’t belong in so many ways that we start to believe it ourselves. “Go back to your country.” You don’t belong at this lunch table or on this team or at this party. Your food is weird. Your language is weird. Your traditions are weird. Your clothes are weird. We are continually reminded that somehow being different makes us “less than.” We are made to feel that our culture and skin color are something to be ashamed of or inferior. We are treated like foreigners in our own country. Even with the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes, our cries for help are ignored by mainstream America, while Asian women and elders are senselessly beaten and murdered. Once again, a hurtful reminder that our pain is secondary to others and we are still unseen. We begin to question our self-worth and internalize that we have a lifelong handicap. People are constantly trying to undermine us and “keep us in our place.” We’ve been so beaten down that we start to believe that our dreams plateau at middle management, because heaven forbid if you deserve to be a partner, or CEO.

No matter how much you’ve achieved or how many boxes you’ve checked off, there will always be people who will still say you’re not good enough for this reason or that. It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not, because unfortunately, they are the ones with the power to put you in leadership positions. Partner at McKinsey. Managing Director at Goldman Sachs. Vice President at Google. Partner at Cooley. We’ve all heard the same feedback that gaslights us into believing we don’t deserve it: “You’re just not leadership material” or “You just don’t have what it takes.” These are just vague, overused excuses to keep us in our lane and avoid promoting us. Meanwhile some mediocre colleague is taking credit for our work or being promoted above us, because we don’t advocate strongly enough for ourselves. In the back of our minds, we believe what our parents told us, that working hard is all we need to get ahead (when it most definitely is not). We also have the voices of our parents in our heads making us feel guilty for wanting to tell our employers that they can take their bamboo ceiling and shove it.

We are constantly selling ourselves short, because we’ve been programmed to believe that more isn’t possible. But if Jeremy Lin had believed that and his parents had deterred him from pursuing his dream, he would have ended his basketball career in college. Jeremy refused to allow all of the stereotypes, racial slurs, and doubters stop him from standing atop of the basketball world in a way very few players will ever experience in their lifetime. The reason so many Asian Americans idolize him, is because he did what we all wish we had the courage to do. It was by no means easy, but he pushed aside all of the haters, underminers, and non-believers to make his dream a reality. Jeremy had the confidence in himself to ask: Why not me?

If there was a movie about an all-Asian military battalion that was the most highly decorated in American history, no one would believe it. Except that it would be based on a true story about the 442nd infantry regiment of segregated Japanese American soldiers during World War II. Hollywood would never produce a big-budget film based on the 442nd, because people would think it’s too much of a stretch considering how Asian men are depicted in the media. Just like it would be unrealistic to have an Asian leading man in a romantic comedy because Asian men “aren’t desirable” or “masculine enough.” Any number of excuses could be used to maintain the current narratives about Asian men in society created by mainstream media and Hollywood, but Jeremy Lin obliterated all of those false narratives.

Jeremy inspired me to believe that anything is possible. His story encouraged me to ignore all of the noise and doubt that held me back. His breakthrough also made me question if I was placing limitations on myself and what I was capable of.

Since that time, I have often asked myself the question: Why not me? I’ve started two companies and raised close to $30M in venture capital funding. I’ve started an investment syndicate, Hyphen Capital, that has invested over $25M in 80+ Asian American founded companies, because I want to provide a runway of support for other Asian American founders who have the confidence to ask, “Why not me?” I wrote and published a letter that was published in the Wall Street Journal condemning anti-Asian discrimination and violence, that was signed by over 8,000 business leaders, spawning a movement of new Asian American activists: Stand with Asian Americans. I joined the board of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center to build a museum honoring AAPIs on the National Mall. And I became an executive producer of 38 at the Garden, because if our own community didn’t step up to back this film, it would never get made. My dad passed away twenty years ago, and didn’t get to experience the Linsanity, but I know that he would have loved our film on so many levels. I’m grateful that years from now, my sons will be able to relive that moment through the lens and perspective of this documentary. It has made me more intentional about raising them with the confidence and audacity that I didn’t have growing up.

