Building Beyond the Billion: Lessons on Leadership and Legacy with Sarah Chen-Spellings

0:00If you've been feeling stuck in your business and wondering if you're the reason it's not growing faster, I have something for you. I'm hosting a free, no-pitch, live class called Three Money Beliefs That Made Me Millions. And I'm sharing the exact mindset shifts that helped me go from million-dollar years to million-dollar months. This isn't fluff. It is a surprising strategy that changed everything for me, and I want to share it with you. Like I said, no pitch, no fluff, just you and me talking about how we shift our beliefs around money to make you millions. Save your seat now at jasminestar.com forward slash millions.

0:32I can't wait to see you there. Welcome to the Jasmine Star Show, a place where we talk about business. And today we get to mix that with empowerment. We get to mix that with philanthropy. And we get to mix that with an incredible woman who is changing the face of investing, family offices, and just a powerhouse. I could not be more excited to introduce you to Sarah Chen Spelling. Sarah, thank you to the Jasmine Star Show. Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. Jasmine, you know, I always say this. I meet certain people where I feel like our frequency matches. Okay, let's start there. And I'm just compelled to reach out and, I don't know, do things together.

1:11I feel like magic's going to happen somehow. We are new friends. But as people from the podcast know, I don't bring people on the podcast without knowing them personally. I don't do the book tours. I don't have conversations to have conversations. It has to be this person has to be in direct alignment. So let's chat about how we met. Now, there's two perspectives. There's your perspective and my perspective. So let's start there. How did we meet from your perspective? From my perspective? Yeah. Well, I am the silent stalker on Instagram of great women. It is my hobby to find exceptional women doing exceptional things.

1:46I didn't know we were starting there. Okay. And I've been following your journey, your personal journey, because I was, frankly, I'm new to America. And I wanted to find, you know, great women doing great things. And what's she up to? What's she like? And building my network that way and sort of building that algorithm of great women, because I think social media can be a positive place if we build it intentionally. And I know you believe in intentionality. So it started with that. And then, you know, Create and Cultivate is a group that I support. Jacqueline Johnson and Marina Middleton are building something amazing.

2:20And with the work that I'm doing beyond the billion, of course, female founders are the beneficiaries that we are driving fueling women-led innovation so that community is very important to us and when i saw that you were keynoting i was super excited and then but i didn't reach out and then you dm'd me and i was like okay okay okay the universe is saying something here okay okay so you're making references to create and cultivate and johnson johnson and marina middleton okay so we're gonna pause so if people are not familiar Create and Cultivate is a female-led and driven conference to empower business owners.

2:56And I was invited to speak during South by Southwest. And so after my keynote, I'm behind stage and I am introduced and we start talking. And we had connected ever so briefly. Now, before I went through and I was looking at who's speaking and how we start connecting, and I just sent DMs to people. Some people responded, some people did not. So the fact that we were behind stage and then within the first five minutes, I thought to myself, you are lightning in a bottle. And we had a very short conversation. But in that short conversation, you broke down female funding, female founders, investment, family offices, what type of debt female founders should be getting.

3:34And I'm sitting here and I literally stopped you and I said, I am so sorry. We just met. I need you on my podcast. And I said, whenever you're in L.A. And then lo and behold, you say, what are you doing on March 27th? can you be in New York City? To which I replied, I'm not sure what I'm doing on the 27th. And you said that you are co-hosting an event with the Gloria Steinem Foundation at Gloria's house along with Olavella. And all I knew was I had to be in New York and I had to have you on the podcast and everything works for us. And so I want to say thank you for being here. I want the audience to know that I wanted you on this podcast because there is very specific reasons.

4:10And I just want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart because I think that you are absolutely going to change and empower so many lives in this conversation. So thank you. Oh, I appreciate it. I'm excited to do the work. Okay. Now that we're setting the ball high. That's right. Okay. So let's give a little bit of context. I really want to break down what you do, what you're most known for, and then I want to contextualize it for most of the listeners. Because last night I had the opportunity to hear you speak from a lot of different perspectives. So before we talk about the work that you're doing with Beyond the Billions and how many unicorns you have in your portfolio, because all of that is brag-worthy, but there was a story that you shared yesterday that I thought would really set the groundwork.

