Po-Lin’s story

And yet talk with this Taiwanese-born 40-year-old entrepreneur, with electrical- and medical- engineering doctorates from Cambridge University in the UK and RWTH Aachen in Germany, and she sounds far more like a 19th Century moral philosopher than a 21st century geek into technology. There is reason for this. Her route to the top of her industry has as much to do with destiny and Buddhist prayers as it does with scientific credentials and academic grit.

It is quickly apparent that Po-Lin does not deliver the standard VC pitch.

Po-Lin’s entrepreneurial father and mother founded a sewing-machine manufacturing business in Taiwan when she was just six years old, and for a decade her parents struggled to pay off the banks and make payroll, getting up every day at the crack of dawn and not coming back from work until near midnight. As a result, Po-Lin largely had to raise her two younger sisters, their play consisting of chasing butterflies across the factory’s lot and helping their parents build circuit boards.

Po-Lin hated growing up above the family’s sewing-machine factories. “There was always smoke and dust and the sound of heavy machinery,” she says. “I told myself, ‘I’m not doing engineering. I’m not doing this.’ I loved literature. I wanted to be a journalist or a writer.”

Her dream to become a woman of letters became a source of family tension. “During high school, I had quite a conflict with my father, because he always tried to tell me what to do and it was whatever he wanted, not really what I wanted.”

Po-Lin says she was, under normal circumstances, just a mediocre student.

Her family’s fortunes changed when her father designed a software-guided sewing machine to handle complex embroideries, and built this manufacturing business in mainland China, where the new product took off. That’s when it was discovered Po-Lin, the “bad” science student near failing in some classes, could do well in school when properly motivated.

Po-Lin desperately wanted to visit her father in mainland China, but bringing the entire family over to the mainland from Taiwan for a holiday was an expensive proposition and he could still ill afford the cost. But he listened to his daughter’s earnest plea and said, “Ok, if you score 100 at school, get the top rank for all your subjects, I will bring you here.”

Po-Lin did just that and her father was true to his word.

However, Po-Lin says she was, under normal circumstances, just a mediocre student. She nearly failed chemistry, preferred the philosophical thinking behind physics, and really only excelled in Chinese literature. After earning her undergraduate degree at a university in Taiwan, and deciding to push ahead with her schooling, Po-Lin’s father took her to a Buddhist temple and told her to make a sincere prayer to attend a high-quality graduate program.

That degree from Cambridge in turn led to a medical engineering doctorate from the artificial heart unit at the esteemed university in Aachen, Germany

There was unspoken family history hanging heavy in the air between them. Her once-wealthy grandfather had left mainland China for Taiwan in the 1930s and then, ill prepared for this new world, had gone bankrupt after opening a restaurant in Taipei. As a result, her brilliant young father, Hui, was forced to cut short his education and had to work on the shopfloor of a sewing-machine factory, to take care of his hapless parents.

Po-Lin knew her father ached for one of his children to realize his great unfulfilled ambition: an engineering doctorate from a world-class university.

The Mount Putuo Buddhist temple was crowded that day, there were thousands of believers sending prayers and incense heavenward, and Hui looked for a pillow for his daughter to kneel on. In a fit of pique, Po-Lin said in a rebellious tone, “Yeah, so tell me what you want me to wish for and what subjects you want me to study?”

Her father quietly replied, “Whatever you like.”

Everything changed in that moment. She understood then her father only had her best interests at heart, and she swore in that moment to devote her life to his wishes. “I decided then that I am going to do engineering and I’m going to be a good engineer.”

She was true to her word – just like her father.

Po-Lin got a masters in mechanical engineering from the New Jersey Institute of Technology, with a focus in robotics, and then applied to PhD programs in the US. She was collecting rejection slips when the Buddhist gods decided another intervention was called for.

Chinese doctors were prodding Po-Lin to make an affordable and locally made artificial heart

“My father called me one day and said, ‘You know, your professor in Taiwan told me a professor from Cambridge is visiting. How about you send an application to him?’”

That professor was leading an artificial-heart research project at Cambridge University, and he eventually met Po-Lin and decided her mechanical engineer background and knowledge of robotics would be of value to the multidisciplinary field engaged in everything from fluid dynamics to manufacturing. At Cambridge, Po-Lin designed a tiny artificial heart in the descending aorta that pumps blood to the kidneys, addressing the poor renal circulation that is a side effect of heart failure. Her father, who had never before attended her graduation ceremonies, was there when she graduated from Cambridge. “He was so proud,” she says.

That degree from Cambridge in turn led to a medical engineering doctorate from the artificial heart unit at the esteemed university in Aachen, Germany, and two doctorates from world-class international universities appear to have finally put the family ghost to rest. “After my PhD, I decided I will go home. I'm going to stay with my parents because they are getting old. They miss me and I miss them. I wanted to be close to them.”

But Po-Lin could not forget how her parents had suffered when launching their sewing-machine startup; the entrepreneur’s life was decidedly not for her, she decided. She instead secured academic work for herself at Soochow University in Suzhou, the canal-filled city often called the Venice of China. Po-Lin grew restless after a few years in academia, however. It was very slow, getting things done in a university setting, and her dream to create value in life and to be of real help to humanity remained unfulfilled. “I was not actually helping patients,” she says. “I was very frustrated.”

This entrepreneurial systems engineer is unleashing a series of innovative med-tech products that will materially aide her fellow human beings

Meanwhile, Chinese doctors reliant on the latest med-tech products made in Europe and the US. were prodding Po-Lin to make an affordable and locally made artificial heart, so that heart-ill Chinese on death’s door could survive until a treatment for their condition was available. Again, remembering how hard her parents worked building their company, she spent an entire year “convincing myself I knew what I was getting myself into and could do it.”

But destiny works in mysterious ways.

You can’t run from it. Not in the end.

Starting this year, seven years after she founded magAssist, this entrepreneurial systems engineer is unleashing a series of innovative med-tech products, just now emerging from clinical trials, that will materially aide her fellow human beings. “Every penny you spend is a vote towards the world you want to live in,” she says, returning to her highly personal view of the world. “I think investment is at one level just a redistribution of resources. Money is money and really means nothing. But if you put your money on the thing you want to happen, then the world will move in that direction, and I believe that is what my investors and I are doing. I am spending my resources – my time, effort, and life – on this business.”

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