What is holding you back from doing great things? We all struggle with obstacles on a daily basis, whether internal or external, but imagine what you could do if you were unshackled from those doubts and fears. How many other inspirational leaders would we have to look up to if we didn’t hold ourselves small? How many triumphs have we missed because we didn’t wave off others and shoot our shot? Ask yourself the question: Why not me?

- Grace Lee Boggs

I vividly remember visiting Washington DC during sweltering summers as a young boy, and always looking forward to consuming all that the Smithsonian museums on the National Mall had to offer. It was like being a kid in a knowledge candy shop. As an adult, I appreciated these museums even more. I visited the National Museum of the American Indian and learned so much about indigenous Americans and their culture. I tried desperately but couldn’t get into the National Museum of African American History and Culture, because I had heard so many amazing things about it. I couldn’t help but wonder when there would be a Smithsonian Museum for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.

I believe that education about history and culture is critical to combating ignorance and hate. I am fortunate to have taken the first ever Asian American Studies class with Joseph S. Sun at the University of Pennsylvania. There is so much about Asian American history that was nowhere to be found in my high school textbooks beyond a paragraph or two about Japanese internment and the Chinese Exclusion Act. I never realized that people of Asian descent were the only race to ever have been interned or banned in this country. I am in my mid-40s, and here are some things that I only learned in the past year:

• The first Asians in America were Filipino sailors known as the “Manilamen” who jumped ship from Spanish galleons and settled in Louisiana in 1765.
• Wong Kim Ark was born in San Francisco but traveled to China to see his family. Upon attempting to return to the United States, Ark was denied entry by immigration on the basis of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. He challenged the government the Supreme Court ruled in his favor in 1898 under the landmark ruling about birthright citizenship protected by the Fourteenth Amendment that could not be limited by an act of Congress.

• In 1871, one of the largest mass lynchings in American history occurred in Los Angeles as 19 Chinese immigrants were killed and 15 later hanged by a mob of 500 white and Hispanic Americans who attacked, harassed, robbed, and murdered Chinese residents of Chinatown. Ten men of the mob were prosecuted and eight were convicted of manslaughter in these deaths. The convictions were overturned on appeal due to technicalities. White residents burned down Chinatowns to the ground all over California in cities like Antioch (1876), San Jose (1887) and Santa Ana (1906). Chinese were actually banned from walking the streets of Antioch after sunset and had to build tunnels to get from home to work.
• 1944–1946 The 442nd Infantry Regiment was an infantry regiment of the United States Army. The regiment is best known as the most decorated in U.S. military history and as a fighting unit composed almost entirely of second-generation American soldiers of Japanese ancestry who fought in World War II.
• The Immigration Act of 1965 finally allowed immigrants from Asia to enter the country again, including Chinese who were banned since 1882. It allowed relatives and children of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents, professionals and other individuals with specialized skills. This meant that only the most educated and wealthy from Asia could immigrate, leading to the fabricated perception that Asians were the “model minority” which was used as a wedge against other races in America.
• Yuri Kochiyama was an American civil rights activist. Influenced by her Japanese-American family’s experience in an American internment camp. She joined Malcolm X and the Organization of Afro-American Unity and was by his side when he was assassinated in 1965.
• Contrary to popular belief, Andrew Yang was not the first Asian American Presidential candidate in U.S. History. Congresswoman Patsy Takemoto Mink from Hawaii ran for President in 1972. She was the first woman of color ever elected to Congress. Mink fought fiercely for women’s equality and was responsible for Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which barred sexual discrimination in institutions receiving federal funds and opened opportunities for women in athletics.

• On June 19, 1982, Vincent Chin was beaten to death with a baseball bat by two white men in a hate crime in Detroit, Michigan at his bachelor party, nine days before his wedding. Tensions were high in Detroit as American car manufacturers were struggling with the rise of Japanese automakers and laid off autoworkers looked for a scapegoat. The ACLU and NLG would not recognize this as a civil rights case, as many felt that civil rights didn’t apply to Asian Americans. The man and his stepson who violently murdered Chin never served a day in jail and were given three years’ probation, fined $3,000, and ordered to pay $780 in court costs. The result was no different than the mass lynching in Los Angeles over 110 years prior.

