Asia's Education Problem | Billy Naveed | Tank Talks Asia

BILLY: So we used to have these parent-teacher interviews, which were very stressful for me because my Dad only asked one question. Is he top of the class? And the teachers would say, sir we don’t really rank our students by that measure. Oh okay, is he top of the class though? No sir, we don’t really… Okay, but if you were to rank, how would he rank? And then like, he literally would not like leave them alone til they say, yes sir he’s top of the class. Okay.

MANISHA: He's a tech entrepreneur who says Asia's education systems won't be fit for purpose in the AI era. It's time to shake things up. Billy Naveed has lived and breathed tech since the age of 14 when he started coding, and launched his first business.

Of British Pakistani heritage, he moved to Asia for a career in investment banking. Whilst in Hong Kong, he started Young Founders School. An attempt to break the Asian parents’ and the establishment’s obsession with rank and grades. Something he thinks is killing creativity and problem solving skills.

Hello and welcome. Thanks for joining us on Tank Talks Asia. I'm Manisha Tank at the AsiaWorks headquarters in Singapore, back with another outstanding guest.

Billy Naveed, welcome to Tank Talks Asia. How you doing?

BILLY: Very well, thank you. How are you?

MANISHA: I'm good. I'm so excited about our conversation today. So British Pakistani, and you grew up, where was it? Burnley near Manchester. What was that like?

BILLY: Well it was a cold, wet, dark, rainy. No, it was great. You know, we had a childhood that was, we never really wanted for much but I think only when you leave a situation like that you realize, wow, it was pretty tough. We had a region that was extremely high crime rates, very high unemployment. Unfortunately because of policy, the industrial North had its heart ripped out of it, mainly by the rise of China, the kind of dumping of extremely cheap goods around the world. And that really impacted the manufacturing sector that was located up there.

And that was really the reason that a lot of the people in that area arrived there, mainly from Pakistan. And in fact, like when I grew up, my high school had, I think, four white people in my year. Everyone else was from Pakistan and from similar regions to Pakistan, our parents were at least, they were all born in the UK.

And so those factories throughout the time that I was growing up were constantly getting shut down. And so, yeah, very high unemployment, crime, drug-use rate. So yeah, pretty tough.

MANISHA: So your parents wanted to safeguard you, as I understand it, from some of the things that might have been happening on the streets. What did they do?

BILLY: Well, they were very strict, firstly. They also didn't really want me to go outside to play with other kids as everybody else did. And so my dad had this bright idea of buying me what he thought was a gaming console 'cause I'd been asking desperately for a Nintendo 64, if you remember those things.

And unfortunately, he didn't quite understand the differences between a gaming console and a business computer, and he got me a BBC, micro business computer.

MANISHA: Oh, wow. Okay. I remember those.

BILLY: That flashing cursor that did absolutely nothing.

MANISHA: Yeah.

BILLY: It didn't play any games, and so I was devastated, but I also realized how much of his income he'd spent on this thing, it was very expensive. And so I didn't wanna break his heart. Tell him you bought me the wrong thing.

And I was very close to my librarian, weirdly. I was a huge book reader. I would spend most of my Saturdays in our local library and the librarian said, why don't you actually learn to code? I was like, what is code?

So she gave me this book that basically taught me to code in a language called basic. And so then I started making my own computer games. Very basic.

MANISHA: What did you make? What did you make?

BILLY: Like they were very basic text-based games. Like you go into various rooms, you’d perform various actions, but it was all very deterministic. And then you got a prize at the end. And so I started, you know, giving them out to some friends at school, et cetera. And that really got me hooked onto this whole coding thing.

And I'd made enough money through selling these really basic games and then my parents gave me some more money, 'cause they realized how much I loved being at my computer, to buy my first PC. Actually, I built my first PC, actually technically.

And that was kind of my first, I think my first real moment of, wow, there is a really big world out here that I had no idea about and that's kind of what started me on my software journey.

