I assume this one is working. Sometimes technology is hard to predict. So many familiar faces and so delighted to be back to First Press here. I was born in... I think first of all, I think today I will describe three parts of my life. One is a little bit about my personal life, the second part is I know a lot of young people here and hopefully will inspire you on the career side and how God can lead you in your life, and then finally, I think the most important is my faith journey in Christ, and happy to share with you. So I was born in a Christian family. My mom and dad were deacons in the church, and my grandfather actually is a pastor in China. And so I always pray to God, 'Please don't call me to be a pastor. I'm not good at it.' I will be a very effective elder. And so far, He kind of listened to my prayer. I have one older brother and three sisters. I'm the youngest. You can tell from my family there is a lot of pressure to be in this family. My brother is a Rhodes Scholar, he's a heart surgeon, he's also a professor, and he does artificial hearts. So when people are dying, he replaces the heart, and he always said that like the Bible, I think it's Psalm 139, that the creation, even his own invention on artificial heart, is not the same as God's creation. That's something that he was really a good witness. He lived in Cambridge. My other sister is a marine biologist, and she passed away recently. She could name every animal in the ocean. The sister that is a pharmaceutical Harvard professor. So you know how much pressure to live in this family. My mom is a tiger mom. All my older brother and sisters all had to be in piano performance. My sister actually wanted to be a composer, and my mom said no, you have to have a real job. My brother wanted to be a professional basketball player, she said nope, you have to make a living. That is interesting. When the youngest one came along, she was too tired, so she let me do anything I liked to do. So I only have grade one of piano, because on the way to piano, I loved to catch spiders and other animals. So eventually I dropped out of music and I loved basketball. Later on I'll share more about my basketball. It's kind of the environment I grew up with. I look back and I appreciate my mom gave me the freedom to do a lot of things that I like to do, which became my strength when I do my work. You may be surprised, I have 100 fighting fish, each of them I grew and they were born, each one had a name, and I had to rank them every day to see who was number one. With that I did a lot of multitasking, and I thank my mom for helping me to do that. So that is a little bit about me. That's my mom and me. You can tell I'm a pretty naughty boy. I think among the siblings, I'm the naughty one. That's how I grew up. This may be another one, I don't think I changed much. I have a chin that is interesting. Later on I'll share, usually from Singapore to Malaysia, we take the very fast taxi drive and usually had to stop by a small town to get some food. One day we were just sitting down, my mom and dad, and if you see some kung fu movie, there's a man with a long beard, white beard, and he stayed at that table and went straight to our table. My mom and dad were so worried, and he gave me a prediction of who I was going to be. I would just completely ignore that, but later on it turned out to be true. After high school, I really enjoyed high school in Singapore. Even though I grew up in this church, every Sunday we go to some Bible study, until that camp that I went to in high school. The preacher, the teacher actually is a lady preacher, and she taught this very familiar story to all of you, the Bible story that Jesus asked Peter, 'Do you love me?' three times. I was struggling with that. Even though I knew all the Bible study, that was the first time I touched that, you know, Jesus loved me. So that I became a born-again Christian. That is John 21:15-17, and that's something that I really had the first experience with Christ. For your career, my mom had a big impact on me, that's why there are a lot of pictures about my mom. Here's a prayer. Also something I cannot follow her, she can recite Psalm 139, a very long psalm, by heart. I don't think I can do that. She always asked me to do that, at least the first portion, then second portion, and third portion. It's just hard to do. One thing good about my mom, she always taught me, when we assign you a small thing, do it wholeheartedly and do well, and the big thing will be given to you, more responsibility will be given to you. That turned out to be a very good value for me to learn. Sometimes I look at my grandkids, they are not quite clear. One practice my mom had: you cannot finish, if you don't finish your plate, you can't leave the table. Even today, I still try to finish my plate, and if not, I'll take it home and not put