Felix Lee
Democratising Mentorship with ADPList
In this episode of Brave UX, Felix Lee shares how ADPList is democratising mentorship 🌍, the lessons he’s learned from failure and resilience 💪, and why clarity beats cleverness in design 🎨.
Highlights include:
- How competitive speed skating shaped a mindset of excellence and perseverance.
- Why the mission to democratise mentorship is deeply personal and transformative.
- The bold risks behind ADPList’s unique vision for a global mentorship platform.
- Felix’s take on “clarity over cleverness” and what it means for great design.
- The leadership philosophies that drive courage, resilience, and team empowerment.
Who is Felix Lee?
Felix is the co-founder and CEO of ADPList, a global mentorship platform connecting expert designers, technologists, and professionals across more than 150 countries. With over 27,000 mentors, ADPList has made possible an incredible 100 million minutes of mentorship annually 🌍.
In just three years, Felix has raised $1.3 million in capital, built a community of 120,000 LinkedIn followers, and launched the world’s largest 24-hour design super-conference 🚀. Beyond design, ADPList has expanded to include product management and engineering, reflecting its mission as a human transformation company.
Felix’s journey hasn’t been without challenges. As a young founder, his resilience has been shaped by early entrepreneurial setbacks and a drive to democratise mentorship 🌟. Featured in Forbes’ 30 Under 30 Asia List and Tatler Asia’s Gen-T List 🏆, Felix continues to inspire a global community with his clear and ambitious leadership style.
Transcript
- Felix Lee:
- We live in a world where we are in tech today, people are earning $200,000 a year and they're telling me it's not enough. Well, these people out there, maybe even the waiters here, they're maybe earning $50,000 per year. I think that's perspective where it gives you perspective that the world isn't only in Silicon Valley, the world isn't only in tech or design. There is a bigger world there. If you want to do something big that you have to recognise that there are people who are not in the same class as you, and you have to help to elevate them as well.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Hello and welcome to the first ever live and in-person recorded episode of Brave UX. As Diletta mentioned, I'm Brendan Jarvis and through Brave UX, it's my job to help you to understand the important issues and people that are impacting our field of design. I do that by unpacking the stories, learnings, and expert advice of a diverse range of world-class design leaders.
- My guest today is Felix Lee. Felix is the co-founder and CEO of ADPList, a global platform for expert tech and design mentoring that features over 27,000 mentors from over 150 countries and also makes possible over 100 million mentorship minutes each year. And I've got to tell you, it's been quite the ride for Felix since founding ADPList just three short years ago. He's raised $1.3 million of capital. He's amassed over 120,000 followers on LinkedIn. He's launched the world's first and largest 24 hour design super conference. And last year he was featured in not just one but two world-class publications, Forbes 30 under 30 Asia list and Tatler ages Gent List.
- But now he's here with all of us for this conversation - thanks to everyone at Design Outlook - on Brave UX. So everyone, let's put our hands together now and give Felix a very warm welcome to the stage.
- Felix Lee:
- Thank you so much, Brendan. Thank you.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Good to see you. Please have a seat. Oh, thank you Mike. Thanks mate. Can I get some water? Thanks man. Well, Felix, here we are. We've been talking about this now for quite some time, and I have learned many wonderful things about you in the last few months as in the lead up to design outlook. And one of those things was that before you were a and a founder, you were actually an international athlete participating in a rather high-paced high intensity sport. What's the story there?
- Felix Lee:
- Yeah, thanks for having me Brendan, and thank you all for coming today. My first time in Melbourne, so it's really cold. So I started speed skating at the age of seven with my brother, and we spent most of our childhood into our teens up until I was 22. And for a good chunk of that time, I was actually part of the national team in Singapore and I competed in speed skating. And so I participated in games like the Asan games, Commonwealth Game Asian Games. Well, the only game that I regret not playing is the Olympics. There was the one that I sort of retired before it happened before we could make it there. So it was a rather long period where I spent in speed skating. Yeah.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- What parallels, if any, can you draw between your time as an internationally competitive athlete and what you've now been doing with ADPList?
