Episode 291 - How a Venture Capitalist, Serial Entrepreneur, and Basketball Team Owner Finds His Identity in Christ with Phil Chen

What do you get when you mix a trained physicist, a seminary grad, an entrepreneur, and a Silicon valley venture capitalist?  

In the case of this episode, you get an awesome guest who somehow checks all  those boxes.   

Phil Chen is the CEO of cold electric and the owner of the new Taipei Kings, a basketball team,  in the recently founded Taiwanese pro league. It also happens to be where past podcast, guests and faith driven entrepreneur, Jeremy Lin plays. 

Phil's career is wide reaching and impressive. But what's even more valuable is the way he has allowed his theology to shape how he leads and all these various places.   

While we're going to premiere a feature video that tells Phil's story at this year's faith-driven entrepreneur conference. 

Today, he joins us to tell us a bit about his journey and share how rooting ourselves in scripture can help affirm our identities in Christ and empower us to pursue all that he calls us to.

All opinions expressed on this podcast, including the team and guests, are solely their opinions. Host and guests may maintain positions in the companies and securities discussed. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as specific advice for any individual or organization.

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Episode Transcript

Transcription is done by an AI software. While technology is an incredible tool to automate this process, there will be misspellings and typos that might accompany it. Please keep that in mind as you work through it.

Joseph Honescko: What do you get when you mix a train physicist, a seminary grad, an entrepreneur, and a Silicon Valley venture capitalist? In the case of this episode, you get an awesome guest who somehow checks all those boxes. Phil Chen is currently the CEO of Cold Electric and the owner of the New Taipei Kings, a basketball team in the recently founded Taiwanese Pro League. It also happens to be where past podcast guest and faith driven entrepreneur Jeremy Lin plays. Phil's career is wide reaching and impressive, but what's even more valuable is the way he has allowed his theology to shape how he leads in all these various places. Well, we're going to premiere a feature video that tells Phil's story at this year's Faith Driven Entrepreneur Conference. Today, he joins us to tell us a bit about his journey and share how a rootedness in Scripture can help affirm our identities in Christ and empower us to pursue all that he calls us to. I'm Joey Honescko, and you're listening to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. Let's get into it.

Joseph Honescko: Welcome back, everyone to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. I'm with my co-host today, Justin Forman, who recently got back from a video trip across Asia to capture stories of faith driven entrepreneurs in that region. And today we're going to talk to Phil Chen. But, Justin, start us off with just, quick review of that trip and talk about what it means to see this movement growing all around the world.

Justin Forman: Yeah. What a trip it was. Indeed. It is such a gift to be able to see God at work in so many different places. It's a beautiful movement and it's so much more widespread, diverse and so many different shapes and sizes and businesses and industries and innovations and people solving problems. And it is a gift to be able to see it. A special gift for us, though, was an opportunity to take my son on the trip. And so it was his spring break, and my wife and I have recently done a math problem that made us cry to realize there's probably about a thousand nights or so left before he heads on to maybe that next chapter in that next season. And so it was special for me to be able to be back there. You know, I studied there in Hong Kong in college and man, such a formative experience in my life. And so to take your son back there to experience some of those things, experience just the beauty and the uniqueness of that harbor, there is nothing like the view from across the harbor, Victoria's peak. And to see that, and great to spend time in Taiwan with just a unique story. We talked about this movement's being so deeply rooted in history of the cities where we are, and our guest today with Phil, man what, what a story of how, family has been at the foundation, at the foundation of country and at the foundation of city and shaping that in just a powerful way. So, Phil, it's great to have you. Welcome to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast.

Phil Chen: Thank you. Thank you for having me. It's a real pleasure.

Justin Forman: So, Phil, start us off here like we were alluding to. There is a family history and a family story of entrepreneurship that goes pretty deep, wide, and a lot of different industries. If you could maybe just give us a quick flyover of what are some of the different industries and things he's been in.

Phil Chen: Yeah, probably the first, you know, patriarch. How it was started, my grandfather on my mother's side in the 60s or 70s. He started a petrochemical company. He got actually a loan from the US government. This company has been instrumental in the development, even in Taiwan's economy. It grew to, you know, four multi-billion dollar companies from that. And so he was actually the first seed investor in TSMC. Then his fourth daughter didn't get involved in the traditional side of the business and then went out completely into tech. She has since then started, I want to say also for multi-billion dollar companies, the most well known in the consumer space is HTC. And so my family has been in petrochemicals, in transition, in the tech. And then venture capital and then the like.

