Asia Tech Podcast – Episode 97 – Beverly Chen – Marketing Director, APAC at AppsFlyer – I Definitely Jumped Into the Deep End

The Asia Tech Podcast spoke with Beverly Chen, the Marketing Director, APAC at AppsFlyer.  You have to read the transcript below and listen to this episode to get a real sense of the birth of an accidental entrepreneur and her continuing journey of growth and discovery.

Quote: I Definitely Jumped Into the Deep End

Michael Waitze: [00:00:00] Hi this is Michael Waitze and welcome back to the Asia Tech Podcast. Today. I’m joined by Beverley Chen, the Marketing Director at AppsFlyer for APAC, the whole region, I believe, right?

Beverly Chen: [00:00:12] Yes. Correct.

Michael Waitze: [00:00:14] Beverly, thanks for coming on today. How are you doing?

Beverly Chen: [00:00:16] Thank you so much. Really good to be with you, Mike. Thanks for having me. I am doing great. It’s a cloudy day in Bangkok. So…

Michael Waitze: [00:00:27] Are you working from home still?

Beverly Chen: [00:00:29] We’re kind of on this flex model where you can go into the office, if you’d like. You can work from home if you’d like. We do cap it at a certain amount of people just to keep everything safe. But yeah, otherwise it’s, it’s pretty adaptable.

Michael Waitze: [00:00:43] So refresh my memory. Where are the AppsFlyer offices?

Beverly Chen: [00:00:47] We have 15 offices globally. It’s hard to, to keep track because we keep opening up offices around the world, but we’re an Israeli company. So, so our headquarters is based in Israel.

Michael Waitze: [00:01:00] That’s interesting. And how about, do you have a full office in Bangkok as well?

Beverly Chen: [00:01:03] We do. Bangkok is actually our Asia headquarters, which is quite interesting for a global, global tech company. Usually they’re based out of Singapore, but, but yeah, we are here.

Michael Waitze: [00:01:14] Yeah. I mean, I guess we can talk later about why they decided to do it in Singapore. There was another Israeli company actually that made their headquarters. I think it was Taboola that did the same thing. No. Do you, are you familiar with them?

Beverly Chen: [00:01:25] I am. I am. Yep. Yep. I do know that their headquarters are here as well.

Michael Waitze: [00:01:30] That’s awesome. Look, let’s back up a little bit. I want to give our listeners a little bit of your background for context so they can understand where you’re coming from and, you know, go back as far as you want. Cause it’s actually not that far.

Beverly Chen: [00:01:43] Yeah, definitely. So I think, you know, what, as, as any kind of third culture kid, when you get the ask the question of, Oh, what’s your background, where you from, there’s always that five-minute pause of, wow, this is really complicated. Should I be telling you, you know, my whole life story, but basically I was born in the US you know, grew up in a really international environment, which, which was definitely a little bit of a non-traditional environment where you, you aren’t really anywhere that that is home to you and growing up in, you know, a British International School especially was a really interesting experience. So I actually went from Bangkok over to Boston for university, and I stayed there to work, and basically started my career there.

Michael Waitze: [00:02:29] What is it like moving around like that as a kid? In other words, I did this, but I only did it, you know, between States. So like I was born in California, grew up a little bit in Massachusetts, then New Jersey, then Connecticut, then Pennsylvania. And for me, it was good and bad. Right. It made me adaptable and yet not really committed to anything at the same time.

Does that make sense?

Beverly Chen: [00:02:51] Yeah, I think it’s this age-old, you know, if you, if you ask any third culture kid, where, where are you from, or where’s home for you, it’s this bizarre, you know, situation you find yourself in where you’re thinking, I don’t technically have a home country everywhere I am. So, so I’m a US citizen, but, other than going there for college and being born there, I didn’t really spend much time there. So I do consider myself a foreigner when I’m there. I grew up in Thailand, but I’m not actually Thai, so right, exactly. And my family’s from Taiwan, but I’ve never actually lived there before. So when I go there almost as a foreigner, but I think what’s really nice about it. It can be quite an isolating experience, but on the, on the other side of the coin, what’s really nice about it is that the world is kind of your single country. So all of a sudden, you know, the world feels quite small and it’s nothing to…to you to have friends in other countries or to be moving around here and there, it’s kind of like going from New York to Hamptons when you’re going from Asia to Europe.