MANISHA: So you, as I understand it, set up a business at the age of 14. So that was what you were doing. Were you making games? What was it?

BILLY: No, so what happened was, is I set up a website on, there's a site called GeoCities, if you remember, and GeoCities hosted websites. And so I built, I really got into visual basics. So I built what at the time, and this will sound very grand, it really is not grand, was like the third or fourth most visited visual basic coding site in the world. And on there I had a bulletin board and that bulletin board was something that you could go up and ask questions and people could reply to them, and this was like very advanced technology back then.

And I realized that I was replying. And by the way, in order to like fake increase traffic, I also created some other usernames of people replying to people. So it seemed like my bulletin board was really busy, but actually 80% of the answers were actually just me providing the answers. But what it made me realize is that I actually knew a lot about the subject, about visual basic, about coding, and through that process, some people were actually asking questions and eventually they're like, well, can you just do it for me? And that's how I got started.

MANISHA: So you were like an early version of Fiverr, whatever they call it.

BILLY: Yes, exactly. Yes. Remote worker for hire. And then very quickly I realized I couldn't do it all myself. And so I had to work with other people. And so particularly I used to work with Ukrainian and Russian maths engineers who would provide some of the maths components and I would go do other things.

MANISHA: Wait, where did you find them? I mean, you were a 14-year-old kid.

BILLY: They were on my bulletin board. They were asking questions about their projects and then I asked them like, what do you do? And then they told me that they were, you know, scientists.

Yeah, so like one project we worked on, I actually worked on the UK's first lathe that made contact lenses for patients with stigmatisms in their eyes. And that was a, you know, three or four person project that we worked on. And that gentleman, it was a company called Abbot Spear Engineering. And at one point he said, well, look, we're into a crucial part of this project. We were about to launch. Can you come down to Cambridge, where he was based. And we need to like sit here and we need to all be here and work for the last month, next month or so. I was like, no, I can't. He says, why? And I said, 'cause I've got school. And immediately you could just tell on email, he was absolutely shocked. And he had no idea throughout this entire time he'd been talking to a 14-year-old kid.

And, but, you know, it was really the first time that I felt that I was being judged by the quality of my work and my skills rather than my age. And that was so empowering and that really formed the basis of, you know, how we came into YFS in the future.

MANISHA: Safeguarding issues aside, did your parents know about it? What did they think?

BILLY: No, they had no idea. So actually this was, I think we were obviously living at a different time because this gentleman asked to speak to my dad, obviously, and he told him everything that was going on and said, by the way, did you know your son's been working for me for the past six months?

And my dad had no idea. But in the end he said, look, I actually still need him to come down and help us out and there's some school holidays coming up, and so my dad just agreed and I remember him dropping me off at the train station and this guy picked, he actually had a son similar age to me as well, so he picked me up at the other side, and I stayed in his house for a week.

I mean, I'd never met him. He had one conversation on the phone, but you know, he was like, he sounded like a smart white person and my dad trusted him.

MANISHA: It's a fascinating way to spend teenage years and what brilliant stories you have.

Let's jump though, 'cause I've gotta get you to Asia. So what gets you to this part of the world?

BILLY: So I was working for an investment bank and yeah, they gave me the option to go to New York or to Hong Kong, and I was like, I've been to New York a lot and I love it.

But, you know, I really, from everything we'd studied, obviously being in financial markets, you study the rise of China and I really wanted to make a bet on Asia being the place to be over the next part of my life. And so that's what I did. I'd actually never been.

MANISHA: Same as me, when I moved to Hong Kong, I had never been before.

BILLY: Yes, my chopstick skills were extremely lacking, but I was very enthusiastic and came to visit and just fell in love with the place. It was just buzzy and vibrant and everything I was looking for.

MANISHA: So, roughly when was that?

BILLY: That was in: 2008

MANISHA: Same year that I moved to Hong Kong. Yes. Yes. And it was, there was an incredible buzz about Hong Kong. I get it. Okay, and then you come to Singapore eventually?

