Here’s a glimpse into the mind of a global technologist and visionary. Someone who’s given governments the power to give info in a meaningful way. Someone who has thought of the business case for Asian-American empowerment. And, someone who breaks down the steps to achieve that power. Interested?
Tim Hwang is the founder and CEO of FiscalNote, a global technology, and media company focused on delivering timely and relevant policy information in a complex and evolving world. FiscalNote’s core technology sustains products and services that power more than 4,000 clients — from small nonprofits to government agencies to large corporations (including half of the Fortune 100) — with software tools, AI-driven insights, comprehensive domestic and international data sets, as well human-authored news and analysis.
To learn more about Tim Hwang:
- LinkedIn: Tim Hwang
- Twitter: @timthwang
- Facebook: Tim Hwang
- Instagram: @timthwang
Below is our edited transcript of Tim Hwang’s talk, “What We Can Do Starting Now,” at the Imagine Talks Annual Symposium.
Francis Kong: Thank you so much for joining us for Imagine Talks. And I’m especially excited to talk to you because of where we’ve been in 2020 and also essentially where you work at crossroads— intersection of technology and politics—and also the fact that you’ve overcome two major hurdles within that area to make that achievement, being Asian and young, which are two things that you’ve also was able to fight up your battle [sic].
So before I jump into some of my really nitty-gritty questions, could you share a little bit about yourself to the audience and tell us a bit about how you got started and basically the premise of FiscalNote and how that became one of the creation you’re working on right now?
Who is Tim Hwang?
Tim Hwang: Yeah, well, happy to give you a little bit of background on myself and certainly my family and whatnot. So, my family: my parents actually immigrated to the United States in the 80’s from South Korea and my father was a physicist. My mother’s a small business owner, and really instilled in me kind of the traditional values of being Asian-American and obviously working hard. And, you know, the end of that rainbow—being obviously a stable career and a stable job and the like— definitely basically threw that all out the window (laughs).
When I was in middle school and high school, I got kind of swept up in the world of politics. You know, I first started interning with my local congressman: I was at the district attorney’s office, and then my dream was to become actually a prosecutor in the United States and then kind of work pretty closely in that regard. But I think that I kind of really got swept-up into that kind of electoral politics.
And so, in 2007, ended up joining the presidential campaign back then was for Senator Obama, who was running for the White House, and lo and behold, obviously, that campaign ended up turning pretty well. And so, about a year later, when I was at the age of 17 [I] decided that I was going to do something really crazy and run for office. So I ran for the Board of Education in Montgomery County, Maryland, which is the largest district in the state of Maryland, about a quarter of the state’s population. [I] got elected, served there, managing roughly—call it—22,000 teachers, $2.5 B dollar taxpayer budget, another $4 B kind of capital budget, and the like.
Being drawn into politics at a young age
And really got a rough and tumble into the world of politics from a very early age. Obviously wasn’t super aligned with [what] my parents were thinking, and they were really pushing hard to go back to school. So, [I] ended up going to Princeton to study public policy and computer science and then was starting over at Harvard to start my MBA, but decided that I really wanted to go off and do something new. And, you know, while as an undergrad, really got kind of linked up into the startup world, the technology startup world.
And, you know, a lot of my friends were kind of going out to Silicon Valley or starting companies or really thinking about how to leverage technology in a new and novel way. So I think that—by the end of my undergraduate career—I realized that I really want to start a company, but I wasn’t really sure what the product is going to be, what service we’re going to launch, and I just fundamentally thought about what I was interested in. And I was obviously interested in politics.
I was also interested in law, I was interested in policy. And one of the biggest challenges that I’d seen when I was sitting in government or working around politics was just how inefficient things were, and how much time people spent trying to track what other people are doing, right? So if you were in Congress, you spent a lot of time thinking about what the federal regulatory agencies are doing, what foreign governments are doing. If you are a regulator, you think a lot about what state governments are doing, what city governments are doing.
