♪ haslinda: welcome to "high flyers." a show that gives you a 360 degree view of asia's elite. a man who is not afraid to voice his opinions. as outspoken personality is met numerous high-profile controversies. that is not stopped him from reaching for the prize like , building australia's largest online retailer. kogan.eet rislan

>> from the very beginning he felt like an entrepreneur. he knew the only way he could have something was there and it. he taught himself to think outside the box and after a string of ventures while still in his teen years. his challenge to the status quo continues to this day. i invited this high flair to -- flyer to join us in the singapore flyer to tell us about his past, present and ambitious future. ♪ haslinda: welcome to "high flyers." you have this big idea, this lightbulb moment while shopping for an lcd tv at age 23. ruslan: the roots for the idea came when i was studying in miami.

i noticed all the local kids were buying everything online. and were buying it for much cheaper prices than all the international students. we would go to walmart to buy our stuff because that is what the university told us. they are buying things online for much cheaper and i realized a small online retailer can operate with greater efficiency than a goliath like walmart. a few months or years later in australia i was searching and looking to buy an lcd tv. i saw that i could not afford one. they were really expensive at the time. i decided to contact some companies out of china to tell them i want to buy 100,000 tvs, hoping that would give me a quote and then i could ask him for a sample and a sample was going to be my tv. when they started providing

quotes and pricing, i saw there was a huge gap in the market. a tv was about $1000. it was selling the shops are -- for about $3000. i noticed that gap and i thought back to my days in miami and i i thought online tvs are a perfect product because online retailers are about maximum value per cubic centimeter. here you are shipping a thin box around the country, perfect for logistics, perfect for everything. i quit my job and started importing tvs. haslinda: it wasn't that easy as that because you needed convince the chinese suppliers to provide you with a small number of tvs and other products as well. how did you convince them? ruslan: things came to a halt pretty quickly. after i chose the factory to work with i contacted them and said i don't want to do in order for 100,000 tvs. i just want to do one container of 80 tvs. and they laughed at me.

i was in a tough position because i quit my job, when to -- went to start this business, but the factories are telling me no, we can do 80 tvs because china is about mass production. haslinda: you did something for them first? ruslan: to me business is about win-win. how can i make this win-win? out of all the factories i have spoken to in china, even these multibillion-dollar organizations, a lot of their marketing material was in ching-lish. it didn't make sense. their spreadsheets had numbers censored. i really don't like it when people sensor numbers. numbers need to be right in line with two decimal places. i read it all of this for them. i redid their marketing brochures. i translated into english. i inserted diagrams of the user manuals. i annotated it. i made it look like a professional western document

and i sent it back to them and said it might not be of any value for you in my tiny order of 80 tvs, but there are other ways i can add value to this transaction. as a result of that they replied a few hours later, thanking me and they excepted by order and gave me a better price than we have previously negotiated. haslinda: not everybody is buying into this kogan.com story. you have a lot of criticisms. some say you don't respect intellectual property rights. the biggest criticism came from jerry harvey. he says you are a con. everything you promised is a con. your response? ruslan: to get that sort of reaction out of jerry, i take that as a compliment. [laughter] haslinda: is there truth in that? ruslan: that we are a con? we operate a business with millions of customers in a

country with an amazing legal system. if we were a con, we would've been found out by now. instead we have millions of happy customers. we believe we respect all intellectual property law. we've never have had anyone prove otherwise. but there is no doubt we are going to have critics. we are changing the way retail is done in australia. haslinda: your mom was not convinced. when you tried to start your own company you had a full-time job. she said why are you leaving a well-paying job to be a tv salesman? ruslan: not only did she say that, she started crying. it was tough because i'm trying to explain to a crying mother i'm not really got to be a tv salesman. i'm starting a direct to consumer online retailer where we manufacturer our own private label products. and deliver them with better prices. she did not really understand

that. now she understands what we do and she no longer cries and she is very happy. back then it was tough to convince her. in fact, i didn't convince her. i had to go out on a limb and do what i thought was right. haslinda: what is the biggest setback you have faced? ruslan: i should have bought kogan.com domain on day one. we did not buy kogan.com. we expanded internationally, then i had to buy kogan.com for a number with a lot of zeros on the end. that was a mistake. i have learned how important intellectual property is. and how important it is to protect all of your intellectual property. mistakes happen along the way. the most important thing is that every mistake you learn you -- you learn the hard truth, you acknowledge the facts, then you ensure it never happens again. >> coming up -- ruslan: when the social network movie came out, everybody wanted to be an entrepreneur.

