Jessica Lee
Good, thank you Abe.

Abraham Kim
I’m pretty excited about today’s interview. We’re interviewing Tim Hwang, he’s the Founder and CEO of FiscalNote. A media politics company here in Washington, DC. He was, in fact, the recipient of our Trailblazer Award last year at our 2018 Gala Awards Dinner. But the significance of this company is that it is an important and growing media company that is providing an incredible amount of transparency for laws and regulations— not only at the federal level but down to the local level. And more importantly, he is providing this information for voters and for consumers across the world. It’s not just here in the United States, but many different countries. Particularly interesting in your interview with him Jessica is that he seems to have cracked the nut on how to connect great journalism with providing great data. And there’s an important business model here that he shares with us. And so I’m particularly interested in how your interview went with him Jessica.

Jessica Lee
Yes, it was a fascinating and wide-ranging conversation. You know, many of you have probably heard about FiscalNote’s acquisition of CQ and Roll Call for $180 million. And so this was a groundbreaking achievement for such a young company and a young CEO to achieve here in Washington. Just getting some perspectives on how Tim approaches the world of media and government and of course technology as a way to economy and the way we function more efficient were so interesting to me and I think you will all find it fascinating as well. So without further ado, let’s turn over to the interview. 

Jessica Lee
My name is Jessica Lee and I am your host of Council of Korean Americans podcast series called Korean American Perspectives. Today I’m pleased to interview Founder and CEO of FiscalNote, Tim Hwang about his personal journey to FiscalNote and his passion for closing the gap in representation of Asian Americans in the media and the news. Tim is also a member of CKA and will be speaking at our upcoming Empower Summit on November 2nd here in Washington. Thank you for being with us today, Tim.

Tim Hwang
Thank you for having me.

Jessica Lee
Great. So I want to start this conversation by opening up with an easy question. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and where you grew up?

Tim Hwang
Sure. Well, as you know my name is Tim Hwang. I am the Founder and CEO of FiscalNote. I grew up in the Midwest. Actually, initially, I was born in Michigan. When I was very, very young, my parents actually moved to Washington, DC. My father worked for the federal government and so he ended up working for NIH (National Institute of Health) and NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology ). Grew up in a lot of science-based backgrounds and the like. My mother actually was an art teacher and art curator. And so I got a little bit of both sides of the world, you know, in terms of a left brain, right brain. But had a good opportunity to learn from them both. And I think growing up in Washington, there were certainly a lot of opportunities to get involved in the Korean American community. It’s one of the largest Korean American communities in the country. And so I had that really great experience growing up, from a very early age.

Jessica Lee
Great. And how did being Korean American as a child impact you? Were you proud of being Korean American? Were there a lot of Korean Americans in your neighborhood and in your life growing up?

Tim Hwang
You know, I want to say that to be totally candid, I was not super proud to be Korean American when I was growing up. I viewed Korea, at least initially, as small market, a little backwards in terms of cultural backgrounds, and the like. And a lot of my friends were not particularly Korean. I am second generation fully. That being said, my parents, they told me to go to Korean school. We went to church, which was at a Korean church. And my mother and father are still very, very Korean to this day. And so I think over time as I’ve gotten older, that’s definitely shifted quite a bit. But one of the things I appreciate about growing up now that I’m a little bit older are the values that came over from being Korean and Korean American and a lot of those values are what differentiates me personally from a lot of the people that I work with and the entrepreneurship community that I sort of surround myself with. The idea of working hard and staying humble and continuing to work for your country and like, while not particularly unique to Koreans I think are especially pronounced in Koreans, and those individual values I think have carried over the last couple of years or so.

Jessica Lee
Can you tell us about your experience in college and whether there were any important lessons that you took away from your time there?

