Bend, Not Break

by Ping Fu

  Once I had the board’s approval, I made an announcement to Geomagic employees that my goal was to continue to propel the company forward. The first slide of the presentation was a picture of a mountain range. “Let’s move to another peak,” I opened my talk, “and let’s aim for one that is ten times higher.”

  Not everyone in the audience smiled; some employees were skeptical. But overall, the company mood was positive and energy levels high. We cheered when one person chimed in: “DROOM now stands for Don’t Run Out Of Momentum.” Indeed, we had come a long way from the days when our principal strategy had been Don’t Run Out Of Money.

  —

  My intuition was right: the next phase was not easy. It felt as though we were always changing the tires while the car was still running. Doug Tatum, a fellow entrepreneur and personal friend, had just published a book called No Man’s Land: What to Do When Your Company Is Too Big to Be Small but Too Small to Be Big. It resonated with me because Doug was so insightful about the issues that we were facing at Geomagic. More businesses die at this phase of growth than any other, the book points out. One of the reasons is that entrepreneurs underestimate the capital required to finance larger operations. Once the burn rate far exceeds the founder’s ability to make payroll, many companies tank very quickly, faced with negative cash flow.

  I was convinced that we needed to raise money, even though Geomagic didn’t need any at the time. Experts had told me many times over the years, “The best time to raise money is when you don’t need it.” Paul Rizzo and Stuart Frantz, our two board members from Franklin Street Partners, were not thrilled—bringing another VC on board would dilute their investment. But to their enormous credit, they supported my decision and remained committed to Geomagic.

  In May of 2008, I engaged an investment banker named Mir Arif, the founder of Madison Park Group in New York, to help us raise a round of venture capital funding. I had known Mir for a few years, and considered him one of the nicest and smartest people I knew. I trusted him because he had demonstrated the depth of his knowledge and given me sound advice in the past.

  We felt fortunate to discover that there were many VC firms chasing a few great investment opportunities at the time. Our fund-raising process was made even more efficient because Mir had an excellent relationship with many of the midmarket firms. A few road shows and four weeks later, we had eight firms visiting our headquarters and meeting our team in North Carolina. We received six terms sheets. Mir ran the competitive matchmaking process, and I was flattered yet heartbroken to tell five of the firms no.

  In the end, we chose Valhalla Partners from the Washington, D.C., area, mostly because the Geomagic team liked Scott Frederick, a Duke graduate and strategic adviser with an infectious smile. He came down to meet with our board members, and we felt good about the synergy. Scott made a funny comment during that visit, which later proved to be true: “The entrepreneur and VC relationship is like a marriage. Only it is a lot harder to divorce a VC than a spouse.”

  On September 10, 2008, investment bank Lehman Brothers announced a loss of $3.9 billion, and the U.S. stock market began falling like a rock. I realized that I had better get this Valhalla funding closed immediately. On September 13, which just happened to be a Friday, I asked our team to personally collect the required signatures from Franklin Street Partners early in the morning. Valhalla promptly wired us the $8 million at noon. At four p.m. that Friday, the Federal Reserve said that it would not bail out Lehman. The bad news put the entire nation into panic mode. Lehman Brothers filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy just two days later. Our timing for closing the funding couldn’t have been more perfect or our cash position more secure. Stuart said, “I always thought you were a visionary, Ping. You’re also psychic.”

  In retrospect, I do not know if accepting the Valhalla investment was a smart move. We were financially secure before receiving their funding. I did not anticipate that the U.S. economic recession would dive so low or last so long. The manufacturing sector, Geomagic’s primary revenue source, was hit hardest of all. We did not and could not achieve the high growth rate projected in our business plan. We also didn’t anticipate Scott leaving Valhalla shortly after we signed the deal. Our relationship with Valhalla grew strained, and remains so to this day.