- Felix Lee:
- Yeah, ADPList. It's been here for three years. The risk capital from one of the best venture capital firms, Sequoia Capital that funded Instagram, Airbnb, and many more. So we share the same investors. And when you think about startups and I think tech design and also the world sports, the one thing that really relates is the idea of excellence. When I was in the national team, I was training and competing with the best in the world, the best in the country. And you kind of feel the level of excellence rise when you're with the best in your field and not just in design and the hard work that it takes to win. One of my mutual friend is the Olympic gold medalist in Singapore and he won Michael Phelps.
- And so you kind of see and witness the level of greatness and the level of perseverance and hard work that is put into that. And that is why I think that is transferable because when you have tested that level of excellence, when you have been there and been around greatness, you know how it looks like. You know how it feels like. It's almost like you learn a design theory. You wouldn't know how to apply it a hundred percent correctly unless you've been a part of the process. And so I think being part of the group of people who are really good at what they do, I think that has increased the level of standards that I expect out of myself.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Well, speaking of those standards and the things that you expect of yourself, I've heard you previously say, and I'll quote you now, the world doesn't owe us a living. And I've heard you say this in various different ways in various formats to various people, and it made me think that it seems like a really deeply held belief that you have. Where does that belief come from?
- Felix Lee:
- If you look at Singapore's history today, we're close to 60 years. Today. We're one of the wealthiest country. 60 years ago, we were a third world country. If you started the history of Singapore, we were kicked out of Malaysia in 1965, beginning independence on August 9th, 1965. We had nothing to our name back then, nothing to Singapore's name. And today we have everything from marina basins to Mexico, stepin racing across the streets every September. And that wasn't by accident. It was a lot of, now we're on our own, what do we do? Do we borrow money from neighbours? Do we put systems in place? And I think one of the most profound thing about Singapore's history is that it's a reminder that you kind of have to start everything from yourself, your belief, what your vision is. And the vision at that point was to take Singapore from a third world country to a first world in the span of 50 years.
- And we did that. And a lot of people asked me, why do I spend more time in Singapore versus in San Francisco where I spend a few months there every year? And it's because in Singapore you simply get the inspiration of all of this was built and done from the ground up, get your hands dirty. And I think it's a reminder that you have to put yourself in a situation. No one's coming to save you when you're kicked out of the country or when you're fired for a company. You could be set for a few days, but you have to pick yourself up. And I think that to me is a reality that we live in.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I get the sense also that your parents have played quite an important role in the way in which you see yourself in the world.
- Felix Lee:
- Can I some water as well?
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Oh, absolutely.
- Felix Lee:
- Thank you.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Yes.
- Felix Lee:
- How rude of me.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Thank you. I'll just put that on the floor. So I grew up in a family of bakers. It's interesting. So we own a small bakery in Singapore where my grandfather had started. And so growing up, my childhood was very different. I wasn't out in the playground running with friends and whatnot, but I was in a bakery. We had a two story, it was like a shop house and the house was on the second level. And every time that I wasn't doing my homework, I would be down with my grandparents and helping them with the store. And I think that shaped a big part of me throughout my childhood and it shaped the fact that you should be out there. I think hanging out with people of different classes, selling things, interacting with strangers, but I think most importantly, to witness the level of hard work that is being put into it.
- I remember my grandma is in 70, 80, 82 this year and she recently cut her finger, so she had to go for a huge surgery. And boy, I was in the hospital and I was like, you're working at 80. And my parents as well, they're working at five and every day to prepare for the bakery. And I think that's a good reminder that we live in the world where we are in tech today. People are earning $200,000 a year and they're telling you it's not enough. Well, these people out there, maybe even the waiters here, they're maybe earning $50,000 per year. I think that's perspective. It gives you perspective of that. The world isn't only in Silicon Valley, the world isn't only in tech or design. There is a bigger world there. And if you want to do something big that you have to recognise that there are people who are not in the same class as you and you have to help to elevate them as well.