I think so. yeah, it’s a bit of a, it’s a bit of a different outlook and experience for sure.

Michael Waitze: [00:04:04] So think about this from your perspective, right? I grew up, I was born and raised in the United States and I left the US when I was 24, I feel like, and this is hard to explain to most people my age, but I feel like a third-culture adult.

Right because I spent most of my adult life in Asia, as a matter of fact, all of my adult life in Asia and most of it in Japan. Right. So for me to identify with your experience is actually relatively, and I always say relatively it’s easier than if I hadn’t been through that. In other words, if I was just some dude that worked on Wall Street, I wouldn’t be able to understand that experience.

But I think it drives a lot of other things. I know it does for me, but did I interrupt you? Go ahead.

Beverly Chen: [00:04:46] Not at all. I, I think definitely. And, and it’s sort of an age-old story when you meet somebody in Asia, you know, you asked the question, so how did you find yourself here? You know, you’re moving away from your family and, and the place you grew up in, and it’s often kind of what people say is, yeah, I, you know, I wanted to experience something different, so I thought, Oh, why not move somewhere different for a couple of years? And then they ended up sort of just staying permanently. And this is something that I think you hear all the time, but, but it’s definitely an experience that you can have no matter what age you are.

Michael Waitze: [00:05:20] Yeah. I mean, most of the guys that I was working with at Morgan Stanley were sent out on like a two-month or three-month project. Right guys from operations that were said, that said, look, I was a Morgan Stanley, right? So they said, look, take this technology, bring it to Tokyo, implement it should take you three months and then come home.

And those guys were there for like six years, 10 years, and then London and their mothers and fathers kept calling them and just going. Are you coming?

Beverly Chen: [00:05:43] When are you coming back? Yeah, exactly. It’s always, are you ever going to come back question, but yeah. Yeah.

Michael Waitze: [00:05:51] Tell me a little bit about your experience in Boston. You went to a British school in Bangkok, you said, right, but you ended up going to college in. BC did I have that, right?

Beverly Chen: [00:06:00] Yes. Yes. Boston College. So it’s actually really funny because when I went there, I just, I sound like the most obnoxious person ever, because based off of my accent, you’ll think, Oh, she’s American.

And then because I grew up attending a British school, my vocabulary, you know, the terms that I use are, are British. So you end up just sounding really, really snobbish. People are thinking to themselves. Who does she think she is?

Michael Waitze: [00:06:24] Right. Did you get that when you were there?

Beverly Chen: [00:06:27] I, you know, what was really interesting was I thought that there wasn’t going to be any culture shock.

And boy, did I have something coming to me because I arrived to Boston and just sort of realized that everything from, you know, my world view to how I think about life, to how I see the world to my travel experiences. Everything was really different from anybody else’s experience there. you know, the school itself had a really homogenous student population.

I think it was like less than 1% international kids there. So I was definitely sticking out a little bit like a sore thumb. And, and trying to navigate my way through that. So, so there, there was that element of fish out of water, I think.

Michael Waitze: [00:07:17] But it’s really, it’s interesting to me. Right. And when you know, most kids and you’re a kid, I know I was, when I went to college, they go from sort of a, a, a very homogenous environment into kind of a less homogenous environment.

Right. In other words, they, they grow and they learn when they get there because. They’re just more people from different backgrounds there. And yet it sounds like you went from reverse. In other words, I don’t think most people understand how diverse Bangkok is particularly in the international school environment.

Right. I told you, my daughter went to NIST and she had kids from a hundred countries. It doesn’t pick a number. It doesn’t really matter. Right. And yet she does, she’s kind of doing what you’re doing in reverse. She goes back to Japan to go to school and now hang out with very Japanese people. And I’m sure she’s going to stick out as well, because while her mom’s Japanese, Kyla looks more Mexican than anything else.

