Liu, who previously founded the award-winning Nanoly Bioscience, is also a pianist, an activity that has been, well, instrumental in her success in business, as she describes below.
Q: What’s the best piece of advice you ever got?
A: “The best way is paving your own way.” I learned this from my piano teacher, Martha Albrecht, in middle school. Whenever I learned a new piano piece, we’d listen to professional pianists’ versions of the song. Then Martha would guide me through the music measure by measure and have me mark it up with my own interpretation.
I approached Enplug the same way. When building a business, we can either copy another business or write our own DNA. Doing things our own way extends beyond how we build product; it’s also how we create culture, hire, and get funding. We broke most “startup rules” right from the beginning.
Q: What did you learn from your biggest mistake?
A: Follow up immediately. My biggest mistakes have been from missed opportunities because I took too much time to follow up. After meeting someone cool, I email them within 12 hours. They’re more likely to remember me and still have some excitement from our conversation. I find that if I wait more than a day to contact the person after the first meeting, there is a drop in response rate.
Curated from How a Piano Lesson Helped Me Succeed in Business [Time/Money]