On this episode of OneHaas, entrepreneur, advisor, and investor Albert Lee shares his career journey from finance to the startup world and his invention of the app, MyFitnessPal.
Born to Korean-immigrant parents, Albert grew up in a small town outside Albany, New York. His dad worked as a scientist at a research and development laboratory right next to Albert’s high school – a school with a reputation for producing successful entrepreneurs.
Albert chats with host Sean Li about co-founding the health app MyFitnessPal, why his approach to entrepreneurship has a lot to do with solving everyday problems, and how his time at Haas helped him reinvent himself.
*OneHaas Alumni Podcast is a production of Haas School of Business and is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:
On his unique high school experience
“Our school actually, you know what's kind of crazy is, has a couple other very successful entrepreneurs that have gone through it. So prior to me, a guy named Colin Engel, who founded iRobot, the company that makes the Roomba, actually went to my high school. And after me, actually Brian Chesky, the CEO of Airbnb, went to my high school as well. So it's kind of this small high school in the middle of nowhere, but has this sort of background of being affiliated with all of these like inventors and scientists. And so there, I think it fostered some entrepreneurial activity.”
On the invention of MyFitnessPal
“My brother and my sister-in-law were getting married and they had decided to have a beach wedding in Mexico. And my brother was like, man, I am not in good shape. He's like, you know, I really want to look good for this wedding.
So they went to a gym, they went to see a trainer, they started working out. And the trainer said, you know, it's great, this is definitely important to get him to a fitness plan. But if you really want to reach your goals before this wedding date, you're also going to have to think about what you're eating. And so the way that I want you to do that is to keep a food journal. And here it is. And he literally presented my brother with this, like, paper and pen diary plus, you know, a little reference guide that had some generic information about foods and calories…And so my brother took that. I think he felt like logically it made a lot of sense to do this thing, but just couldn't believe there wasn't a better way to do it.”
On his approach to entrepreneurship
“You can start very organically from your own experiences and say, okay, well, what is the stuff in everyday life that I'm doing, seeing, feeling that just doesn't feel quite right to me? You know, are there products that I'm using that I don't like? Are there experiences that I'm having that don't make any sense? And I think my brother and I had determined that the latter way of trying to build something was much more aligned with how I think we think and we operate and how we feel motivation. And it comes a little bit from the selfish place, which is like, well, I have this problem and I kind of want to solve it, you know, and it doesn't look like anybody else is going to solve this. So I'm going to try to do it on my own.”
On how his experience at Haas shaped his mindset
“I think one of the magical things about being a business school student is sort of this, you get this kind of new identity where you are. You're kind of something, but also nothing, you know? And I don't mean that in a disparaging way, but it's sort of like you have this opportunity to sort of reinvent parts of who you are and expose yourself to a lot of different things. And just like immersing myself in a community of people who, many of whom had entrepreneurial aspirations, just completely changed my personal mindset.”
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