- Well, speaking of perspective, one of the perspectives that I was interested in learning more about is the perspective of being a young founder. You were 23 years old when you founded ADPList, and I think you told me just in the green room before that you're turning 27 soon. And one of the other things that I've heard you say, and I'm going to quote you again now, is that every single day I wake up and say, no, I'm not going to negotiate with my doubts, with my fears, with the self-imposed belief, then I have to overcome that challenge. What is the fear that you most often contend with?
- Felix Lee:
- Well, I think the fear is to be mediocre, to be like everyone else. And I'll tell you why. So there is this powerful quote by Nike. They ran this ad I think in the 1980s, go something like that. There are neighbourhoods that you don't belong in, clubs that you cannot enter, schools that you can't get into, but the roads are always open, so just do it. And I think throughout our lifetime, I think there's a lot of things where we might not belong in there. Maybe not this room, maybe not the other room. Maybe you're feeling some of that right now. But the reality is that back to the point, no one is coming to save you. And if you're not going to put yourself in there, you are at the losing end. And so the fear of being mediocre is scary because if you think about back to the point of a global perspective and a regional perspective today, Singapore, we have amazing companies, Australia, there's amazing companies.
- I'll talk a little bit about Canva as well, but if you look at Singapore company, we have companies like Grab, I think it's worth $15 billion today, maybe 30 at some point. But here's the sad thing about that. Maybe the CEO is watching this. But here's the sad thing about that is that if you go to the us, if you go to India, no one knows about Grab. They might know it, they're not using it. And the point is that do you want to be a billionaire, but go to a country where your has not benefited anyone at the end of your life. I think you could be a rich man, but no one would benefit from that. And so the point is that one of the biggest thing that I want do and the message that I'm trying to share is that I want to be that person to say that we can create something out of this part of the world instead of being just in Silicon Valley.
- Why can't we create a Google here? Why can't we create an open AI here? Why is it that OpenAI has to be from some element in Silicon Valley? I mean, he's a great guy, but there's no reason we don't like the money, we don't like the talent, we don't like anything. I think we lack the ambition to dream big, to fail. Big people are afraid of failing big. And I think the fear that I have is to be part of that circle that says, I just want to make it to a billion dollars, and that's it. I don't want that. That's why today when you look at ADPList, doesn't look like a Singapore company. It doesn't feel like that. It's intentional. There's a message behind it.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Thinking about what you've been saying, the fear of mediocrity about ADPList and its mission, I'm curious about that because something that people in the audience might not know unless I'm the only one is what a DP and ADPList stands for. What is that, Felix? What does it stand for? What does it stand for?
- Felix Lee:
- A lot of people thought that we were part of the payroll company, A DP. So it stands for Amazing Design People List. So we started with designers. I'm a designer myself. We started with designers and that's why it stands for, it started in pandemic. So that was to help people get jobs and mentorship during the height of pandemic when people are losing their jobs.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- And I've noticed that the vision for ADPList seems to have grown broader than just design. Probably why I didn't understand that. It was awesome design people to start with. I see you've added disciplines like product management and engineering and other things in recent years. In recent time, yes. The company's been around for three years. You've been very, very busy person. What is the vision for ADPList?