it to waste. That's something the younger generation doesn't quite appreciate, so we are trying to teach them. Then I moved to college, Nanyang Technological University. That is where I learned my physics. Usually it's a four-year program, I think I finished in three years. That's something that I decided to pursue something else. One thing I really enjoy is being a basketball player. I won a championship from my college. I played power forward and center. You can tell the one in the middle is me. My right, two big players are Michael Jordan and LeBron James, they are the two best players. I always admire what they are doing. Even though in Singapore I was supposed to be quite tall, so I played power forward and center. I usually scored about 35 points a game. As you can tell, I was quite popular in school. But one thing I did was at my college, I was president of a Christian fellowship. I thought I did a good job, we had the biggest fellowship members and we expanded a lot. We even went out to preach, so we went to Malaysia, East Malaysia, and a lot of provincial areas. I started to realize the demon process and how to address that. Being a young Christian, you are very inspired, and in the name of Christ you can chase that. So I learned a lot about real spiritual warfare, even some of this black magic. At certain hours you start to have pain, and it really addresses you in that way. I learned a lot about how this spiritual warfare is very real, and our Jesus is much stronger. But clearly, you start to experience that spiritual warfare is real. One mistake I made is I tried to do too many tasks. When I ran the Christian fellowship, I had a staff team of three. Because I worked so hard with them, some of them didn't finish their school, so I had to do one more year. I started to realize it's more important to be in process with God, not by the task. I learned that a lot being a task-oriented person. With that, I went to graduate school. I got many offers, but I decided that energy is a bigger problem. I think I was 30 years ahead of time, so I went to nuclear engineering at MIT. I didn't finish a PhD because of the Three Mile Island accident, so no new power plants were built in the US. I decided I didn't finish my PhD and moved to the West Coast. That's the only resume I wrote throughout my life, and that resume got EDS Nuclear in San Francisco to hire me. Initially, the interview, I said, 'Wow, that's great, three days holiday, come to stay in San Francisco.' The interview was only half a day, and to my good surprise, they gave me an offer. My mom thought I was in some trouble, either with drugs or something, how come he didn't finish a PhD? So she sent my brother to check me out, to see whether I was really in good shape or on drugs or some different influence. My brother came by, spent three days with me, and then he told my mom, 'He's fine, don't worry.' One of my professors really helped me a lot. To be candid with you, my thesis professor, the nuclear reactor thesis professor, he passed away already. He told me very bluntly, 'Lip-bu, I don't want Chinese students for my PhD, and don't expect any grant from me.' Unfortunately, I liked his class and I liked his topic for my PhD, but he didn't want to give me any TA or research assistant. I was very glad that the chair of the department had pity on me, so he gave me a project to do to pay my tuition. Later on, I helped my professor put a paper grant from EPRI, and for the grant, he reluctantly had me as a student doing the research. But I put inside there a typing budget, so when I wanted to finish my PhD, I didn't even have to type. I said, 'Well, you're going to be on vacation, so why don't I use your secretary and your jungle office to finish my master's?' My two kids still laugh at me. I still use one finger to type because of that interesting background. One professor, this torturer is still alive, he gave me very good parting advice. He said, 'Keep your eyes open and take calculated risk.' That has been great advice for me. I thought I would share with you how I used that for multiple learnings. From EDS Nuclear, I moved into a startup. Three of the people came by asking me to join them. They knew I was very good at software programming, so they said, 'Lip-bu, can you join us as a founding fourth person?' So I did that. They said, 'By the way, you're the youngest, so by default you're going to be the CFO.' I said, 'What does a CFO do?' He said, 'Well, just balance books.' I said, 'What kind of books do I have to balance?' It didn't seem like I knew anything. He said, 'Okay, we'll send you to USF, University of San Francisco, to take part-time evening classes for an MBA.' Being very smart, but before that, I need to show you one chart. This is my lovely wife, Issa. I met her at First Press in a Bible study class at home. That's how I met her. Some