Fortune favors those who follow their dreams

gzlaser

KAIFU Lee(李开复）, 41, vice-president of Google and President of Google China, has another title among Chinese students – teacher Kaifu. Since 1998, he has been touring campuses and giving lectures, publishing letters to students on media, and answering students' questions on his own website.

Lee teaches everything, from study advice to career planning. As he has moved from vice-president of Microsoft to vice-president of Google, Lee has become an idol of many Chinese students with big IT dreams. Lee quotes the advice of one of his professors: \"Only those people who are extremely lacking in imagination will have 'making a fortune' as their dream.\"

21st Century talked to Lee about people's attitude towards making a fortune, and the importance imagination plays in making money.

21st: Do young people misunderstand the idea of making a fortune?

Lee: I met quite a few young entrepreneurs born in the 1980s. They can be divided into two groups. The first group has identified goals and devote themselves to doing something meaningful, something they believe in. The second group care about selling their companies for a good price, floating on the stock market and making a fortune.

The first group seem to be more likely to do something big and be successful in the long term. Bill Gates had never thought of becoming the richest man in the world when he quit school to start Microsoft. His goal was to make personal computers available to everybody. Then, he made it, now he is the richest. Usually, the more obsessed you are with money, the further you pull yourself from it.

21st: Did you ever worry about money when you were young?

Lee: Sure I have. I understand how students from poor families struggle through university education and how money has always been a top priority for them. My advice is: don't spend all your energy on the money stuff. Sometimes people are too obsessed by the emergent things and forget things that are really important (in this case, money is emergent while learning knowledge is important).

21st: Do people's attitudes towards making a fortune change at different stages of life?

Lee: There is a stage in your financial circumstance that can be called ultimate financial freedom, meaning, you don't need to worry about money anymore. You can roughly calculate how much money you need to achieve the ultimate freedom:

Then, see if the money can buy you all the things you want for an ideal life.

But life changes. I can give you an example of someone who achieved this freedom. One of my friends worked hard in the first half of his life and he earned enough money for his ideal life. He then traveled around the world for two years and used up all his money. Now he's working in a company.

21st: If young people who have making a fortune as their dream are lacking imagination, what about Google's young people? What dreams do they have?

Lee: I think people working at Google enjoy what they are doing. This morning, we had a conference. At the end of the meeting, I said: hey, don't forget your Google shares. You can cash in now. Some of them were surprised and asked: Oh, really? How much money will I get? Before tax or after tax? In this case, perhaps they can be more imaginative about money.

Cream of the crop

I was not a rich student when I was at Carnegie Mellon University in the States. Neither was my roommate. I worked part-time in the computer centre and he worked in a school kitchen. He usually brought me some food left over from the kitchen. At spring break we stayed at university as flying back to Taiwan was too expensive. My roommate got 25 kilogram of cream cheese from the kitchen and suggested living through the spring break on 20 cheese cakes. We ate these cakes for seven days till the last piece went smelly. \"Good news! We are finally free of cheese cakes!\" he claimed.