- Felix Lee:
- For a very long time, people call us an education company for a very long time. People look at us as a mentorship platform. I think we're bigger than that. We're a human transformation company. And here's why, Brendan, because when we put two people in the same room and have conversation, both of them walks out of that conversation a little bit more inspired, a lot more motivated, they gain a lot more perspective. And one of our tagline is called Be More. We hope that when you walk out of that conversation, you're able to get inspired to want to be more of who you want to be. And so our role in the world, the world that we want to create is that everyone can get access to this conversations. Everyone can walk out of there feeling a transformative experience. In that sense, we have designed a transformative experience that when you walk out, you're a different person or with a different perspective. And that's how I would describe a DP as a company and as a community.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You've previously said, and here comes another one of these quotes that I have. When you look at ADPList, a lot of people say it's a website, it's a platform. But the majority of people majority here today say that ADPList is a community. I think that's the most amazing thing any founder could hear. Why is that?
- Felix Lee:
- Well, today apparently a lot of designers associate profit with evil maybe because of sunk, I don't know. He sells data. And so I think it's good to be seen as a community because people are allergic to the idea of corporation. I do think that's a little bit weird because if you don't make money, you can't really forward your mission to be honest. I mean, we're doing some amazing work, but if we don't make money, if we don't expand it, we don't fundraise and everything like that, whatever that we're doing is just going to be whatever that we're doing. It's not going to get into a bigger scale. And so I think there's a fine balance when you look at CEOs and when you look at companies that they should be making money and they should be using that money to forward their mission. Now the point is that some people don't. Some CEOs don't obviously, and it becomes a sort of like an evil billionaire situation, but that's not how it is. That's not how we want to be. So rather we be called a community than a company just because for the sake of perception.
- And I'll end off with saying that there's this quote by what Disney I really love is this quote that he says. Something that really inspired me was that I don't make money to make movies. I make money so that I can make more movies. And the essence of that quote is that money is here to fuel your mission for the world. And I think that it is a means to an end, and I think that's always a powerful message.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Thinking about this idea of community and the fine line that it sounds like exists between being perceived as a community and also being a corporation with a profit incentive to make money to continue to do the things that you're doing. From the outside looking in, it seems at the moment that ADPList is still searching for a sustainable revenue model. And I was curious about your thoughts of the line that you may walk between the mentors and the people on the platform and the company's desire and need to continue to exist.
- Felix Lee:
- Oh, wow. I got a little bit nervous there because everyone asked me for my business model. I'm sure a lot of you're curious. Are you curious? Oh, all of you're curious. Wow. So I'll break it down for you, Brendan. Now I'll break it down for everyone. So I don't know who here works for my competitor, but hopefully you are. Feel free to share the message out. Paid mentorship doesn't make sense. It wouldn't make us a big company either way, it wouldn't make sense for mentors. It wouldn't make sense to be the next big thing. And here's why. Mathematically just doesn't make sense. So a lot of people like to draw comparison to Uber and Airbnb. It's like mentorship. You're a mentor, you charge like an Uber driver, but let's just put in this perspective. Uber is a high frequency product. People use it on a weekly if not daily basis.
- So even though the ticket item for a Uber ride, it's pretty low margin. Uber takes about $5 per ride, but the frequency makes up for that. So it's a good business. Now you look at Airbnb, it's a low frequency business, not like Uber. It's a low frequency business and you only use it two to three times per year, but every time you use it, you spend hundreds dollars per night and it adds up to thousands of dollars per year. So the Airbnb makes quite a bit of money from every individual who spends out there. Now, let's look at mentorship. I think here's the ugly truth that a lot of founders that do this do not want to see that, or there's no first principles thinking in that, which is mentorship is not a frequent use case. I know a lot of you in this room based on data by the way, come once to a mentor, solve their problems and they don't come back ever.
- They come back maybe end of year, six months later. That's one problem, right? So low frequency, unpredictable frequency as well. The second thing is that it's a low ticket item. So if someone charges you a thousand dollars, you would think three times to even pay that person. Now, if they charge you a hundred dollars, it makes sense, you pay for it. But the profit margin as a company is really low. I take $10 and because it's so low plus a low frequency, I make about $20 or $60 positively from you per year. Now, $60 per user, that is a pretty good revenue to be honest. But let's put one last piece to that, which is that not everyone is motivated enough to get a coach or a mentor. You look at your siblings, look at the people around us, look at your friends who are not in this industry.