It was, it’s a mix between me and her mom. Right. But she speaks Japanese. So the expectations are different and there are things I think I know that I learned from being an international environment and it’s weird the way you perceive yourself and your other people perceive you. You just think you’re normal.

Right. Other people have this perception of you. Yeah, that’s interesting.

Beverly Chen: [00:08:28] Right. I got a lot of, you know, I was just so shocked because I got a lot of, Oh, you’re, you’re so exotic. Do you ride around on an elephant and, and just all of these sorts of questions, like, is this a real question? but yeah, it…it was definitely a really interesting experience going from really broad horizons, being around people from all different types of backgrounds and countries. And honestly speaking at the time, I didn’t think about it. That was, that was my version of normal. Right. So moving into something like that was actually really eye-opening.

I met people who didn’t even own a passport and that to me was completely mind blowing, but you also recognize your privilege, right? From a really young age, you are exposed to all of these different cultures and countries and different types of people. So I was really lucky to have that. And to this day, I still think that it really defines who I am.

Michael Waitze: [00:09:27] Yeah. I mean, I’ve always said, I feel like the luckiest person in the world, because the experiences that I’ve been able to have good, bad and indifferent have definitely shaped a worldview for me that I think is really important. I want to ask you. You, you were in Boston, you went to school, you weren’t from Boston originally, but you stayed there after you graduated, right?

Did you go right into, did you go right into the tech scene and did you decide to stay in Boston on purpose or…

Beverly Chen: [00:09:55] So it’s really interesting because I’m, I’m very Type A personality. I’m the kind of person that really likes to be in control. I’m a planner. and when I look at my career trajectory it’s, and it was a lesson that I learned really early on, I kind of just fell into a lot of the things that I ended up doing.

So from Boston College, I started off. at Pernod Ricard, which is a premium wine and spirits company, I’m sure you know them, you know, Jameson, Absolut Vodka, Glenlivet, all of these companies. so yeah, so I was, I was doing their leadership program for a couple of years, meeting a lot of different people in the F and B industry.

And one of our clients ended up becoming a real mentor of mine. His name is Patrick Lyons, and he was the founder of a prominent, regional F&B group there. And I, you know, I was sitting having coffee with him one morning. We were just kind of chatting and he has this, he has this iconic restaurant on the main street in Boston called Newbury Street called Sonsie that’s been an institution for, you know, 30 years, something like that. And I remember sitting there and just, you know, not really thinking about it and just said to him, okay, Oh, Hey, have you, have you never thought about turning, you know, that front area that you have that restaurant into a cafe? Why do you guys not serve coffee?

They open at lunchtime for, for service, right? So, and at that time, I, I didn’t think about it again. And he kind of just said to me, well, I like that idea. How would you like to run your own business? You know, I don’t know what you know, at 22, but fortunately not enough to dissuade you of what might lie ahead.

And I kind of just jumped at it without thinking and I was like 100%. Yes. I don’t know anything about F and B don’t know anything about restaurants. Certainly don’t know anything about, you know, developing any sort of, an F&B venue, but I was kind of like, yeah, yeah. I said, yes first. And I was like, I’ll think about everything else. I’ll just figure it out later.

Michael Waitze: [00:11:59] But this is kind of what I call accidental entrepreneurial-ism. Do you think this was something that was always inside of you? You know, this idea, you said you were Type A, you want to be in control. Do you think this was a manifestation? A little bit of that idea that I want to run something 22, 42, to me it doesn’t matter.

Beverly Chen: [00:12:17] I think it was probably more a symptom of having a very driven personality. So when you have that kind of personality, I think you’re just constantly thinking about, I want to be better. I want to be better. What can I do that’s going to challenge me? What can I do that’s going to allow me to grow?

And I never imagined that I would go into the entrepreneurial direction. And it’s funny that you call it an accident because it 100% was unintentional. You know, my father worked for Stanley Black and Decker, which is as corporate as you can get and growing up, I always thought that’s exactly what I want to do.

I want to be a senior executive in a corporation, a multinational corporation. And I had never really thought about anything other than that. Right. And so again, I kind of just fell into it. Yeah.