Tim Hwang
Well, I think that my earliest life’s lessons started certainly a bit earlier. And so to give you a bit of background on myself, I started my first company when I was 14 years old. I didn’t consider myself an entrepreneur but certainly thought a lot about building things. And I think that Koreans are definitely builders. If you think about the miracle on the Han River and the growth of the country in the last several decades or so. I’ve always thought about myself as sort of creating new things and trying new things. I think that was the first lesson, which was just: if I see an opportunity, just going and building something around it. The second was around sort of societal impact. Around that time, I also started getting involved in politics. As you know, I ended up working for President Obama’s ’08 campaign, kind of unknowingly. And then that ended up turning out pretty well. And afterwards, I ended up running for office representing Montgomery County on the Board of Education. Got elected at 17, which is a really weird experience, but having that sense of public service intermixed with trying to build things is something that I’ve thought a lot about.

That’s actually one of the reasons why I went to technology, because I thought a lot about societal impact. And going back to your original question about college, when I was in college, I originally majored in politics and public policy at Princeton. I was studying because I really wanted to do something in politics, in government, and the like. I was thinking about it and talking to people and if you remember at the time, I was going to college in the early 2010’s. And so this is, you know, when the president was trying to pass healthcare reform when the rise of the Conservative Tea Party came up. And I was thinking to myself, “Wow, this is not an industry I want to be in.” The pace of change is so slow and even if you change something, the probability that it’ll get rolled back is actually quite high (or struck down in court).

One of the epiphanies that I had was that we’re working on healthcare reform and trying very hard. And I was talking to a friend of mine who started a telemedicine company. He essentially built a mobile app that connected rural patients and urban doctors at very low cost and had scaled this out to millions of Americans— essentially low cost healthcare for millions of Americans. And I thought, “Well, this is the dream, right?” Because that’s what the government’s been trying to do for decades and you did it in two years.

And so I think that the pioneers of change have definitely shifted. I think that in the 20th century, the government was viewed as the opportune place to make changes. In the 21st century, that’s actually shifted to the technology industry. Every challenge that you see in education and healthcare and environment. In information and data and cybersecurity, privacy— all those battles are getting fought in the private sector. And I felt very strongly that I needed to make a large impact there. So I made a slight career shift in college. I thought that I would originally go into the government, kind of using my tech and politics background to work at the State Department or the FCC or something like that.

But I kind of flipped the script and I said, “Well, what can somebody who understands government and politics do in the technology sector?” And the biggest impact that I thought was building a company. And that’s really was, was the beginning of my career, post-college.

Jessica Lee
And how did you get interested in big data and artificial intelligence?

Tim Hwang
Well, I think that there’s a lot of talk, both in Korea and in the U.S., about something called the Fourth Industrial Revolution. And, you know, the Industrial Revolution at previous eras were very specifically built around raw materials, right? So if you think about the previous Industrial Revolution, it was about transforming steel and oil, these raw resources, into something that we could use. And that to a large extent is why America exists today: because of these industrialists that built companies that power our energy, power our transportation, power our telecommunications, power our automobile industries.

The concept of the Fourth Industrial Revolution is very interesting because it means that the raw resources of the 21st century are not physical materials anymore— they’re actually data. And if you think about the world that we live in today, the amount of data that gets produced is quite substantial, right? You wake up in the morning, you turn on your smart Thermostat, your energy consumption. You get out the door, you turn on your car. It’s collecting data all the time for navigation. Your smartphone devices, constantly collecting data on every photo you click, on every website you visit. Every time you swipe a credit card, there’s thousands of pieces of data that get collected on your personal history. When you go to work, everything that you do is monitored on email, on software devices and the like. And so everything that you think about, everything that you do, every step that you take is monitored. And in some ways that’s frightening, in some ways that’s good because it means that we have more data to improve people’s lives. Whether it’s in healthcare or transportation or logistics and energy— whatever it is. The concept of improving human efficiency at this point is primarily driven by the amount of data that we have.

Take for example, precision agriculture. We are facing a crisis in the next 20 or 30 years about whether or not we can actually feed the world population, based off of the rate of growth as well as the ability for us to produce actual food. The one saving grace, apart from improvements in crop yields and the like, is actually our ability to use data in agriculture to drive efficiency. You know, using self-driving tractors and meter-by-meter data around moisture to actually improve productivity.

