An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
The first one, which is the most memorable for me, I received when I was in my freshman year of high school. I was on the track team and I was competing in the triple jump for a spot at the provincial finals. I had faulted on my first two jumps and only had one left to qualify. As I got ready for my last jump, I considered moving the starting line for the jump, which would have made it more difficult to fault but also more difficult to qualify. There was a senior who was standing in for the coach at the event who I looked to for advice. He told me something that has always stuck with me. He said that if I went with Plan B, then I wasn’t going to win anyway. What I needed to do was commit to Plan A and give it everything I had.
As a part of our series about women who are shaking things up in their industry, I had the pleasure of interviewing Ivy Xu.
Ivy is a location-independent entrepreneur writing about the future of education, work, and learning. She is the CEO of Prequel, where the most ambitious teens learn 21st century life skills through passion-led boot camps hosted by leading experts. She is also the co-founder of Wander Women DAO, a venture studio DAO building products to empower more women to be nomadic and financially free.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
I was born in China and emigrated to Canada with my family when I was four years old. I grew up in Ottawa, where both of my parents worked as engineers. During my sophomore year at Queen’s University, I participated in a business incubator program that provided me with a grant to build a business. That experience changed my life.
When I graduated, I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur, so I moved to Silicon Valley to learn from the best. After three years working in San Francisco, I realized I was getting too comfortable working for big tech companies. To refocus on my goal of being an entrepreneur, I took a sabbatical year to travel. That was 2019.
When the pandemic hit in 2020, I did what a lot of young professionals did and moved back home with my parents to wait it out. That move allowed me to reconnect with my sister, who is 11 years younger than me. It was really the first time I had interacted with her since she became a teenager. She was in her sophomore year of high school and stressed out about figuring out the next season of her life, including what she would study in college.
The more I interacted with her, the more I realized that, just like me when I was her age, she knew nothing about the real world. In her mind, there were four career paths that were OK for Asian immigrants: business, engineering, medicine, or law. She liked art, but she did not see how it could be a successful career for her. So, like a lot of her friends, she was planning to study business. As I watched what my sister was going through, I realized that she needed better opportunities for learning about her career options. She had no idea about how changes in the world of technology have opened doors for us to go into whatever we are passionate about.
My first thought was to let her shadow a bunch of my friends who were working at their careers so she could see what they do on a daily basis. But I thought that might end up being boring for a teenager. Eventually I decided that the best way for her to experience as many careers as possible was for her to launch her own startup. That way she would experience the whole process, including ideation, user research, sales, marketing, and more. That idea morphed into Beta Camp, a six week online program to teach entrepreneurship, business, and life skills that launched in Summer 2020.
I thought Beta Camp would include my sister and a few friends, but after we put the word out, we got over 110 applications. We accepted about 80 kids and put them together in teams of five to six to build startups. By the end of the summer, some of the teams were already monetizing their products and services. One team that launched workshops for teachers on how to create more engaging online classrooms ran five workshops, with teachers paying $50 each to participate. Later we had kids that made thousands of dollars selling on Shopify, leveraging a supply chain that they built out in just within a few weeks. One 14-year-old who participated in the first cohort just raised $1.6 million for his startup.
I had no idea whether kids would actually be able to monetize in six weeks. They were starting from nothing. The first week they didn’t even know what a business was. But it went really well. We just finished our fifth Beta Camp cohort this past summer, which is now a part of Prequel, a new mother company that will oversee many new programs that we are building.
Can you tell our readers what it is about the work you’re doing that’s disruptive?
When it comes to education, I believe the most important factor when it comes to student success is who is doing the teaching. In a typical high school setting, you learn business from someone that has never started a business. In many cases, they have never even worked in a business. When it comes to career counseling, you are getting guidance from someone who has not personally explored different careers. They are learning from brochures as they guide you.
Our program brings in the best of the best, people who are actually working at the forefront of innovation, to teach the subjects that they are really, really good at. Providing those types of teachers to high school students allows them to enter college with a baseline knowledge of what they are studying, which means they can spend the next four years advancing to the forefront of their field instead of learning the basics.
Another step we are taking is making sure that students get real world exposure instead of just theories. What we hear from all of our students is that they learn entrepreneurship by reading a book or filling out a worksheet, but not from actually going out and doing it. When they learn programming, they might play within the game, which is a good start, but you never go beyond that and build a game yourself. Too often, all we learn in school is how to get good grades.