which is weird. i didn't watch "spider-man" and thought i wanted to be a spider. ♪

♪ haslinda: you essentially equate unconventional. anyone looking for a job at the -- with you better not be sending in his or her resume the -- via hotmail. why? ruslan: somebody he was using hotmail, chances are they set their e-mail address up 15 years ago and have just never bothered to look at what else is out there. newer technologies have come along like gmail that lets you search e-mail much easier which we use internally in our organization. also, we look favorably of people that have their own domain name. if you can purchase their name .com and use that as an e-mail. we want tech savvy people. we want people who know how to

research online and keep up with technology. to swim against the current. and that is one of those little things. like your e-mail address we believe says a lot about you. we have proven it. we have logical reasoning tests. -- tests that we send to everybody who applies for a job. haslinda: is it true to say that the typical profile of your employee is either the gen y and millennials? ruslan: people who grew up with the internet are much more likely to succeed when they apply for a job at kogan then if they don't know how to use the internet. haslinda: the average age is 26? ruslan: 26 or 27 is about average. -- 32 i amone of the one of the oldest staff. haslinda: you don't believe in official training, formal training because you say all the answers are right there. google. ruslan: correct.

we think formal training is for people that want to look like they are learning, whereas google is for people that actually want to learn. for a lot of our senior managers formal training is not an option because most of the things we are doing, no formal training exists. by the time something gets into a university degree or some sort of formal training it is old information. whereas if a new piece of software comes out today, you can learn about it tomorrow on google. and we are solving problems for the first time. that is why we need to teach our staff not to rely on others for information, but they go out there and get it themselves. haslinda: you don't reward employees in the natural way. there is no one-timer you look at promoting them or reward them as compensation. anyone is able to walk up to you and justify a promotion. ruslan: when i worked in the corporate world i learned a lot about what not to do to keep

staff motivated and to build a great workforce. one of those was to do the annual review process where once a year in september you sit down with your boss and they discuss things to make them give you -- justify a 5% pay rise. all of a sudden in august everyone is there at 7:00 a.m. and going home at 9:00 p.m. and working so hard. your pay review and nobody is there in october. so we learned to run in a meritocracy. any staff member, whether you are male or female, what university degree you have, we care about university degrees when we hire you because a degree means you can read and write and you can commit to something for three or four years. but beyond that we don't care what you have done in your previous jobs. we care about what you are doing right now. as a result of this meritocracy

we have had staff who have had six pay raises in six months. there was a 19-year-old with six pay raises in his first six months, earning six digits on the senior management team. we value when your actual performance is rather than any other external bureaucratic measures. haslinda: nine years ago when you started it was one store. nine years later it is still one store but you have grown from one employee to almost 200. how big do you think kogan will become? ruslan: you were spot on. one year ago -- 19 -- nine years ago one store. , in 10 years time we will still have one store. we are about scalability. we are building the online presence and we will scale it from there. if he said to me five years ago how big will kogan be in five time, i would not have guessed it is where it is today. being a retailer in turning over hundreds of millions of dollars.

if he said to me where is it going to be five years time, i am not even brave enough to have a guess. haslinda: when did you know you had something big? what was the turning point? ruslan: the business started by selling a true kogan brand of tvs. then it grew. when we started that growth and i realized this business model works for whatever product we decide to put through our manufacturing, our supply chain and our logistics. at that point i realized the growth potential of this business is enormous. haslinda: a $1 billion company in a couple of years, is that possible? ruslan: if you drew the graph of what was done in the last nine years, you would have a set of billion dollars within the next five years. haslinda: more and more people are calling themselves entrepreneur.