It’s shocking and sad to think that as an Asian American, I had no idea about so much of the historical contributions and tribulations of our own community in this country. How can I assume that anyone else will know or acknowledge we have gone through, if I myself don’t know. That is why I am honored and humbled to share that I have joined the advisory board of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center. Thank you to the Smithsonian Board of Regents for this opportunity to serve. Our mission is to bring a museum celebrating and honoring AAPI history to the National Mall in Washington, DC.

My hope is that by building this permanent fixture on the National Mall, that someday my sons and their children and future generations of all backgrounds will be able to learn all of the things I didn’t have a chance to learn and more.

To find out how you can support the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, visit: https://smithsonianapa.org/

There’s always something that’s standing in the way

But if you don’t let it faze ya, you’ll know just how to break

Just keep the right vibe, yeah, ’cause there’s no looking back

“Permission to Dance” by BTS

Growing up in New Jersey in the 80s and early 90s, I vividly remember my girl friends fawning over New Kids on the Block with posters all over their lockers of Joey McIntyre and Jordan Knight. My little sister’s room plastered with pictures of *NSync and Justin Timberlake. Just like Meilin and her friends in the latest Pixar feature, Turning Red, melting over her favorite boyband 4*Town. One thing was consistent, almost all of the big boybands were all-white. If you had told the 15 year old me, that in someday there would be sold-out football stadiums of screaming and fawning teenage girls (and grown women) of all ethnicities across America, for a Korean boyband who barely spoke English, I would have thought you were insane. And yet, a group of 7 young men from Korea known as BTS have become the most popular music artists in the world. The gatekeepers of American media would never have supported BTS or any other Asian band to the meteoric rise that they have had. But that didn’t stop BTS, because they were so good that they could not be denied. This was the same story for Parasite, a Korean indie film that was the first foreign language film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. The movie was a flawless masterpiece that managed to beat the Hollywood machine and do it with subtitles. Everything we have been told all these years is that there is no market in America for diverse stories or celebrities. It took a small peninsula in Asia to smash that false narrative and open the door for so many others. People care about quality, no matter what color is behind it. BTS and Parasite were so good that they could not be stopped and they didn’t ask for permission or approval to do it. This is a critical lesson for Asian Americans who often seek this permission and approval. We need to break free from this mentality if we want to be seen. It’s not enough to be seen, we want the seat at the table that we rightfully deserve.

Dave Lu 呂曉龍 on Twitter: "3 out of 7 of them are Asian and yet @BusinessInsider chose none of them to be in the cover photos. Gary Wang is worth 5x the others. This is how you make Asians feel invisible. Do better.https://t.co/PIWkIKzyAb / Twitter"

3 out of 7 of them are Asian and yet @BusinessInsider chose none of them to be in the cover photos. Gary Wang is worth 5x the others. This is how you make Asians feel invisible. Do better.https://t.co/PIWkIKzyAb

Recently, a friend brought an article from Business Insider to my attention. It was about seven “self-made billionaires”. Three of them were Asian, and yet Business Insider chose to feature three photos of the others. Here are the originally featured photos for the article before they changed it and added the following editor’s note “The cover image has been changed to include an image of DoorDash co-founder Andy Fang to better represent the diversity of people on Forbes’ list of billionaires under 30.”:

It was another reminder that the media perpetually makes Asians feel invisible through conscious or unconscious bias. Whether or not this was intentional doesn’t matter, because it happens far too often. This type of subtle exclusion is far more insidious and dangerous than explicit racism, because it rarely gets noticed or called out. For far too long, American media gatekeepers have gotten to decide who gets featured and who doesn’t: Who they choose to put on covers of magazines. Who they choose to interview on television. Who they choose for awards and recognition. Whose stories they choose to tell. Who gets recording contracts and promotion. Thankfully things are changing, whether they like it or not.