Michael Waitze: [00:13:09] Did you know what your dad did when you were a kid? And I’ll tell you why I’m asking because Kyla, right, my daughter asked me recently, What do you do?

She really did. She sent me like a list of questions. What do you do? Because one of her friends wanted to interview me for something. It doesn’t really matter. Before we moved to Thailand, she was only 10. And I was working at Goldman Sachs or whatever, and I don’t think she would have understood like what portfolio equity portfolio trading was.

Beverly Chen: [00:13:37] Right.

Michael Waitze: [00:13:37] But did you know what your dad did?

Beverly Chen: [00:13:39] I actually did. I have a really close relationship with my father and I admired him a lot growing up, you know, he started off as a factory worker in Taiwan. That factory ended up getting acquired by Stanley. He kind of worked his way up, moved to the US and ended up moving to Thailand on a contract with Stanley Black and Decker.

Yeah. So it’s, it’s actually really funny because he’s always made it a point of really wanting us to be very well versed when it comes to business or when it comes to that sort of thinking. So from when we’re really young age, it’s like, Oh dad, can I go get a lollipop? And he was like, well, can you explain to me the pros and cons, talk to me, walk me through the scenario or, or anything that we would ask for,  it was like, okay, where’s the deck? Like walk me through everything. yeah. Yeah, exactly. So it was, he was, you know, I was doing like balance sheets and P&L when I was like 10 years old. So, so that’s kind of, that’s kind of the way that, that I was brought up. So I actually did have a really good understanding of, of what he was doing.

And I think that did at the time inform a lot of what I thought I wanted to do  and I didn’t realize until later, but, but that experience actually did really serve me later on in my career as well. When, you know, you, you say yes to this opportunity to start your own, F&B business and you walk in on day one.

You signed the contract and then you’re left kind of standing alone there in the hallway  and, no one’s telling you what to do when to do it, how you’re supposed to do it. So I kind of stood there for a good five minutes looking around and just thinking, okay, what do we do now?

Michael Waitze: [00:15:26] Were you nervous at all?

Beverly Chen: [00:15:29] I, what what’s actually interesting is that I don’t think that I was nervous.

Michael Waitze: [00:15:34] You don’t sound like someone that gets nervous actually.

 I think I was nervous. And I think it was just this dogged determination in the face of, of a challenge that, that got me really excited, you know, knowing that something’s going to be hard and it might hurt, but, but doing it any way because you really want to succeed.

So there was an element though of. Oh my God. Okay. What, what do I do now? Because I was basically given an opening date, which was three months from then and nothing just, okay, so this is the opening date, work it out from there. So I stood there and I was like, well, I guess I should put together a Gantt chart of some sort or some kind of, a project schedule and kind of just worked backwards from there and figured it out as I, as I went along.

And how did it go?

Beverly Chen: [00:16:21] It went really well. I think it was one of the more defining moments of, of my career and of my life. I think, I think it’s a moment where a lot of people might stop or  pause, but you really have the conviction of deciding you’re going to be the person that’s in charge of your own story.

You’re going to be the person that decides what your narrative is going to be. And it kind of just took, took that talk and I was working crazy hours, you know, you’re up at like four in the morning and you finish up past midnight and you sleep a couple hours and then you go again and there’s no such thing as a weekend.

So I definitely jumped into the deep end there, but it was the most rewarding experience I would say of my life.

Michael Waitze: [00:17:01] And is that cafe still there?

Beverly Chen: [00:17:03] It is, it is still there. Yeah.

Michael Waitze: [00:17:06] Does that amaze you sometimes, like you can take your mom and dad into a restaurant or whatever that you basically…

You know. I, I kind of didn’t think about it at the time.

I think I was just so focused on, you know, getting everything done and now nearly 10 years later, looking back and thinking about it, it does blow my mind a little bit of Oh wow. That, that actually exists. And people are going, yeah,

Beverly Chen: [00:17:30] real, real, real life people

Michael Waitze: [00:17:32] …that aren’t, that aren’t my family that don’t owe me anything. Right.