How to bring organized data to finance, law, and government groups
And so I felt like I was a very big opportunity to aggregate all of the actions of government. So the legislation, the regulations, the court cases, all the things that were kind of happening left and right, and then to be able to take that information and then build a software product that helps organizations basically monitor how laws and regulations are impacting their industries or their customers or their constituents. And so, we move that Silicon Valley, bootstrapped a couple of thousand dollars—something like $6,000 or something like that—between summer savings and really just started the company out of a Motel 6 room in 2013.
You know, we were coding, calling customers, pitching investors and in 2014, we launched our product and just aggressively grew the business from there. And so, you know, the company—we moved our headquarters out from Silicon Valley to Washington, DC, I would say end of 2013, kind of early 2014. And [we] are now actually the largest technology company headquartered in the District of Columbia. We offer service, about 5,000 customers. Our customers range from the DOD, State Department, CIA, White House, every member of the House, the Senate, half of the Fortune 100 major investment banks, and financial institutions and law firms.
We’ve been able to build a fairly large B2B customer base to kind of help us continue to grow the business. We’ve raised probably about 400 million or so in venture capital. And so, you know, investors include folks like Mark Cuban, Jerry Yang, Steve Case, NEA, the Economist group, SnT Global, and so on and so forth.
A technological solution to world problems
And so really, we’ve been able to continue to grow our business, not just here domestically, but also internationally. We have offices across Europe and Asia, also across North America as well, where we’re going to continue to expand our presence as well.
So it’s definitely been a really interesting experience. But our mission as a company really hasn’t changed that much from when we started the company seven years ago, and we’re just continuing to kind of push forward on what we want to accomplish here.
Francis Kong: So many questions, and yet I only have so little time with you, that’s so awesome and gosh, such—just such a vision like I love the —how you —and so many people in Silicon Valley and startups, they don’t realize the most basic core formula that you just displayed, which was you must first understand a problem before we go out and try to create a solution. And you did that—and you really understood —it wasn’t a technology-based [sic]— it was an actual problem that existed in the ecosphere and in the ecosystem. And from there, you saw a technological solution for us. So that’s awesome you did that.
The ripple effect of FiscalNote
OK, so then this brings me to another question here. 2020—craziest year that I’ve ever experienced. And I think probably true for many people on planet Earth right now. And it basically had huge shifts in how many of us globally, but definitely here in the states how we view and connect politically, and also how we shifted our use of technology as well too. Have you seen ripples of that affect FiscalNote that’s basically the cross-section of politics and technology?
Tim Hwang: Yeah, I mean, so at a fundamental level at our company, we sell information to our customers, right? So we help our customers understand what governments are doing. And so, you know, I’ve never seen a time where—I mean, I’m fairly young—but I’ve never seen a time when people were so glued to their screens on what was —what the government is going to do, not in 2008, you know, not even in 2001.
Right, like, really, I would say, like, it’s so pervasive in people’s lives: shutdowns and stimulus and, you know, all these different things that like, you know, lockdowns that impact people at a very day-to-day level. The financial crash of 2008 was kind of —that thing that’s happening over in Wall Street and like, you know, 9/11, people were definitely scared for national security.
The digital transformation enterprise
But it wasn’t— for most people, they still want to work. You know, they thought about what was going to happen and the like. And so I think that, you know, this is the first time when people really like at a local town, city, county, state level, we’re just tracking everything that the government was doing. And that put an enormous amount of pressure, certainly on our company, to be able to continue to deliver information for our customers. If you are a restaurant owner or non-profit seeking stimulus or tax credits or try to understand lockdowns and what you’re capable or not capable of doing, you know, really that critical information was, I think is very necessary.
But separate apart from that, I think the technology sector very broadly saw a lot of very, very interesting kinds of trends that really accelerated over the course—last couple of years, right?
So digital transformation enterprise is something that people talk a lot about, you know. For the last 40 years, people have been talking about moving from paper and pencil, spreadsheets to kind of cloud-based tools and workflows and collaboration capabilities and the like, you know, video calls and whatnot.
I remember it doesn’t seem that long ago, but, you know, 18, 24 months ago—especially in more emerging markets or different sectors like manufacturing, oil, and gas or banking, you know—people just didn’t feel comfortable doing business online. They had to be face-to-face, and you had to fly there and get on a plane and actually do business.
Francis Kong: And sign paper.