That’s like the fundamentals of human society, of driving our ability to feed ourselves, that’s driven by cutting edge technologies and data and artificial intelligence. And so when I think about the rate of change in the 21st century, it is primarily around “How do we collect more data? How do we use that data more efficiently?” And then the real question after that is “How do we use that data to make to make things that are more useful or things that people can actually use in some capacity.” And so I think that that’s the promise of artificial intelligence, which is the ability to actually crunch all that data and actually start to make decisions start to make capital allocation decisions or whatever it is that actually drive improved efficiency and productivity. And you know, that’s the basics of an economy. How do you drive efficiency and economy in the economy? How do you drive that productivity? And I think that over the course of the next five, 10, 15, 20 years, almost every single company that I know considers themselves a technology company or is trying to transform themselves into a technology company in order to capture some of that value.

Jessica Lee
Your firm FiscalNote is leading the way in automating Washington and changing the way people consume and understand legislation and regulations that are happening across federal, state and local levels. What has been the biggest challenge in doing this work?

Tim Hwang
There’s a lot of challenges, so maybe I can divide into two. The first is industry-based challenges and the second is entrepreneurial challenges. So for industry challenges, I would say government data is still very opaque and I would say that, particularly once you get down to the state and local levels, now we do a lot of things internationally— places like Southeast Asia, Latin America, the Middle East. It’s not that people want to hide data. It’s just that despite the Internet being around for the last 20–25 years, a lot of government institutions have not made that shift yet into fully cloud-based, fully internet-enabled systems. And so we are fighting the uphill battle, but we are definitely working through those challenges.

To give you a good example, we collect every piece of legislation, every regulation coming from federal, state and local governments in the United States. There are thousands of federal regulatory agencies. There are tens of thousands of state regulatory agencies and there’s 88,000 cities and counties in the country. Do I think that a city in east Texas is going to have the full ability to transform their government over the last couple of years? Probably not. Not because they don’t want to, but because that’s just the state of technology today. Same thing goes for the regulators in in Oregon or Nevada or whatever the case is. And so we have to essentially work with governments, in the country and around the world, to actually transform their datasets. But I think the work that we do is important because we’re providing transparency for laws around the world.

Secondly, entrepreneurial challenges, that’s a whole other host of problems. But I started this company with three guys, a laptop, and an idea. And so you can imagine every problem under the sun from raising capital to hiring & management and product development and sales & marketing, go-to-market challenges, customer support, operational challenges, scaling international development and the like. And so it’s definitely been an experience, but it’s been a fun one for sure.

Jessica Lee
FiscalNote acquired CQ Roll Call last year for $180 million. What led you to pursue that? And can you speak more broadly to the future of journalism in your view?

Tim Hwang
So we acquired CQ Roll Call as you said. It was a division of the Economist Group for about 20 years. CQ Roll Call for a very long time was the largest newsroom covering Capitol Hill in Washington DC. Roll Call, in particular, is very well established in Washington, founded in 1955. CQ was founded in 1945. So first of all, it’s really interesting being a 20-something-year-old Korean American kid acquiring these media assets that are, you know, twice my age. But I think secondly, probably more importantly, we have to find new models to support great journalism. I’m not convinced that advertising is it or even whether consumer subscription is the right model.

If you look at the modern digital publications that are out there today— the VOX, the BuzzFeeds of the world, the VICEs and the like— they are real, they are really struggling to find sustainable business models. And if you’re not the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post, I think it’s very difficult to build a national consumer base to actually consume your information. For everybody else who’s not the 3 or 4 top newspapers in the country, you have to build sustainable models. And the model that we sort of got behind was premium subscription and premium data combined with great journalism— which essentially in a non-jargony way means that we have one side of our business that sells really great data to organizations in a B2B manner. And then the profits of that essentially sustain our ability to invest in great journalism and the newsroom.

We felt like we could actually pioneer that model here, particularly in Washington. We are one of the very few newsrooms that are aggressively investing in hiring journalists and editors and producers and the like. We can do that because we have substantial profits from another side of our business that actually benefits from the great journalism that our people do. And so from my perspective, the ability to pioneer a new direction in the media industry— and particularly the journalism industry— was particularly enticing. I think that people in the journalism industry have seen quite an erosion of jobs, of opportunities and the like. And so the ability to actually chart a new pathway is particularly exciting.

