Interview with a Founder: Beryl Liu (Co-founder of Matters Lab)
By Norman Chi, Analyst
Beryl Liu is the co-founder and COO of Matters Lab and was previously the Operations Director of Initium Media. An experienced startup operator, Beryl once led the global operations of Aivvy, a music-tech startup which won the innovation award at CES. She was involved in running a Hong Kong-based NGO in Greater China.
1. What early experience shaped who you are?
I am always passionate about the media because it can bring social value to the public, it’s THE thing I value most and deeply rooted in my heart. But I will say other than my passion, the sum of my experiences also is a big part of who I am now.
After graduating from college, I chose to become an editor in Hong Kong's first all-electronic media as my first job. Before starting Matters, I’ve joined several different groups and startups, including one NGO, one silicon valley startup and Initium Media which allows me to step out of my comfort zone, broaden my horizons, know more about new disruptive technologies like blockchain and learn how startups work. All these unique experiences and passion for media shaped who I am now.
2. Who is your role model as a founder?
I will say there are two types of role models I look up to. One is successful and inspiring entrepreneurs, the other is someone who you are close to and can resonate with.
For the first type of role model, there are too many entrepreneurs I look up to. Among these successful stories, one key thing I will particularly be inspired by is how these entrepreneurs find a breakthrough and identify the right path to stand out. Like Stewart Butterfield’s founding journey of Flickr, even though the original online game idea wasn't working, he had the crazy vision and quickly learned and found out the true needs of users: real-time interaction around photos, and then based on the findings, he launched Flickr and turned it into a success. This type of founders are the role models I would especially look up to and want to share the same vision as they do.
But these great entrepreneurs are too far from our life and work, you can’t fully resonate with these entrepreneurs. So my mom became one of the role models I look up to since I can relate to her story more easily even though she’s not a founder. For the past 10 years, she had a relatively weak physical condition and underwent several severe surgeries which often left patients in pain and despair. But she kept fighting and fighting with a positive attitude, dealing with the pain and pressure, and always looked on the bright side, which really inspired me at my darkest moments, this is the kind of story you can always keep in mind and gather momentum from.
3. What is the biggest mistake and takeaway in your founder journey so far?
The entire entrepreneurship is the endless journey of trial and error until you find PMF (Product Market Fit), so before that, don’t rush to do premature scaling with limited resources. We tried to do too many things in 2018 because back at that time we thought we were ready to scale up, but actually we weren't, and we didn’t allocate the resources properly, leading to a bunch of conflicts both internally and externally. It was a costly lesson we learned after these series of poor decisions we made.
As a result, if you figure out you’ve made a bad decision, founders must learn how to set a stop-loss. Admitting and giving up on one decision you made is difficult, but when you admit something is wrong, it helps you to redirect to the right direction and potentially lower future costs. What’s more, it’s the failure that allows you to rethink and reflect on your goals.
About Matters Lab
Matters Lab is a decentralized content publishing platform for creators to publish, manage, license, and enable content providers to be paid for their content, rather than to have their content and revenue opportunities taken hostage by advertising algorithms and social media giants.
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