business

It’s The Final Curtain Call. A New Story Begins.

After spending 15 years at the helm of Wattpad, today I am starting a new role as Executive Advisor to the WEBTOON family of brands. That’s right, I’m stepping aside as CEO of Wattpad to apply my experience and skills to this new role alongside my other activities as an investor and board member.

As I reflect on the journey of building Wattpad over the years I am amazed at what I’ve accomplished together with my co-founder Ivan Yuen and the entire Wattpad team.

What started as a place to read and write stories on your mobile device, has grown into a product and community loved by close to 100 million people.

We pioneered storytelling technology, changed how people read, write and engage with fictional stories, and transformed the entertainment and publishing industries. Leveraging our massive built-in fandoms and data, we turned numerous top Wattpad stories into hit movies, TV shows, and bestselling books. These movies and shows have topped the box office and ‘most watched’ charts on streaming services, gone on to win Teen Choice Awards, a People’s Choice Award, and even received Emmy nominations, and all have changed the lives of a new generation of creators. It’s been an honour and privilege to democratize who gets to tell their story and redefine how the world reads and shares fiction.

We raised record amounts of capital at the time from top-tier investors in Canada, US, and Asia. We were one of the first to commit to scaling our company in Toronto and then successfully proved you could build a world-class tech company here. We played a part in re-shaping the overall narrative of the innovation ecosystem in Canada.

These are the things you simply don’t think about when you’re starting out, writing code, and bringing an idea to life. To say I am incredibly proud is an understatement.

The past year was record-breaking for Wattpad. Since the acquisition – one of the largest for a Canadian technology company – we have never grown faster. With the Grand Plan in place, it’s the perfect time to pass the baton to Wattpad President Jeanne Lam and Wattpad WEBTOON Studios’ President Aron Levitz in leading the team to achieve the vision. With such strong leaders, Wattpad is in great hands.

I’ve always been a natural builder and I will continue to help build the “next big thing” as Executive Advisor to WEBTOON, as a venture partner of Two Small Fish Ventures, and board member of two of Canada’s most important cultural and innovation organizations, the Toronto International Film Festival and MaRS.

It has been a life-changing 15-year journey for me, my family, the Wattpad team, and millions of Wattpadders around the world. Thanks for all your support. Thanks for sharing all the emotions. Thanks for all the wonderful times and good memories. Thanks for being here with me. I can’t say thank you enough.

Calling this a new chapter or the next season would be a misnomer – it’s the final curtain call of my career as a CEO. But I’m not done yet! I’m still at the top of my game. I’m still hungry for more wins. I still want to make an even bigger impact. My new story begins today.

Strategic Partners Turn Your Vision Into Reality Faster Than You Can

A few months ago, Wattpad announced a partnership with Anvil Publishing in the Philippines. Together, we’re launching Bliss Books, a new Young Adult imprint that’ll bring some of the biggest Wattpad stories and authors to bookshelves across the country.

The news means Wattpad can realize the vision I laid out in the Master Plan much, much faster. But really, speed is just one of the values a strategic partner brings to the table.

Anvil also has deeper insights into local purchasing habits and consumer behaviour than we do. The first part of the Master Plan is to “Discover more great stories,” and we do this by leveraging our Story DNA machine learning technology and a passionate community to find unique voices and amazing stories that are validated in Tagalog. With their local insights, Anvil can corroborate our insights using their local knowledge to guarantee a successful adaptation.

The best strategic partners also have a reputation you can piggy-back off of. Another element of the Master Plan is ‘Turn these stories into great movies, TV shows, print books, etc.,” Anvil has a reputation for publishing high-quality books, and that’s exactly what we want to do.

Anvil is the publishing arm of the National Book Store with hundreds of bookstores. It’s established presence means we – through NBS – have the ability to distribute Wattpad books to every practically every part of the country tying into another key part of the Master Plan to “Distribute and monetize content on and off Wattpad and earn money for storytellers.”

The Philippines is one of Wattpad’s largest markets and a very important one since its home to some of our most passionate users. Plus, when you factor in the expertise and reach of Anvil, it was an easy decision to partner with this local company who can help us continue to celebrate and reward Filipino authors and their fans.

Entrepreneurs: if you have the ability to form a partnership with another complementary company, seize it. The strategic upside is great and may help you realize your vision faster than you ever could alone.

The other thing managers should remember

When I first became a manager, one thing that was extremely difficult for me to get used to was delegation. When an employee gets promoted to manager, and even after they realize they now have a different and distinct role, it can be hard to let go of the day-to-day work.

Why? In many cases, the person who gets promoted to a leadership or a manager position is someone who is an awesome individual contributor. To be an awesome IC, you need to be very good at getting stuff done.

But as a leader or a manager, you need to focus on asking other people to get stuff done.

You need to make sure your team is working on the right stuff to achieve desired outcomes. As a manager, you can’t do the work of other ICs – it no longer in your job description.

This is counter-intuitive and crazy hard because it is the polar opposite of what awesome ICs know so well.