- They're not motivated to get a mentor or coach. So you're serving a very, very small market, small frequency and small ticket size. I could make $15 million off that today, but it would never make me a company that's able to compete the likes of LinkedIn. Would I want that? No. I don't want my legacy to be a $50 million, a hundred million dollars guy. I'd rather compete with the likes of Google and LinkedIn. We die by the sort. There is a high risk that we're doing this. It's an extremely high risk that we're doing this. But back to the point, that is the legacy that we want. That is the dream that we're chasing after. Now, if you want to ask about the business model, it's simple as the network grows, it's a co social network. We get more users because it's free, get more mentors and whatever mentees members we call it, it's easy. It's recruiting and hiring. As your network gets bigger, as mentors meet more people, they verify more people on the platform, recruiters are willing to pay for that. We're able to provide opportunities for people and recruiters pay for that. And recruiting is an expensive business. It's a high frequency business that is a billion dollar opportunity, multi-billion dollar opportunity. Why not take that? Why do I settle for a hundred dollars per session? I'd rather give it to everyone for free.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- So you're going all in, it sounds like.
- Felix Lee:
- I'm going all in. I might not be here in the next two years, but I'm going all in. But if I do make make it, if I do make it, then I think it's going to be a hell of a story to tell.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I'm speaking of that story. One of the things that informs, I think the narrative of any company or certainly of us as people is the mission that we see ourselves on. And one of the things, Felix, that you've said about the mission that ADPList is on is that it's to democratise mentorship for all. I just was thinking about what you said earlier on in the conversation about being a kid, working in the bakery, mixing with all different types of people from all different walks of life. Why is the, aside from perhaps the hard-nosed commercial side of you, but why is it that this idea of democratising mentorship for all is something that you are willing to literally bet the farm on and go all in to achieve?
- Felix Lee:
- Yeah, so there's a few parts of my life that I don't share on LinkedIn. I worked at Gap, the clothing brand gap as a retailer when I was a kid. It's about my part-time job. I worked as one of the waiters in conferences like that. I was serving food outside. I was a computer administrative. So I grew up in a pretty humble family and I was helping my dad run some of the stuff. So no job is in a sense beneath what I can do today. And the idea of that is because I wasn't born with a silver spoon. I wasn't born with this networks. I had to fight for it. I took a 30 day trip to San Francisco when I was 20 just to learn from strangers and a lot of them were willing to open up their doors for me and share.
- And so not everyone have the courage to do that. Not everyone has access to do that. And I think because I've done that, I find a value in it. I just think that more people will find a value in that as well. I believe in that and I believe in the power of exchanging ideas and that's why ADP was born. That's why the power of democratising, the access to mentorship and these conversations, these inspiring conversations is important because perhaps the next Einstein is lost somewhere and no one is there to pick them up. And hopefully one day we get to inspire someone through our platform and pick that person up and say, Hey, there's an opportunity for you.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- One of the stories that Felix doesn't often tell, and in the nature, the good nature that we're sharing stories that hopefully someone out there can find some value in is that ADPList is actually Felix's second company when he was just a teenager, he founded with his brother after borrowing $5,000 from his parents, which was a lot of money to them, his first company called pda and it was sold to an Indonesian company for $250,000 or so you thought, right? What's the TLDR of that story and what did it teach you about life?
- Felix Lee:
- Wow, that was a tough story. I wouldn't share this, but thanks for bringing it in public. You're welcome. My brother and ITLD, my brother and I started this company called Peg Debt. It's a trip planning platform with $5,000. We survived for three years throughout our high school and by the end of it, we sold that company. So we thought I was 21 years old for $250,000. Now we only got $20,000 of that. The rest of it didn't come to the bank and they simply just didn't want to pay us. And so as a 21-year-old kid with not so rich family, you could think about let's sue them, right? These are very rich people. These are very rich people. If you sue them, they're going to counter sue you and they have more money to fight a lawsuit. What do you do? You walk away from it.