BILLY: Yes, so in: 2019

MANISHA: Brilliant stuff. So speaking of brilliant stuff, you decided to start something called Young Founders School. How? How did this come about?

BILLY: It was, I think, a culmination of events. I've always wanted to find ways to give back. And in my past it was always giving something to charity, doing some volunteering. But you know, nothing ever really resonated that much to me and whilst I was working at the bank, they landed me with the responsibility of fixing the internship program.

MANISHA: Fixing it? I'm sure a lot of people will resonate with those words, but go ahead.

BILLY: They said can you fix the internship program. So all of our metrics were like going south, right? So, you know, we look at how many people are applying, to conversions to full-time role. Everything was like going south. And it reminded me of a conversation that I was having with the recruiter at the first bank I worked with.

And they said, by the way, you went to Warwick University. Did you know that Warwick was number seven of the seven universities we recruit from? And I said, okay, well, what if I'd gone to Durham, which is my second choice? What would you have done? They said, oh, no, absolutely not. We would've, we would've rejected your application immediately.

MANISHA: Without even looking at your credentials or skills?

BILLY: Without even looking at credentials yeah. And the reason was, is actually very practical, right? They have so many applications, they just have to draw a line somewhere. And that line is this arbitrary line of how many applications can they deal with at any one point.

And so I said to our recruiter at the time, I said, do we do a similar thing? The answer was yes. It's actually common practice in the industry, which shocked me. And so I said to them, I think the issue is you're recruiting from the same places that everybody else is recruiting from. Right. Why don't you go to schools that maybe don't have that same privilege? Right. And why don't you go younger?

Anyway, they said, sure, Billy's got crazy ideas, go and do whatever you want. And so I got together some people and we went to visit some local underprivileged high schools.

MANISHA: High schools. So you'd gone from graduate level to high school?

BILLY: Yes, to let's see if we can build that. It was a very long term project, but let's build that brand recognition at the high school level, and my initial thoughts were, we'll sponsor some football teams and we'll, you know, do some talks and that'll be it.

But actually what happened when I went there blew my mind, and it turns out it changed my life. But we met a mixture of kids from 11 to 16, and the 11 year olds were so entrepreneurial and so amazing. Like the story I always tell is I met this kid who's fishing bikes out of riverways in Hong Kong, and repainting them to sell on eBay.

MANISHA: That's brilliant.

BILLY: And he was doing it to put food on his table.

MANISHA: Oh gosh. What a story.

BILLY: That's the level of poverty in some schools in Hong Kong.

MANISHA: Yeah.

BILLY: And you know, I was blown away by it. And then somehow I met the 15, 16 year olds. And every ounce of entrepreneurial rigor and energy had just been beaten out of them.

MANISHA: Why?

BILLY: By the school system. It was very clear the school system, it was set up to teach them to pass exams, not to be productive members of the workforce. And it really shocked me and so I went to the teacher and I said do you teach them entrepreneurship?

And maybe I was biased, I was hanging out with a lot of entrepreneurs, but I thought this was fundamental to what society needs to be teaching the kids. But absolutely not. We don't teach entrepreneurship. We don't even teach business. But we do teach accounting, which was laughable.

MANISHA: Well, you need to have a business to do the accounts for.

BILLY: Well, exactly. It's like teaching you to fill up a car when you don't own a car. I mean. And this really bothered me. And the kids I was talking to, they were saying to me, I said, what you are doing this bike thing is, actually you're an entrepreneur. No, no, no, we’re not entrepreneurs.

MANISHA: I'm just putting food on the table.

BILLY: I'm just putting food on the table. They thought an entrepreneur was rich, white, male and lived in Silicon Valley. That's their version of entrepreneur. And entrepreneurs often say that when they come across like a business idea, it's like a splinter on their brain. And this ended up being that splinter I bake. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't think about anything else. But also I really thought, who am I to solve this problem? Like I'm, you know, this young banker in Hong Kong. I don't even speak Cantonese, barely. You know, I can order fried rice and a taxi around the town, like that's it.