Justin Forman: Yeah, quite a history, quite a legacy there. You know one of the things that we go through a journey on whenever we're capturing these stories is trying to find the unique thread line. And I remember the first time we connected, you said, I've got one for you. I learned how to study business in seminary. Now, that's not a line that we hear much on a podcast in a video story, but you had a route that took you from just a business background and a family like that through seminary. And what did you mean by that? How does that principle ring true for you?

Phil Chen: I would just say, I mean, looking back and seeing obviously we you know, I know a lot of people went to business school. I know very few people that went to seminary. I think it also hit me hard when during Covid, actually during Covid, when I moved to Taiwan, a lot of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs moved back to Taiwan as well. And actually many of them didn't go to MBA, but many of them were very successful entrepreneurs, and many of them had successful exits in the valley. But at the same time, you know, the thing with Silicon Valley is, what do I do next? Right? There's this sense of anxiety, and there's always the sense of FOMO, whether you're investing in a next year or working on the next incredible billion dollar idea, there was just very little thinking, very little time spent and energy and attention spent on the question of why? Why are we doing all this? And on the other hand, the people who went to MBA. I think MBA obviously is a great experience, but at the end of the day, you learn the technical part of the business. But again, you don't ask that why question. Right? And I'm also reminded of Christensen, you know, Harvard Business School professor was also a believer who also wrote, you know, the Silicon Valley Bible, Innovator's Dilemma. And then later in his life, he had this book, like, what do you measure your life with? Right? There's the sense in which entrepreneurs are so clever and amazing at measuring their business. Right. What's that metric that will really help your team and your business grow? But none of them spend their time and energy and genius thinking about how to measure their own lives. And the why question, right? They spend so much energy for their business. And, you know, at the end of the day, how other people will perceive them and do so little on themselves and of course, has very little conception of how God uses them right. And so it is completely upside down thinking and inside out.

Justin Forman: Yeah, I love what you're talking about. There's so much of industry knowledge and experience is caught. I mean, it's built, it's compounding knowledge base. It builds over time. But there is that commonality of seminary that if you can understand that, why not only is it for you, but for your team that, like so much of us dialing into our team and leading them, is understanding why connecting on that? Why connecting on that mission, that purpose? Is that something that you instantly saw the translate ability of that? Or how long did it take you to kind of connect that seminary experience to what you were learning and experiencing in business?

Phil Chen: It took me a long time. Like I never understood it either. I didn't go into seminary thinking that was my business school. And the other thing that people don't really talk about, just your childhood, right? People talk about, you know, your childhood trauma or how you grew up as a family, your relationship with your parents. Right. The entrepreneurs are talking about that now for ten years, 15, 20 years ago, there was little to no talk about that, but all that. You know, whether it's pain or trauma that you've experienced as a child. Which show in the office space and how you work with people, how you related, how you communicated? Right. At seminary, I was lucky to go to Fuller and Fuller. You know, they had a whole curriculum on marriage, family and therapy, right? I think that's also a huge void in this whole entrepreneurial journey right now, this conversation about family and growing up in your childhood and how to face that. And in some sense, I see a lot of entrepreneurs wrestle with it. And in my years as a venture capitalist, in many ways, I became their pastor. Because when you're a CEO and leader going out, raising money, these childhood stories and memories, they surface, right? And I became one of the few investors that also prayed with my entrepreneur. And so it became also a different way of investing for me. Right? There was one lady which I not only became their lead investor, but I also became the pastor that married them to. But yeah, there was no plan going into become a venture capital that this would happen.

Joseph Honescko: So I'm thinking for a lot of our listeners, I think that they're in that place where they understand that there's some concept between their faith and their work. They want to be faith driven entrepreneurs. Right? That's the name of the podcast. So at least they had some sort of interest to search it and to click on it. But I still think that a lot of them struggle with finding that full connection, where it becomes something that is so embedded into their life. So for your experience, was there something that kind of clicked or was it just faithfulness over time, or what did kind of make that switch to where you were able to apply these things that maybe you've learned a lot, but then you were able to apply it and kind of start to see it be ingrained in your life in that way.