The Game Has Changed

Media used to determine who shines but social media has force them to shine the light on us when we shine so bright that they have no choice. The Internet democratized content with YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. Now you don’t need to have a casting director or record producer decide if you are worthy of an audience. You can build your own audience and let your talent speak for itself. For the longest time, network television wouldn’t cast many Asian actors because they thought there was no demand. Ryan Kaji of Ryan’s World proved them wrong on YouTube by amassing huge audiences and views. Ryan has been called the Boy King of YouTube by the New York Times and has amassed 31 million subscribers and close to 50 billion video views. Network execs would have never guessed a Japanese-Filipino American boy would be the most watched kid in America. They fall into the trap of “pattern matching” which is code for: stick with what’s safe and maintain the status quo. This happens in every industry unfortunately and is an extremely dangerous form of perpetuating and reinforcing conscious bias.

Streaming video has forever altered the media landscape. The competition for endless content among streaming giants like Netflix, Amazon, Apple and Hulu has created demand for more stories and productions. This has allowed for more diverse audiences to be served with relevant content. Netflix was at the forefront and obtained the rights to international television shows including Korean drama series. What they didn’t expect was that one of those Korean shows would become a worldwide crossover phenomenon and the most watched show in Netflix history: Squid Game. It was proof again that the audience didn’t care about race or language, they just wanted good stories.

Black Panther has one of the best stories in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Everything from the story to the acting to the costumes to the directing made it a massive worldwide blockbuster. No one in Hollywood expected Ryan Coogler’s masterpiece with an almost entirely black-cast would break records the way it did (it was still the top grossing solo film after the Avengers ensemble series until Spider-man: No Way Home last year). But Marvel had to go through 8 other white male Marvel heroes before Black Panther was made (and that includes Ant-Man!). If it wasn’t for the success of Black Panther, it is unlikely that Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings would never have been made. It made more than Captain America, Thor (1 & 2), Black Widow and Ant-Man (1 & 2). The success of Black Panther and Shang-Chi demonstrates that people want good stories, despite Hollywood wanting us to believe that fans just care about “big name actors.”

In the past, anytime an Asian American project was announced or premiering, the community would cross their fingers and pray that it wouldn’t suck. Phil Yu, better known as Angry Asian Man refers to it as the “rep sweats” for the anxiety that a project represents us well, otherwise we may not see another for years. This fear is justified since it would take over 20 years for another Asian family to get a prime time network television show after All American Girl with Margaret Cho was cancelled by ABC. But since the box office success of Crazy Rich Asians, more Asian American projects have been greenlit than I can recall in my lifetime. In the past month alone, we have seen the first Pixar feature directed by an Asian American woman in Turning Red about a Chinese Canadian girl, Everything Everywhere All at Once about a Chinese immigrant family who runs a laundromat, Umma about a Korean mother and daughter haunted by the matriarch’s ghost, Bridgerton season 2 features the South Asian Sharma sisters in a British period drama, and Pachinko tells the generational stories of a Korean family. When I was a child I would desperately scour television shows for anyone who looked like me, and now my kids are able to watch Fresh Off the Boat or Never Have I Ever and not think twice about it. Being able to see yourself represented on screen is more impactful than you realize when it happens.

So Pursue Your Dreams

A recent TikTok of a Vietnamese woman named Kaitlynn Bu telling her parents that she wants to major in art is going viral with 7 million views to date. Her mother responds that she is too short and small and has “nothing in comparison to others.” Her father goes on to say that she needs to “stop dreaming” and “live with the reality.” This conversation is painfully all-too-familiar for many children of Asian immigrants. Our parents gave up so much to come to this country and suffered to give us a better life. They want the best for us and that means a life with security and comfort. We know that in some twisted way, this is how they show love to us. And we in turn, raised in cultures of filial piety, feel an indebtedness to honor them by fulfilling their dreams for us. But those dreams are rarely our dreams, even if we were programmed to believe they are.