Beverly Chen: [00:17:35] Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It was actually really funny, you know, getting my first customer and you’re so excited because it’s, it’s the first experience. And I think if a lot of people haven’t experienced it before becomes really addictive of, of a very physical manifestation of your idea, which you, you know, which you brought to life with your, with your blood, sweat, and tears, as they say.

Michael Waitze: [00:18:00] Yeah. It’s hard to explain to somebody who has never built anything from scratch what that, what that feeling is like when you take that idea and turn it into an execution plan and then actually do it and it it’s there.

Beverly Chen: [00:18:12] Right. I mean, I think I, you know, I kind of, after that experience, I kind of went on with my life and my career.

And a few years later, you know, I received a text message from Patrick Lyons, who was the one who gave me that opportunity. And he was just checking in with me. And he was like, by the way, you know, the cafe’s killing it. It’s doing really well. You rocked it. And I just remember I was like commuting home or something and I just burst into tears. What’s wrong with me? And I think I was just, it, it’s just a really nice thing to hear that something you personally built is still is still there.

Michael Waitze: [00:18:52] Well, it’s in there and it’s thriving. Right? It’s just amazing. Actually, when you think about it,

Beverly Chen: [00:18:56] Right. Exactly.

Michael Waitze: [00:18:57] So tell me, how did you get from working in Boston, building an F&B business, which was definitely out of plan for sure,  but worked really well. How did you get into the tech world? Like, ’cause there’s so unrelated.

Beverly Chen: [00:19:15] They are. and I think the early lesson and what I took away from that and what, what Patrick had given to me, which I’m so grateful for is that he, you know, again, going back to that, I had always imagined a very clear career path going into the corporate world.

And he really opened my eyes and allowed me to, or enabled me rather to imagine things for myself that I never would have imagined. and so because of that, I really, I really changed my philosophy on how I wanted to go about my career. And every move was still strategic. I think there had to be, you know, a calculated decision behind it, but I was a lot more open-minded than I previously planned to be.

So. I’m in Boston, you know, I’m running this cafe, it’s going really well. He’s offering me to open up my own separately and to fund it and career wise, everything was really great. But I think I was looking for something a little bit different. I think my experience in Boston was also really isolating.

So for personal reasons as well, I thought, Oh, I’d really love to go to Asia. It’s a great opportunity at the same time to diversify my work experience. And someone that I had worked with at Pernod Ricard had said to me, Oh, have you ever heard of this company, Rocket Internet? And I was like, Nope, never heard of it.

Are you interested in, e-commerce not really right. Like what, what do they do? Okay, well, there there’s this company’s Zalora, which is a portfolio company of Rocket Internet Group. You should talk to this person. And I was like, All right. Well, before you say no, let’s, let’s have a conversation. And one thing led to another, you know, I found myself getting an offer and it actually sounded really interesting.

And that’s how I found myself in the tech scene. And just to give you a little bit of context, at the time I didn’t even know what SEO stood for. Right. And here I am, again, finding myself in another hallway after having signed a contract, thinking to myself, right? What am I going to do? I’m head of performance marketing, which means I’m in charge of all of these different things that I know nothing about.

I do see a theme here…

Michael Waitze: [00:21:29] But did you have any intention of coming back to Bangkok? Like, did that surprise you?

Beverly Chen: [00:21:35] It did surprise me. I was actually intentionally trying to not come back, just because I had grown up here. I really wanted to, you know, live somewhere else again, that whole idea of the world being like a single country for you.

The idea of living somewhere new isn’t really, you know, isn’t really too far fetched, so I wasn’t planning on it. But this opportunity kind of, kind of happened and it’s another unintentional, pivot, I would say. but that’s, that’s how I ended up in the tech scene and, and I saw it as an opportunity to grow, to do something new, to learn something new and I just grabbed it.

Michael Waitze: [00:22:14] What was it like? Normally what I do is I ask people what it’s like to go from a corporate world into the startup world. But you kind of went from, like literally building your own thing. No, ’cause in a way, right. You built your own cafe. It’s definitely not corporate. It’s not tech startup, but there was nothing there.

And then you made it there and then going into Zalora, it was already there, even though it was young, but was it, was that challenging? That part of the difference, in other words where you weren’t in charge of everything.