Phil Chen: I think really it's my theological education, right? I think one of the most influential thinkers for me was N.T. Wright. And how he would, when I read him and understood how he interpreted the gospel, with it being like the number one message Jesus came to talk about was inaugurating the kingdom of God. Right. And so I thought deeply, okay, what does that mean? That also means bringing kingdom culture, kingdom ethics, things of that nature. And further down to that, it made sense to me that engaging in this world and trying to be a salt in this world culturally and entrepreneurially was the way in which I would help inaugurate, you know, the kingdom. And so for me, it was natural to my theological education. I was lucky enough to read him, which is a very different theology, that I was educated growing up, and I think many Christians and faith driven people grow up, you know, understanding a very different interpretation.

Joseph Honescko: Yeah. You said something earlier there where you use that language of upside down, and that's something we're saying a lot in faith driven. I think maybe even N.T. Wright, maybe has some of that language as well. But you talked about this language of it's upside down thinking to the world. And we've been doing episodes over the last couple of weeks about idolatry and self-sacrifice. Last week we had this great story of an entrepreneur who turned down a promotion for the sake of a colleague and all these different things, and it's easy for that upside down way of life to sometimes feel like it's a lesser or like a trading down. But you've seen great success, not in a prosperity gospel kind of way, but in this way that we do see wins happening in the world. We see God doing great things through his church in certain ways. We are seeing the inauguration of the kingdom through these upside down ways of being. What other things have you seen? Where those counterculture decisions, those upside down ways of life, have led to positive things, both in your life, maybe in the life of the team or the entrepreneurs that you've supported, but also just in your career?

Phil Chen: Yeah, I think about for some reason I thought of [....] in one of his blog. You talk about like which mountain you're climbing. I forgot the title of the blog, but the idea was you may be climbing this mountain. That is very, you know, it's the hot thing in the valley, right? But then some new thing comes along and you get an offer. And the idea, of course, is do I continue on this prosperity mountain or do I jump ship and start from zero? Right. And I think for the entrepreneur, for me, I was always comfortable starting from zero again, which is why like now, looking back 20 years, I was able to become a pastor and an ordained pastor. And then from there, being an entrepreneur, I felt that it start from zero. And then when I went to HDC, we did really well and then start from zero and becoming a venture capitalist and then keep going again. And then basically when Covid hit, start from zero again and jump into a completely different industry, whether it's starting a basketball team or running a battery company, I just think that when you're backed by scripture, when you're backed by, you know, this faith, you can start from zero and it will be very uncomfortable. But when you have faith in the time and energy and attention that you put to it, it really just will carve out a completely unique path. And it's okay to start from zero again.

Justin Forman: Yeah, that's really good. Phil. So before we move on to some of the other entrepreneurial things that God has opened up doors for you to be in, I want you to come back to this idea that we are all carrying around some level of trauma. We're all carrying around some things. And you talk about your seminary experiences like we're unpacking something the way that you've described your family's reaction to you deciding to go to seminary. Is unique. It's unique. Just maybe in the world where it feels like there's endless amounts of pressure from parents that we put on our kids, especially when we're talking about generational businesses. We're talking about family businesses. We're talking about different things. What do you look back and reflect on? To say that as parents, as entrepreneurs, that we should be giving our kids the space to follow that obedience of what you're talking about without the the weight, the baggage, the pressure. You just talked about that in a really refreshing way. So when you look back on that, what do you take from it?

Phil Chen: There's actually some of the even more powerful, because last week with my brother's 50th, we were kind of reflecting on this. And not only was I the first in the family to seminary, imagine this. You know, coming from a well-to-do family, I went to private school, but I was also the first to go to community college. And I just remember it cause such deep shame to my family. I remember we would be at dinners and my mother would introduce, oh, this is my son. You know, he went to Berkeley all his sister went to Berkeley. And she would look at me and literally skip to the next person, you know, and I remember how hurt I was, but how much shame I felt. But at the same time, because I read scripture, I understood my dignity, too. And so I went to community college confident, you know, I wasn't afraid. And it was also the best experience for me. There's nothing I would take away from that. You know, many times I was still feel lesser than many times even, you know, in a room full of Harvard. Yale. Because I'm constantly surrounded by them, because I'm exposed to them right now. But there was something so beautiful in that experience that and I don't know how to explain it, other than the practice of reading scripture and actually believe in those things as a child that gave you the confidence and faith to really power through community college.

