Interview with Calvin Chin, Chief Executive Officer, Qifang

What makes Qifang special?

At Qifang we see ourselves as the caretaker of dreams because education is essentially about dreams. It’s a belief that by acquiring skills or knowledge I might transform my life and provide for myself and my loved ones. When a young person has to cut short their education or has to stop and save up in order to continue and complete their education, well, those dreams die or are deferred; and that young person loses the chance to live up to their maximum potential. What Qifang does then is provide a web service that allows individual students or schools to connect to funding sources, to manage and cultivate those relationships, and build communities around borrowing, lending and donation. It’s those communities of trust built around supporting education which make Qifang special.

What country best facilitates starting a tech company?

It has to be China because we have all the ingredients for starting a tech company. We’ve got really talented and creative people, we’ve got a really robust infrastructure, we’ve got risk capital, we’ve got a really supportive government, and we have booming end markets for any product or service you might dream up. But you know, in the end I think what really makes new companies thrive is determination and optimism. And after over 25 plus years now of an economic miracle that’s really transformed society and everyone here in itl, there’s this real feeling that anything is possible if you just work at it. I wouldn’t trade that for anything, anywhere.

What makes an innovator?

To me, an innovator is somebody who creates a solution to a problem that nobody else could. In fact sometimes they realize the problem before anyone else does either. What they then do is with passion and drive they really take those ideas and they make what’s possible into reality. An innovator is really somebody who takes a look at the world and says why are things the way that they are, but they go further than that to say why can’t the world be the way that I see it or the way that I want it to be?

How does Qifang contribute to improving the state of the world?

Well, at Qifang we have a very simple company mission which is to give everyone a way to pay for their education. For us really it’s more than a company mission, it’s more of a global necessity, because if you think about the biggest problems that we all face, whether it’s climate change or poverty, disease, certainly many others, well, we can’t afford to waste the potential of any human being. And you know what education really is is the chance to maximize your potential and when you give somebody a chance to really maximize their potential, not only do you transform their life, but also the lives of all those around them, and actually future generations as well. In that way, at Qifang, we don’t really see ourselves as only improving the state of the world, but actually improving the future as well.