- Those are money lost. Two 50 K would've changed my life, I'll tell you that. So what I took away from that episode of things, it was traumatising by the way, was that I had then exponentially grow beyond what a 21-year-old kid would've grown. Because I've seen the reality of humans, I've seen the reality of business. There are wolves in business. And that's why I always telling designers, don't be so naive because when you reach a C level executive, these are things that happen. And so I became someone who I think was a lot more cautious, but I think also a lot more aware of the realities of the world. There's good and bedside. You might be here trying to change the world, but the next thing you know, I might get fired as a CEO by the investors. So I think that has grown to be a part of me to be aware of how tough real life can be and real business can be. And I think that still continues to be a big part of me today.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Speaking of tough, one of the things that Felix, that you did was not go to university after PAC debt was sold. You actually opted to join the military, which to me sounded like quite a tough decision. And you've previously described your time in the military as simultaneously one of the best and worst times of my life. What was it about that choice to spend that time in the military that made it both of those things?
- Felix Lee:
- Well, I think not everyone knows that I go to military. I think everyone must be thinking like, oh my God, this guy does everything.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- All of your secrets are coming out today.
- Felix Lee:
- Yeah. So I don't put it on LinkedIn as well, by the way. It's not a part that I'm particularly keen on sharing, but I thought it was interesting. So every boy and man in Singapore, at some point they have to opt in and say that they need to go to the military. So it's compulsory in a sense, but I spent two years in the military and I was a combat medical specialist. So that means that I go out there in the field, I fight, but I also heal people. But that was tough because in the military, you don't get freedom to talk. You don't get freedom to make your own choices. People just tell you to shut up, move on, suck it up. And I think that's the life for two years. Can you imagine two years? And worst thing was that I was very defiant. I was very defiant. And so I'll give you an example. I'll tell you a quick story. So I was so defiant to a point where people started bullying me.
- I'll walk into a room and I would have on a whiteboard would say, Felix is a slacker, whatever they want to call it. Now, I was simply just doing freelance work outside of that. I was doing design work, so I didn't want to hang out with people. I said, you guys can do your own thing and whatever. I'm not going to try to hang out. And then obviously I got bullied for that. In that sense now that is just one part. And then your superiors start bullying you. The bosses, they will come in, there's a room of a hundred people and they're like, oh, I need someone to throw the trash. It's like, oh, Felix, throw the trash. You get targeted for that. It was a tough two years, but the best time out of those were the times where I spent in a jungle with my friends.
- There was once where I spent 14 nights in the jungle of Singapore and we were doing a tough training. So by the end of the training, we were supposed to go out there and fight this simulated war. And so spend 40 nights, it was very tough. We had to survive on our own. And there are some nights there where you just don't feel like doing anything. I think those were the nights where someone who is positive would say something nice and say something positive and said, Hey, there's two more, three more. Let's look forward to that together. And when someone is positive, it's actually really infectious, especially in times of depression or whatnot. And so that was the biggest learning for me was that you have to start to hang out the right people because these people bring the best of you. And I think the two years I was lucky enough to have been bullied, but also to have been hanging out with the right people that took me into a place where I've never been before.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- That sounds like a really challenging situation at quite a young age for someone, anyone to experience. And I suspect that there's many people out there in the audience that although they may have not served in the military, can relate to what you're saying in some work environments, they're not all that great. I'm thinking about the work environment now and thinking about your formative experiences in organisations like the military, how, if at all, have those shaped the way in which you treat lead and manage your own team?