do you think the market has been diluted by it all? ruslan: i've never called myself an entrepreneur as such. it's more a title that others call me. my facebook says i am the "toilet paper roll changer" because i still change the toilet paper rolls. you still have to do everything in a business when it is growing fast. when "the social network" movie came out i think that it made entrepreneurship more glamorous. everybody wants it and said going by this movie two hours ago mark zuckerberg had zero and now he's got tens of billions of dollars and everybody wanted to be an entrepreneur after that movie. which is weird. i did not watch "spider-man" and decide i wanted to be a spider. that movie made entrepreneurship glamorous. i think that's a great thing because what people failed to acknowledge a lot of the time is the contribution business makes to society. there was an entrepreneur losing

sleep over every product and service losing sleep over how they can make it better. haslinda: how much sleep did you lose? ruslan: i don't the guy lost any -- think i have lost any sleep. i voluntarily jump out of sleep every single morning. it is tough. i've had at conferences people coming up to me and say things like, you know what? i want to be an entrepreneur like you. i am sick and tired of the 40 hour week. that makes me laugh on the inside. the last time i did a 40 hour week was when i was in the corporate world. haslinda: you do up to 100 hours a week? ruslan: sometimes even more. usually between 70 and 100 hours per week mark. the best thing about it is i love what i'm doing. i jumped out of bed in the middle of the night and i run to my laptop to write myself an e-mail. it doesn't always make my girlfriend happy, but it's a great feeling when you love what you do. >> coming up --

ruslan: you get addicted to the game and that's what makes me jump out of bed in the morning. ♪

♪ haslinda: yours is a perfect immigrant story. your parents met in russia and came to australia in 1989 which -- with just $90 in their pockets. they had a hard life to ensure you had a better one. ruslan: definitely. i appreciate it so much more now that i've grown up and i get to understand what they went through. i also now credit a lot of what i have achieved with kogan with the life lessons they taught me. because when you think about what it takes to be an immigrant or an entrepreneur, it's very similar. to be an immigrant you have to take a massive risk, travel into the unknown, work your butt off for a potential benefit that might not be there. and entrepreneurs do the exact same thing. watching my parents arrived with $90 in work three or four jobs

each -- my dad worked as a taxi driver in the night and deliver pizzas and worked at the victoria market. mom and be a cleaner at one cafe and a waitress at another. they were studying english at the same time, trying to educate themselves for a better life for their kids. it made me have an incredible work ethic and determination. i knew from a very young age that i can do anything as long as i work my butt off to do it. haslinda: mom qualified medically. dad, an engineer by training. how did you feel seeing your dad and mom holding those jobs when they were highly qualified back home? ruslan: i was five and a half years old. it did not really click with me. i didn't understand dad has a masters in engineering and here he is driving a taxi or working at the victoria market. the same with mom.

it just does not click. you learn to appreciate those things as you get older and you reminisce about it. i think about it now and i think -- thank them every single day for what they did. haslinda: in the early days you lived in public housing? ruslan: grew up in the housing commission flats in melbourne. haslinda: and you always crossed the canal. tell us about that canal and how significant it is. ruslan: it's significant in the sense that as a little kid all the bigger kids were jumping over it. i would always climb the bar -- large wire fence -- barb fence and try to jump it. i would come home with wet shoes and all of that and finally managed to jump over it. also it ran to the golf course. you would find washed up golf balls and along the fence line. i would like them, put them in, wash them and then sell them back to the golfers. that was the first money i ever earned myself. haslinda: you have actually

started about 20 or so ventures. that was the start of your entrepreneurship experience. ruslan: from a young age my parents taught me if i want something, i have to earn it. so with the golf balls it wasn't big money. it was like $10 or $20 a weekend, but at the age of nine that makes you pimp of the milk bar. whenever i would go to the shops elected by whatever can't yet wanted. -- candy i wanted. after that it led to my parents giving me five dollars to wash their car. until we were at a shopping center and i saw a big billboard that said "car wash, half-price only $40." i thought hang on a second, i'm getting ripped off here. these businessll cards and dropped them around the neighborhood. i went to all the houses and packed a hose with a few sponges into a backpack and people would pay me $15 to watch their car. then started taking bookings and i hired some of my friends because i couldn't do it all on

my own. and there was phone repair, website design through high school. there has always been a lot of injuries along the way. -- along the way. it all, needed in kogan.com, my baby. haslinda: you are worth about $350 million and counting. one of the richest young people in australia. has life changed? ruslan: certain things changed. like i never got to go into the high flyer before and here we are seeing all of singapore. i fly at the front of the airplane now. drive a nice car. live in saint kilde. it's a modest apartment but the money hasn't really changed. i love fishing. i wish the fish knew how much money was in my bank account but they don't.