of you know her quite well. I was very brave to ask her to marry me 12 times, and she turned down every single one. Some of you know her well, she is very, very strong-minded. At the end, she said, 'Well, nothing personal, I just don't want to get married.' I said, 'Okay, at least a consolation, you don't want to get married not because of me.' That was motivating for me to continue persuading. One day she said, 'Well, let's get married.' I said, 'Okay, when am I going to propose to your father and mother?' She said, 'No, just put together a photo portfolio, and I will talk to my mom and dad in Malaysia.' That's how I got married. The first time I met my in-laws was at the wedding. So that's how Issa works. I'm delighted to have her. She helped me stay grounded. A lot of times when you are a little bit successful, you get into your head, and she is the one who brings me down to the ground, makes sure I am grounded. She has been a great blessing. First Press means a lot to me. We have three wonderful grandkids. Before that, these are my two boys, Andrew and Elliot. I think the mentor by one, I think right there. Thank you. Andrew is the older one, and the younger one is Elliot. I think they all grew up at First Press, and some of you know them. Thanks for taking care of them. This is my family. Some of you know I always sit at the upper stair of the balcony. I think some of you see me. We get to know each other well. For some reason, Mark Lebertton reached out to me and asked me to join the session, join the elders. I was surprised, usually you have to go through seafarers and others, and then they recommend, but somehow he reached out to me. That reminds me of the Bible study, Luke 19:10, Jesus called the tax collector from the tree, and he came down. I feel the same way. I said, 'Well, even though I'm not the tax collector, I feel that same way that Mark somehow reached out to me and asked me to serve in the session.' I learned a lot about First Press. That's a very nice transition to my spiritual life. Because of that, over time, I also had the luxury to serve on the Regent College board with Susan Phillips. Sometimes you join an organization, you contribute, but I think you learn more than the contribution. I love their bookstore. I bought a lot of books. I always love books. Again, Eugene Peterson, you see him in person walking on campus, that is just amazing. It's a very good experience. Also with Susan Phillips, I work very closely with New College and Craig. So nice to see you finally, we get to know each other more. I continue to support First Press. The other one is very important. This is my family, three grandkids. Andrew looks this way, really. He turned out to be great. He is a co-founder of an AI startup company, and he also does a fund that I sponsor, doing a lot of very early stage, pre-pre-early stage. He is very, very smart, from CMU. The older one, he plays basketball with me, he was on the basketball team. He also from CMU. Two of them are from CMU. The daughter-in-law, the one in the middle, also from CMU. So we have a long history with CMU. I serve as a trustee and as an advisor to the Dean's Advisory Board of Engineering. The extreme right is Sunbin. When Andrew told me he was dating someone, I said, 'Who is that?' He said, 'Well, she's a litigation lawyer.' I said, 'Why on earth are you dating a litigation lawyer?' It turned out she is a very nice lady. When Issa and I, the two kids were too tired after a whole day of skiing in Utah, and we had to pick up this lady. I put a big sign up, and the lady came by and said, 'What? I'm Sin.' So we picked her up. I thought she was a Korean lady, but in the car she spoke fluent Mandarin to me. I said, 'Am I picking up the wrong lady?' She said, 'No, that's me.' I learned that at a young age, without her parents' support, she went to Nanjing, China to study at a local school. I show a lot of respect for a foreigner able to survive in that local school and also Beijing University, eventually becoming a lawyer in Korea. So we have three boys, we have no girls, it's all boys. That's kind of our family. But more important, the next slide, that's my mom before she passed away at the beachfront. Some of you know, I was very involved with the facility task force with Bob Russell and Jim Childers. Some of you know them well. I learned a lot about their faith. Even in the challenging times, Jim Childers in the morning went to chemo and later on came and conducted the meeting. I still remember we were building, selecting the architecture. Some of you know, originally we were ready to go forward, but a young man came back and said, 'This is a horrible design,' and we had to throw it away. Give credit to Jim Childers, he said, 'Lip-bu, let's be open-minded and listen to him.' Eventually, this is the facility that we have. Bob Russell and I were very