Speaking from experience, when a leader does the work of an IC it can be very demotivating and become counterproductive. On the other hand, when a manager delegates the work and trusts individuals to get the job done it can be very motivating.

As a leader, you should remember that it is far better for you to focus on figuring out what your ICs should do (and why), and let the ICs figure out how to get the job done (and then, do it).

The one thing new managers forget

I first started managing people when I was 26. Four years later, I was managing a team of 30 developers. On paper, I was fantastically successful; in reality I should have fired myself.

At the time, I thought that in order to lead a team of awesome developers, I had to be an even more awesome developer. I worked frantically to write more code than anyone else not realizing that I accepted a new job the moment I was promoted – and writing code wasn’t it.

It’s something that almost all new managers forget. Being a manager isn’t a glorified version of your old job: it’s a brand new and completely different role. It requires a different skill set and attitude. As a manager, your responsibility is to ensure your team works on the right things at the right pace to deliver the right outcomes.

In my 30s, without any management or leadership training under my belt, I didn’t have a clue how to direct such a sizeable team. As a newbie manager I made mistakes and added further complexity to an already chaotic organization. It was only years later when I truly realized how my lack of leadership contributed to the chaos. I still cringe thinking about it.

I’m not proud of those mistakes, but I learned a lot from them. My biggest takeaway was that being a manager isn’t about rolling up your sleeves and working alongside your team (although there are times when this matters); it’s about understanding where your organization wants to go and deploying your team and resources to get you there.

If you’re a new manager who’s still doing the same work as before, step back and delegate. And, congratulations on your new job.

5 tips for better meetings people will actually want to attend

Over the years I’ve attended thousands of meetings. The best ones respected my time and input. They kept me engaged – and often excited – throughout the meeting. And the worst ones … well, I’m pretty sure we’ve all attended at least a few terrible meetings and know what that’s like.

Having seen the good and the bad, I wanted to share some simple tips that anyone, at any level, can implement for more effective meetings.

Go beyond the agenda
Yes, circulating a clear agenda prior to the meeting is important, but also consider explicitly spelling out the objective and the outcome of the meeting. It gives participants the right context to prepare for and be fully engaged during the meeting (or decline the meeting if they can’t help meet the objectives/outcomes).

Nominate a facilitator
This person makes sure the agenda is followed and desired outcomes are met. They empower all participants to contribute and get the group back on track if the conversation goes awry. Facilitating meetings is a special skill and not everyone is good at it but if you find the right person, you are practically guaranteed a great meeting. Keep in mind that the meeting organizer doesn’t have to be the facilitator.

Limit participants
Keep meetings participants to 4-7 people maximum. In my experience this really is the sweet spot. Beyond 8 participants, the introverts in the group tend to shy away from voicing their opinions (a good facilitator, though, can help draw out their perspectives and ensure introverts have a voice).

Forget the update
Don’t use a meeting to provide or ask for updates. Save it for email, or better still a collaborative Google Doc. Share these updates in advance of the meeting as pre-reading material so you can focus the discussion on healthy debates and decision making.

Save 10
Use the last 10 minutes of the meeting to recap the discussion. This is crucial. You’ve just spent the last hour having a productive discussion, it would be a shame for it to fall apart in the follow-up. Make note of the essence of the discussion, key decisions made and actions to take. Be sure to share these notes with all attendees and other stakeholders who couldn’t join.

Slight tweaks to the way organize your meetings can have a profound impact. Know of any other hacks to make meetings more effective? Let me know in the comments.

The Evolution of an Entrepreneur

Years ago, a summer job gave me one of the most valuable lessons in entrepreneurship.

I needed tuition money for university so I got a job at a factory printing t-shirts. I witnessed firsthand how the owner juggled multiple and often diverse tasks in order to operate a successful business. Looking back, I was naive to think that a t-shirt printing company was just about printing t-shirts.

If you look at the journey of an entrepreneur, it all starts with an idea. But an idea is just that – a thought. Without execution, an idea is as good as yesterday’s newspaper. Only when execution follows an idea, can you determine if there’s product-market fit. If you achieve product-market fit – congratulations, that’s a major accomplishment! You can start a company to further iterate on the idea and cement your place in the market. But once you start a company, you have to turn it into a business.

I’ve personally gone through this journey three times. My first business failed, I sold the second one, and the third has become one of Canada’s most successful startups. My experiences failing and succeeding as an entrepreneur reinforced the lesson I learned that summer many years ago: As an entrepreneur, the best product you can build is yourself.

You will wear many hats throughout the entrepreneur journey. As your company grows, you play different roles in the company and you can expect to change ‘jobs’ every few months. Each new job requires a different skill set. You may start as the product designer, but soon you’ll lead a team as a manager, and then eventually you transition into a leadership role. I have yet to meet a single person who, at the launch of their company, has every required skill. So welcome continuous learning and crave self-improvement.

Taking the time to build yourself as a well-rounded entrepreneur will pay dividends.