It’s not every day you meet a power Pixie. But since discovering entrepreneurship at age 16, purpose-driven entrepreneur and Cofounder/CEO of WOW Pixies Lily Wu, has devoted herself to longterm vision and helping fast-track other young women into web3.
It’s no mean feat that by the time this petite pioneer finished high school, she’d made half a million dollars. Lily learnt invaluable business lessons, recognizing entrepreneurial thinking as an adaptive skill that’s really about solving problems. More importantly, she learnt self-assurance to choose opportunities according to her most important values – curiosity, adventure, creativity, relationships and freedom – rather than for money or prestige.
As a 19-year-old university student, Lily co-founded education startup Austern International, with the vision to ‘develop the next generation of millennial leaders and entrepreneurial thinkers.’ As CEO, she launched intensive career bootcamps in six global cities − offering university accredited training and certification career accelerator programs − later generating 7-figure revenues. Other previous startup experience included being Head of Programs for Singapore-based New Campus, an edutech startup.
Passionate about women empowerment and networking in web3, Lily explains that WOW Pixies DAO is the ‘first social Decentralized Autonomous Organisation (DAO) to invest in women-led web3 projects and the NFT ecosystem.’
With Sandbox, Decentraland, and NFTWorlds being a huge part of WOW Pixies’ future in the Metaverse, she wants the DAO strongly positioned ‘to grow with the rest of this space and begin our journey in building alongside the innovators and visionaries.’
The WOW Pixies website states it’s all about empowering women, adding the community is built on ‘high morals, giving back, and innovation.’
Lily is the Southeast Asia (SEA) Startup Partner Lead at Stripe, a global technology company building economic internet infrastructure. She’s also founding ambassador of Future Females Singapore, helping female entrepreneurs make connections and find resources.
Despite her relentless business activity, Lily is also a published author, illustrator, dancer, and black belt holder in Taido Japanese martial arts, participating with the Australian National Team in the 2017 Taido World Championships in Japan.
Lily is known for her ‘contagious positivity,’ in encouraging ‘people to dream big while taking tangible next steps.’ Her own self-description − ‘a curious learner and resourceful individual’ − is more modest.
However, she’s rightfully proud when tweeting that discussing web3 at the United Nations (UN) WEDO 2022 Women’s Entrepreneurship Day summit in May this year was a ‘dream come true.’
An Instagram post shows Lily’s dedication to the South-East Asia (SEA) startup space: “You don’t see a lot of women representation in web3, let alone ASIAN women representation.” She praises fellow female entrepreneurs helping ‘bring more voices and diversity into NFTs so people like me can feel seen and heard.’
While the Wow Pixies website states its NFTs are ‘5,555 randomly generated pixies whose vision is to lift up and help bring women-led projects to the forefront,’ it’s difficult not to see some similarities between the symbolic meaning of the word ‘Pixie’ and Lily herself.
According to southern England folklore, pixies are small, but rich in magical abilities.
They are revered for their bubbly spirit, childlike appearance and ability to draw out the lighthearted side in others and make their human friends smile.
Lily describes the Metaverse as ‘a virtual space where we can transcend all kinds of boundaries where physicality limits us.’ She enthuses about its many opportunities.
These include fractionalized real estate, luxury authentication using NFTs, increased data ownership, metaverse schools enabling fully remote learning, charities combining NFTs and DAOs to raise funds, and more.
Yet though the Metaverse may bring the world even closer together, Lily cautions with almost no regulations, security and identity are major concerns, adding ‘it can be a place with no consequences for bad behavior.’
Whether she’s traversing 20 countries, taking ‘cheeky’ Bali breaks, or praising her supportive ‘funmaker’ husband’s help in conquering her fear of the ocean by surfing, this feisty spirit is constantly learning and trying new things. Together with a tribe of like-minded soul sisters, her thrill at being at the technology frontier to ‘start building an equitable future from Day 1’ is REAL.
LILY WU’S METAVERSE & WEB3 TIPS AND RESOURCES