  While we had raised the Valhalla capital intending to expand our business, we quickly discovered that under the new market conditions, there was no high growth to be found. We decided not to attempt to summit any new mountain peaks at the moment. We would be better off conserving cash.

  —

  Around the time that we closed the Valhalla deal, I fell unexpectedly into a dark valley in my personal life. A few years earlier, I had been deeply saddened to learn from Nanjing Mother that Shanghai Papa had passed away. Shanghai Mama had suffered a stroke shortly thereafter. She had spent the next three years in the hospital, paralyzed. Nanjing Mother told me that my beloved Shanghai Mama was miserable before she died in early 2006. Her children had done their best to help, but they were quite consumed with their jobs and caring for their own children. Most of the burden for her care rested with Nanjing Mother. I was filled with regret for not having spent more time in China or taken better care of Shanghai Mama.

  A few months before Shanghai Mama passed way, I received a call from Nanjing Mother saying that Nanjing Father had suffered a massive stroke. He was now brain-dead. In China, people worship their ancestors and respect their parents, especially in old age. It was not permissible to stop life support, even knowing that he could not be revived. I hired two nurses to look after him night and day. I found it strange that Shanghai Mama and Nanjing Father, both having suffered a massive stroke, were staying at the same hospital at the same time. Nanjing Mother was now responsible for both her sister and her husband.

  Nanjing Father passed a year later, in February of 2007. I rushed back to China because the funeral could not begin without me. Nanjing Father had written into his will that he wanted me to host the ceremonies and present his eulogy. Although I did not feel I had ever gotten to know him, I honored his wishes. I was, after all, a good Chinese daughter.

  I felt saddened by Nanjing Father’s death, and even more so by Shanghai Mama’s and Papa’s passing. Yet I had spent so much of my life without them, both as a child during the Cultural Revolution and as an adult in the United States, that I found myself able to mourn them and move on. My biggest concern was Nanjing Mother. Shanghai Mama’s unhappy last few years weighed heavily on my shoulders. I did not want my birth mother to spend the remainder of her life alone and miserable in China.

  That summer of 2007, Herbert took a sabbatical from Duke to teach at Berlin Technical University. He did so because Xixi was to attend the JFK International School in Berlin for a year. She was fourteen and, although only in the second year of middle school, remarkably independent. Having grown up with so little parental oversight in my own life, I always had granted her an unusual degree of freedom, compared with many Chinese and American parents. I allowed her to visit friends and go out on weeknights, manage her own schedule, and pursue whatever extracurricular activities she desired. She proved herself worthy of this liberal approach and always behaved responsibly. It made me proud to see how Xixi was blossoming into an articulate young woman who was both a talented artist and a top scholar.

  During the summer of 2008, as we were seeking out venture capital investors for Geomagic, I excitedly flew to Berlin. Xixi and Herbert’s year abroad had come to an end, and I couldn’t wait to bring them home. But when I arrived in Germany, Herbert told me that he was leaving me. Without giving me any warning or time to talk it over, he left for Paris with another woman. I packed up everything and came home with Xixi. That was it. Seventeen years of marriage dissolved in a flash. I felt as though I’d had the wind knocked out of me—disoriented and confused—but I tried hard not to show it.

  Herbert appeared at home briefly at the end of August 2008 so
that we could talk to Xixi together about our separation. A few weeks later, on the very same day that I was closing the investment with Valhalla, Herbert sent the movers. A year later, he returned to Austria and remarried. I became the primary caretaker of our daughter.

  I was unprepared for the challenges of being a single mother and CEO at the same time, and didn’t have any time to process what had happened with Herbert. Xixi, who was now fifteen, was having difficulties during her freshman year upon returning from Germany. Many of her longtime friends had gone to other high schools. As she headed into the awkwardness of adolescence, struggled to find her place, and dealt with her parents’ divorce, she became very quiet, frequently withdrawing into her bedroom with the curtains closed. She also suddenly and inexplicably lost hearing in her right ear. To complicate matters, my body had me on a hormonal roller coaster, as I was premenopausal. I would wake up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat from hot flashes. I am usually calm and rational, so my uncharacteristic emotional state surprised me.

