A debt that could not be repaid directly

Shield Xiao Dun spent years trying to answer one question. William Louey, a man he then barely knew, had paid for his schooling at Millfield in the UK, fees Xiao Dun recalls as steep even then. When Xiao Dun won a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge, and told Louey he no longer needed to pay, Louey insisted on covering most of the tuition anyway.

So I just couldn't understand why basically a stranger would do this to me.

— Shield Xiao Dun, Wealth Office

Each time they met, Xiao Dun asked how he could pay Louey back. The answer came at a party Louey held in Hong Kong when he was 50. He gathered around 30 of the scholars he had sponsored over the years and recommended a film to them, Pay It Forward. Xiao Dun says it resolved a confusion he had carried about how to repay parents, teachers, friends and strangers who had helped him without asking for anything in return.

What he took from it shapes how he thinks about wealth. He tells Michael Macfarlane that if he had taken Louey's money and built a house in Hong Kong, it would not, in his value system, have been as meaningful as what Louey actually gave him, which was an opportunity. Any enterprise that creates value in society is a form of paying it forward, he says. His own choice was to give educational opportunity to as many people as possible, using technology.

The limits of the scholarship

Xiao Dun has also followed Louey's example directly. With a group of fellow scholars he set up a scholarship, called Pay It Forward, that replicates what Louey did for them. He is candid about its limits. It reaches a narrow group, and once the funders stop paying there are no more scholars. He hopes the model will continue for generations through new benefactors, but he does not regard it as sustainable on its own.

Macfarlane describes a parallel pattern among the families his firm advises. Many, he says, take less interest in philanthropy as a separate activity and prefer to build social impact into their core businesses and investments, because a philanthropic outcome can disappear once the funding is withdrawn. Xiao Dun says he will continue to give where he can. His larger hope is that his company will have the bigger impact, by charging users just enough to keep itself sustainable while reaching people at scale.

So the best tech products are made so that the wealthiest people and the poorest people use the same products.

— Shield Xiao Dun, Wealth Office

He cites the iPhone as a rare hardware example and points to software such as Google as a more common one. Education, in his view, should work the same way. Everyone is different and needs a different education, but everyone should have the same access to the best of it. He observes that many entrepreneurs of his generation and younger approach impact like this, through climate, health technology and work on ageing, and that the roles of entrepreneur and philanthropist may be coming together.

Purpose as the fixed point

The approach was tested in 2021, when China's double reduction policy, introduced abruptly, banned for-profit tutoring in core school subjects. Xiao Dun had spent more than a decade building 17 EdTech. He says he understands many of the government's reasons, yet still disagrees with how the policy was carried out, and that teachers who entered education as a positive force in society should not have been treated that way. As a business, he says simply, the company suffered a lot, and the way forward was to find a pivot.

He draws a practical lesson about political risk. Long-term planning in China already looks ahead to 2049, and he argues that setting clear boundaries, for example by stating that compulsory education will not be privatised until then, would give entrepreneurs the certainty to decide where to build. His impression is that a more stable policy period has begun, though he is careful to say he may be naive. His new company is incorporated in Delaware, which he says gives it the freedom to list anywhere.

What did not change was the purpose. Xiao Dun describes a meaningful life as one that leaves other people's lives better, and says most people's sense of meaning ultimately involves other people. Once that is clear, the company, the country and the strategy are simply the transport and the road. He considers himself fortunate to have known his purpose in his twenties, and says he is more excited about it now than ever.

Humanity before technology

Macfarlane suggests that Asian business culture tends to start from purpose and build profit around it, while Western companies often look for a purpose after the fact. Xiao Dun declines to speak for others. He says only that he started with a purpose, and adds a striking observation. The two dystopian futures he fears from AI, one of passive consumption and one of extreme concentration of power, might be more profitable than the path he prefers. For him, humanity is a larger concept than technology, and products should serve it.

He links this to Chinese values that put people at the centre of a harmonious society, and to Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism. His advice to a young person in the position he once occupied follows from the same conviction. If they already have the ambition and a purpose, he says, the most important thing is in place. They should believe in themselves and in the power of education, because even without a golden ticket, the chance to change a life through learning is growing for the most motivated.