4:46that you had said you are from Malaysia, a small town, not even in a major city, and your mom had aspirations of being a secretary. Can you pick up that story there for us? Because I think it really sets the stage for who you've become. Yeah, so Jasmine, just two very quick corrections beyond the billion without the S. Okay. That's important from a brand new perspective. You know what's up. Thank you. You know what's up. Thank you. Thank you. And I wasn't from a small town. It was my mother that was from a small town. So I'm from the capital, Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. And I think the suburbia in me continues.

5:18So I did grow up in a little bit of a nice suburb of Malaysia in Damansara. So I guess, you know, starting with my mother, because I think, you know, I've started to realize so much of our lives don't begin the moment we're born. It's actually generational. So you talk about it and it's the good and the bad, right? Good being, you know, the hidden dreams, the bad being generational trauma. And I think I've only come to understand and take full perspective of that in my recent years in my adulthood. But my mother has been a huge role model for me. As mentioned yesterday, she started in Batu Pahat, which is a small town south of Malaysia.

5:58And her biggest dream, because she was one of nine children, the last of nine children, imagine the generation before me. And her biggest dream was to be a secretary. I mean, she didn't really go to university, you know. and picked up her bags, took the leap of entrepreneurship. I genuinely still today believe that immigration is the biggest form of entrepreneurship there ever is. And my mother did that in Malaysia, but still that's a big leap of faith where she had no one else but her brother to support her and encourage her. And she really just started from ground zero, built herself. and within her career, it was promotions, it was challenges.

6:39All along the way, I was with her because I mentioned this yesterday, Asian style, we talk about our issues as a family at the dinner table. That's where things are solved over food. That's always an element of food being comforting, but it's also a good way to bridge the conversation. Yeah, at the end of her career, she was CEO of a Japanese automotive company and ultimately a holding company that owned Volvo, Daihatsu, Volkswagen, and a couple of other brands as well. And, you know, I saw, frankly, my father being an amazing partner and co-parent in every single way and supported her. You know, she will always attribute my father, encouraging her, saying, OK, now I'm the general manager.

7:24I think I'm happy. This is my mom speaking. And my dad would say, well, what's next? Why not go for it? and she did and she did and she did again and again. So one step forward ahead of her time and you know just some context for your listeners the Japanese culture expects women to be a little bit more submissive I'll put it that way. We're not expected to lead. She has had instances herself where she was the boss attending the meeting and I was told this she was asked to make coffee and she said well you're meeting me you can make your own coffee. Thank you very much. And so I've experienced female leadership without realizing that it's different growing up.

8:07And so I had an interesting microcosm of the world early on. And that shaped me to who I am today. Absolutely. Speaking of who you are today, I want you to talk more about Beyond the Billion, but then to also let the audience know to put this in context, to see a strong father and a strong mother working together and always him asking her, so what's next? And so then I intersect and I know a little bit about your story. You're cutting millions of dollars of checks in your 20s, right? So this is a little bit unexpected. You are far ahead and above of many people your age. How did you get there?

8:41And then what was the thesis for what you're building today? You know, I was in a cog in a wheel, obviously getting started at the lowest level. But very quickly, I was ambitious. My ambition was always something within me. And I looked around and I was asking my friends, hey, who is someone here that's a senior vice president or someone of some sort of like huge P &L in the company that's young, you know, not in their 60s? Because a lot of the version of leadership in Malaysia back then looked older of a certain gender, of a certain, you know, skin color, even I'll say that. And so I looked around and the youngest person then was Azli Rezali.

9:23He was 42, I think at that time, 40 something. Anyway, he was one of the youngest. And I reached out to him like a DM, but an internal company DM for coffee with the one intention of gaining inspiration. How did you build your career in this humongous company with$30 billion market cap at that time? We were in, I think, 30 countries at that point in time and shape your career. I want to be you, basically. And I entered his office. We had a couple of quick, quick conversations. and he realized I did law as a degree. And very quickly, I could see the gears moving in his mind. And he very quickly turned it into an interview.