i don't catch any more. haslinda: isn't a cliche to say money does not matter when you already have money? ruslan: when you look at business people around the world, like steve jobs kept going up until he had a few weeks left. why? because he wanted the money? what is richard branson turning up to work at the moment? because he really wants the money? why is rupert murdoch working? because he really wants the money? i could have whatever i want. my kids will never have to work a day in their life and their kids and their kids. you get addicted to the game and you love the challenge. and entrepreneurs create all the products and services that enhance our lives. and they thrive on competition. that is what makes me jump out of bed in the morning. haslinda: speaking of richard branson, you put a down payment of $200,000 to go to outer space? ruslan: when i saw the virgin galactic program launch it struck a few chords with me. one was that as a little kid you

say you want to be an astronaut by the time he reached 10 or 15 years old you realize it will not happen. then at about the age of 28 i realized again it might happen. it struck a chord with me. both russia and the u.s. have sent 498 people into space. they have spent over $500 billion on their space programs. that is over $1 billion per person into space. richard branson is doing it for $200,000. i'm a capitalist. i love free markets. this is a perfect symbol of what a private enterprise can achieve and what government can achieve. richard branson is sending people into space for 1/5,000th of the cost of what other

governments have done. based on that i felt an affinity to the program. that is why i joined. haslinda: mom is not liking the idea of you going to space? ruslan: she despises the idea. mom keeps telling me you're not going to go as long as i'm alive. yeah. she really doesn't like the idea. but i might have to do what i did with skydiving with her. where i flew to new zealand saying i have a few business meeting and she saw the video on youtube and nearly killed me. she told me nothing go skydiving. i might just tell her i'm going camping in the mojave desert. we will see what happens. haslinda: you are a lot of things to a lot of people. how would you like to be remembered? ruslan: how would i like to be remembered? that's a good question. probably by the things that are most important in life. i want to be remembered as a

good son and a good brother. i say they are the most important thing at the moment. haslinda: thank you so much. it's been a pleasure. ruslan: thank you. ♪

♪ haslinda: welcome to "high flyers." this show that gives you a 360 degree view of asia's business elite. we are joined by a woman whose mission is shaking up the working environment. she drew on personal experience to set of asia's first marketplace for employee benefits. it's attracting the attention of worldwide business leaders, including google and american express. cxa's rosaline koo.

>> growing up in a ghetto and -- in los angeles she always had to make quick decisions. sometimes it was fight or flight. that something made her stronger and fearless when she decided set up her own company and go her own way. and now for this high flyer to join us on the singapore flyer to explain how and why we should transform the workplace. ♪ haslinda: welcome to "high flyers." you started cxa because he said employers are not maximizing the benefits for their employees. explain that to us. rosaline: to me benefits should be personalized to each and

every employee. if you are young and healthy, you are not going to need a much insurance even though companies spent thousands. or if you're already married and your spouse is covering you, then it is a waste. why not allow the employees to personalize their benefits and decide for themselves how much they need? for someone young and healthy to go do yoga or pilates or mindfulness or travel, but someone married could use that money for pediatrics or maternity or dental. or also to exercise. we believe that this insurance money should not just be used for treatment. why not shift the paradigm and use it for prevention and get people healthy? haslinda: you are kind of -- you have an advantage. you also have to convince people that what you are doing and offering is right.