MANISHA: And tell the taxi where to stop. That was my one phrase.

BILLY: Yes exactly. So it was, it was really that getting over that imposter syndrome and I was kind of pushed into it. And, yeah, the founder of RISE, which is actually on my web summit, Paddy actually gave me a slot at the very first web summit called RISE in Hong Kong and, actually his assistant I believe, came up with the name, Young Founders School, because he said, well, if I don't make you do it, you're not gonna do it. And so he gave me four weeks to find kids, to put them through an entrepreneurship program and then get them on stage.

MANISHA: Sometimes you need that catalyst to get you going,

BILLY: And that was it.

MANISHA: Incredible. So what does Young Founders School actually do then? I mean, that's a fantastic backstory, I'll give you that. But what do you actually do?

BILLY: So we teach underprivileged high school kids about entrepreneurship, and we do it through courses, mentorship and internships.

The idea of YFS is to close that opportunity gap because we believe that opportunity is not universal, but talent is. Most of the kids that go through our program start their journey of life, two, 300 meters behind everybody else, and our job is to kind of close that, meter by meter.

MANISHA: How do you actually make that happen though because some of those underprivileged communities or institutions, they're gonna be in places and spaces that you actually have to go in search of them. So where do you begin? I can't imagine how that works.

BILLY: Well, you'll first begin with the curriculum, right? What is it you're actually teaching? And we are big believers in doing, not just learning, a theory. So a lot of this is building up skillsets, building up mindsets. So rather than teaching you theoretical things about prompt engineering, like here's how you build a business with AI as your copilot.

MANISHA: I see.

BILLY: And so these practical skills are what companies desire today. But we are helping them go through the entrepreneurial process because kids love it, think it's cool to build a startup and they actually, at the end of it, build a real product.

So they come in and do mentorship at certain points during these courses, and then our internships is really the culmination of all that, where we do virtual internships at corporates from some of the largest banks, to consultancies to some large tech companies. And the kids go and see what it's like to actually put those skills to test in a real life workspace, and those last for between four and eight weeks.

And then finally those internships give you that badge that replaces that maybe not so good school that you went to. And it gives them something that their CV can be built upon.

MANISHA: Okay, do they get jobs? I mean this is the big question in Asia right now. Will they have the skills to embrace the AI future?

BILLY: So, you know, we think it's our duty to help make that happen. If you think about where Asia is today, 60% of the world's youth is born in Southeast Asia, and India.

MANISHA: Yeah. It's remarkable.

BILLY: Every single year, India is gonna produce a graduate population equal to the size of Australia into the workforce.

MANISHA: What a stat.

BILLY: Think about that.

MANISHA: Yeah.

BILLY: Mercer have said, unfortunately, of those kids that graduate, half of them are in jobs that don't have anything to do with the degree that they were trained for. In fact, they actually call them unemployable. That's how the skills are completely mismatched to the jobs they're in. Right. That is a big, big, big problem that we need to solve.

And whilst it is true, there was a Stanford University report that came out that said there's been a 19% decline in graduate jobs because of Gen AI. And we are seeing that in white collar professions all over the board. The kids that we teach were never invited to that party in the first place.

MANISHA: Right.

BILLY: So, but for them, Gen AI is the biggest enabler, I think more than any other technologies ever happened. Every other tech that we've seen, every other industrial revolution has meant a destruction of blue collar jobs, has actually made the poor in many cases poorer.

But this technology is actually going to be a massive enabler. It's actually gonna be a superpower. If we teach them to use it in the right way, the things that are holding them back, are actually gonna be driving them forward.

The corporates that we deal with are saying, yes, graduate jobs may be struggling, but there is unlimited demand for AI enabled graduates.

MANISHA: AI is such a broad term, isn't it? It's massive. It's massive. And there are so many different verticals that come under that.

