My story begins inside the confusing cocktail that is high school. 

I attended a conservative boys grammar school in Auckland, New Zealand. It was the type of school to confiscate phones and dish out detentions like tacos.     

16 years old and without much love for instruction or rules, my grades already lived in the neighbourhood of rock bottom. Unhelpful was the fact that I had to skip an entire semester of school to tend a broken heart (this was after I got dumped by my first girlfriend) 

As a last ditch effort to stop me from dropping out, my parents sent me on a flight to visit my aunt in Beijing, where I would stay for over a month. One morning as I strolled through a ‘Hutong’ (traditional Chinese alleyway), I found myself inside one of those cosy hole-in-the-wall coffee shops. It was stuffed with books and smelled of roasted nuts. Beside me was a couple who sat next to each other reading. Behind me was an old man and his dog. He seemed to be writing something important. Everyone looked happy in their own world, doing their own thing, accompanied only by the trickles of conversation and the odd fly that would enter the room, bumping against the windows. 

For the first time ever, I felt the urge to open a book and read. It was then that I realised how interesting literature, philosophy, history and economics could be outside of a classroom. Who knew studying could be fun?

When I returned to New Zealand, I told my parents that I would go back to school. I thought, hm, homework wouldn’t be so bad if I could invite my friends to hang out in these cosy coffee shops.

From that point on, each weekend became a time for study, coffee & friends. Rinse and repeat. It was a motivating and addicting routine. In fact, I would ‘study, coffee & friends’ so hardcore that I’d end up going to Harvard. I would also briefly become an investment banker in London before quitting to cafe-hop across some 50 countries, sleeping in rented cars, showering at YMCA. Then, to pay my bills, I would tutor English online, teaching one student to begin, and then over 500 as word spread. At 23 years old, I incorporated and successfully scaled my first business in tutoring, and then my second in education tourism.

For a time I was at peace with just creating impact as a traditional ‘edupreneur’, but I never felt true love and passion for my work. It was snowing under a milky sky on the day when it suddenly occurred to me why: growing up I never really had a tutor. All this time my only teacher in life was ‘study, coffee & friends’. I wasn’t passionate about what I was doing because I didn’t 100% believe in the vision that I was selling.

The world doesn’t lack tutors - knowledge can be found free on Google and in libraries. What the world lacks is motivation: 

Study, coffee & friends. 

That had been it all along. I believe that people can accomplish great things when they are left free and motivated by their environment. Education means bottom-up exploration, not top-down instruction. Being an educator means thinking not about what we learn, but where we learn.

That was how O3 was born - as a ‘third place’ in between the home and the library where people would keep coming back to by choice. It’s a productive and creative ‘park for the mind’.

Even as I write this article, I am sitting inside our flagship O3 space in Newmarket, Auckland, due to open its doors to the public in a week’s time. In front of me is a warm cup of coffee, brewed with the O3 blend. Cigarettes after Sex is playing on the speaker. It’s my favourite band. I’m surrounded by all kinds of books, art and ideas. Engraved on the concrete wall are the following letters: Study, coffee & friends.  

My dream is to create a more motivated world. Never have I felt more motivated. The fire inside me glows a little brighter, and its embers trickle from my chest down to my fingertips.