close friends. One thing that I decided is very important before I get there. I was quite involved also with Barbara and Ted. Ted Streer is here somewhere, oh right here, perfect. Barbara, Sherry, and Beth Streer. We were co-chairs of two capital campaigns, successfully fundraising on that. Jim Childers, a lot of respect. Bob Russell is a very good friend. Later on, I will touch on, I was a big supporter of Mount Hermon. Some of you may like the place. Every year, Labor Day weekend, we were there as a family tradition. Now we are so happy the three young grandkids love that place, so they are asking to go there. We are just delighted. With that, I picked up a book I really like, called 'Finishing Strong' by Steve Farrar. Highly recommend you pick up that book. Not many Bible characters finish strong. King David didn't finish strong. That book touched me a lot, and I decided I want to form an accountability group. We want to finish strong. Bob Russell is one of the members. Later on, I will share with you some other members. We have Bob Nielsen. Some of you may know Bob Nielsen. I just saw a thousand sharing that. We are delighted to work on the capital campaign together with the tremendous help and tremendous leadership you have. Long story short, we decided to form an accountability group. Highly recommend, every month we have one meeting. We have Bob Nielsen, I have Steve, a former pastor, and I have others. Even though I moved down to Santa Barbara, thanks to COVID, instead of rotating to different houses, we have it on a Zoom call every Saturday from 10 to 12, once a month. We pick two books each time, and we learn a lot, chapter by chapter. We also spend half the time praying for each other. We have a policy: anything we share, we keep it confidential, not even share with our spouse. That turned out to be very good, keeps us grounded. We all come from different backgrounds. Michael Parks used to also attend First Press, and he was also one of them. We are delighted to have that, we learned a lot from that. Back to Mount Hermon, highly recommend. They have a great team. I still very dearly remember Roger Williams, some of you may know, he passed away, but he has been a good inspiration for me. Of course, Jr., Mike, Ron, all this team, and David the piano, it's just amazing. That's part of mine that every year, no matter how busy I am, I always go there. A little bit on the career, back to this: take risk with your eyes open. I was asked to be the CEO of Cadence Design. You may not be familiar with the company, but anything on your cell phone, anything electronics, uses Cadence Design for the design. The company was quite in trouble, and the stock was down to $2.42. I was just sending Andrew to CMU, sending him to the dorm to leave, and I got 12 different phone calls from all the board members at Cadence. They said, 'Lip-bu, can you come back?' I said, 'What's the hurry? Keep calling me.' They said, 'Can you come back?' I said, 'Sure, tomorrow I will be back.' They said, 'Well, Lip-bu, can you step in to be the interim CEO?' I said, 'I never ran a company. Forget about turning around. Are you guys kidding?' He said, 'No, I think the team really wants you.' So I told them, 'Okay, I'll do it for three months while you do the search.' Then they put me on the search committee. I said, 'You know what? I'm too busy with customers, and this is a crisis situation, very close to bankruptcy. Maybe you guys should find someone better.' I said, 'Well, that's why we need to do a search, and you should be a part of it.' I said, 'But I'm too busy. You guys do the search. When you find the right person, I can pass the key.' So I continued working on it. After supposed to be three months, I think two and a half months, the chairman came in very smiling. I said, 'You found a CEO? So when can I give the key to?' He said, 'You can keep the key.' I said, 'Wait a minute, what is that?' Finally, they said, 'Well, you are going to be the CEO.' Even during that interim period, I was struggling. I asked, I prayed with Issa, and Issa was so supportive. She said, 'I think your mind is already set to do that, and I will support you.' That's something I really appreciate about Issa. Without her support, I wouldn't be able to do it because I had to drive every day from Piedmont to Santa Clara, one and a half hours each way, and I did it for 13 years. Some of my customers asked, 'How long are you going to be there? You are a venture capitalist, you're going to flip it, and next thing you'll be back to VC.' It turned out I stayed a long time, 15 years including two years as chairman. The company performed very well, and the market cap is almost $80 billion. When I took over, it was less than $6 billion, $0.6 billion. Anyway, that's something. Every night, to be candid with you, the first three weeks I was struggling. I couldn't sleep