Simu Liu has not been shy about sharing his personal journey from reluctantly becoming an accountant for his parents and getting fired from Deloitte. While it wasn’t easy, and he had to model for stock photos and dress up as Spider-Man for birthday parties, he would go on to star in a hit Canadian television series, Kim’s Convenience, and shoot his shot with Marvel to land the starring role of Shang-Chi, the first Asian American superhero featured in the MCU. He recently presented an award at the Academy Awards and is starring alongside the likes of Ryan Gosling and Margot Robbie in a live-action Barbie movie and Mark Wahlberg in Arthur the King.

Even those who have taken the path their parents wanted for them or that they thought they wanted for themselves, harnessed their gifts and talents for something they were more passionate about like writing. Min Jin Lee attended Yale and Georgetown Law, only to write two New York Times bestsellers and a National Book Award finalist in Pachinko, which is now an adapted series on Apple TV+. Charles Yu graduated from Berkeley with a degree in molecular and cell biology (likely pre-med) and Columbia Law School and worked at a top law firm, before writing short stories and two novels, the second of which he won the National Book Award for Interior Chinatown. Abigail Hing Wen went to Harvard and Columbia Law School and spent two decades working in law and venture capital before writing the young adult series Loveboat, Taipei that is being adapted into a Lionsgate film. Eric Lu graduated from Harvard and Harvard Medical School and is now a writing his third season for the Fox television series The Resident. By all accounts, these writers had perfect resumes that would make any parent proud. There are countless examples of obedient children who honored their immigrant parents dreams for them, but realized later in life that they had different aspirations of their own. Imagine if they had nurtured these gifts early on in life and had those years back to write.

I personally have experienced this myself. I spent my youth jumping through achievement hoop after hoop to please my parents: Ivy league college, working at big name tech companies like Apple and Yahoo!, getting my MBA from Stanford. I jumped through these hoops only to find that I was always unfulfilled on the other side and left thinking fulfillment would come with the next hoop. It wasn’t until I started my first company that I found what I loved. My mom was not pleased with me leaving the path I was on. She still worries about me to this day, but that’s what moms do, no matter what path you are on. Now I’m investing in the next generation of Asian American founders through Hyphen Capital. I can relate with many of my founders who have parents who are disappointed in their life choice and some have even been disowned by their parents. Ultimately, these are our lives to live and our successes and failures to own. Otherwise they will be our regrets that will haunt us as well.

I am a firm believer that we need stop believing the myth that effort leads to outcomes. Instead we need to build our own houses. Don’t wait for someone else to approve of you. We need to leverage our networks to succeed because success doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It may be terrifying to take that leap of faith, but it will be the best thing you will ever do for yourself, even if you fail. If you depend on someone else to determine how high you can go, you will never find out for yourself. Asian Americans have gone on to start their own successful companies, law and venture capital firms, hedge funds, production companies, design studios and more. They have gone on to build restaurant empires, write bestselling novels, and even become the mayor of Boston. Don’t let someone else tell you what you can and can’t do, even if they’re your parents. You and you alone can hold you back.

Invest in the Future You Want to See

In the 1980s, the Korean government lifted a ban on foreign travel for Korean nationals. This allowed Koreans to explore the world and many pursued education in the West. They would return to Korea with new perspectives on business and popular culture. In 1996, the Korean constitutional court banned censorship on artists and filmmakers for controversial content. This opened up a whole generation of bold and creative ideas expressed cinema and music. The Korean government is one of the only countries in the world that has a Ministry of Culture. One division of the ministry, the Popular Culture Industry Division that is focused on pop music, film, television, fashion, and three other divisions known as the Cultural Content Office have a budget of $5.5 billion! The Korean government sponsors $200–300M of a $1 billion investment fund also backed by investment banks and private companies. The goal of the fund is to nurture and export Korean popular culture which has created this “Hallyu Wave”. The government sees the investment fund as a way to “promote the nation’s soft power.”

