Welcome, Ronald Yu! First things first, please introduce yourself and your business!
Ronald Yu: I am the co-founder of Ricciwawa, a multi-lingual, multi-sensory online platform that teaches Chinese to challenged students. I am also the co-founder of Makebell, a second platform dedicated to the production of Talking Booklets – i.e product content with text, audio, video, image, in multiple languages, and which authenticity can be certified with NFTs.
I am an engineer by training, but I also studied law and had the good fortune to work with (and learn from) some really wonderful people who taught me that if you have a good platform, you can adapt it for multiple purposes.
Education and marketing are converging! As more companies try to form relationships with their customers, their marketing materials increasingly resemble educational content, so we give them ways to adapt.
Please tell us more about Ricciwawa & Makebell. Where are you based? How do you operate? How about your team?
Ronald Yu: We are a small start-up, based in Hong Kong. We currently have a 3-member, multigenerational team of directors with legal and technical backgrounds.
We provide different perspectives and capabilities – and this team is supplemented by developers based internationally. But more importantly, we operate knowing that a confluence of technologies (and personal experiences) is the best asset when it comes to realizing our ambitions.
Let’s talk big picture. What problem does Ricciwawa & Makebell solve out there?
Ronald Yu: We focus on solving modern issues related to education and technology.
As far as Ricciwawa is concerned, we identified a global difficulty related to Chinese language learning. Beyond the fact that this language is difficult to learn, the challenge for most users is to find engaging content. Most of the content out there is not relevant to overseas learners, and it’s rarely translated correctly to students’ local languages.
Also, the most engaging solutions are often not easily shared online (as is the case with custom printed content) or hard to create (e.g. videos). As a result, teachers see their teaching efficiency reduced, and students can have a hard time learning. Ricciwawa solves both these issues.
The Makebell platform also solves an accessibility issue. Product education (i.e. creating products to educate customers) is now an important way for companies to establish relationships with their customers. Still, creating content is extremely time-consuming, especially if it involves video and/or one or more translations are required and businesses can therefore struggle to communicate with their customers, who are frequently frustrated trying to find updated content.
What solution do you bring, then?
Ronald Yu: We solve these issues by developing new generation ed-tech solutions.
Ricciwawa facilitates Chinese language learning by letting educators easily create and share content that students find more engaging and relevant, in students’ local languages. The platform is designed to teach Cantonese and Mandarin and thus provides two levels of translation, let alone of course the pinyin, character grouping, and the separation of radical elements.
To make that work, we provide the technology (the platform) as well as a different business model. Beyond uploading content, we also allow the users (the teachers, that is) to sell their unique content, which obviously creates a positive loop. More incentives create more content, that’s a win-win-win for the teachers, the students, and the platform.
Makebell then solves the problem of corporate content creation and updates by letting companies quickly create content that can be consumed in multiple forms. That content can be translated, turned into audio content, updated as needed, and as I mentioned before the platform can also certify the content’s authenticity through NFT technology.
Market-wise, what makes Ricciwawa & Makebell different from the competition?
Ronald Yu: The two platforms differentiate themselves from the competition from a model perspective and from a technology perspective.
Unlike its competition, Ricciwawa allows educators to create their own content, tailored for their students, by entering text or scanning existing materials. They can share that content and earn from it online. Typically, the recipe consists in producing heavy proprietary materials, so that’s a big change.
Makebell is transformative in its ability to simplify, accelerate content creation in multiple languages. Its format makes it easy for companies to scan, update content and generate multiple versions in different languages. And, again, certify its authenticity.
Can you illustrate this with an example of how Ricciwawa & Makebell made an Impact on a client?
Ronald Yu: We see teachers developing an activity they were not able to develop before. That’s very promising because we introduced Ricciwawa in a limited beta version so far, and quickly found followers and initial subscribers in Africa, Asia, Middle East, European, South and North American markets.
Teachers in Germany, for example, are already creating Ricciwawa content specifically for German students with stories relevant to them, and with German translations using our beta. Filipino and Indonesian users have also told us about how the Ricciwawa content had helped them learn Chinese in Tagalog and Bahasa contexts, respectively.
What stage of development have you reached? What can you tell us about the next steps? Anything exciting?