because there were about 6,000 people under my watch, and I had to let go of 1,500 people because the company was in such bad shape. The good news is after I retired, the company almost had 12,000 employees, so we hired a lot of people to recruit the talent. I also recruited someone I trained for 12 years, and he took over as CEO. He is fantastic under root. In a way, I am in good shape passing to him and training him. I thought that was done with my career, and I continued to go back to my first love, which is venture investment. As some of you know me well on the venture side, I have invested in about 500 companies. Out of 500 companies, 145 went public via IPO, and 95 were successful trade sales. So I do a lot of startups, from MIT, from Stanford, a lot with Stanford and Berkeley. Just a little bit about my career, I always try to learn, do hard work, do the homework, and learn. I am always very passionate about education. One thing good about not finishing my PhD is I have a chip on my shoulder, so I always try to learn more and work harder. Some universities somehow see that I am very passionate about universities. So I am on the board of CMU. In fact, one side story: when they invited me to be on the CMU board, my wife strongly said no. I said, 'Why?' She said, 'Lip-bu, don't disturb our kids.' So I backed off. Finally, I had to persuade, and my Andrew and Elliot gave approval for me to be on the CMU board. They said, 'Okay, Papa, you can join the board, but with one condition: don't drop in unscheduled. You have to make an appointment.' I said, 'Okay.' One day, I was on the way to a trustee board meeting dinner, and suddenly I texted my youngest son, 'I'm going to be in town. Do you have time for dinner? Can I set an appointment tonight? I'm free.' I was in a dilemma on the bus, and I told the trustee sitting next to me. He just shouted to the driver, 'Stop, and get him out of the bus.' So I did, and it turned out to be the best decision I made. That's the reason I joined the board. I am on the Engineering Advisory Board at Berkeley, on two advisory boards: the School of Engineering and the new School of Computing, Data Science, and Society, called CDSS. Jennifer is a good friend of mine from Microsoft. She refused to leave my house until I said yes. So finally I joined, and it turned out, some of you know, Databricks is a great company. I am an investor. It's really a great company. Also, Luca and the Opac system, many companies I am involved with. It's a great school, Berkeley. I am very excited about, of course, my MIT. They said, 'Lip-bu, you didn't finish your PhD. Why don't you come back and finish?' I said, 'I'm too old for that.' I told the new president, and Anantha, the School of Engineering, said, 'You should come back and rejoin the advisory board.' We decided to go big time into fusion, nuclear fusion. They said, 'Lip-bu, you should come back and help on Edison nuclear and others.' So I decided to rejoin. One thing I really like is how to use AI and machine learning. I invest a lot in medical applications, like for cancer, more accurate biomarkers, and also some rare diseases. I decided to join the UCSF advisory board. They call it the Executive Council; they don't have a board. This is running all the budget, all the engineering research. A lot to do with the medical field. In fact, one of them, hopefully you don't need this, is Eddie Chen, a very good friend of mine. He is the number one neurosurgeon at UCSF. He just started a company using brain waves and semiconductors to drive more accurate communications. It's about 82% accurate. So like Stephen Hawking, you don't have to punch a keyboard; you can use brain waves. In fact, they are going to do a foundation model to decode the brain. I learned a lot about the brain, how this side is for communication, that side is for vision. It's just fascinating to learn from him. I like him so much, I support him. He is one of the faculty we need to keep. I endowed a chair for him and for epilepsy. Hopefully, he will do a startup I can invest in. Long story short, it's just a lot of learning. As long as you are willing to learn, humble to learn, I think there is a lot of opportunity. Finally, I was asked by Mark Lebertton, as you know, he stepped down from First Press to be on the Fuller board of presidents. He recruited one of my partners, I introduced him to be on the board. One day he was speaking here, and I said, 'Oh wow.' He said, 'I think the time comes nearer now, you've got to be involved.' So he basically convinced me to join the Fuller board. I work with Katy a lot, working on the Fuller side. Again, I learned more than what I can contribute, even though I endowed a professorship there. A couple of things I just want to summarize before opening up for questions. I think all of you know Al Palmer. He is one of the best teachers. Every