  As Herbert moved out, I moved Nanjing Mother in to stay with Xixi and me. I wanted her to have an enjoyable time with her daughters and grandchildren, all of whom were in the United States. I found it ironic how Chinese our situation was: three generations living under one roof. The arrangement worked out well. Nanjing Mother and Xixi got along and took good care of each other whenever I was on the road. I generally don’t believe in fate, but sometimes life has a funny way of falling into place.

  —

  By March 2009, the U.S. market had hit a historic low. Almost everyone at Geomagic knew firsthand people who had lost their jobs, their homes, or both. As a nation, we had tumbled into a pit of hopelessness, and we couldn’t seem to find our path forward.

  During our quarterly company meeting that April, we conducted our usual survey of employee satisfaction using the Net Promoter Score tool. NPS asks only one question: “Would you recommend X product or company to someone else?” Independent surveys show a positive correlation between higher Net Promoter Scores and high-performance companies, such as Apple, Southwest Airlines, and Google.

  At Geomagic, we used NPS to evaluate our products, training, and customer support services. Generally, great companies will receive an NPS of higher than 50 percent, and our scores were consistently within that range. We also adopted NPS to measure our employee satisfaction. For this, we asked: “Would you recommend working at Geomagic to someone else?”

  When we collected the NPS ratings from our employees during the morning session of our company meeting that April, we got a surprising result. At lunchtime, the HR manager handed me the score: Geomagic had received its first negative NPS. There were more employees willing to openly complain about the company to someone else than employees who would recommend the company.

  My hands began trembling, I felt nauseated, and I had trouble holding back my disappointment. I couldn’t make sense of why this would be the case. Big companies were letting go of armies of people. Small companies were falling off the face of the earth. Yet we were financially secure and even hiring. How could our people be so miserable? If they didn’t want to work here, why would they stay? Just for the paycheck? One of my goals in starting Geomagic had been to create an environment where people loved their jobs and enjoyed working together. Clearly, I had failed our people miserably.

  After lunch, everyone gathered together again. It was time for me to announce the employee satisfaction survey results. When I gazed out at the tapestry of familiar faces, many of whom I considered dear friends, I could not hide my emotions. My voice shook as I spoke. “I feel ashamed that we have more detractors than promoters here. These results break my heart.” I wanted to ask for our employees’ help in turning this situation around, but words didn’t come out. I cried instead.

  Later that evening, over dinner with the Valhalla investors who had come to our annual meeting, a young associate scolded me. “Your speech was unprofessional, Ping,” he said in a crisp, high-pitched voice. “You came across as defensive. Geomagic’s employees won’t feel comfortable telling you the truth.”

  I took his words at face value. Gazing down at my plate, I replied, “I’m sorry. I should have controlled my emotions better.”

  But thankfully, in the coming days many Geomagic employees stopped by my office to tell me that they appreciated what I had said during the meeting. They could tell from my voice and the pain in my eyes how much I loved Geomagic and cared for them. They told me that they very much enjoyed working at Geomagic. They suggested that their low scores might have reflected the bad mood brought about by outside factors such as the depressed economy, which was not fair to the company. Several people shared stories about their recent struggles: parents, partners, or friends who had lost their jobs and homes; lower than expected commissions due to missing revenue goals that were unrealistic, given market conditions; and the empathy they felt for customers who had been hit by hard times.

  By expressing my genuine feelings to Geomagic’s employees, I had opened the door for them to share theirs. Years later, I saw a video of a TED talk by Dr. Brené Brown, in which she said, “Vulnerability is the birthplace for connection, love, and change.” Once again, I had found this to be true.