10:01He asked me this question, hey, if you don't mind, tell me how many ping pong balls can you fit in a Boeing 747? And then I knew because I've studied business cases before, it's a typical MBA question where they're looking not for the answer, but how you get to that answer. And I answered it in a way that was satisfactory, three, I suppose, because the next thing I knew, he said, all right, tomorrow you report to me, I'll sort out the paperwork. We're starting a corporate venture capital unit. Nothing's really been done yet. We have a strategy paper. We're getting approvals. But because you have a legal degree that you're going to be helpful in the team.

10:38So by then I was hired number three or number five. I have to go back. How did you answer the question? Do you remember? How do we fill the Boeing? So I'll give the formula, the concept of it is you think about a ping pong ball is a sphere, right? So you look at the total volume of that ping pong ball and you sort of break down a Boeing 747 as a cylinder. And then you sort of calculate that. How many spheres within cylinders? How many spheres can fit into a cylinder? and then you make sure you cover like the top as well. Are we including? So you ask smart questions like, are you including the cockpit?

11:16You know, is there anything else? Any other information I should know? So it showcases your qualities. Yeah. Oh, I love it. Okay, okay. So they're starting this new venture arm and he has unexpectedly, to your surprise and probably his, brings you on that team because you're going to be useful. Yes. And how long are you there? And then how does that get to the next? So I am there for quite some time, actually. I want to say close to five years in the company. And then I think we were doing it for about three years. And one of the things that I remember you saying yesterday was you were often the only woman in the room.

11:49So how does that shape where you are now and why you're so passionate on the other side of it? What I realized was that I was put in a position that was super unique. I was hiring number three and number five, right, of this 100 million and then 150 million unit. And because we were so small and nimble and I was the only one with a law degree, I was sent to all the legal meetings. And because I was so young, I was probably not qualified to be there negotiating with our head of legal. That was, you know, this woman who's super, super sharp and she's done the work. She's got the credibility. But, you know, my boss is like, you take the meeting like you're supposed to just report back to me, which was maybe a little bit irresponsible on his part.

12:27You know, some that there was some politics there, but it gave me a huge opportunity. And in these rooms where I was negotiating term sheets and working with the entrepreneurs, you know, what got me here was I realized we were cutting like$30 million checks. And all the deals that I was looking at in diligence did not have a single woman on the management team. And again, this was not like once, twice. It happened like, you know, we were looking at multiple deals to make that one check. You have a huge funnel. And I was like, where are the women? And any time I would negotiate, yes, you know, there would be women, you know, that were in supporting roles.

13:05But I was hungry for women that were carrying P &Ls, that were leading the innovations that we would invest in. And I just did not see them. And I looked around me and this really piqued my interest. And I looked around even within my company in terms of women holding P &L. There were very, very few and far between. And that eventually led me to become an accidental feminist. accidental activated feminist, I suppose, because I've always been a feminist. But I looked around me and I, you know, I was talking with some of my peers that didn't work in the company. Like, what's the situation in your company?

13:39Are there women at the top? And they're like, hardly, you know, CEO is a guy, like all the top C-level positions are filled by men. You might have finance, legal by women, but driving businesses, driving growth in a way that I wanted to see myself in? Hardly any. And then we looked at the stats. And it was at that time in Malaysia, only 5 % of CEOs in Malaysia were women. So go figure, of course, we're not seeing them. And we asked the bigger question, where are the women? And could I see myself in this for the future? And that question led me to actually being a co-founder of what is now Lean in Malaysia.

14:17And it brings Sheryl Sandberg's Lean in brand, which I know has mixed connotations for different people here in America. But what I will say is, you know, the way it was implemented in Asia, because I was then instrumental in shaping a lot of the circles in Asia. It helped us think about leadership and women taking a seat at the table, taking up space and empowering each other, leaning into each other to want more for ourselves. And so I had my corporate career where I was investing, trying to encourage more women in leadership in my realm of influence, which was not much at that time, because remember, but I'm still in my 20s.

14:52Then building myself in Malaysia to be this advocate for female leadership, you know, doing the work with policy, activations, community, all of that. So I had almost like that two things at once, right? And as I guess fate would have it, or God's design, whatever you believe, in 2016, 2017, as I was, you know, coming to the US, visiting portfolio companies and all of that. I met my husband along the way and we had to decide what next for our lives and America was it. So you met him here in the United States. How did you guys meet? Just randomly, side note. Random side note, because this is important.