has it been difficult? not and --t has because the same money you spend on insurance our competitors are only offering insurance and we for the same money can make your employees healthy and save money and engage employees in changing their lifestyles. why not? it has not been difficult for us to convince employers. we are getting all the tech companies and now all the banks. haslinda: what is been the most difficult part of starting out? rosaline: fundraising is one. starting from scratch to build something. i think a startup is like sprinting a marathon in the dark because you are uncertain about the future and you have to get traction. you have to get clients before you run out of money. the most difficult part for us was getting the approval of the regulator and the regulator telling me to get approval from -- for my acquisition i needed

to be the single shareholder. so even though i had investors lined up, i could not use the investors. i had to pump in my own money. so pumped in $5 million along -- so i pumped in $5 million along with the bank loan for the acquisition in order to do it. that was a difficult conversation with my husband. haslinda: who today might not have forgiven you because he had to get back to working life. rosaline: he had retired. so he went back to work. we've been married for 25 years. he is my best friend. he is the most supportive person ever. he went back to work. he is not so happy about that but he is still really supportive. haslinda: the thing about starting or giving a new product is that there will be others who will do the same very quickly. what is a stop your competitors from offering what you are offering right now? rosaline: nothing is there to stop them.

we do have probably a one year start before them, but it would mean they would have to complete -- completely change their business model. are the global firms willing to change their business model just for asia, which is different from the rest of the world? the difference with us is we use technology to not just aggregate the insurance companies but the -- to aggregate the gyms, the hospitals, the clinics, all the health apps. haslinda: you said you invest more than the big boys. rosaline: i have. haslinda: using your own money. rosaline: now the investors money and the bank loans. we have invested quite a bit in being further ahead than anyone using technology. the neat part about our technology is we have the data. with the data, if i have health screening data, i have everyone's lifestyle habits and

i have their hospital and their clinic claims. we can figure out what lifestyle changes will actually lead to less claim costs and a healthier health screening. haslinda: it also takes grit. would you say that comes from perhaps the experiences of your childhood and your parents? rosaline: my parents have a lot of grit. my dad left china at 19 and hit -- hid in san francisco for 40 years before he gave himself up. my mom, during the communist revolution had her land and property taken away. her mother was taken to a labor camp. my mom left two daughters behind to go to hong kong to make money for the family. they met and moved to the u.s. and then my family grew up in south central los angeles during the watts riots.

we learned to overcome a lot of hardship. it's probably from my parents. haslinda: it has been quite a journey. is there one moment that makes you really proud of what you have achieved? rosaline: actually, my daughter. i am most proud of her. when she was four i was working during the .com in malaysia. i was commuting every morning at -- monday at 4:00 in the morning and coming on friday night at midnight. one of those weekends when i was building the startup my daughter had a really long epileptic seizure. i went to the school because i cannot been to the school in a long time and found that she also had a learning disorder triggered by the epilepsy. luckily, it was benign and triggered by sleep deprivation. so she had to work so much harder than others to make it and she did.

she in a great college in boston. i am so proud of her. that is what i look back -- it's not my accomplishment. it's my daughter's accomplishment. >> coming up -- osaline: at my last company they told me that in order to have more diversity i needed to hire more men. [laughter] ♪

♪ haslinda: you didn't set out to be in entrepreneur. you have a degree in cybernetics. what changed? rosaline: i think it is destiny and serendipity that brought me here. each decision just led to other decisions along the way. i studied cybernetics mainly because when i was young we were really poor. the first person with a very nice house i babysat for was an engineer. that is how i became an engineer. i just wanted to get out of my

own neighborhood. i just followed him because he was the first professional i had ever met. haslinda: your first job was with procter & gamble. you managed a team of 33 in a manufacturing plant producing crest toothpaste. that was a life-changing -- rosaline: it was. i moved to los angeles. -- from los angeles. i was 21. i walked into this manufacturing plant. i discovered i was the first asian they had ever met. i discovered i had 33 people to manage. they were all older and more experienced than me. it was a shock to say the least working there. haslinda: and you said you sucked. [laughter] rosaline: that is best term. it's either i sucked or it was executive like a substitute teacher where if you turn your back they throw eracers that you. at i did not know how to manage 21 and it took a chance on me to