There is definitely a gap between what kids are learning and what they need to know to apply it in the real world in a way that actually impacts the progression of our society. Teenagers, and even preteens, have the potential to do a lot of things that our culture does not challenge them to do until after they graduate from college. Students should be able to explore things academically as a tool for discovering their likes and dislikes, but once they have a passion for something they should learn the skills they need to pursue it. They need to learn financial skills and investing skills and leadership skills and how to build an audience on social media and create a personal brand online. These are the skills that open up opportunities regardless of what career they pursue.
Finally, by taking learning online you do away with the limitations that students had when they were stuck in one geographic community. Now, wherever you are, the Internet allows you to find kids like yourself with the same interests and ambitions. Many kids are ambitious but don’t know what they’re ambitious about yet. Kids are always motivated by their peers. By taking learning online we provide the opportunity for them to connect with amazing peers.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
One funny mistake that I found myself making was a result of the generation gap. I’m a young millennial, but the kids that we are teaching are mid Gen Z. When I tried to connect with them through social media there was a lot of frustration because, as I learned, they use social media platforms much differently than I do.
For example, they use Instagram as a chat tool because they don’t use Facebook Messenger. So their Instagram accounts have zero posts and zero stories but 2,000 followers. I learned from this that social media platforms provide a great opportunity to really know a demographic and what it takes to connect with them.
I also discovered that they don’t use short slang like my generation does and they don’t understand it when I use it. I once told my sister that we needed to create a sense of FOMO and she had no idea what I was talking about. I told her it was “slang that kids use.” When she said she didn’t, I told her it was “slang that old kids use.”
We all need a little help along the journey. Who have been some of your mentors? Can you share a story about how they made an impact?
I am really lucky to have two mentors, both of whom made a big impact on my life. One of them is an incredibly successful businesswoman who I interned with when I was 20. She helped me to connect with a lot of people in the business community in Silicon Valley and showed me the importance of keeping people within your network. From her I learned that you need to be incredibly generous with people, helping where you can. I don’t think she ever told me this directly, but the understanding that I got from her is that when you network, you act with the people you are connecting with as if you need them 20 years from now and they need you today.
The other important mentor was one of the organizers of a fellowship that I was selected to be a part of in college. It is known as the Cansbridge Fellowship and it provided me with a three month business internship in Asia that allowed me to explore some of the innovative things that were happening in Asian markets. He really helped me to see what was possible. He encouraged me to come to Silicon Valley and be a part of what was happening there. “The pie is here,” he would say. “Come hungry and help to expand it.”
In today’s parlance, being disruptive is usually a positive adjective. But is disrupting always good? When do we say the converse, that a system or structure has ‘withstood the test of time’? Can you articulate to our readers when disrupting an industry is positive, and when disrupting an industry is ‘not so positive’? Can you share some examples of what you mean?
Disrupting, in my opinion, is almost always positive. When an industry is disrupted, it results in options that aren’t like the original. And more choices and competition are always good. In addition, having a new option does not take away from the old one.
In my field, for example, I don’t think that more alternative education programs will immediately shut down traditional schools. It might challenge traditional schools to take on some of the best ideas. With each disruption, there are new ideas that come out and the popular or common ideas at that time can take elements of the disruption and incorporate them.
The only thing that comes to mind in the area of negative disruptions are those that leverage short-term thinking instead of long-term thinking. The most obvious of these to me is the disruptions that are contributing to the climate crisis. A disruption that progresses the oil industry rather than one that promotes clean energy would be a negative disruption.
Can you share 3 of the best words of advice you’ve gotten along your journey? Please give a story or example for each.
The first one, which is the most memorable for me, I received when I was in my freshman year of high school. I was on the track team and I was competing in the triple jump for a spot at the provincial finals. I had faulted on my first two jumps and only had one left to qualify. As I got ready for my last jump, I considered moving the starting line for the jump, which would have made it more difficult to fault but also more difficult to qualify. There was a senior who was standing in for the coach at the event who I looked to for advice. He told me something that has always stuck with me. He said that if I went with Plan B, then I wasn’t going to win anyway. What I needed to do was commit to Plan A and give it everything I had.