15:33I do believe this should be part of the conversation because choosing your partner is the biggest investment you'll make. Absolutely. And this is by no means we're not perfect people. My husband's not perfect, neither am I. but we met when I literally missed my flight and I met him at the closest bar yeah wow took my number exchanged my number uh we exchanged numbers and then we uh followed through and did long distance for a while. So it was like immediate chemistry if you guys are just I have this kind of thing like this so I genuinely believe in it like if it's meant to be it's meant to be.

16:07Oh my gosh. So yeah immediate chemistry you know I had like history with other long distance relationships So I didn't have much hope. I was like, all right, let's see. And this guy was pretty persistent. Michael was pretty persistent. And yeah, proposed to me within nine months. And so he is the reason, the catalyst to change my trajectory. I didn't really have America on my books at all. I didn't study here. So I didn't really have a network here. If anything, it would have been London, right? London would have been the natural choice of Europe if I wanted to be out of the country. Okay. So, okay.

16:40I think I remember recently on Instagram seeing like an anniversary post. You know, you guys got married in Bali? No, in Malaysia. Malaysia. A wedding blessing in Malaysia. A wedding blessing. Okay, okay, okay. So I'm watching this. And so put me in your shoes. You come to the States without a network, but a litany of experience. You've built out strong. You're multi-passionate. You have investing. You have a very big network of women in Malaysia. And you get to the States. And then what? And then I have to hustle. Girl. And so what is that? Like literally, what does that look like? Explain it to me like I'm five.

17:13I started with people I knew. And this is, you know, a question people like to ask me is what's one of your favorite investments or best investments? And one of it was a big failure from a dollar perspective. But from a relationship and trust perspective, it was my highest return. So my portfolio companies that we invested in, that was my starting point, right? So good. Because I was always, you know, look, I was not the final decision maker in my 20s. It was a board of really, you know, smart people in my company. We had advisors, all of that. I was facilitating a lot of the work behind the scenes.

17:50But what I always helped myself to was a high, a very strong and high work ethic, strict work ethic. I would be, I try not to play the game too much. It's necessary in corporate, but I try not to do that. And I was truthful. And people appreciated that. So, you know, if a deal went through, my portfolio companies knew that it was because Sarah pushed it through. Sarah worked on it. Sarah brought in the right people around the table. And yes, I was only my attorneys. I didn't feel like I had a lot of power because I wasn't the final decision maker. But people see through, you know, authenticity.

18:30And because of that, even without my title, and the checkbook of the public listed company, just as Sarah, people just wanted to help me. And so I, you know, sucked my ego up, asked for help. Who do you know? Who can I speak to? And of course, you know, because this was a personal move, it wasn't strategic. It wasn't like, all right, I want to continue my career in venture capital, I got to go to Silicon Valley, I was in DC, right? The political capital. Yes, there's investing and all that, but it's more skewed to defense. It wasn't in the worlds I felt that I fit in. And so I networked like crazy, showed up, you know, in different places.

19:07I had really good women who opened doors for me. And ultimately, I met my co-founder, Shelley Porges. Let's go there. Like that's where I want to. Shelley Porges. And, you know, she became ultimately my co-founder for what started as the Billion Dollar Fund for Women. And, you know, I was starting out, I knew I wanted to continue in venture and investing. I knew I wanted to continue in female leadership, women leadership. And here she was over breakfast telling me what she was up to. And it was called the Billion Dollar Fund for Women. My ears perk up. And I realized, huh, women investing, I know something a little bit about that.

19:44Like, you know, frankly, I was waiting for my green card at that time. Let me volunteer my time. Let me be free labor for you. Show you my value. Let's see where this goes. I actually didn't know that part of the story. So a billion dollar fund for women. And you say, despite my legal training, despite my experience, despite having navigated all of these other multimillion dollar deals, I'm going to volunteer. Because you have to start somewhere. And first of all, I wasn't legally allowed to work yet. I had the green card. That was an important part. But of course, I was setting myself up for the future.