- Felix Lee:
- So I'll share two frameworks. I think one is about the leadership philosophy that I love, which is that courage isn't something that you can find inside of yourself. So if today you're looking to switch a career or you're looking to quit your job, it's not something that intuitively you would be able to do it. It's just impossible. Courage is found by the people around you. And I'll give you a quick metaphor on that. So when you think about jumping off a plane, when you skydive, you don't actually want to jump off the plane. It's the parachute that gives you the courage. It's an external support. And so when you relate back to leadership on your own life, it is that when you want to make tough choices and tough decisions, it's actually something external. It could be your friends or your family and said, go for it. I'm going to support you.
- And often that is what is needed for someone to make that jump. And I think from a leadership philosophy, I try to be like the parachute. I try to be like the parachute for my team. And when you think about war, the infantry is always second. The air force will always go first. You have to establish air superiority. So the air force will always go in, first drop bombs, whatever, and then the infantry goes in. Now imagine a situation that without the Air Force, the infantry would've lost quite a bit of battle and men before they go in. And so you want to be that air force as a leader. So that's the philosophy number one, which is to be the external courage. The number two things that I learned, the number two thing that I learned from this military is called the framework a r after action review. So after action review means every time after a certain mission, we sit down, we talk about what went right, what went wrong, and I think that has tremendously improved the way that I run the company and how we have done experiments as well.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Thinking about that AAR. I think I got that right.
- Felix Lee:
- Yeah.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- One of your biggest learnings as a designer turned founder has been to always have a positive answer to the following question, which is, are we solving the right problem for right now? So thinking about that, how do you know when you are not doing that at ADPList?
- Felix Lee:
- So a lot of designers think they're solving the right problem, but they're not. I think a lot of CEOs, even more CEOs, think that they're solving the right problem, which is the problem. So a lot of your CEOs, I mean you love because you can relate to that. A lot of your CEOs probably come into a room and say, we've got to do this. You're like, where did that come from? So I sometimes do that, but I try to hold myself back a little bit this days. And the problem with that is that you sometimes got to ask yourself, A friend of mine, a good friend of mine who runs a pretty big company, and he told me this, he said, when you make decisions like that, you have to look at it. If it's Avis decision or non-visible, if you put decision out, is it something that you can roll back?
- A lot of decisions are some things that you can roll back, and there are some decisions where you absolutely cannot roll back. For example, if we change the branding, you can't roll that back. People are going to sort get influenced by that. So I often look at that decision metric and say, if we put this out, is it going to be a huge challenge? Is it going to be road back? If it is a two-way, door Street, then we should just do it if the team wants to do it. Now, the second thing is that sometimes I get into arguments with our designers. They say they want to do this, I want to do this. And the reality is that I often let them do what they want to do. And not because I'm one of those empower your team kind of CEOs, even though, I mean that is part of the reasons, but the bigger reason is because I asked myself this question, if this decision is made by me or made by them, would the company actually have a big difference in terms of the outcome?
- Would we actually die because this was not my decision? A hundred percent of the time, the answer is no, you wouldn't die or you wouldn't be a billion dollar suddenly just because of this one decision. So I have learned to disagree and just commit to them. And I think in that sense of give and take, they allow me to make decisions that are bigger. So if they want to run an experiment and said, okay, what's the rationale? Everything, go for it, because the company doesn't depend on that to survive or to die, so just go for it. But there are some decisions where you have to just take the lead on that.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- How much of a struggle is it for you to kill your own darlings?
- Felix Lee:
- Oh, that was big. A big struggle. I mean, everyone can feel it. It's a designer to be able to say that you want to let someone else experiment, go first before your, it's a big struggle, but you learn to grow with it. You learn to just say, screw it, just do it. Right? And I think we have run thousands of experiments, and I think I have run my fair share, and I've been proven wrong a lot of times. So these days I've learned to be much more humble with that.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- You've also got another, I dunno what you'd call this, a saying that you often use, and I imagine you use this internally as well. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's this distinction you've drawn between designers needing to be clear, not clever. What does that mean in practical terms?