Beverly Chen: [00:22:44] Right. You know, I actually, I did start my career in corporate at Pernod Ricard. It was already sort of three very different environments that I found myself at going from corporate to, you know, the complete opposite side of the coin with, with this very entrepreneurial experience.

And then going from that to a startup that is already established. Right. So, so it, it was different, but I think something else that my upbringing was able to serve me later in my career with was the fact that you are really adaptable to different environments. And I think one of the lessons that I learned early on was, I might not be the smartest person in the room, but I know that if I work hard, I can do it.

So that’s kind of the attitude that, that I take forwards with me, you know, might not be the most intelligent, but I, I know that I’m a capable person and, if I put the hours behind it and if I, if I set my mind to it, then it’s going to happen.

Michael Waitze: [00:23:44] I always think that the person who says they’re not the smartest person in the room ends up kind of being close to the top. Anyway, I’ll let you, I’ll let you, I’ll let you ride with that. I will not challenge you on this because it’s not worth it. You know what I mean? What were some of the takeaways from being there? In other words, what was that environment like? I’ve met, like, I know what Rocket Internet is, but for people that don’t understand, like what the intensity is, like, what was it like working in a tech startup? So what year was that?

Beverly Chen: [00:24:09] That was 2015. Five years ago.

Michael Waitze: [00:24:15] So back then Zalora was still standalone. It had not been purchased by the Central Group. I can’t remember who it was.

Beverly Chen: [00:24:21] Yes. Correct. Central group. Yeah.

Michael Waitze: [00:24:23] What was the environment like?

Beverly Chen: [00:24:26] It was intense in a completely different way than, you know, than the cafe experience.

I think I had never worked in management consulting. I had never worked in iBanking. And I remember going through the interview process and they had given me a couple of consulting case interviews. I was very confused. I was kind of like, why am I doing this? And, kind of just navigated my way through that.

But, but yeah, it’s very, very numbers driven. It’s a really aggressive kind of environment. It’s a very. You know, you hit your number or you’re out kind of environment .  And you’re surrounded by a lot of really accomplished people, which I think forces you to grow and forces you to challenge yourself as well, to really take yourself that level up.

So while it was very challenging, I’m still really grateful as well for that opportunity, because I was able to in such a short period of time, I’m talking, you know, three to six months. Just ramping up to be able to learn as much as I did about performance marketing, SEO, product, all of that. And that was a, and that was a direct result of that kind of high pressure environment.

Michael Waitze: [00:25:33] Do you think there’s any relationship between the stuff you learned, building the cafe with Patrick Lyons and then transfer it into Zalora?

Beverly Chen: [00:25:44] Yes, definitely. I think when you think about it and you take the time to go back and look at your story, understand the places where you grew understand, you know, what are our strengths?

Where did I overcome obstacles? That really becomes a part of how you approach any future or current challenge rather. And so I take a lot of that with me. Whether it’s, it’s this sort of thinking of, you know, motivation is important. Yes. But motivation is easy to rely on because it requires no concentrated effort to get.

Right. Motivation comes to you. It’s it’s, it’s, it’s kind of like inspiration, but it’s not reliable. So it’s really important to cultivate discipline. So the question wasn’t really, how do you keep yourself motivated or how do you kind of keep running at full speed ahead, but it’s how to train yourself to work without it.

And that’s something that I think is really important in both Zalora and any other work experience that I’ve had. And another thing is kind of knowing that you have this mentality of focusing on the end goal. And that was something that I really took from that Lyon’s Group experience. You know, you, you, you drop your anchor, you have your open date and then you figure it out, whatever it takes to get that done.

Michael Waitze: [00:27:00] Yeah. I did that with my InsurTech podcast. When I sat down with Theresa, we were like, I forget it was like the beginning of April and we just looked at each other and said, okay, we’re launching May 1st. We had no guests. We had no. We didn’t even have a website yet. And we launched on May 1st. We did five episodes.

We edited them all. We did all that stuff and it’s just done. And you’re right. This idea of motivation for me is not an externality. It’s an internal thing. I’m self motivated. It sounds like you are as well. Is that fair?