Unusually as an NGO, your organization is actually using it not only to deliver, but as part of the product.

BILLY: Yes, absolutely.

MANISHA: So how does it, how does it work?

BILLY: We started with AI to make ourselves more efficient. Just using AI on a daily basis to do things like send emails or to simplify workflow, is actually underperforming. Right, that's underperforming.

We actually expect every single one of our staff to be creating AI agents to improve their workflow and to be working with each other, to be supervisors of AI agents. That's how we actually think.

But what it's enabled us to do is to scale the operation. Like two years ago, it would cost us about 150 US dollars to run one internship because of the humans involved. Today that 150 US dollars is under 20.

MANISHA: Under 20?

BILLY: Under 20 in two years.

MANISHA: It’s like the space program. It's done the same thing.

BILLY: The reason is that we now have AI systems that are giving daily feedback to the students on their work. So AI has completely transformed what we do as organization. On the coarser side, the important thing about AI is to help students understand that AI isn't there to replace the work, it’s your copilot, and so you have to teach them about what it's good at and what it's bad at.

So the systems that we use are where, at certain points we'll say, now you can go ahead and prompt the AI for X, Y, Z. It will then deliver result and we’ll shut the AI off. And then say, now critique it. Work in your groups. Do these things that are offline, help you think about what next? And then you go back into AI and you take your learnings from your group and you put them back in.

MANISHA: I find that really interesting 'cause this has been one of my biggest bug bears. I am a parent of three and I'm always thinking if these guys start using too much AI, is it just gonna be a brain drain?

BILLY: Yeah, it, I mean, studies have shown that your, students that are using AI, their brains are firing less, they've less cognitive load. So, but what they've done is they've replaced their thinking with AI.

MANISHA: It’s a different process.

BILLY: It’s a completely different process.

MANISHA: What are corporate CEOs telling you about their needs for the next 5, 10, 15 years?

BILLY: They are looking for qualities, not skills.

MANISHA: And what kind of qualities?

BILLY: Fire in the belly, willingness to learn, creative thinking, hunger. These are qualities that if I can have, if I could have a workforce of those types of students or those types of graduates, most companies that we deal with can teach you how to do that job. I mean, let's be honest, going to university, it's a signaling mechanism. Most of us, whatever we do for our degrees, has very little bearing on what we actually do.

MANISHA: Well you could say it was fit for purpose at that time.

BILLY: People are pulling their hair out at what they perceive to be the quality of graduates. It's not their fault. These kids coming out are, you know, super smart. In fact, you know, Singapore is what, in the top 10 of PISA scores for maths and science. There's no question the kids are smart.

It's about the other qualities. And those are the types of skills that we want to tease out as students, to put them in difficult situations, to make them fail and to make sure that they know it's okay to go and take some risks.

So it's this, to me, we need to restart that conversation between corporates, parents, and the schools.

MANISHA: You mentioned parents. There is this obsession, like there are so many comedians in this part of the world who make jokes about Asian parents versus Western parents. You told me a really funny story about your dad, back when he used to go to your parent teacher meetings. Go on.

BILLY: So we used to have these parent-teacher meetings, which were very stressful for me, because my dad only asked one question. They’d say, hi Mr. Naveed. Yeah, Billy. My typical protocol was this, Billy's very bright, he interrupts the class all the time, he talks too much. But he still has good test scores. That was like basically every single class I went to. Right.

And, every single class and he'll say, okay, and so what grade is he getting? Oh, well he's got, you know, A or whatever percentage. Okay, great. Where is he in the class? And they say, what do you mean where he is in the class? No. Is he top of the class? And the teachers would say, sir, we don't really rank our students by that measure.

Oh, okay. Is he top of the class though? No sir, we don't really. Okay. But if you were to rank, how would he rank? And then like, he literally would not leave them alone ‘til they say, yes, sir he's top of the class. Okay. And if I ever got, oh, well, he made be second. I would get the eyes. You get the eyes. Yeah, I got the eyes.