Jessica Lee
That’s great. I used to read CQ and Roll Call religiously when I worked on the hill. So that’s quite amazing. There’s been dramatic growth in the Asian American population since 1965, as you know, and today we’re part of the fastest growing racial group here in the United States. By 2050, Asian Americans will become the largest immigrant group in the country with about 12% of the total population. What can we do to ensure that Asian American voices are adequately represented in the media and in policy debates?

Tim Hwang
Well I think there’s a lot of things, particularly from political perspective. I have this theory, essentially, that in order for any great sort of political awakening or the establishment to take notice of a particular ethnic group, you sort of need three things. The first thing is you need a pipeline of good political candidates. People who are politically engaged and are actually willing to stick their neck out and get out there. So I think there’s a lot of organizations that are out there, CKA included but also others, that empower the next generation, are trying to build a pipeline, all of that stuff. The second thing that people need, or the ethnic group needs, is a pipeline of entrepreneurs. And the reason why I say that is because in order for an ethnic group to really have an awakening moment, you need resources. And in America, like any other capitalist country, resources come from building companies, from creating wealth— particularly individual institutional wealth that can support great philanthropy and civic organizations and the like. I think Koreans, amazingly, are actually very entrepreneurial, particularly Korean Americans. And I think we need more Korean American entrepreneurs because the wealth creation that comes from entrepreneurship in particular drives philanthropy and civic engagement and political contributions and everything else. I think the last thing is media representation, which is sort of the third leg of the stool. In every aspect, from not only in front of screen but behind screen in producers and owners and media assets and the like. Because those are the ones that are driving decisions around casting around stories around everything else on the back end.

And so I think that if you have those three things. When you have a great pipeline of political leaders, when you have a base of individual wealth, both entrepreneurship as well as sort of corporate attainment or corporate representation, and then you have media representation— those three stools, essentially the legs of the stool, essentially will result in the rising tide of Asian Americans. Obviously there’s a lot of work to be done on all three angles. Certainly I think that in the past, as somebody who sort of objectively views a lot of the work in the Asian American sort of civic community, there’s certainly a lot of workin the first bucket. There’s actually a lot of work in the first bucket. The second two buckets I think are the real bottlenecks for real representation. Even if you have a thousand Asian American candidates, if they can’t get political backing, if they can’t get institutional funding, if they can’t get resources, they’re never gonna make it to mainstream. And certainly if they don’t have proper advocates in the media side of the house, they’re never going to be able to crack their messaging or whatever the case is. And so I think that, objectively speaking, there’s probably a lot of work that needs to get done in the two other buckets. And I think that if that happens, then I think that be the sort of clicking point at which there’s some shift. When you look at other ethnic groups, the African American community, Hispanic community and the like, it’s only when those three buckets have been filled with great candidates, a wide base of entrepreneurship and individual wealth and business contribution, and media representation, whether it’s in the form of ethnic media or in mainstream media. I think that’s what essentially results in great empowerment.

Jessica Lee
One of the themes that we’re exploring at the CKA Empower Summit is leadership development and how we can help more Korean Americans reach their full potential in their chosen fields. Were there any cultural norms growing up as a Korean American and as an entrepreneur that you struggle with personally? And I ask this because we like to at least focus one question when we do these podcast interviews on our next generation of Korean Americans, who might be looking for words of wisdom or encouragement as they navigate growing up both as Korean and American. And so were there any challenges or advice that you might give that has helped you confidently become who you are today?

Tim Hwang
I think that the biggest thing that Asian Americans, and Korean Americans in particular, have problems with is asking directly for the thing that they want. If you speak the Korean language, there’s something really interesting about the Korean language, which is that you never really ask for something directly. You say something like, “Ooh, wouldn’t it be great if blah, blah, blah.” And it just comes off as really rude if you ask a certain way. I think that language has implications in terms of culture and as a business person, I’ve consistently found that if I ask for something directly, more often than not we’ll have a conversation. We’ll probably get some form of it, whether it’s today or tomorrow, whenever in the future. But I think that Asian Americans have trouble asking directly for partnerships or investment or whatever it is.