manage this large group. but i really learned that i needed to learn business and i needed to be a better leader. so i left for business school after that. i went to columbia. what they told me at procter & gamble this saved me was that i tried so hard. they forgive me for sucking but it gave me the impetus to really be better. haslinda: what changed the course you took? why go into health benefits? it has to do with mercer. rosaline: i worked at mercer for eight years. the only reason i got to mercer was because i worked at an insurance company. when i was there i told them forget the broker. you don't need an intermediary, come to me directly. so after i took 200 clients from mercer they hired me to run their 14 countries. countries haslinda: you grew

the business at mercer 800% in four years. that is phenomenal. rosaline: i had a great team. we expanded to 14. we came up with so many creative ways. we decided to get a small clients in a portfolio, but we also told hr give us all 14 of your countries so we will manage them for you. it grew 800% during my time. haslinda: but mercer didn't buy -- bite when you said you wanted to change benefits for asia. it did not think asia was a priority for you to be working on. rosaline: i begged for five years. every single year i build a -- built a business case to say asia is different in the u.s. asia is different from the rest of the world. there is a way to actually grow much bigger than 800%. please let me do it. but unfortunately they never

said yes. haslinda: and you left? rosaline: i left after a ceo change. she was a big supporter. haslinda: you managed to get the attention of big businesses like google, amex. how does it feel? rosaline: it feels great. i think it's really the proposition we are offering. if you go to any other broker they will get you insurance at , the best rate. you come to us and for exactly the same price we help make your employees healthy every cut -- and we cut costs because they don't have as many claims. then we engage the employees so that they actually will change their lifestyles in order to be healthier. i really believe we should shift the paradigm from treatment to prevention. haslinda: companies that choose

to seek your services do not have to spend an additional cent? rosaline: we have brought down the costs of doing this. and the reason we have done it is because we have actually integrated and aggregated the insurance companies, the gyms, the hospitals, the clinics, the disease management. we used technology and aggregate them in our own e-commerce platform. so if you take all of those work away but leverage all the other companies, technology can do wonders. haslinda: how is your psyche different from an american company? rosaline: we have localized everything we have done to asia. every single country in asia is so different, even though in the west they think it's all asia. china is so different from

india, so different from singapore, so different from hong kong, malaysia, indonesia and thailand. because i have worked in all 14 countries i understand the differences. i want to localize for companies here. we do understand the differences. haslinda: it's also interesting you have chosen to hire more women than men. and you have always chosen to do that. rosaline: at my last company they told me that in order to have more diversity i needed to hire more men. [laughter] now 80% of my leadership team is female. it is amazing how much we get done. there is no egos in the way. haslinda: women are known to be catty. rosaline: i hired non-catty women. [laughter] it is true. i found confident, strong women who are passionate about making the world a better place.

also they can multitask. many have kids so they know how to multitask and get things done. haslinda: and investors are obviously taking notice. you have that offers. -- you have had offers. they want to buy you out. rosaline: we are really fortunate because we have traction. we were able to attract the investors we wanted. we actually turn away a lot of investors and picked three we thought would be great for us. haslinda: would you be up for sale? there are people that want to do that. you are waiting for a better price? rosaline: we have had offers. we don't want to sell for a long time. we think that we want to get to all 12 of the key countries in asia first and then really go for explosive growth. we do not want to sell for a long time. i want to stay with the company. typically the ceo is locked in for another three years. i plan to stay here until i

drop. haslinda: quantify explosive growth and how soon do you see yourself getting there? rosaline: we only launched a year ago. so far we have 530 clients, 80,000 participants already. i believe we will get to 100 -- in revenues and over one $100 million million participants. it will probably take us all five years but i would like to work those five years. if we need to exit, exit but stay so i can continue taking this company forward. it is my baby. it is my baby. ♪ >> coming up -- rosaline: we were picked on because we were non-black kids. i learned to fight but only if they are smaller. mainly i learned to run really fast. ♪