MANISHA: Oh gosh. No birthday gifts for you.

BILLY: So, because I think what, what happens is, is your parents, your parents are, at least when they moved, they took such a risk moving to the UK, right?

MANISHA: And even within Asia, actually, there have been so many communities that have moved and had to restart.

BILLY: And so they were petrified about me being ruined by the British society about, you know, me not being educated because, you know, you can see how hard they had to work. They were manual laborers. Like my dad worked three jobs. He was working in a mattress factory, he was a plumber, he was an electrician. Like he did whatever he could to put food on the table.

And they didn't want their kids to have that same life, right? They wanted something different, and the only way that they knew how is education. Like you need to get educated. That's why I've gone on a boat or a plane around the world. That's why I'm working all these jobs.

It's you that is gonna have that better life that I never had the opportunity to have. Right. So that's why they were so obsessed, and for them they're like, I've given you everything and if you can't get first place, I'm gonna kick you outta the house. No. It is, it's an obsession.

MANISHA: So we gotta wrap it up there. But this has been such a great conversation. We always ask our guests to bring in a memento that they've been here. It's always a trigger for us to make sure that we bring you back at some point and hear the next part of the story. But you have brought these beautiful badges.

Do you wanna explain what they are, that we have on the table?

eaching a million students by: 2030

MANISHA: Where are you right now?

BILLY: This year we're gonna teach 50,000 kids.

MANISHA: That's really not bad at all.

BILLY: So we are actually the largest NGO teaching entrepreneurship in Asia. We'll do about one half thousand internships in the next 12 months and as we get to a million kids, we want to be having about a billion dollars of economic impact right through the organization. And so this logo was designed actually as a deconstructed world, where the world actually has been pulled apart. And these are the hands that are now holding the heart, the core of the world.

MANISHA: Yes. I can see the fiery orange.

BILLY: The fiery orange, which represents the youth of the future.

MANISHA: Yes. The fire in the belly.

BILLY: The fire in the belly.

MANISHA: Oh, I'm liking it.

BILLY: And so these hands, if we can nurture the youth of tomorrow, they can do amazing things. We just have to show them the right way.

MANISHA: And we have to rely on you. I imagine it's quite high pressure running an NGO, you know you have to go to donors, you have to do galas, you have to fundraise. There is a lot to that, but underneath it all, there's a call to action. What is that?

BILLY: Right now there's really two things that we really need. One is we are desperately short of companies willing to give just one employee day to us.

MANISHA: Just one day.

BILLY: Just one day of their employee's time, which most companies actually do already. They do some kind of beach cleanup or whatever. Give that to us. Help us give a chance to an underprivileged kid that would love the chance to work virtually at your company, to learn about your company and the jobs that these individuals do. So that's the first thing.

We could literally have 10,000 companies on our system tomorrow, and we still would have more demand and supply. So anybody that is in a CSR role, leader of a corporate in Asia, and especially if your employees speak local languages, that is really, really key for us.

The second is I really, and we are trying to do more of this, is have a conversation with leaders from education departments, from schools, even parents that are interested in the future of work and they should be if you have kids. What are our kids going to be doing in the future?

We all need to sit down and have a conversation. We are starting to speak to a number of, ministry of education in various countries, but let's sit down and see how we can use our curriculum, our now almost decade of experience, to help your kids, to help them tackle the future of work.

MANISHA: Billy, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for joining us on the show.

BILLY: Thank you. My pleasure.

MANISHA: I have to say I love that story about Billy and his father going to the parent teacher. I'm sure we've all had a moment like that.

That's it for this episode though. I'm Manisha Tank, from me and the team thanks so much for listening and please don't forget to subscribe and follow Tank Talks Asia. That way you'll be supporting our mission to bring you the real story of what's happening here in the region to the rest of the world.

And of course, you're never gonna miss an episode. We wouldn't want that, would we? Tank Talks Asia is an AsiaWorks production.