Ronald Yu: As I just said, we have developed and beta-tested a web version of Ricciwawa and expect to launch an app version soon. Over the next three years, we hope to work with educators to build up their content collections, and with NGOs to create content for overseas markets notably in Africa, Southeast Asia and the Middle East.
Our aim is to fashion Ricciwawa on a Patreon-style model where parents, educators, and students can interact and benefit from each other in a viable and sustainable way.
We are also deepening the market research for Makebell and, based on the feedback, we will adapt the Ricciwawa platform for Makebell. Over the next 3-5 years, we expect to launch Makebell to large corporates, then create online versions for smaller companies, particularly those involved in educating their products working with customer resource management companies.
Let’s talk about entrepreneurship. Looking back, what was the most obvious challenge you had to overcome when you started that business?
Ronald Yu: Being an entrepreneur is something you learn, and in my case, it took a while to acknowledge the flaws in our initial presumptions as well as the limitations of our initial ambitions – frustrating!
Another challenge was to recognize where our real customer base and strength lay, and having been an academic for some time, it’s actually forced me to unlearn years of academic training. Being an expert is worthless if you can only talk to the people who already know, you want to learn how to prune down complex messages into something more palatable to the average person.
And the least obvious?
Ronald Yu: A less obvious challenge was probably to learn to embrace A/B testing and the idea that all hypotheses, however attractive, must be validated before proceeding further. Many say ideas are valuable, but the reality is that ideas are a dime a dozen.
What you want is ideas that work because they are desirable, feasible and viable, but filtering these out takes time and effort. At the same time, you need to consider multiple perspectives, not variations of the same idea. Knowing when to act on an idea and when to wait for more data, more analysis is never easy.
You also must recognize that correct positioning is both an art and science and something that evolves non-linearly over time and that some of the best solutions can come to you unexpectedly, like when walking one’s dogs. I learned the importance of carrying a notebook to jot down ideas before they evaporate.
What does it take to be a business owner or an entrepreneur these days?
Ronald Yu: My experience tells me that what they say about entrepreneurs – that a business owner needs lots of nerve, belief in oneself, a vision, good social and entrepreneurial skills, a good online presence (if for nothing else, Zoom calls) – is all true.
But so too is a willingness to accept responsibility, to learn, to be flexible. Personally, I believe in backup plans and the importance of integrity and reputation because people do remember backstabbers, cheaters, and liars.
Would you share tips as to how you manage to deal with the hurdles of being an entrepreneur? Any routines or hacks worth sharing?
Ronald Yu: While I believe that having faith in yourself and your ideas is important, you need to balance this with rational analysis and a recognition that some problems have multiple solutions. You also need to be open to new ideas, be willing to recognize when things are not working and pivot.
I actually live by three quotations that definitely apply to entrepreneurs:
“There are always possibilities” (Star Trek)
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results” (something Albert Einstein is alleged to have said)
“The fault…..is not in our stars, But in ourselves” (William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar)
Speaking of tips & hacks, have you read any good books on business recently? What were the main takeaways?
Ronald Yu: I read Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon by Colin Bryar and Bill Carr and Attention Factory: The Story of TikTok and China’s ByteDance Kindle Edition by Matthew Brennan.
The former provided me with important insights into Amazon’s management innovations, notably the use of narratives instead of Powerpoint presentations. The latter book’s most salient takeaway was Douyin/Tiktok’s dual virtuous cycles.
The other book I frequently re-read is the Millionaire Next Door by Thomas Stanley and William Danko because it was the first book to make me realize how facts can upend your assumptions.
Do you happen to listen to any podcasts you’d like to share?
Ronald Yu: I listen to many podcasts but regularly tune into the Techmeme Ride Home and Today in Digital Marketing because they are short, mostly fluff-free, keep me informed of new developments and I can listen when I walk the dogs.
When I have time, I will listen to podcasts on AI, cybersecurity, law, blockchain, economics. I particularly like Revisionist History because Malcolm Gladwell is such a good storyteller and his podcast often reveals the inaccuracies of historical narratives. I also like Law Bytes because Michael Geist is such a great legal thinker, and Against the Rules because I love Michael Lewis’s books.
Wrapping up – how can people reach you? Anything else you’d like to share?
Ronald Yu: As the world becomes more interconnected, I believe success will come more from the ability to connect disparate elements into coherent wholes. People can reach me at ron[at]makebell.com