Beverly Chen: [00:27:31] Yes. I I’m. Maybe that’s why I don’t really think about motivation. I think that, you know, everybody also goes through different phases in their life or in their career.

And the important thing is that, you know what your end goal is and what result you’re trying to achieve. And you just go after it. And if you don’t know the answer, well, you better figure out the answer because that date is that date. Right. So, yeah.

Michael Waitze: [00:27:57] So let’s go back through this though. Right? So you started at Pernod, which is kind of food and beverage. Maybe it’s just the beverage part. And then you actually went into an F&B operator. So kind of the same sector, although not, you know, on different sides. Yeah. And then you moved from there into Zalora and now into AppsFlyer.

Beverly Chen: [00:28:17] Right? Correct.

Michael Waitze: [00:28:19] So are you in the tech world now forever? Like what’s your feeling there, in other words, is this something you think sustains itself or do you think you go back to being an entrepreneur too, at some level? And is that in the tech space?

Beverly Chen: [00:28:34] Right? I think, you know, when, when I think about it and I have this philosophy now of, don’t have a five-year plan or don’t have a ten-year plan because when you, when you plan something for yourself, in some ways you’re adding limitations, right. You’re kind of setting the boundaries of this is what I’m going to do in five years time.

Right. So I like to leave the door open, you know, at this point I’ve been in the tech space for quite an amount of time now. I find it a really exciting space. I’m very passionate about it. So I wouldn’t intend on, you know, moving to a completely different industry. I think at this point in my career, I’m really looking at what can I contribute to this space that I’ve built this experience and this and this skillset in.

Now the question of whether I’m going to go in the entrepreneurial direction or not, again, it’s something that I’m open to. I’m not going to say no, but. But we’ll see what, what opportunities come my way or, or, you know, when the idea strikes, if, if I feel like there’s something I really believe in, or a gap in the market that I see that I really feel like I want to go after.

Yeah. So we’ll, we’ll kind of see what happens.

Michael Waitze: [00:29:45] Did you do the same thing when you joined AppsFlyer and again, let’s just back up over this, right? So when you joined  the F&B business. You said that particularly when he said, okay, you’re on your own, start your own thing. You didn’t know anything about it. But you just stood in the hallway for that five minutes and said, I’ll figure it out.

And then you got hired by Zalora and you’re like, it’s very consulting driven, but I don’t never, I’ve never been a consultant. So you spent another five minutes in the hallway going, I think I need to figure this out  too. Was it the same with AppsFlyer? Like, is this the theme? Is this the thematic thing for Beverly? You know what I mean?

Like, I just want to go do stuff. I don’t know.

Beverly Chen: [00:30:21] Right. It might be, you know, I think I thank you for noticing the pattern here, which is people don’t usually bring me on board necessarily for a plug and play reason of, Oh, she fits the bill perfectly in terms of, you know, having done the things that she’s going to have to do in this role.

I think probably what, what my thinking is, is that people normally bring me on board because they think I can add some value in terms of my skillset that might be transferable or my personality, whatever it is. So, you know, with AppsFlyer or it was, it was another kind of jump. Where I was now moving from B to C marketing to B2B.

I had never been in the B2B business. didn’t know anything about it, you know, the JD sort of  said, Oh, 10 plus years in B2B marketing. And I read that. I was like, do I have that? Nope. Am I going to, am I going to go for it? Yes. Yes. so, so yeah, you know, I joined the company. I was 10 years younger than everybody else in my position, but again, I didn’t have that fear or that worry because I knew, you know, when I set my mind to something it’s, it’s going to work out. And if I don’t know the answer, I don’t know what to do. I’ll figure out what to do.

Michael Waitze: [00:31:38] So I think the, one of the learnings here is that every father should tell their daughter whenever they want to buy a lollipop, that they need to write a business plan for it.