Justin Forman: Yeah. Well, looking back, it's always fun to see how God uses those moments. And I think it's worth pointing out to our audience that you're not exactly the normal seminary grad community college, whatever you might put it, you've got such a wide range of interests and expertise. We might dub you the most interesting man alive in the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast because we're seeing something from everything from physicist to investor to advisor to chaplain to wedding officiant. We are seeing it all from this. But one of the things that connects to this part of your story when you talk about community college is the sport of basketball. So tell us a little bit about that basketball journey and how that showed up in your life decades later.

Phil Chen: Well, for me, basketball is also played a very different role. It was, again, you know well to do, private school. I became a very good basketball player. I [....] play college basketball. And people don't understand how I got so good is because basketball, you can play alone. And basketball became my therapist almost. And that's how I got really, really good because I spent hours and hours playing alone. And I would rather be that introverted playing low guy than go out and party. Right? Carrying all that trauma with you on the basketball court. And then when I went to community college, the things that I learned playing basketball there, you know, about how to sacrifice for your team and leadership and all these things. Right? And they came full circle to me when moving back to Taiwan. When Covid hit, I invested in an entrepreneur in Taiwan that started a couple of new basketball league, and it did so well. That the second year, you know, decided to start up my own team in this league. And it was, you know, being CEO, I was very hesitant in doing it because basketball was my sanctuary. Right? It was something not only did I do as a hobby, but like I said, it was my therapist. But as a profession, you know, whenever you make something your profession, it will never be fun, right? Because it barely becomes a business. Right. And then added to it the CEO. The CEO is like it's a distillation of, you know, all the worst things because if something's working right, I heard you, I must say this and I resonated a lot with it is, you know, when you're a CEO of an institution. At the end of the day, you only get to work on problems that nobody else can solve, right? When something is working, you know it's a waste of your time to go work on it. But only when there's a problem, whether it's a player or a marketing problem or a business problem, that's the only thing you get to work on, right? And so basketball, then, you know, I knew it would come to that. Having experienced being, you know, operational in products that I love. But at the same time, looking back, you always hate that process, right? The experience itself is horrible. Although at the same time it brings such meaningful memories, right? There's a huge distinction between the experience yourself and the memories that it generates.

Justin Forman: So I want to jump in here with this because I think our listeners there are all over the world, they hear basketball, they think different things. But one of the things that struck me, having been there and being up close for the game, is just the experience of what you guys are building there. You've created unique atmospheres, you create a unique experience, and this is in a matter of what the league is, what, four years old. So in four years, I mean, you've seen this propel so much forward. And we're seeing such a unique thing that's being building there the talent, the experiences, the players, the athletes, you know, the game that we were part of Angley's sit in courtside taking this in and the experience of what you guys have been able to put together. Can you just talk about sports and the role that it has? As Joey was alluding to a couple weeks ago, we talked about how, especially in the West, we've made sports an idol, but you guys are coming at it from a different perspective and a different side of that coin. What you see as the potential for sports there in Taiwan.

Phil Chen: Yeah. The electricity that you felt in that crowd was definitely different from an NBA game. It felt like a finals playoff game. But there is that same idolatry here for sure. There's a huge overemphasis on winning and winning at all cost. You know, winning ways on and off the court. There's definitely a lot of elements of that. And we are such an early young league that there's still a lot of regulations that don't know how to handle a lot of, you know, new situations and crises, etc. but I would say that we are young, but the enthusiasm of it is off the charts and the engagement is very, very interesting. Like, we're the only team, the New Taipei Kings this year from Taiwan that has been reported by CNN or Forbes. And enthusiasm is oozing out of Taiwan into Japan and Korea and the Philippines, and all those leagues who are much older and much more established are looking at what's going on in Taiwan. How is this little nation who's, to be honest, not very good at basketball, but how are their teams building this type of excitement in their arenas and online, and the conversations that are having on it? Right. It's not all positive, but the level of engagement is something, like you said, like every entrepreneur is speaking for it, right? When you build a social network or a community, you also want some haters, right? Because the haters generate even more conversation and engagement. And so yeah, it's very new and young, but yeah, but it's also very promising.

