After a 5-Year Entrepreneurial Odyssey, an Undergrad Returns to Babson’s Campus
In March 2020, as the pandemic forced the world into lockdown, Jason Ou ’27 was hurrying to leave Babson Park. At the time, he was a sophomore, and everything seemed to be shutting down, including the College’s campus. Ou needed to go. He needed to get to Taipei, Taiwan.
“For me, it was a rush,” he says. “I had to say goodbye to everyone. Everyone was moving out.”
He packed up his room, filled six boxes with clothes, shoes, and other things, and gave them to a friend. “I didn’t have time to figure out what to do with this stuff,” he said. “I told him I would be back in a few months. Turned out to be a few years.”
After leaving Babson, Ou’s life went in unexpected directions. His departure set him off on an entrepreneurial odyssey, one in which he was exploring new things and moving from one opportunity to another. At first in Taipei and then in Shanghai, he joined two startups, worked with basketball YouTubers and a DJ, took time to finish his military service, and helped to revive a struggling museum.
Months passed. Then years. Despite the passage of time and his many entrepreneurial exploits, Ou never forgot about Babson. Before the pandemic, he had thrived there, leading student clubs, starting a business, and meeting people from around the world. “I treasured my time at Babson so much,” he says. “It was a very enriching experience.”
This fall, five busy years after leaving that hectic March, he returns to campus to complete his undergraduate studies. He’s now 26. That’s an older age for a Babson undergraduate (some of his classmates have taken to calling him the “undercover uncle”), but it feels good to be back. “Nothing has changed much,” he says of Babson. “The feel is still the same.”
He also finally retrieved those boxes he left with a friend. Inside were things he had forgotten about, including a skateboard. “It was a time capsule,” he says.
Working Right Away
When he left campus in 2020, Ou first settled in Taiwan. For much of his life, Ou has split time between Taipei and Shanghai. He was born in Taiwan, and then moved to Shanghai when he was 3, though he has family in Taiwan and has continued to visit there through the years.
While Ou initially thought he would be back at Babson for the fall of 2020, he soon decided to take a year or two away to wait out the pandemic before returning. With all that time ahead of him, Ou went to work.
He saw an opportunity with YouTube. At Babson, Ou had worked on an exchange student’s YouTube account, assisting with content strategy and video production, and it grew from a few hundred to 100,000 followers.
In Taiwan, he worked with four basketball-related YouTube accounts, helping them negotiate brand collaborations. “I just started working right away,” he says. “All the accounts were growing in size.” Later, Taiwan’s professional basketball leagues and their investors approached him, asking for advice on the leagues’ public relations and marketing strategies.
Soon enough, a year went by. Ou pondered his next move while Babson friends checked up on him. “After a year, people started asking, ‘Where have you been? Where did you go?’ ” he says. “That’s when I needed to make a decision.”
Ou realized he wasn’t ready to return to Babson. Not quite yet.
A Litany of Opportunities
After completing his required military service as a Taiwanese citizen, which took about four months, Ou began pursuing a litany of other opportunities.
He helped a popular DJ with her tour of China, managing logistics and assisting with contract negotiations. He first met her on a plane, approaching the DJ after recognizing her. Such directness was new for him. “It’s a Babson thing,” he says. “I would have been a lot more hesitant if I hadn’t come to Babson.”
Going on tour, though, wasn’t something he ultimately enjoyed. “I realized I hated the business,” he says. “I had to stay up so late. It was very unhealthy.”
Next, he joined a startup, PlanHouse, a social platform connecting users to events. As a member of the venture’s founding team, he was involved in “everything,” including managing content, performing market research, helping with app development, and even the paying of taxes. “I had to learn so much stuff,” he says. “It was a steep learning curve.”
Based in Shanghai, the venture was going well until a pandemic lockdown was enacted in the city. “It scared all the investors away,” Ou says. “It was pretty rough.”
Another startup followed. Tan Element helps users make money with side hustles. A founding team member, Ou was involved with sales, content development, and the hiring and firing of staff, which wasn’t easy. “I went through many processes of hiring people and then laying them off because we didn’t have enough money,” he says.
A trip with his mother to Yunnan province in southwestern China inspired another experience that was far removed from the world of startups. After visiting a small rural village, one where sheep, horses, and cows often block the roads, Ou decided he needed to give back. “I realized how privileged I am,” he says. “I live a comfortable life.”
Initially, he helped students in the village learn English, but then he took on a bigger project of revitalizing a struggling cultural museum. Dedicated to China’s Moso ethnic group, the Moso Museum had tried unsuccessfully to open four times, in the process racking up a significant debt. Over the next year and half, Ou helped the museum reopen for good this time, and once it did, he helped it find visitors.
When the museum reopened, only 13 people visited in the entire first month. Now, some 800 people walk through its doors in a day.
Back to Babson
Through all his entrepreneurial adventures, Ou never lost touch with Babson. If he had questions about market research or investor relations or staff recruiting, he would reach out to College alumni. “I got a lot of help from Babson,” he says.
With the museum thriving and his brother enrolled at nearby Northeastern University, Ou decided that the time had finally come to return to school. To be back on campus this fall and see the first-year students beginning their Babson journeys, he is reminded of himself when he first started at Babson in the fall of 2018. “I was one of them,” he says. “I remember how anxious I felt at orientation. I was Googling how to do a proper handshake.”
Much has changed since then. Ou has been on a journey. He feels ready for whatever comes next. “I can survive anywhere in the world,” he says. “I can start a business anywhere I go.”
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