♪ haslinda: we talked about how your dad's village was near

canton. he was an illegal immigrant he made his way to mexico and then made his way to san francisco. somehow. tell us more. rosaline: he was only 19. he left china for a better life. he did make his way on a dragon boat to mexico. and somehow made his way up to san francisco, maybe through texas. hid for 40 years in chinatown. there are a lot of chinese. at 59 he wanted to procreate and have children. he gave himself up for the amnesty program. he went to hong kong. and that -- hong kong and that is where he found my mom. haslinda: your mom lifted it was near canton as well? rosaline: she was there during the communist revolution. for family was landowners and a was a no-no during the communist revolution. they took away her land in her property. they sent my grandmother to a labor camp.

my mother left her two daughters behind it with a hong kong to make money for the family because they had no more money. haslinda: and they decided to go back to the u.s. for better opportunities? rosaline: my father wanted to find a wife. he did not know she had two daughters. they did not tell him. he brought her to san francisco. they wanted to own property. they bought the only house they knew of they could afford in los angeles. unfortunately they did not know it was a bad neighborhood. haslinda: there was a 30 year age gap between your mom and dad. he was 61 when you were born and you are the eldest of four. rosaline: he wasn't working when i was growing up. my mother worked two jobs. she was a seamstress and then she cooked at night for a restaurant. i still remember at night when she would take the bus for an hour down the san pedro. one night i woke up because she

was telling my dad if that man comes and harasses me again, i will teach him a lesson. i saw her put a cleaver in her bag. [laughter] that's the image of my mother growing up. she was really tough. haslinda: how difficult was like -- life growing up? he grew up in the ghetto. the only chinese in an all-black neighborhood. rosaline: we were picked on because we were the non-black kids. i learned to fight but only if they were smaller but mainly i learned to run really fast. i was a track star later. i can run really fast and now. haslinda: what the remember of -- remember of those days? what is the overriding thought to get out of that situation. rosaline: i remember eleanor brown swinging around by my hair. i was the only one with straight hair.

it fused a certain fearlessness and a drive to get out. haslinda: when you eventually got out and went to school how was it like? rosaline: i'm not sure there was a sense of achievement. ok, i have to study really hard. i was the first in my whole family to ever go to college. both my parents were illiterate. i was the very first. they did not ever learn to speak english even though they lived in the u.s. for so long. i mainly used my college money to help my brothers and sisters. haslinda: what's the relationship like between the siblings? rosaline: we are really close. my family is still very close. my mom comes at least once a year to see the grandchildren. we go back every year. my family is very tight. haslinda: you met your husband in new york? and you are completely different personalities?

rosaline: we are different but we had similar upbringing. his family was on the kmt side. his grandfather was part of the military. he was a general. they left china at the same time my parents did because they lost the war. his family made their way to south america. but when they went to the u.s. he grew up in newark, new jersey. as the one chinese family. he grew up fighting also. in terms of work he is a phd in economics and a lawyer. he grew up managing risk. and i take risks. he helps companies manage their risks. but he is still so supportive. haslinda: what you make of the perception that a startup in asia will never be as big as those in the u.s.? rosaline: i think they will. i think it's a matter of time.

i think the differences between the u.s. and here, and since i spend half my time in both, is in the u.s. failure is a badge of success. right? failure is just something you go through so you build character. out in asia it is all from confucius. my mom is very confucius. there is a fear of failure here. the u.s. started much sooner. because there is none of your failure, there are entrepreneurs. here you almost have to be a rebel and countercultural to rebel against the culture you -- of you don't want to lose. the u.s. got a head start but i believe asia will catch up. look at alibaba. it is bigger than all the u.s. firms. i'm so proud of that.

haslinda: are you more accepting of failure? is it ok for your daughter or your son to fail? rosaline: yes. i want them to experience life. unless you experience failure, you will not learn that you can get up. it's very ok for my kids to bump and scrape and get back up. i think that is the only way to build character. you don't know true character until you go through crisis. and you find that you can get back up. haslinda: thank you so much for being on "high flyers." rosaline: pleasure. ♪

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announcer: "brilliant ideas," powered by hyundai motors. narrator: the contemporary art world is vibrant and booming as never before. it is the 21st century phenomenon, a global industry in its own right. "brilliant ideas" looks at the artists at the heart of this. artists with a unique power to astonish, challenge, and a surprise. in this program, new york-based wangechi mutu. ♪