Here are 5 #HumansinTech who are living proof that academic success is not the be-all and end-all

Asians are well-known for their academic prowess, to the extent that the overachieving-Asian-with-overbearing-parents has been cast as a stereotype. In fact, when Amy Chua wrote the bestseller Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, the world gave a collective nod of agreement to the portrayal of Asian parents who typically cannot accept anything below an A grade from their children.

Naturally, the internet came up with the ‘High Expectations Asian Father’ meme to get a laugh out of it:

Truth be told, many students and their parents still believe that education is the one and only path to success. In a report on USA Today, Hwy-Chang Moon, professor and dean of Seoul National University’s graduate school of international studies, puts it as such: “There is a mentality of a first tier […] You have to be first-rate, otherwise you may not be able to survive.”

Recent times, though, have seen several reputable companies coming forward to debunk this myth. Most famously, Laszlo Bock, the senior vice president of people operations for Google, reportedly declared in an interview with the New York Times that “GPA’s are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless […] We found that they don’t predict anything.”

In other words, academic success is not a good way of knowing whether one will be successful in a job, much less in running his or her own business. Here are five entrepreneurs that have gone on to do well in their respective endeavors despite not nailing those A-grades earlier in their lives.

Anders Tan, co-founder of Edusnap

Anders Tan, by his own admission, was one of the many Singaporeans who fell through the cracks in the country’s education system, which is incredibly competitive.

I was in the Normal Technical stream in secondary school, and went on to ITE [Institute of Technical Education], followed by polytechnic, and then army, and finally university. It was the long route! Because I don’t come from a rich family, my parents did not have the capability to send me for additional enrichment programs. As a result – and I believe this is one of the main reasons why I wasn’t able to do better in my studies in the earlier days – I gave up studying completely. To me, studying was costly and unfavorable for people who are not rich.

Despite his low-prestige academic background, Tan was determined to create a platform that would connect willing tutors with students who didn’t have access to mentors like their well-off peers did. After a period of blood, sweat, and coding, Edusnap was born.

Yoichiro “Pina” Hirano, founder and CEO of Infoteria

Andry Suhaili, founder and CEO of PriceArea

Brian Lim, founder and CEO of Launchbox

Juny “Acong” Maimun, founder and CEO of Indowebster