Lessons from Allen Lau

Allen Lau, a prominent figure in the tech and startup ecosystem, has openly shared his journey of transforming Wattpad from a personal project into a global entertainment company. His experiences provide invaluable lessons for aspiring entrepreneurs, leaders, and creators.

On Entrepreneurship and Vision

On the genesis of an idea: "For any good idea you can safely assume that someone in Mumbai, someone in Beijing and someone in London or Paris, is independently and without you knowing it, executing on that idea already." [1]
The value of execution over ideas: "Ideas are cheap. Execution really matters: get things done, iterate, test the market — and do it fast." [1]
The power of a North Star: "If you make the decision to be a global company, it becomes the company's North Star. Having that North Star is always helpful. It aligns everyone in a company." [2]
On contrarian thinking: "The best opportunity in plain sight that nobody can see." [3]
The importance of purpose: "A vision without purpose is a business without a soul. Having purpose without vision, you are kind of wandering aimlessly." [4]
The role of purpose in perseverance: "Purpose will keep you going during the difficult times." [5]
Entrepreneurship as a learning journey: "Entrepreneurship involves constant learning and evolution; you will learn a new job every 12 months." [4]
The best product to build is yourself: "The best product that you want to build is not necessarily the product the best product that you want to build is yourself." [6]
Overcoming hesitation: "The number-one thing that stops people from starting a business is hesitation." [7]
The reality of startup failure: "Many startups will fail, and it's only natural, and it's actually okay. The lessons that you learn through success and failure will be life-changing." [7]

On Building and Scaling a Company

The '3 and 10' Rule of Scaling: "Every time the company crosses the 3 and 10 threshold everything is broken. When we grew from a single founder to 3 people, everything was broken so we had to fix it. When we grew from 3 to 10 people, everything was broken, so we had to fix it." [4]
The evolution of leadership style: "Leadership style needs to change as the business grows." [4]
From telling to empowering: "The communication or leadership style had to change from telling people exactly what to do, to saying ‘this is what we need to achieve, and this is why, and you go figure it out.’" [8]
The founder's influence on culture: "The company culture starts from the top. The founders' influence on the company culture is over-indexed." [8]
Hiring for a global mindset: "Because we have so many users in different parts of the world, we need our team to resemble that, as well." [2]
The importance of a diverse team: "Founders who grew up in a single country and haven't had a broad exposure to another culture or language have to make that constant conscious decision how to grow the skillset and, most importantly, how to find diverse perspectives on different things.” [2]
A top-down global mindset: "This type of mindset has to be very top-down. If we want to address the global market, but the only thing that the founder talks about is the US market, then it trickles down that message even though it might be unintentional." [2]
Resourcefulness as a core value: "You do more with less, and only spend time on things that matter -- this breeds sufficiency and invention." [9]
The CEO's fundamental responsibilities: "Always making sure there's enough cash in the bank, setting a strategy and vision for the company, and hiring the best people to make it happen." [10]
On financial prudence: "If you buy things you do not need, soon you will have to sell things you need." (Quoting Warren Buffett) [9]

On Community and Storytelling

The mission of Wattpad: "To entertain and connect the world through stories." [1]
Democratizing storytelling: "We democratized the process. And we changed so many storytellers' lives." [4]
The power of free: "Something magical happens when a price falls to zero -- all of a sudden, demand rises to infinity." [6]
Eliminating friction for user adoption: "By offering something for free, you completely eliminate a common question consumers have when deciding to try a new product -- 'Should I pay for this?'" [6]
Connecting with a global community: "We want to build a global business that's why you see the word world in our vision." [1]
The vision for storytelling: "People will always want to be entertained. people always want to be telling or listening to a story. and people always want to be connected." [1]
The future of entertainment: "Leverage groundbreaking technology to fundamentally disrupt the entertainment industry while empowering diverse voices." [11]
The human need for stories: "Since the dawn of humanity, humans have been enchanted and spellbound by the art of storytelling." [12]
Building a community, not just a product: "We are building a global community then we realize well perhaps the people that we hire they have to mirror the community that we have." [7]
The importance of diverse stories: In a 2020 podcast, Lau emphasized the importance of telling diverse stories to a global audience. [13]

On Learning and Personal Growth

The value of continuous learning: "I spend at least half an hour a day reading blog posts or articles to help me be more prepared for the future." [4]
Learning from others' experiences: "For most challenges, someone has faced something similar before. I just have to find that person and figure out how they solved that problem, and apply it in my context." [4]
The role of mentorship: "The best mentors and advisors share their experiences, rather than tell you what to do. And when you hear these experiences, you can apply the lessons learned intelligently to your own business." [2]
Learning from both success and failure: "Being able to learn from other people on how they solved these problems—or even how they messed it up—helps you learn and grow as a founder." [14]
The advantage of experience: "It is very hard for a very young founder to go all the way, because sometimes experience does help." [4]
The intensity of the startup journey: "I learned like 20 years 30 years worth of experience within those thousand days because it was just so intense." [14]
The importance of curiosity: In a 2025 podcast, Lau attributes his success to curiosity, especially in the early days of Wattpad when there was little traction. [7]
Leveraging your network: "An introduction from someone connected to the person you want to reach will instantly increase your credibility and thereby your odds of an email reply." [15]
The power of optionality: "I want you to remember the key word optionality." [14]
The journey is the reward: "It's the journey not the destination." [7]

On Investment and the Future

On seeking venture capital: "For this type of company, venture capital would be the most obvious and in many cases the only choice." [10]
What he looks for in a startup: "What I'm looking for would be whether the startup will become the category winner or even better the category creator." [16]
The ambition to be a game-changer: "What I'm looking for are people who are ambitious. who wants to be the game changer. to me that's what innovation actually looks like not an incremental improvement. but totally change the landscape." [16]
The right early-stage KPI: "It's knowing how much your users loving your product that should be your KPI." [16]
On the evolution of the Canadian tech ecosystem: "When we talked about M&As in the past, it was more about selling to foreign companies, but today the narrative is evolving, with more discussions of Canadian buyers, and that is super exciting." [14]
Investing in deep tech: As a venture capitalist, Lau is now focused on investing in the next frontier of computing and its applications. [3]
The future of AI: "Like connectivity in the internet era, 'the cost of intelligence' is now rapidly declining, while the value derived continues to surge, driving even greater demand.” [12]
Recycling knowledge and capital: Lau started Two Small Fish Ventures to help recycle capital, knowledge, and know-how back into the Canadian ecosystem, a practice he saw as a gap compared to Silicon Valley. [14]
The potential of AI-driven content creation: Lau speaks about the evolution and opportunities in AI-driven content creation. [9]
Balancing innovation and business fundamentals: A key theme in his masterclass for entrepreneurs is balancing innovation with the fundamental business needs of traction and revenue. [13]

Learn more:

Lessons from Allen Lau

On Entrepreneurship and Vision

On Building and Scaling a Company

On Community and Storytelling

On Learning and Personal Growth

On Investment and the Future

Written by Antoine Buteau

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