Globalization and digital transformation
Tim Hwang: Right. Sign the physical paper or like, you know, shake the hand. And so I think that’s fundamentally changed now. I mean, people can raise billions of dollars in capital, close multi-million-dollar customer deals, and they can do it all over Zoom or Google Hangouts.
I think that that plays significantly to technology companies like ours, who—in addition to selling information—we sell a lot of workflows, so collaboration tools and, you know, chat tools and those types of things specifically for lawyers. And overall, I would say that that transformation—digital transformation— has accelerated quite aggressively.
And the companies— I remember what something that my mentor told me, because I wasn’t working obviously back then. But, you know, during the dot-com era, a lot of corporate executives were kind of divided between, you know, should we lean into the Internet, or is the Internet just kind of a fad?
And ultimately, what happened was, yes, there was a dot-com bust, but for all the executives that had the vision and the foresight to actually lean into the Internet, those are the ones that actually got promoted. Those are the ones that kind of have that visionary leadership into the future.
Political challenges faced by Asian-Americans
And all the ones that were kind of more antagonistic about the Internet obviously were kind of shoved aside, right? So I think that, you know, this era around enterprise cloud machine learning and artificial intelligence-driven technologies is only going to continue to accelerate. And that’s something that obviously we’re continue to watch here.
Francis Kong: OK, fantastic. Yeah, I was just so curious about the impact from both political and also technology, and that all—all of that totally made sense. And it’s amazing that, in this crisis, you just showed that if you’re in the right space, not only are you not like, now, wondering where your next dollars come from, you’re actually raising amazing amounts of capital because you’re now lined with the whole global trend right now.
So then the next question I have for you is: you did mention one of the interviews that I saw of you, that one of the biggest challenges you had when you were first starting this, was your demographic to work against, right? Of being both a young person and also being an Asian-American.
Now, there were some not-so-pretty issues that were brought up about the Asian community during this year just really connected to the little viral outbreak. Do you think that has made it even tougher and harder now to be from this demographic and to start a business because of that incidence now that this happened?
Tim Hwang: I think that, to a certain extent, Asian-Americans have always been viewed as outsiders, right? They’re separate—I would say separate—they have separate set of issues from European immigrants, largely because of the stark contrast in appearance.
Political rhetoric faced by minorities during a pandemic
I guess I have a couple of thoughts on that: number one, I don’t think that COVID was, I mean, I think COVID was one of the factors, but I think that anti-Chinese sentiment is very, very strong in the United States politically, economically, financially, culturally, philosophically.
I think for people to really understand it, they need to understand the analagous that I—the analogy that I would probably put forth is how maybe Russian Americans felt during the Cold War. And I think that Chinese Americans, many of them in particular Chinese Americans, have been around for many, many generations in the United States. And the challenge, I think, is that right now we are at a very, very heightened time between U.S. and China in terms of political relations. We’re in the middle of a pretty stark trade war. We have some very significant challenges and differences of opinion in terms of political philosophy.
There’s a massive geopolitical tic-tac-toe game being played across the emerging markets, and there’s that fundamental level of distrust.
Now, COVID obviously didn’t help, and obviously the political rhetoric around COVID also did not help but, you know, the tinderbox was already there, and COVID was really just the match. And so it’s not to say that it’s going to be difficult for Asian-Americans. I think it’s always been difficult for Asian-Americans. But I think that in particular, you know, in the midst of a politically sensitive time period, it’s going to be very, very challenging to kind of navigate around—around those issues.
The culture of Asia and its sentiment
Now, the flip side of that is that’s obviously the pessimistic perspective, right? The opposite of that is that the center of global economic activity is shifting to Asia, you know. It’s shifting to China, to Japan, to Korea, Singapore, Southeast Asia. I think that most of corporate America knows—almost all of corporate America knows—that if you want to grow your business—if you’re a Johnson and Johnson or 3M or McDonald’s or whatever it is—they know that the growth is going to come from Indonesia, from greater China, from Korea or whatever the case is.
And so their executives need to be much more aware about kind of Asian culture and sentiment and I think that Asian-Americans have a very significant role to play in bridging the gap between East and West in terms of helping American businesses expand into Asia and then helping Asian businesses think about how to deal with American financial markets and economic markets and the like.