Despite the popular success and adoration of Korean pop culture exports, there has been an increasing wave of hate crimes against Asians that has frustrated and demoralized many in our communities, because we feel helpless to stop random attacks from happening. Changing perceptions is a long game. It takes time, but it also takes planning and investment. The Hallyu Wave from Korea did not happen overnight. Seeds were planted over the past several decades and nurtured by supporters and investors to grow into the fruits we are seeing today. Korea is a country of 52 million people on a peninsula in Asia that is exporting content that isn’t even in English. Let that sink in. Korea has built up its global standing and power without having to saber rattle or build up arms the way neighboring countries have had to do. Instead they have built soft power through winning over the hearts and minds of people internationally with its songs and stories. Who needs an army with nukes when you have the BTS army? Have you seen them annihilate haters without mercy on Twitter?

We need to change our mentality from short-term investing for financial ROI into long-term investing for social ROI.

If Asian Americans want to see real change, we need to invest in more high quality, impact projects and support creators, artists and community leaders. We need to invest in non-profits like The Asian American Education Project that promote teaching Asian American history in schools and museums like the Museum of Chinese in America and Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center. We need to invest in projects that tell our stories. That’s why I helped produce 38 at the Garden, a documentary film on HBO that celebrates Jeremy Lin’s legendary night at Madison Square Garden ten years ago but also contrasts it with the current anti-Asian climate. We need to invest in scholarships for young creatives who can’t afford the proper training or whose parents may not be supportive of their dreams. We need to mentor young professionals and founders on how to navigate company politics and fundraising. We need to donate to candidates who can represent us and fight for us in government.

Our parents raised us to be extremely conservative with our money, so we’re used to investing in real estate and mutual funds. But just as we need to take risks with our careers, we need to be willing to take risks with our money. We need to change our mentality from short-term investing for financial ROI into long-term investing for social ROI. Put your money and time into projects and causes that you can be proud of that you believe can have positive social impact. It doesn’t have to be about financial investment, you could open doors with your network or volunteer your time. Don’t just think about your bank account, think about the future we build for our kids and grandkids.

If Korea can produce the Best Picture winner, most watched show in Netflix history and the biggest band since the Beatles in America, just imagine what is possible. If you’re a parent and your child doesn’t want to be an engineer or a doctor, but instead wants to be a professional athlete, comedian, mayor, chef, writer or actor, support and encourage them, because they just might become the next Jeremy Lin, Ali Wong, Michelle Wu, David Chang, Min Jin Lee or Simu Liu. Growing up, we didn’t have names and faces to fill those gaps, but now we do. Let’s invest our time and money in making it the norm and not the exception. Like BTS and Parasite, we need to be so good that we can’t be denied. We won’t wait to be given our seat at the table, we will take it.

Please check out the book Rise: A Pop History of Asian America from the Nineties to Now which thoroughly goes through the past three decades of AAPI representation in media and the impact it has had on the community. We can’t know where we’re going if we don’t know where we came from.

Special thanks to friends and authors Min Jin Lee, Jeff Yang and Abigail Hing Wen for reviewing this essay for me!

Everyone loves Costco. Knowing that you are probably getting the best price available on a product (15% over cost) and that it was selected by the Costco team as the best in category, gives you peace of mind as a consumer. The cost savings and peace of mind alone are enough to justify the price of membership. Italic is giving members who are looking for premium and luxury goods, that same peace of mind around the quality of products as well as the cost savings (up to 80% less). That’s why it was a no-brainer for Hyphen Capital to invest in Italic.

Millennials differ from previous generations in that they don’t need all the big flashy logos emblazoned across their chest or on their bags. They want their status to be more subtle and discreet. That’s why Italic comes at just the right time, with products made by the same manufacturers as top tier luxury brands but without the markup for the logo. By offering an annual membership, similar to a Costco or Amazon Prime, Italic is able to offer consumers consistent savings while Italic benefits from loyal shoppers. Loyal active users leads to lower acquisition and marketing costs as well as increasing economies scale for stronger negotiating leverage and buying power with vendors and decreasing COGS. From clothing to skincare to home goods to luggage, Italic has curated supply chain relationships with the top vendors in the world. With bags made from the same factories as Prada and Tumi and shoes made from the same factories as Armani and Tod’s, the feedback from customers speaks for itself.