- Felix Lee:
- Yeah, so if you look at in practise, a lot of designers or even product managers, I think they try to be very clever with things like ai, with things like latest design trends and whatnot. But what you end up is a product that is very clever, but no one knows what they're doing. No one knows exactly what's going on. And I think that even comes down to copy. Some people would say like, oh, this is the world best cereal will planet's best cereal, or something like that. It's clever, it's eye catching. But if you kind of frame it differently that this cereal makes you healthier or this is like a vegan cereal that boosts your immunity, whatever, I mean, it's clear what people are getting out of it. And as a designer, you always have to be clear of what your intentions are rather than try to be clever around what's going on. Now, I'll end off with this. There's a lot of designers who look at AI and says, I should implement ai. Now, that's the irony because the thing is that a lot of things that you're doing likely wouldn't need ai, but you're doing that because maybe your boss says, so maybe because the design AI seems to be a trend right now,
- But the problem is that your onboarding is not even fixed yet. There's still a broken UX there, and you're jumping into ai. AI's not going to solve that. It might solve some of it, but it's not all of it. So to understand the problem and be clear about it, I think that's the most important thing. I think a lot of people just jump around with trends and everything else, which is obviously scary.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Drawing a line now between clarity and uncertainty and also thinking about people's tummies because it's coming up. Afternoon tea. This is my final question for you. There's a lot of uncertainty out there in the design community at the moment in the world, probably at large. And I imagine in what you do as a tech founder, there's quite a bit of uncertainty. I mean, if you knew exactly what the future was going to be for ADPList, you would've already done it, made it to those goals, and we probably wouldn't be chatting on the stage right now. In those times when you're in the leadership seat and things are really uncertain when things are getting tough, you've got a runway. When you're running a company and you're not a hundred percent sure what's going to happen off the back of a consequential decision, what do you say to yourself?
- Felix Lee:
- It's a tough question. I think when you're uncertain, it goes back to what you want, what you want to live behind for the world. And this is an interesting story because I just went off to an offsite with our team and I told them that, Hey, you're taking this risky business model. Obviously you guys all know about it, but the chances of failure is extremely high. And to my surprise, all of them said, yeah, let's do that. I'd rather fail this than to settle for being like one of the competitors. And back to the point of just to wrap it all up, which is courage is external. When it's uncertain, you cannot find that courage in yourself sometimes. And it is words like that from team, from your family, from your friends, that gets you through it. And I'll say this, which is that people ask me about burnout. It's interesting. I don't understand the concept of burnout. I'm a workaholic, and I'm not afraid to admit that. And some people said, don't you burnout? I said, no. The days that you don't feel like working are the days that you should work. Those are the days where you push above your limit. I'm not asking you to go a hundred percent of the day, you could be 1%, but I just need to show up. By the way, I don't push my team like that. So if you're burned out, you're burned out.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- I could feel the room drop a few degrees.
- Felix Lee:
- So I don't push my team like that, but I push myself like that. That's a mindset of an athlete. That's a mindset of greatness. And if I were to leave anything with anyone here, which is when you're feeling uncertain, obviously your courage is external, but hang out with people who are great at what they do, not just in design. I think that is the problem with a lot of folks today, which is like I just hang out with people who are great at what they do and what I do, but hang out with people who are just completely not in your field, but they're good at what they do. For example, an athlete, a makeup artist, a dancer, singer, whatever. I have friends from all over these places who are the best at what they do, and you get a sense of that greatness, that sacrifice, that hard work, that the tears and the joys. You want to be part of that all you want to witness that.
- Brendan Jarvis:
- Well, Felix, it's been great sharing this couch with you today, and I'm sure everyone in the audience has picked up a little bit of that greatness from our conversation today. Thank you for so generously sharing your stories and insights with me and also all of the curious, wonderful designers that are in the audience.
- Felix Lee:
- Thank you so much, Brendan. Really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you all.