WEBVTT

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I want to share with you
a big secret today.

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And it's not one that a lot of you
are going to want to hear.

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But at the same, time it's so important
that I have to tell you.

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That secret is this:

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what if I told you

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that every singe day kids go to school
they become less intelligent?

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Now, how could that be possible?

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When kids go to school
they learn things, right?

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And they accumulate more knowledge.

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So if anything,
they should be getting smarter.

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How could they possibly
be getting less intelligent?

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What am I talking about?

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Well, I do hope
to illustrate that to you today.

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Before I turned 14, I was a kid
that did not know what he wanted in life.

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So usually, when you go up
to a 5 or 6 year old and you ask him,

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"What do you want to be
when you grow up?",

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he'll say, " An astronaut,"
or "A businessman".

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I wanted to be a professional
Call of Duty player.

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(Laughter)

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And since I had no idea about
what I wanted to be when I grew up,

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I just listened to my parents
almost 100% of the time.

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I trusted that they knew
what was best for me.

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My parents wanted out of me

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what any typical parent
would want out of his child:

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go to school, keep up your grades,

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get out and exercise,
once every few years.

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(Laughter)

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And I was trying to do
everything they asked of me,

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except the problem was
I wasn't even that good at school.

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I was terrible at science,

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could not write a 5-paragraph essay
if my life had depended on it.

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And to this day I still think

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I'm the only Asian kid in the world
who does not understand math.

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(Laughter)

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I really do.

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But when I turned 14 that all changed.

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I was no longer this hot air balloon
and floating around in space,

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I was now like a supersonic jet
flying toward my destination

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at 50,000 miles an hour
or however fast those things go.

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This change all started
when I received an envelope with the mail.

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It was an invitation
- not to a birthday party,

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I did not get any of those -
not to a playground,

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but to a business plan
competition down in Boston.

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And I was curious, I was
just so curious that I had to go.

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The program director explained to us
that over five months,

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we would form a team,
develop a business idea,

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and present this idea
to a panel of judges,

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who would be judging us

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how good our suits are,
and how good our business ideas were.

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And a long story short,
over those five months

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I formed a team, developed an idea,

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and we actually ended up

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winning that competition
and taking home a check.

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And that one event sparked my interest

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for going to more and more
of these competitions.

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Over the next two years of my life,

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I actually went to dozens and dozens
of these competitions,

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and I was winning almost all of them.

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And I realized that I liked
going to them so much

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not just because I liked winning them

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but also because I had
an unrealized passion.

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That was a passion for creating things.

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Because the one thing
that my team would do differently

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from our other competitors,
every single time, was

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well, everyone would go up and present
their idea and their PowerPoint,

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we would go to a home depot,

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buy supplies, and actually build
the idea we were talking about.

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And the judges were just so blown away

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by the fact that a bunch of teenagers
could go and create things,

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can make prototypes,
and [have] minimum viable products.

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We won almost every single competition

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just because the judges loved
that we had gone and executed it.

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At one of these competitions

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I met a short-tempered,
middle-aged Polish guy named Frank.

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If he is here today
I'd better run after this.

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(Laughter)

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He came up to us, took a look
at our prototype, and said:

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"I can help you guys
turn this into a real company."

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Think about that.

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Isn't that cool?

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We are 16 years olds,
we are going out into the world

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and creating a real
hardware technology startup.

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At first we were all like,
"Time to be Steve Jobs,

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let's go build Apple,
dropping out of school now."

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But we quickly realized
it's not that easy.

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So, don't drop out unless
you're really sure you have a good idea.

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But... (Laughter)

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We've realized that the first part
to building a great company

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is to assemble a great team.

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And as students,

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we couldn't go to bars to network,
to networking events for adults,

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so we went to our school

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and set up this little presentation
in our auditorium,

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in which we would present our idea
and hopefully kids would join our team.

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We sent out an invitation
to our entire school.

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And the first thing we noticed
is that almost no one showed up.

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There was almost no interest.

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And those who did show up
spread the rumor around the school

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and throughout that week,
we were actually marked,

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we were made fun of for our ideas
and for being wannabe Mark Zuckerbergs.

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(Laughter)

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What's funny is, the next week after,
we took the exact same presentation,

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and did it at our elementary school
so to kids who were 5 or 6 years younger.

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And the response was phenomenal.

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These kids were throwing
their lunch money at us

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asking if they could buy a prototype.

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(Laughter)

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They were asking
for our pre-money valuation,

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which I know you guys know
from watching Shark Tank,

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but it was amazing that these kids
even knew terms like that existed

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when they were too young to even probably
pronounce some of these words.

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That just inspired me so much.

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And I think this is what
our education system has done.

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Over just these 5 to 6 years
in the education system,

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these creative children
have turned into these teenagers

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that are unwilling to think
outside of the box.

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So let's go back to that secret
I was talking about.

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How is it possible that school
is making kids less intelligent?

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The fact is, there is so much more
than just one type of intelligence.

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While school can make you
more academically intelligent,

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it can teach you
physics, algebra, calculus,

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it is diminishing the children's
creative intelligence.

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It is teaching them
to think in a certain way,

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to go down a certain path in life,

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it's telling them: go
to high school, get a diploma,

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go to a good college, find a stable job,

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and if you don't do that,
you won't be successful.

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And if that was true,
how am I even standing here today?

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How did I, a straight C student,

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start a technology company
at the age of 16?

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And how is my company, which was featured
on a Wall Street Journal last week,

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doing better that some of the companies
started by Harvard and Stanford graduates?

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It must be something
that can't be measured

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by academic intelligence alone.

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So, here is what I believe.

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Parents, teachers, educators,

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you have the power
to influence and inspire youth.

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The fact is, there are way too many
people out there right now

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who are obsessed with telling kids

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to go to college, to find a good job,
and to be "successful".

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There are not enough who are telling kids

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to explore more possibilities,
to become entrepreneurs.

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And if there's one message that I want
parents, kids, and all of you

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to take away from
what I've said here today

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is that you can open your own doors,

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that you can stray away
from this conventional,

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limited, and narrow path
that education sets us upon.

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You can diverge
and create your own future.

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You can start your own companies
and start your own non-profits.

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You can create, you can innovate.

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And if there's one message
I want you to take away

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from everything I've said, it is this:

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no one has ever changed the world

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by doing what the world
has told them to do.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)