I’ve known Italic founder Jeremy Cai for years since he was a cofounder at Fountain and we were a customer at Pared. I remember first chatting about his idea for Italic at a cafe on Howard Street and was on the edge of my seat. He was going to leverage his unique moat of vendor relationships to create a Brandless for luxury goods. It was brilliant and I knew that if anyone could pull it off, it was Jeremy. You see, Jeremy has an authenticity and genuine passion about building things that is contagious. He is kind, thoughtful and sincerely cares about the brand and culture he is building. He would be an amazing and inspirational leader to work for, but instead I’ll have to settle for investing in him because I would bet on Jeremy any day of the week. I couldn’t be more proud to have Hyphen Capital on the Italic cap table as it becomes the Amazon Prime and Costco of premium products.

Our Investment in Italic was originally published in Hyphen Capital Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

One of the main reasons I started Hyphen Capital was to change the narrative around Asian American founders. Representation matters. Whether it’s on the big movie screen or in a children’s book, being able to see yourself as part of a story is so impactful for a young person. But being included is not enough, it’s just as important, if not more important, how those characters are portrayed. I rarely saw any Asian characters in books when I was a child, except for offensive books like Tikki Tikki Tembo. And the only actors that looked like me that I saw on the movie screen were insulting stereotypes like Long Duk Dong in Sixteen Candles. I want my sons to see themselves as the protagonists of their children’s books and the heroes of the movies. This is why we invested in Hyphen Media. Besides the obviously great name, they are building a platform for underrepresented voices to be heard, which is something the entertainment industry needs right now. By creating content that represents the perspectives of people of color, audiences can see themselves and that’s extremely powerful.

An important study done by McKinsey & Company shows that Hollywood loses $10 billion in additional revenue because of the racial inequity and choosing not telling more Black stories.

By addressing the persistent racial inequities, the industry could reap an additional $10 billion in annual revenues — about 7 percent more than the assessed baseline of $148 billion. Fewer Black-led stories get told, and when they are, these projects have been consistently underfunded and undervalued, despite often earning higher relative returns than other properties.

Hyphen Media hopes to change that as the only podcast-first entertainment brand telling stories by and about people of color — for everybody. Experienced founders, Andrew Kuo and Kareem Rahma, have worked at companies like A+E Networks and The New York Times and are familiar with creating high quality content. Even though people of color make up a majority of the youth in America, they are only 28% of acting leads, 18% of podcast hosts, 15% of directors, 14% of writers and 9% of studio heads. Existing podcast networks are not telling their stories either. Hyphen Media hopes to fill that gap by building a premium podcast slate of fiction stories and non-fiction formats that generate original IP to generate long-tail value in film and television. This unique positioning and valuable library could lead to attractive M&A outcomes like Stitcher being sold to Sirius XM for $325M last year, Amazon acquiring Wondery last year for $300M, and Spotify buying Gimlet in 2019 for $230M. We believe that representation matters and that it can also provide a sizable return for investors.

Our Investment in Hyphen Media was originally published in Hyphen Capital Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Teens today are spending more of their time with online friends vs. offline friends. Over half consider only the people they’ve known online as friends. As the first generation to be digitally native, Gen-Z uses multiple online identities in pursuit of self-discovery. Over half identify as non-heterosexual (25% gender fluid and 70% LGBTQ+ sexuality fluid) to explore their gender and sexuality. While running Fanpop, I regularly observed this behavior among our teenage user base as well. We had communities for different topics of interest and users wanted to have a unique persona for each of those communities. Our users would sometimes have literally dozens of accounts and personas. They would create unique identities for each fan club they were a part of because they wanted to both remain anonymous but also wanted to show a different side of themselves. It would be very tedious for a user to manage and switch between each identity which would likely have led to a churned user. Mascot allows users to easily switch between multiple personas to participate in various chats across the app.