And this is one of the things I tell emerging Asian American entrepreneurs, which is, if you want something, just ask for it. It’s actually surprisingly harder than people think. It’s not just in terms of entrepreneurship, but it’s in terms of setting expectations with executives, setting direction, setting strategy. Even at an employee level, I’m asking for clarity around compensation or around goals, around your relationship with your manager whatever the case is. And so I think that’s been a particularly interesting thing. You know, I think I grew up having been taught to be very humble in what you’re asking for. To be somewhat indirect, in terms of making sure that people are comfortable, which is still very important.

But I think in American society, when you’re, when you’re competing in a heavily competitive industry or whatever the case is, there’s no real time to kind of beat around the bush. I had this experience, not just a week ago, where I was trying to get something and at some point I just shot the person an email said, “Look. Let me put everything on the table. I want this, I want x, y, and z.” And they shot back an email and said, “Okay, great. You can just have it.” So honestly it’s stuff like that where I even to this day, I’m still trying to figure out how to re-calibrate some of my gut intuition.”

Jessica Lee
Finally, what can national organizations like CKA do to nurture bold thinking, confidence and risk taking that are inherent in leadership?

Tim Hwang
I think that well you need to have a goal, right? And so at least for me, my personal motivations for getting involved in the Korean American community and the Asian American community are to try and get better empowerment, to get better representation— not because it’s some sort of vanity-based thing where people need to be more represented on television or whatever, but because I think it actually meaningfully improves people’s lives. And not just in these sort of big ways, if there’s like a big fight or like a violent protest or something, but in small ways. In terms of how people perceive Asian Americans and Korean Americans.

And so I was just thinking about this the other day, which is: every interaction that you have as a Korean American with the rest of the world. Whether it’s at a convenience store or an airport or whatever it is, their perspective of Asian Americans is shaped largely by those small interactions that you have. And so, especially if you’re going out to the south or to the Midwest where there’s just not that many interactions with Korean Americans or Asian Americans. Every time you see a flight attendant or every time you see a restaurant, a bartender, whatever it is. They’re shaping their perspective of Asian Americans primarily on their interaction with you. And so that, I think that puts a lot of emphasis on carrying yourself in a certain way and representing your community in every single manner. And I think that national organizations have a really important role in terms of setting the tone, as well as building those relationships at a broader level, but beyond national organizations, just at an individual level, the ability for national organizations to empower people to give them the tools and the resources and support other organizations that are thinking about these topics, I think is really important.

Jessica Lee
Well, you can meet Tim at our upcoming Empower Summit where he will be speaking on the topic of entrepreneurship and we’ll also be returning to fiscal note for our Closing Reception on Saturday, November 2nd after the full day summit. And so be sure to join us there and we really appreciate this time together today Tim, and best of luck in all your pursuits. Thank you so much.

Abraham Kim
What a rich interview with Tim Hwang. Jess, I thought your question about how Asian American voices can be adequately represented in media and the policy debates was particularly interesting and important. The fact that he had mentioned there are three legs: having great political candidates in the pipeline, having entrepreneurs who can support these efforts, and the third leg of having media makers or news makers, people who are controlling the channels of communication are all important insights. He’s on that third leg, he’s developing that as we speak.

Jessica Lee
That’s right. And I think it’s so fascinating to hear about Tim’s life story and really how he is viewing the world and the future of the Asian American community, and also more broadly data and big data, doing it in a way that’s really inspiring and also hopefully gives our listeners a chance to think about their own roles in really building greater influence in society. So I thought that point in particular, Abe, about how a community can build its influence over time and how those three things worked synergistically was particularly impactful. 

We’re really excited to have Tim at our upcoming Empower Summit. It will be held in Washington, DC on November 1-2. And the closing reception will be at Tim’s company, FiscalNote, so you can come check that out and meet Tim. I think it’ll be very fun and very inspiring, looking forward to seeing many of you there.

Abraham Kim
Well great, thank you very much Jess and thank you to all of you for listening.