When running a business, you have a clearly defined mission. And there’s nothing more exhilarating than having a mission and leading a large team to try to execute that mission. That’s what I felt like when I had my startups.

As an investor, Queen’s Road has a portfolio of missions, a portfolio of projects and companies. As opposed to leading the mission, we’re mentoring various entrepreneurs. It can be challenging to take a step back and just provide advice.

I didn’t realize I would be living in Beijing for 15 years and then another 10 in Hong Kong.

When I graduated from business school, I had a few ideas in mind. I knew that working internationally would be very important, and I also knew that I wanted to do something in the new media industry, having done a few internships with various media conglomerates in digital practice.

Nearing graduation, I was presented with two opportunities in Europe, but then this one in China popped up. I thought it would most likely be in a place like Hong Kong or Singapore, but it was in Beijing — that was with News Corporation. I just jumped at that chance, although it paid significantly less than my other offers.

The way I thought about it was, there’s some scarcity value. It isn’t every day that you get a chance to move to China when you don’t have the requisite language skills and background. I thought it’d be pretty easy to move to Paris or Berlin, where I also had job opportunities. After 18 months, I realized if I wanted to stay in China long term, I probably had to start my own business. And that’s when I set up my first company.

There might have been some people who thought, well, you’re an American, you’re a foreigner, but we got other pushback, too. I never interpreted the fact that I was an American to be the biggest barrier. There were other barriers as well. For example, I’m not an engineer.

It’s important to recognize that China is, broadly speaking, extremely complicated. One of the misconceptions is that there’s a Goliath-type of state structure and everyone walks in lock step. But it’s really more like this crazy, frenetic left and right, up and down, backwards and sideways sort of environment where the government is trying to control pieces of it.

You walk on a street in Shanghai or Beijing, it’s just this crazy, messy, extremely optimistic atmosphere. So, that’s another misconception: I think nine out of ten Chinese are optimistic about their future, whereas I think in the States, it’s probably more like five out of ten.

There are a lot of people in China who want to be more open, I suppose you could say, and see more accountability and more institutional reform. Then there are some people who don’t. There’s not one single view, just like there’s not one single view in the States. Sometimes the media portrays it as if there’s a singular view on things, and the fact is there’s a diversity of views and opinions. It may not be communicated in the same way. I think that’s something that needs to be understood.

So, for a business person who wants to pursue their dreams in China, like anything, it’s super hard work. Every time a U.S .business doesn’t do well in China, they tend to blame the government because that’s easy to believe and buy into. But no one ever looks to see, who are the people that that American company hired? Did they hire the best people? Did they compensate them well? Did they have the right systems in place? Did they spend the time?

Our success — it’s like an equation. Yes, it’s a function of regulatory considerations and barriers, but the much bigger part of it is stuff like, are you building the right team? Are you executing well? Sometimes, I think a lot of people in the States kind of forget that it requires hard work to be successful in a place like China. Maybe the misconception is that all the failures are the result of government and none of the failures are the result of just poor planning and execution.

There are some very specific things I learned. I took a class with (Senior Associate Dean) Al Osbourne and a professor from the law school about doing deals, and I remember when I was negotiating my first term sheet with investors, I literally pulled out those notes and just went through them.

Another thing that I picked up at UCLA was that systematic thinking is important. I picked that up from a lot of my classmates, and all of the classes. Rigorous systematic thinking.

Business school was much more than networking. You’re trying to understand things. Like Peter Guber — the chairman and CEO of Mandalay Entertainment and a UCLA Anderson instructor — used to say: “Find out about it.”

That was his advice to us when he was teaching one of the classes. Just constantly trying to find out about stuff. So, when I moved to China, I did the exact same thing. Just ran around trying to find out about stuff, talking to people, which is actually seeding and laying the groundwork for setting up a business. I didn’t know at the time what I was doing. After a while, you’ve understood a lot. You’ve built a lot of relationships. You understand how to navigate a few things and you’re just ready to pull the trigger to say, “Now I can go all in.”

I think being in graduate school … it kind of forms your behavior to find out about stuff and how to face things. They say that in order to change your behavior or change your habits, it takes, like, a month. If you’re doing this in business school for two years, your habits really have changed.

We all come in as graduate students and we’re all optimistic about what we want to do next. Everyone has plans and ideas, and it’s like a restart. We’re all in our 20s, we’ve worked a few years, and the restart means we’re given another chance to explore the things we didn’t explore as undergrads. We were too distracted. Now we’re not distracted.

Being in China was almost a natural extension of being in graduate school. Your first week in graduate school is really telling, because that’s when people are in overdrive, meeting all your classmates, finding out who’s doing what.

Then you get to China, it’s the exact same way. Literally, every day for 15 years it’s been like that.

I always knew I wanted to make a contribution back to the school, and when Dean Judy Olian was around, she made a concerted effort to meet me and other alumni in China. She always remembered I had kids and always had a very personal touch.

I think that was the first step in making a contribution. As a donor or philanthropist, you’re also trying to think about, what’s our strategy, angle and vision?

I came to a realization that there were a few things that I’d like to be involved with. I’m a father with two daughters, so I guess I’m biased, and I thought maybe gender-related philanthropy might be a good idea. So, we picked a couple of areas to do that.

One is in the business school and one is in the UCLA Division of Physical Sciences. We thought those were two areas that would be really cool and interesting to encourage and support. At Anderson, we wondered, “Are there ways we can encourage, facilitate, motivate and help young women who are considering setting up businesses?” We’re excited about what’s to come and we’re hoping we can have a small impact or make a small contribution, maybe to the next great entrepreneur.”