time he preaches, I take a lot of notes. It's just amazing how much we appreciate him, and we miss him a lot. Even in old age, at New College, we had that Saturday the whole day. I think Susan told me that he tried to have him sit down, but he insisted on standing up to do the whole few hours. That kind of role model is inspiring. There is one Tim. Tim is a very good friend of mine. We have a place in Hawaii. I always go to his church to attend. Every time we go there, I go to his church, and my wife and I just enjoy having fellowship with him. It's just wonderful to do that. These are the few Bible words that mean a lot to me. I mentioned earlier, when Jesus asked three times, 'Do you love me?' and then 'Feed my sheep.' In some way, we all go back to doing either our fishing or our work. Many times we think our intelligence can do it, but you have to lean on God. Every morning I try to pray about it, and before I sleep, I like to read and unwind some of my burdens. People always ask me, 'Lip-bu, with so much stress, how do you relieve it?' One thing is I swim every morning. Every place I have, I have a swimming pool. I swim every morning. If the meeting starts at 7:00, I start swimming at 6:00. One time I was in a hotel, and I said, 'Well, the flight is at 5:00. Can you open at 3:30 for me to swim?' Some hotels are quite nice, they opened up for me to swim, except Las Vegas. In Las Vegas, the swimming time is like noon. I said, 'Who swims at noon? I need to swim at 6:00.' So at least one hotel opened at 6:00 for me. That's why I always stay in that hotel. The tax collector, I felt very strongly about. The other one that gives me peace is trusting in God with all your heart and leaning not on your own understanding. In all your ways submit to Him, and He will make your paths straight. Finally, this one is almost my daily: act justly, love mercy. Sometimes people you touch may not mean a lot to people, but Jesus cares about that. One thing I always remember is the story about the widow with two coins. Jesus said she gave more than anybody else, the rich people. So to me, it doesn't matter how much you have, just giving back and helping. That's what at the judgment day, this is how you show whether you are a good and faithful servant. That's a very important message. These are a few books. Our Bible study accountability group, I always ask different pastors to give me suggestions for books. Charlene is very kind to give me a lot of suggestions, and also Nancy and John from Menlo Church, and also 'Transforming the Board' and 'The Bear with Christ' that I used to be on the board until I became too busy. Someone also recommended 'Renovation of the Heart.' It's very interesting, every time we pick two books, somehow every chapter syncs up so well, it's amazing God leading. Ian asked me to read a book called 'To Change the World Rather Than the World Changing You.' I thought that had a profound impact on me. There are a lot more books, we just highlight these few that I really like. With that, I just want to summarize a few things. First of all, I think some of you know that I was supposed to be slowly retiring. I am 65. I love a company called Intel. Pat Gelsinger is a very close friend of mine, a good brother. He asked me to step in for two years to be on the board. Finally, I stepped up for personal reasons. Later on, the board reached out to me in December, January, February, and March, asking me to come back to run the company. It's an iconic company, and it's very important for the United States. I gave it a lot of thought. A good friend of mine told me, 'Lip-bu, you have an impeccable reputation, and people love you a lot. But this one is 50 times harder than Cadence Design. I want to make sure you are grounded. Also, I want to remind you, you have a great reputation, but people only remember the last one. So if the last one you fail, you are always a failure.' One thing he also encouraged me is, 'Lip-bu, if you decide not to do it, the company will have to hire somebody else. If it turns out to be bad, you will regret it for the rest of your life.' A lot of my friends previously with Intel all encouraged me to do it. So finally, I decided to do it. Also, it's a good platform to witness my commitment to the industry that I love so much. That's kind of my story. The only drawback is this job. I thought I could be very low profile, but it turns out that everywhere, every newspaper, whatever I do something is being broadcast. The other part is the security to take on this role is heavy. You can see someone walking, and it's my security guard, making sure I am safe. Even though I said this place is very safe, somehow it's valuable, you still have to have someone here. That's kind of the thing I have to live with. With that constraint, I would like to open up for questions. I think that's more important.