Beverly Chen: [00:31:47] Perhaps. Yeah. Perhaps, I can’t really pinpoint where that comes from, but, I think it’s a combination of different people I’ve met along the way, the way that I was raised, the environment I was exposed to, but what’s really interesting is one of my college professors, and, and back then, you know, I don’t, I also don’t know what level of self-awareness you have, but, but, I think in a conversation we had before we talked about there are three types of people that you are there’s who you think you are. There’s who other people think you are. And then there’s who you really are.

No one ever knows who they really are. Everybody is always discovering things about themselves that they didn’t know. So one is about myself that I didn’t know, and no one had really pointed out up until that point was, it was my lit professor in college. And I remember she wrote a comment on one of my essays or evaluations, I don’t remember what it was.

And she kind of said, Oh, you know, I find it really interesting that you’re often the lone dissenting voice in the group and it’s really great, kind of thing. And I was like, Oh, I never really noticed that. I’m not usually someone to shy away from voicing my opinion, even if it might be different than other people’s or, you know, saying that I disagree with something, I’m trying to understand the situation of what is it that, that I disagree with. How does the other person see the situation? And how that might affect or change the way that I think about things.

Michael Waitze: [00:33:20] When you, you sit down with your dad and I’m only asking this because you said you have a good relationship with your family, right? When you sit down with your dad and then you go through the progression of your career for a guy who, like you said, started in the factory, the factory was acquired, and then he became a senior executive in that company, but was kind of a corporate guy the whole way. When he looks at your career and you talk to him about it, what kind of feedback do you get from you must be proud, but is he it’s different than what he did? Yeah.

Beverly Chen: [00:33:51] Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s quite different than what he did.

And it’s really funny because if we’re talking about, you know, going back to being that third culture kid and growing up with Asian parents, it’s a very different experience, I think, than, you know, Western parents where, where oftentimes you’re, you’re saying, well done, good job, you know, whatever it is.

And having grown up with Asian parents, my dad, I don’t think I’ve ever actually heard my father say to me, I’m so proud of you. Good job. But I knew it. And I knew that he thought that he definitely showed it. Right. So he showed it in other ways. And I think, you know, yes, he did come from that corporate environment.

But at the same time, I think because he is the businessman that he is, and one of the reasons he was able to succeed, you know, being a factory worker in Taiwan, not speaking English into you know, senior level executive in an American multicultural company was because of his way of thinking and his personality and his mindset.

So he never really put pressure to go into the corporate world. I think when I wanted to venture into this entrepreneurial experience, he really encouraged me, gave me a lot of sound advice, gave great feedback and criticism when, when it was warranted. And same with moving into the tech space. So, so I’m very, very lucky that way.

Michael Waitze: [00:35:10] I feel like I’m talking to a future CEO or a CEO in training or some kind of company founder, and I don’t want to get in the way of what you’re doing now, because obviously AppsFlyer is a great company and it’s very interesting, but I feel like. Just based on the progression that I’ve seen. And again, you can tell me that I’m wrong.

It’s like once you get into this world, the tech world where things are changing and everything’s transforming and it’s moving really fast, it seems well suited to your mindset and your personality because it’s moving so fast. You can’t know what’s going to happen three years out. And you’re good at that.

Kind of like, I don’t know, but let me, let me add it kind of thing. So that’s why I feel like you’re kind of like a CEO in training in a way.

Beverly Chen: [00:35:51] Well, thank you very much. That’s that’s, that’s a huge compliment. Thank you.

Michael Waitze: [00:35:55] Do you not feel that way at all? You must…

Beverly Chen: [00:35:57] I think there is an element of… also, you know, I’ve had really humbling experiences and so I’m not one to say, Hey, look at all my achievements or one to one to think about it that way either. I think I’m always thinking about what can I do better? How can I be better in everything that I do? So, you know, whether eventually I end up in that kind of a position, you know, I’ll take the opportunities to, to keep driving myself and to keep pushing. And if the opportunity feels right, I’m definitely one to also jump at it, right?

Michael Waitze: [00:36:32] Yeah. I love it. Look, I think that’s a great way to end this conversation. It’s inspirational for me to be fair. And I think that the people that listen to this will also be inspired. I really appreciate your time.

Beverly Chen: [00:36:44] Oh, thank you so much. It was really exciting to be on here with you.