Meet Albert Ng, Co-founder and CEO of Misapplied Sciences

Albert Ng, CEO of Misapplied Sciences

Albert Ng is the co-founder and CEO of Misapplied Sciences, and the primary inventor of the technology behind Parallel RealityTM displays. His work has been featured on the global stage, from viral social media posts to the opening keynote address of CES.

At Microsoft Research, Albert was a pioneer in low-latency touchscreens that provide users with an instantaneous response when interacting with their devices. At Stanford, Albert built high-performance computers and interfaces that advanced the ability of biologists to perform next-generation gene sequence alignment. Albert received a BS from Caltech and an MS from Stanford in EE. He was granted fellowships from the National Science Foundation, Stanford, and Microsoft Research.

Ryan: Can you share a bit about your upbringing/career path and how it shaped your approach to entrepreneurship?

 Albert: Like many Asian American families, mine was very academically driven. My grandparents were professors, my parents met in grad school, and they all hoped my siblings and I would carry the academic torch. I attended a Science & Engineering magnet program in high school and got my BS in Electrical Engineering at Caltech. As a world-class research university, Caltech trained its students to think about what is foundationally possible, rather than limiting your imagination to what already exists. As an example, one question on our Introductory Biology final exam asked to develop a mechanism to cure AIDS.

I continued on to attend the PhD program at Stanford, under Professor Bill Dally, who is the current Chief Scientist of Nvidia. As the pioneer of general-purpose parallel computing and the catalyst for Nvidia’s focus on AI, Bill was an incredible mentor. While academia is generally tasked with expanding the boundaries of human knowledge, Bill had an emphasis on generating meaningful world impact.

I try to parlay this background to Misapplied Sciences, where I push the team to think about problems from a fundamental perspective, with the end user experience as the focus. This led us to develop a very efficient process to invent foundational new technologies and integrate them quickly into products.

Ryan: What inspired you to start Misapplied Sciences? Was there a specific moment or realization?

 Albert: When I was in grad school in the early 2010’s, my friends were among the early pioneers of Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality headsets. I had the pleasure of trying on prototypes of then-cutting-edge devices such as Google Glass and Oculus Rift. The amount of technology they were able to pack into the headsets was nothing short of astounding, and the innovations that were needed to get to that point were a massive leap forward in the world of computing.

However, as the primary tech support person in my family, I’ve used my parents as my benchmark for technology adoption. I couldn’t imagine everyday people like them using sophisticated devices like those on a daily basis – they already have enough trouble navigating their smartphones! So I set out to create a new technology that can bring immersive, magical, personalized experiences to everyday people in the physical world, without needing them to wear encumbering devices.

Ryan:  Were there cultural values or lessons from your family that influenced how you lead today?

Albert: My parents grew up in China during the Cultural Revolution, enduring hardships that my generation can only begin to fathom. From being raised in such a challenging environment, to migrating to the US, to getting their graduate degrees, to raising three kids through college – everything we have as a family is due to my parents’ pure hard work over many years.

My parents instilled in me that hard work over periods of time will yield successes that no shortcuts can get you. In fact, the biggest and most satisfying successes are usually the hardest to achieve. Whenever our team faces a challenge that seems difficult, we don’t shy away from it – we embrace it and figure it out, knowing that if we can conquer it, it’ll bring us that much closer to success.

Ryan: Have you had mentors or role models in the Asian community that helped guide your journey?

Albert: It might be cliché, but my parents have been core role models for me. I wouldn’t be who I am today if it weren’t for the amazing examples they’ve set.

My dad is the walking definition of hard work and self-sacrifice. Despite being the top of his class, he chose to drop out of his dream PhD program to work a stable job at AT&T to support the family for 30 years until his retirement, skipping lunch every day to save money to send the kids to college. He always took care of everyone around him before himself – family, friends, and neighbors – developing the reputation of being the most thorough, responsible, and reliable person everyone knows.

My mom is an unstoppable force that would always exceed the situation. Worried that the kids would lose our Chinese roots growing up in suburban NJ, she taught us the Chinese language before we learned English, even co-founding a local Chinese school that went on to enroll thousands of kids over decades. Concerned that the American school system is lagging behind China, she taught us accelerated math and science in the evening after we completed our normal schoolwork. She would never play victim to unfortunate circumstance, and would figure out a way to get the best result, no matter what it took.

Ryan: What’s been your most challenging leadership moment, and how did you navigate it?

