--- Transcript: [00:00:00] Anna Gong: They've moved me to Singapore … and six months into Singapore, they said, we need you more in Japan! And then so I moved to Japan. And then I stayed there for two years. Turned around the business, year-over-year 220 percent. You know, there were a lot of naysayers like ‘why would you send a Chinese female to Japan? It’s a death wish! But, you know, events Stephen Cummins: Didn’t work out that way. Anna Gong: [00:00:20] Success speaks for itself ... right? Like ‘Ana San! You’re such a crazy, aggressive negotiator! But we like it!’ [00:00:29] So as long as you deliver what you promise. Yeah. I think a lot of times U.S. companies or western companies come in. Parachute an executive … you know … tell them everything they want to hear, go away, and then they never deliver. Or deliver very little. So over-promise, under-deliver. Stephen Cummins: [00:00:51] Welcome to 14 minutes of SaaS! The show where you can listen to the stories and opinions of founders of the world's most remarkable SaaS scale-ups! [00:01:13] In episode 86 of 14 Minutes of SaaS in Hong Kong, where I meet with Anna Gong, the CEO and a board member at Perx. This is the first of a three-part interview about her multinational life and career. The threads that run through the interview are consistently fueling hypergrowth, a huge level of self-belief and confidence, and movemen - including Guangzhou in China to Florida, several iconic tech cities in Silicon Valley. To Singapore. To Japan. [00:01:50] So today on 14 Minutes of SaaS, we have Anna Gong, CEO of Perx Technologies, a leading loyalty and customer engagement SaaS platform. And it's an AI powered platform too. Great to have you on the show Anna. Anna Gong: Thank you Stephen. Great to be here. How are we enjoying RISE? Anna Gong: [00:02:08] It's lovely actually. I haven't been to the whole conference, but what I've seen so far is lovely. Stephen Cummins: [00:02:14] Yeah, absolutely. And it was a pleasure to introduce you to the stage today. You did a brilliant job. Anna Gong: [00:02:20] What a coincidence! I didn’t know you were interviewing me. Stephen Cummins: I know. It's insane! Literally two hours or something after introducing you to the stage … or maybe less. So we've been chatting and you've got a fascinating background. Would you tell us your story from childhood all the way up to before you entered the workforce? Anna Gong: [00:02:41] Wow. OK. Going back … [00:02:43] I won't date myself too much. But I was born in China in Guangzhou. And when I was 8, my family uprooted to Florida in the US. And that's where I grew up … until I graduated. I went to California for college. And after L.A., I moved to San Francisco. So I've been in tech all my life. My first job was in tech, implementing large-scale ERP systems. SAP actually … the worst programming language you could ever start with. But you know, we did it. And one of the worst projects that one could be put into as a twenty two year old … you know, Folsom, California. You know, at Intel, this is ehh .. you know Johnny Cash, right? My first orientation package from PwC was ‘go visit the penitentiary! It's so exciting!’ I'm like ‘No’. [00:03:42] So that project literally killed me inside because, you know, fifteen hours of programming, day in, day out. And then there's no leisure in sight. And so, you know, we would drive up Mondays. And then drive back Friday to San Francisco. It was just a miserable time for me. Maybe that was a wrong project for me. But yeah, I realised that I think my personality belongs in the front line. And nonetheless, I started my career in programming. Stephen Cummins: [00:04:10] So you were a bit like Johnny Cash then.