My friend Will Hsu, co-founder and partner at Mucker Capital, introduced me to the co-founder and CEO of Mascot, Ailin Guo. Mascot allows users to instantly transition between different identities when talking to different communities. When she told me about the app, it all clicked for me because I never quite understood why users would want to have so many accounts on one platform. I thought people had “finstagrams” or fake instagrams for the purposes of spamming or boosting their likes and follows. It hadn’t occurred to me that users were exploring various sides of their own complex identities. Mascot is an app that empowers self-expression for teens. Having seen how important and engaging it can be to have a platform where you can be your full self, I knew that Mascot was something Hyphen had to invest in. The early Mascot engagement numbers are off the charts and are only going to get better as they introduce more features and continue to iterate on the product.

Our Investment in Mascot was originally published in Hyphen Capital Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Anyone who has had to manage a hiring process knows how painful coordinating interviews can be. From coordinating schedules with your team to coordinating schedules with your candidate, it can be such a mess. ModernLoop is changing all of that. By automating interview scheduling, ModernLoop makes the entire experience better for your candidates and that’s critical to making a good first impression.

When hiring for Pared, we relied on our ATS service Lever to manage the funnel and collect interview feedback on candidates. The coordination of schedules, however, left something to be desired. It required trying to find open slots between a slate of interviewers which was like playing a game of Tetris. We would have to ask interviewers to move things around so we could make the schedules work with a candidate. If it took too long, it was highly likely that we could lose a great candidate who was already talking to other employers. There is nothing more important than making a candidate feel like a priority if you want to land them. The last reason you want to lose out on a good hire is because your team has meeting conflicts.

ModernLoop CEO and co-founder Lydia Han and her team are building a smarter way to automate interview scheduling. By making it easier to schedule interviews, resolve interview meeting conflicts, sending day-of-reminders, and coordinating interviewers so that the candidate has the best experience because it reflects upon the company.

Our Investment in ModernLoop was originally published in Hyphen Capital Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I first connected with Persona cofounder and CEO Rick Song after their Series A in February 2020 before COVID. Our VP of Engineering at Pared had talked to him about verifying identities on our platform. It was something that was challenging but critical to our business and many other businesses. When someone onboarded to Pared, we wanted to know that they were who they said they were. They were still building out their product at the time and we didn’t end up working together then, but it was clear that they were trying to solve a very important problem that many organizations struggled with. This is clearly evidenced by the fact that their business has grown over 10x since then and their customer base has 5x-ed in that same period of time. The customer need spans industries from healthcare to fintech to travel and includes names Square, Udemy, AngelList, Gusto, Robinhood, Sonder, and Brex among others.

Persona offers identity infrastructure that enables businesses to build personalized and automated identity verification solutions. Companies can access a suite of verification options such as government-issued IDs and biometrics, as well as thousands of data sources to get a holistic view of their customers’ identities. Persona plans to implement even more features to help customers verify identities more accurately and streamline the end-to-end identity verification process. This is all accessible via a low code and no code option to make integration simple for the customer. Persona is working hard to make a tailored and customized solution for each customer because their use cases will vary greatly and their identity verification needs will exist long after onboarding. Ultimately the goal is to give their customers peace of mind that they are doing everything they can to deter fraud, stay complaint, and build trust and safety with their users.

Hyphen is proud to be investing alongside Index Ventures and Coatue Management in this $50 million Series B funding round that was just announced. Rick and Charles have been a part of the Asian American Founders Circle for over a year now and we are lucky to have them. They believe in the mission of Hyphen Capital investing in and supporting Asian American founders and want to someday pay it forward by lifting up others. There was obviously a lot of demand from investors for this round and we were one of the only new investors with access because it was important to Rick and Charles to include us on the cap table. We are humbled and grateful that Hyphen Capital will be a part of the Persona journey with them for years to come.

Our Investment in Persona was originally published in Hyphen Capital Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.