Albert: One of the most difficult moments was when we were raising our Series A in 2018. The process began smoothly – we had 6 months of runway left before we received an attractive term sheet from a reputable lead investor that could also provide a valuable partnership in the next stage of our business. Unfortunately, the investment firm had strategic ties with China, and the trade war between the US and China heated up two weeks after the term sheet was issued, causing a several month-long period of uncertainty as to whether the deal would go through. After 3 months, it was clear the US government was only going to increase pressure on Chinese investment firms, and the deal was called off. That left us with only 3 months of runway to pull together a new round of financing.

After discussing with the investors that were planning to follow-on in the round, one of them concluded the cancellation of the term sheet was not a negative indicator of our company, and decided to issue their own term sheet to lead the round. We quickly put together additional capital from other financial and strategic investors, and closed on the round before we ran out of runway. We are forever grateful to the supporters and believers who got us through those perilous moments.

Ryan: How do you balance maintaining your cultural roots while operating in a global market?

Albert: My parents had a rule in the household – always speak in Chinese. This forced my siblings and me to practice the language daily outside of school, so we won’t lose it. To this day, whenever I chat with my parents, we speak exclusively in Chinese.

Living in Pasadena, I’m a 20-minute drive away from some of the best Asian restaurants in the country, in Los Angeles and San Gabriel Valley. The occasional dim sum brunch is always a good excuse to stay in touch with Asian roots.

For board meeting dinners, I try to avoid the western staples, like steakhouses and seafood restaurants that end up forgettable, in favor of more interesting cultural cuisines. Dietary restrictions permitting, a hearty meal at Din Tai Fung or a juicy Peking Duck would be much more memorable and noteworthy for traveling board members!

Ryan: What’s a mistake you made early on that ended up teaching you a valuable lesson?

Albert: Early on, I painfully learned the importance of aligning incentives.

Towards the beginning of the company, we did not have enough funding to feel confident hiring a full-time software engineer, so we instead began working with a contractor. We’ve known the contractor from a prior company where we’ve collaborated, so we started off in a relationship of trust. We quickly drew up an open-ended contract, established an hourly rate, and set the contractor loose on a large, important project.

Unfortunately, we overlooked the fact that an open-ended, hourly contract incentivizes the contractor to work at a slower pace and not be as diligent in the first go-around to add more hours for testing and debugging. As a result, the project dragged on significantly beyond our estimated timeline, costed much more than we originally budgeted, and took up a lot of our precious time and mindshare. In the end, we had to part ways.

Afterwards, we structured our contracts as fixed price or milestone-based projects. This incentivizes us to be clear in our expectations for results, timeline, and cost, and incentivizes the contractors to work diligently and efficiently, as they stand to gain if they accomplish the tasks ahead of schedule. This change resulted in much more successful, long-term collaborations with subsequent contractors.

While this scenario was specific to contractors, the overall lesson of aligning incentives is applicable to all aspects of business and people/relationship management.

Ryan: What’s a book, podcast, or cultural tradition that keeps you grounded?

Albert: Food is such an important part of Asian culture – one that I am super happy to abide by. Sharing a meal around a table is a fantastic way to break down barriers and build bonds – with colleagues, investors, customers, and partners alike. Every week, among everyone’s hectic schedules around the office, our team sets aside one day to all sit down and have lunch together. For each in-person board meeting, we host the attendees for an intimate dinner the evening prior. The friendships that are created and the stories that are shared around those tables are ones that will be long remembered.

Ryan: What advice would you give to young Asian founders just starting out?

Albert: One of the most impactful pieces of advice I would pass onto anyone, not just young Asian founders, came from one of my undergrad mentors at Caltech, Professor Ali Hajimiri. During junior year in Electrical Engineering, there were two notoriously difficult classes that students could choose between – Advanced Digital Design and Advanced Analog Circuits. Both classes were known to be all-consuming, taking 40+ hours a week for the class alone, alongside the typical 3-5 other classes Caltech students would take at the same time. I was interested in taking both simultaneously, but of course I was concerned about the challenge.

Seeking his advice, I expected Professor Hajimiri to advise me on which path to choose, to manage my workload to avoid burning out. To my surprise, he instead said to me, “Albert, if you want to be the best in the world at what you do, you’re going to have to not be afraid of doing hard things. Take both.”

That would be my top advice: Dream big. Do hard things. Change the world.

Ryan: If you could go back and tell your younger self one thing before starting this journey, what would it be?

Albert: Starting a company is very, very hard. It’ll be the second hardest thing you’ll ever do (getting through Caltech will be the hardest). You will hear many more no’s than yes’s, and you will face rejections from every direction. But you often only need one yes to change everything – one investor to lead the round, one customer to launch with, one key hire to take the company to the next level. So just focus on getting to the first yes.