I have learned to apply those words in so many areas. In business and relationships and more, you take the one chance you have and commit to it. You can’t go through life doing things halfway.
Another was something I already mentioned about the best way to network. You need to treat people like they need you now and you need them 20 years from now. Every time I use that to explain to others the purpose of networking, it really clicks.
The third is something that a friend shared with me about having confidence. She explained that confidence usually comes from the belief that you can figure it out, rather than from the knowledge that you already know the solution. We try to teach our teens that they will not always know the solution. There will be times when they do not know how to get there or when they are too scared to pursue something. In those times, the belief that you can figure out how to get to wherever you want to go if you put enough effort into provides all the confidence they need.
We are sure you aren’t done. How are you going to shake things up next?
Our long-term vision is to get to a place where we are allowing our students to come in and choose their own journey, which is quite a difficult goal to achieve. We are used to a world of prerequisites, so evolving to a place where we are just guiding them on their own journey is a big step.
The most difficult part of this is finding the right balance between what we think they should be learning and what actually attracts them in terms of their passions. Our end goal is to be able to offer a program in which half is focused on academics and half is passion-based, project-based learning.
We are also looking to be more incorporated into the other places where kids learn. As education becomes more distributed, with micro-schools or charter schools or homeschooling, I would love to be able to help with developing the content that is woven into the standard education curriculum to make sure kids have the best, most fun, and most impactful content to inspire their learning.
In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges faced by ‘women disruptors’ that aren’t typically faced by their male counterparts?
One thing that I have noticed now that social distancing is coming to an end and I am having more in person meetings with my team, is that I actually really enjoy Zoom meetings. In Zoom, we are all in one square and everyone’s square is the same size. As a result, I don’t feel small. When I meet physically with my team, all of them are taller than me, which makes it harder to command a room. It might seem funny, but I found that being the same size as everyone else in Zoom meetings is confidence boosting and makes a difference in terms of women feeling more empowered to speak up.
Another challenge that women disruptors face is something I noticed during my days in Silicon Valley when I was working in business development. In the industries that are more male dominated, whether that is engineering or tech or finance, hangouts and socials are still very male oriented. The vibe at those events, which sometimes included belly dancers or strippers, pressures you to be something you are not. It might seem like a game that you just need to play, but it makes it difficult for a woman to connect with the people who can be mentors or role models.
Do you have a book/podcast/talk that’s had a deep impact on your thinking? Can you share a story with us?
A podcast that I listen to a lot is My First Million with Sam Parr and Shaan Puri. It’s about how people made their first $1 million that typically highlights people I think of as hidden millionaires. They are young people with lawn mowing or SEO businesses, not big business people with nationwide, scalable businesses.
It’s inspiring to me to hear that there are so many hidden rich people who make their millions doing all these different things. It tells me that you can make anything work in whatever field you choose to work in. You don’t need to be Mark Zuckerberg or someone else who is in the press. You can build something in your community that thrives. It speaks to an abundance mindset, which I really love. It also helped me to see that I would rather be niche famous, like most of the millionaires on the show, than mainstream famous.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
What we’re trying to do is to help kids. How many kids can one person help? Even if I am having an impact on all of the kids that go through my program, that is still only 150 to 200 kids. We need more people who can help kids to have memorable activation points in their lives that really change the trajectory of their lives by giving them a new mindset and helping them to see what they can accomplish.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
You have to believe that you can figure it out.
When I first moved to Silicon Valley, it was not the normal path for a Canadian with a business degree nor was it an easy step. I moved with no work experience, no work visa, no friends, no network, and nowhere to stay. I slept on someone’s couch for six weeks while I job hunted. It was a brave move with no guarantees, but I believed I could figure it out.
A lot of people ask me if I was scared when I moved or when I launched my company. My response is that other people are doing it so I can figure it out. There are tens of thousands of Stanford and Berkeley kids who are non-technical who find jobs in Silicon Valley. There are plenty of people that build businesses. If someone else can do it, I can, too.
How can our readers follow you online?
You can find me on LinkedIn or at my website where my husband or I write a monthly newsletter on our travels and updates on what we’re thinking about.
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
Female Disruptors: Ivy Xu of Prequel On The Three Things You Need To Shake Up Your Industry was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.