Justin Forman: Yeah. That's an interesting perspective on criticism how you're talking about that. Sometimes that criticism well might not be welcomed. It just generates more conversation and it generates a little bit more engagement. Can you talk about just the moment that we're in and the outsized influence that sports has on culture? You talked about it just in a sense of like, there's a chance here, especially with faith driven entrepreneurs at the helm of some of these teams or conversations, to really shape character of the next generation and young people in a unique way. What is the potential that you're seeing for sports in Taiwan to shape the next generation?

Phil Chen: In general Asian are not very good with team sports, and that's basketball. And, you know, I think at the end of the day, it has to do with team how to, you know, coordinate how to build shared cognition. Right, how to build collaborative efforts. And I believe in any creative industry you need to be able to build teams. And I think in the education, not just in Taiwan but in Japan, Korea, the only place where you get to work as a team is in team sports. You don't get that opportunity or do something as a collective, except for it in team sports.

Joseph Honescko: It feels like so many things that you're talking about here, so much of it is wrapped around identity. And you said something back when we were talking about community college, where you talked about even then how much Scripture was just part of your identity formation and that it allowed you the freedom to go and experience these kinds of things because you were rooted in your identity that you found in Scripture. And so just as we kind of start to come to a close, I'd love to think about the ways that, you know, entrepreneurs are busy, they're fast paced, they've got so many things going on. How do they still make time to engage in the Scripture and engage in this way that they're letting God's Word define their identity and not, you know, whatever big Harvard Business Review article comes out next or whatever.

Phil Chen: I guess it's just keep the big picture of the big picture, right? I think at the end of the day, its identity is rooted in the why question. Right. And I think a lot of leadership conversations today is, you know, you gotta start with why. And that when you start with why one are the next questions or maybe even the pre question, we start with why is who am I right? Who am I in this place? Who am I in God's kingdom? I think those questions are always first and foundational. And before you work out or what's right or else, there's a sense in which whatever you do, it's running away from something, right? You can run so fast and you can still get your answer, but you'll feel the same as where you started. Those questions will not go away, especially when you've been there and done that. You know, because there's no where. You have no place to hide anymore, right? You've got all you want, right? And I see that in so many successful entrepreneurs. Once they get it, those questions are or more difficult often to answer. What are you going to do in your next startup?

Justin Forman: So good Phil. There's so much more that we could talk about. There's so many different angles and new ventures and new things. But let's finish this episode here with building on that question. We talked about the importance of Scripture. You talk about the importance of why we like to end each podcast asking people if there's a specific part of scripture, a verse, a chapter, something that you've read recently that's really coming alive and speaking to you in a way that it might just challenge or inspire others entrepreneurs as they hear it. So is there something that's speaking to you recently?

Phil Chen: Well, just me and my family. We read, I think it was Luke 20 recently about, you know, the birds don't worry about their food and the take away. My children and I took away from that was that of course we have needs, right? We have earthly needs. We have even entrepreneur needs. We have creative needs. Right. But then the interesting thing Jesus was saying was, don't worry. And then his answer was, put the Kingdom of God first. I think when you fill your mind and your spirit and your attention to me, attention is worship. When you put your attention into the kingdom and what it means for you, how to propel this kingdom of God on earth, that itself will take away your worry and anxiety.

Joseph Honescko: Man, your attention is your worship. That's a great way to end. Phil, thanks so much for joining us today. Thanks so much for being with our video team a few weeks ago. We're looking forward to premiering that at a conference that'll be this fall. So, listeners, there's more to the story. There's a lot more. There's a lot of depth that we got here, but there's more coming in the video. So make sure you register for the conference and check out the video when it comes out later in the fall. So Phil, thanks again, Justin, thanks for joining me. We'll catch you on next time.

Joseph Honescko: Thanks for listening to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. Our ministry exists to equip and resource entrepreneurs just like you with content and community. We know entrepreneurship can be a lonely journey, but it doesn't have to be. We've got groups that meet in churches, coffee shops, living rooms, and boardrooms around the world. Find one in your area or volunteer to lead one and bring this global movement to your own backyard. There's no cost, no catch, just connection. Find out more at Faith Driven entrepreneur.org.

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