20:19But I thought that because I had this mindset of, I'll have my nonprofit, you know, usually you think about your life. Most women, I'll say that's like your philanthropy or stuff that you volunteer for. And then you have your cash cow, right? That's your revenue generating, like this is your career, blah, blah, blah. And so I had that kind of bifurcation thinking in my life. And I thought the Billion Dollar Fund for Women was something I would just volunteer for to get started. And how did you become her co-founder? Well, I sat down and Shelly will say this. We sat down. I got really excited and I said, OK, well, I know how to do this.

20:55Like I've structured things. You know, I'm really one of my I think my superpower is I can bring a big vision to life with military precision and execution. And I did that with the Billion Dollar Fund for Women where it was Shelly's idea because she came as a serial entrepreneur, investor, similarly saw, you know, women not getting funding. So let's talk about that, you know, less than 2%, less than 3 % in the last decade. You know, we've not moved adult in a big enough way. And so when I was talking about my background, we really connected on that, right? So that the frequency was right. And I said, well, let me help you.

21:27The next day, I had a website design. I had the framing. I designed the initial pledge, how it would look like as a capital campaign around the world. And because I had co-investors, I've done this work before, people have invested with me. I have some sort of credibility in the world. I brought a lot of Asian investors, multi-billion funds to the table. And she just looked at me and she said, gosh, Sarah, you got to be my co-founder. So there were other women involved in the early, when you're baking an idea together. But ultimately, she saw just what I delivered. I don't just talk a big game, I do the work.

22:03And I think that's so important. We realized the big idea could be working with investors, signaling to the market that, hey, we have wouldn't be great to have a billion dollars committed to women, signaling to the market that we all believe this is not charity, but this is an investment strategy with good returns. And so we set out. I'm going to pause there. Yes. An investment strategy with good returns. Yes. It is not charity. And I just wanted to pause there and let that sink in because there's sometimes conversations around what it looks like and what it feels. And so I was particularly struck by your story because no founder as a female wants charity.

22:42No, every female founder simply wants the chance. Somebody had said yesterday, and I believe it was Gloria, and she had said, we are all given equal measure of talent, but we are not all given equal measure of opportunity. And so I wanted just to pause there and I want to pick up the story, but I want to be very clear. That's a line of delineation. It is not charity. This is an investment strategy with high returns. Okay. So you say a billion dollars. This big, lofty, audacious goal is a billion dollars. And so what happens? And so this was back of the napkin, right? A billion dollars, you know, and just to give some sense of scale here, back then women were getting like 2.2 billion.

23:18So a billion dollars, half of that we thought would be a noble goal. Maybe we'll achieve it in 10 years. I still have the back of napkin initial design of how we would bring this to life. And so we set out on this mission. We start pounding the pavement, dialing for dollars, getting VCs to commit a dollar amount that they described to be invested into women-founded companies. Now, we do not control that amount. So we're not money managers at this point in time, but it's a capital campaign, a pledge campaign to get them to do more. and we were off to the races very quickly within nine months we got to the billion dollar goal so you thought 10 years yes and in nine months yeah a billion dollars so we i mean what what really you know triggered this whole thing was shelly through her friends had an opportunity at the world bank meeting in bali in 2018 to present a big idea for gender equality so this was the concept paper that we put together in front of institutional investors right so that was a trigger point for us to do something great uh and we said okay you know by october we met august september so it was not long let's see what we can do maybe a hundred million maybe we'll come and and be there and just announce the big idea but we start with early commitments we showed up i believe it was more than 400 million at that point in time already when we arrived wow so we what we proved was that designed correctly, VCs definitely wanted to do the right thing.

24:49And the messaging was clear that the capital is out there to be allocated in the right way. So of course, you know, it still has to meet the mandate of the fund. It has to have all this profiles of returns, you know, recurring revenues, potential, blah, blah, blah. But it was by taking that simple exercise into the firm, that's where the change, I believe, happened and the impact of our work. Because that meant if I have a multi-billion firm or even like a$50 million firm, I'll come. If you're my co-founder, we'll have to make this proper and have a discussion. All right. How much do you think we can do for women?