Cindy Mi and Qi Lu Share Advice for Entrepreneurs Building Global Companies

Cindy Mi is the founder and CEO of VIPKID. VIPKID is a 1-on-1 teaching platform where children in China learn english from North American teachers.

https://twitter.com/wenjuan_mi
https://vipkid.com

Qi Lu is the CEO of YC China and Head of YC Research.

https://twitter.com/qilu

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Topics

00:00 – Qi’s intro

00:15 – Cindy’s intro

1:15 – Moving to a new province as a teenager

4:15 – Being an educator and an entrepreneur

8:00 – Starting VIPKid in a hyper-competitive market

14:30 – Metrics for measuring product market fit

21:20 – How did she find the business model?

26:30 – What things did she try that didn’t work?

30:15 – Strategy for product expansion

32:40 – Content expansion for Mandarin learning

34:30 – Building global companies

41:00 – Creating a global culture

43:50 – The future of education

47:45 – How should engineers and product managers think about edtech?

51:10 – Thoughts on AI

54:10 – Advice for entrepreneurs