March 28, 2022

Ep 77: Founding Two 7-figure Businesses & Launching the First Venture DAO for Women | Lily Wu (Startup Partner Lead, SEA & Co-Founder, WOW Pixies NFT)

1 hour 33 minutes

Welcome to the 3rd guest in STIMY’s NFT/Web3 series!

Lily Wu is currently the Startup Partner Lead, SEA at Stripe and co-founder of WOW Pixies, the first DAO to invest in the women-led web3 ecosystem. DAO stands for decentralised autonomous organisation where rather than decision making being centred at the very top, that decision making power is given away to everyone (aka all WOW Pixies NFT holders). Which is something that is being made possible in the Web3 world.

But how did Lily get into the world of NFTs and DAOs?

Well, Lily has her grounding in the startup world.

When she was 16, she founded her first startup - and ended up making half a million dollars selling shoes.

At age 19, she started her second business in the education space, Austern International, which ended up generating over 7-figures in revenue with over 1,000 students attending physical Career Bootcamps in New York, Singapore, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Sydney and Melbourne.

Thereafter, she became the Head of Programs for NewCampus, a Series A edutech startup based in Singapore before joining Stripe as the Startup Partner Lead. She is the founding ambassador of Future Females Singapore, a global organisation dedicated to helping female entrepreneurs get the resources and connections.

To learn about all things startups, growth hacking, NFTs, DAOs and what it means to be part of groupHUG - an NFT accelerator co-founded by Randi Zuckerberg & Debbie Soon, then listen on!

Highlights:

3:56 Being taught by her parents to not ask for permission, ask for forgiveness
6:15 How being left with $100, led to Lily starting her first startup at the age of 16
8:19 Adidas Jeremy Scott wing shoes and the power of arbitrage
12:00 Spreading by word of mouth
15:43 Accounting
20:27 Finding her own internship in China (and getting 20 friends to do the same for $2000!)
25:06 Having the police called on her
28:47 Starting Austern International
30:11 Building the curriculum at Austern International
34:42 Helping Uber launch Uber Eats
36:50 Marketing Austern International
42:39 Working at New Campus
47:48 Becoming Startup Partner Lead at Stripe
50:44 What is an NFT?
55:04 WOW Pixies as a Venture DAO
56:55 Investing in women-led NFT projects
1:03:12 Decision-making process at WOW Pixies
1:06:29 Marketing efforts for WOW Pixies, which sold out in 5 days
1:08:37 The “thunderclap”
1:11:26 Roadmap for WOW Pixies
1:21:25 Metrics of success
1:23:41 How to invest in NFT projects

📍Show notes: www.sothisismywhy.com/77

💌 Sign up for the weekly STIMY newsletter: https://sothisismywhy.ck.page/ebf231f605

🪙 Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/sothisismywhy

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By Ling Yah

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