  —

  In the summer of 2009, at age fifty-one, shortly after receiving the negative employee Net Promoter Score at Geomagic, I looked around and realized that I was not okay. For the first time in many years, I was experiencing depression, isolation, and self-doubt, and starting to question the meaning of my existence. I couldn’t sleep and was having trouble focusing at work. I couldn’t grasp the reason for my divorce, which had been finalized at the end of 2008. I had difficulty controlling my mood swings. I was struggling with my relationship with my mother and our company’s newest VC investors. In the prison of my own mind, I was once again a nobody—and I couldn’t snap out of it.

  I called Hong to vent. “It’s just too much to handle all at once,” I sighed.

  Hong rushed to my rescue. “Come visit me. Let’s go on vacation.”

  My team at work supported me. “Go, Ping,” they said. “Take a long vacation. You need a mental break, and we will hold down the fort here.”

  A few days later, I hopped on a plane to Scottsdale. When I arrived in Arizona, Hong, forever spontaneous and supportive, was ready to take me on an American-style road trip. We threw one suitcase apiece in her car and off we went. Our first stop, we decided, would be at Hong’s mother-in-law’s vacation home in Durango, Colorado.

  Driving through the desert and mountains raw and majestic in their red-hued glory reconnected me to my lifelong source of comfort: natural beauty. The saguaro cactus, tall and lean with branches sticking up like arms, reminded me of the cartoon character Gumby. Each time I caught sight of one, I smiled and waved, as if greeting an old friend.

  Knowing my passion for rock collecting, Hong took me to the Petrified Forest National Park, where fossils, fallen trees the color of rainbows, had dotted the landscape since dinosaurs roamed the earth 225 million years ago. The world is so much bigger than us, I thought. How insignificant my petty problems seemed in comparison. Like a helium balloon released into the sky, my mind let go of its attachment to the negative thoughts that had tethered me for the past year.

  I spent some downtime considering my divorce from Herbert. We had enjoyed a peaceful, supportive marriage for the past seventeen years, but how much time had we spent enjoying life together? Like most entrepreneurs, I had labored twelve hours a day, seven days a week, with barely a break since founding Geomagic in 1997. All my spare energy and loving attention I had devoted to Xixi. Even when I did have time for Herbert, I had often used it to consult him on business issues.

  One aspect of our relationship that I had always appreciated was the freedom Herbert and I granted each other. We maintained independence, supporting each other’s busy work schedules. But neither of us focused on c
ultivating our intimacy or sharing the joys of everyday life. Over the years, Herbert and I had grown into friends rather than lovers. The divorce, I realized, freed us both to pursue more authentic lives. In my heart, I was ready to let him go.

  The trip with Hong did me so much good that the following summer, in 2010, I wrote to some good friends in Europe and asked if I could come spend a few days with them. In all my years of traveling for business, I had stayed in hotels, rarely having the time to stop by to see my friends, even if I was in their area.

  My first stop was to see Sue and Peter Schmid in Lake Konstanz, Germany. They were a lovely couple, and Sue dressed my room with fresh flowers to welcome me. We visited stonecutters and a magnificent waterfall on the Rhine River. Peter, an artistic jewelry designer, worked with me to create a pendant made from African fire opal, green and red like a forest on fire.

  Ever since reading Jane Eyre in China as a teenager, thanks to Uncle W, and then watching the movie based on the book at Suzhou University, I had longed to visit northern England. So for my last stop, I visited Chatsworth House, set in the heart of the Peak District of Derbyshire, which has had a long association with novels and movies. Jane Austen referred to there being “no finer country in England than Derbyshire.” I, too, fell in love with the place. I found it comforting to resolve the reality with my youthful image of the English countryside. I loved being present with the verdant hills and quaint towns, the hauntingly desolate wet winds and gray skies.

  I recalled a conversation during my college years in China. Discussing one of the central themes of Jane Eyre, I said, “It is about the clash between conscience and passion. Which one should we adhere to?”