And so it’s this kind of dual-sided coin where, you know, on one side of the coin, you know, there’s a very antagonistic view and the other side, you just —you need each other to grow, particularly in a much more globally connected kind of system. So it’s a very, very interesting dynamic. But I mean, there is a role that I think that Asian-Americans can play here to facilitate the growth of the kind of global market and whatnot.
How can we promote Asian-American enterprise?
Francis Kong: OK, well, we only have a few more minutes and that automatically this is a perfect question I want to ask in closing here then is: what can we as Asian-Americans do to hopefully promote the optimistic view that you shared, where we can actually promote more connection, more partnership? ... Obviously there’s always going to be a competition, but there’s also no reason why part of that can’t be a healthy competition and a productive partnership?
What can we, here— stateside, as Asian Americans—do to help move it toward the flip side of the coin, the second scenario that you described, which I hope we can do as an entire Asian-American community moving forward in 2021 onward?
Principle #1: Supporting Asian-American entrepreneurship
Tim Hwang: So I think that there’s four things, I guess, right? So, I think that we need to facilitate kind of an Asian-American identity, and that identity, I think, is fostered through three primary principles: number one is I think we need to support Asian-American entrepreneurship. Why? Because entrepreneurship is the foundational aspect of wealth creation in American society. If you want to get wealthy, you have to start a business. You have to own the business. And the fundamentals of that is you’ve got to basically start a company or be involved in starting companies, whether it’s as an investor or whatever the case is, right?
Principle #2: Creating a pipeline of political candidates that can advocate on behalf of Asian-Americans
That kind of fundamental kind of wealth creation should feed into the second thing, which is, I think, political representation and creating a pipeline of political candidates that can advocate on behalf of Asian-Americans— the resource that Asian-Americans need and get the representation they need in Congress and state legislatures and city house and the like.
Principle #3: Media ownership and representation
The third thing I think is media ownership and representation, I think, is obviously very important because it changes the perception of Asian-Americans in mainstream society and offers an alternative narrative to what things that are being presented, I think more pessimistic corners of society. So those are the three main things, I think, to foster Asian-American identity.
And the fourth thing I would mention is, you know, leaning into Asian culture. And I know that particularly for second-, third-, fourth-, fifth-generation Asian-Americans—I’m a second-generation—that it’s very difficult to kind of lean into that culture. It’s many second-, third-, fourth-generations’ have a hard time speaking the language or understanding the culture or the traditions and whatnot. But I think that’s a significant advantage. It’s what I was talking about before, right? If you can speak the language of commerce in the markets where the global markets are growing very quickly—if you can speak Mandarin and McDonald’s says, “We’re going to have a big investment and push into the greater China market”—that’s a significant advantage for Asian Americans to be able to play in the corporate landscape.
If you understand and can speak Indonesian and it’s a huge priority from an investment bank to start setting up offices across Indonesia. I mean, that’s —you can be right at the forefront of connecting corporate America to the rest of the world, particularly in Asia. And leaning into those cultures and customs languages, I think is something that a lot of other cultures have done, particularly as they’ve tried to expand their economic imprint, and it’s something that I think is a very unique opportunity for Asian Americans to present itself here.
Inspiring mantras for Asian-American representation
Francis Kong: Well, I love that. I think I’m going to make that one of my own personal mantras, but I love it. It’s really celebrating entrepreneurship, really celebrating and promoting political representation, really pushing for much more visible and positive media presentation, and celebrating and understanding and embracing and utilizing your cultural heritage. Wow.
Yeah, I think that pretty much sums it up.
Francis Kong: That’s all you, Tim. Always, always, always such a pleasure to listen to you talk. So much wisdom— we come—I’m so sad we came to the end of this interview because I have so many more questions. I hope I can get you for another interview sometime in 2021 or 2022, so full of knowledge, so much fun and wisdom to glean from you that— I am going to have to say goodbye to you at this point. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for sharing your thoughts, your wisdom, and your advice. And I look forward to seeing you at the next Imagine Talks, we actually hope we can meet in person.
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