{"id":123,"date":"2026-04-09T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staging.cultursmag.com\/?p=123"},"modified":"2026-06-03T22:20:30","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T22:20:30","slug":"how-former-issuu-com-ceo-joe-hyrkin-used-lessons-learned-from-a-decade-in-china-to-succeed-in-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.cultursmag.com\/?p=123","title":{"rendered":"HOW FORMER ISSUU.COM CEO JOE HYRKIN USED LESSONS LEARNED FROM A DECADE IN CHINA TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For Joe Hyrkin, most of his business skills and acumen were formed on the streets and trains of China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hyrkin, who spent the 1990s in Beijing and Hong Kong, took everything he learned from navigating cultures \u2014 the grit, the discovery, the ability to read people across any room \u2014 and built a Silicon Valley career that led to a nine-figure exit as the CEO of tech magazine giant Issuu<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While he went to a traditional public middle and high school, \u201cI always had this part of my life that was sort of esoteric and philosophical,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That led him to travel to India when he was 16 and study Chinese and political science at the State University of New York at Albany.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Photo courtesy Joe Hyrkin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI had this sense that, one, I wanted to get out of upstate New York and \u2026 also I had this sense that China was really big,\u201d he says. \u201cThey were increasingly important and there would be, if I could start to understand China and, and [speak] Chinese, I\u2019d be able to play an interesting role in whatever kind of was happening between the U.S. and China and the globe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having read stories of travelers like Marco Polo and others who visited the Middle Kingdom, Hyrkin would spend his junior year abroad studying in China and traveling all over the country, being part of the first cohort of U.S. students who went to China after the events of 1989.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was 1990, so it was a year after Tiananmen Square,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The university where Hyrkin studied in Beijing \u201cwas sort of the No. 2 headquarters for Tiananmen Square, and I got to know students who had been on the square and watched things unfold.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In those days, Hyrkin says more U.S. students were in the country than today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since then, and particularly post-COVID pandemic, that number has dropped significantly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re losing a whole generation of people who understand the culture and understand what\u2019s going on over there,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the positive outcomes of spending a year in Beijing was living in a student dorm full of not only U.S. students but also people from all over the world, \u201cfrom Japan and all over Europe and Africa.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With those students, Hyrkin traveled all over the country by train, \u201cto some places that were just opening up for foreign students to come visit towns [where] foreign students hadn\u2019t been there before.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Through those travels, Hyrkin spent a lot of time in markets, where haggling was \u201calmost a sport.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We\u2019re losing a whole generation of people who understand the culture and understand what\u2019s going on over there.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Through that haggling, a lot of his business skills and acumen were formed \u201cbecause everything was up for negotiation: What you paid for things was up for negotiation. Where we could stay was up for negotiation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That helped Hyrkin learn how to interact with people \u201cin a commerce way that I hadn\u2019t had any exposure to before,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Photo courtesy Joe Hyrkin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Not only that, he started to realize that \u201cpeople are people, and I started to really get a sense of the humanness no matter where people were, no matter what the foundation of their culture was, at the end of the day, we\u2019re human.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Engaging in such human transactions \u201cbecame fun\u201d for him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following his university graduation, Hyrkin went to Hong Kong, where he lived from 1992 to 1997 before moving back to Beijing for two years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Upon his arrival in Hong Kong, though, he was faced with one particular challenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI landed in Hong Kong, I spoke [Mandarin] Chinese, but in Hong Kong, everyone in those days spoke Cantonese or English,\u201d he says. \u201cI didn\u2019t know anything.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PEOPLE SKILLS<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The biggest result of that decade spent in China was learning about people, according to Hyrkin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI just learned about connecting and I learned about taking risks and I learned about talk[ing] my way out of the ramifications of taking risks,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hyrkin also recalls going to China with the purpose of \u201cbe[ing] Chinese for a year,\u201d only to find out that clearly he was not<\/em> Chinese.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEven though I\u2019d gotten good grades in Chinese class in the U.S., I studied Chinese for two years, pretty intensely, I could barely speak the language when I landed,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hyrkin remembers landing in Beijing, getting into a cab and telling the cabbie in Mandarin the address of his university \u201cand he looked at me and he had no idea what I said.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the days before smartphones, \u201cthere\u2019s nothing to look up. There was no phone, there were no \u2014 I didn\u2019t have a map. There was nothing,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I just learned about connecting and I learned about taking risks and I learned about talk[ing] my way out of the ramifications of taking risks.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like eight o\u2019clock at night and in those days, Beijing airport was, I don\u2019t know, about 45 minutes or an hour from my university,\u201d he adds. \u201cThere were mule-drawn carriages sort of up next to the cars, and I panicked and I\u2019m like, OK, what, what do I do?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This marked the beginning of a year where Hyrkin was \u201cconstantly in these situations where I\u2019d never been before. Wasn\u2019t sure what to do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a year of him \u201cbeing in these situations where I had to compromise, I had to navigate, I had to start synthesizing how to put pieces together so I could survive,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2018MAGICAL\u2019 DISCOVERIES<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

While the first few weeks were a struggle, Hyrkin still thinks that year was \u201cmagical.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI traveled, I met people, I learned, I argued, I navigated, I did all sorts of things,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those experiences of \u201cdiscovery\u201d were central to his learning about how to conduct business, according to Hyrkin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou have to constantly be in a space of discovering, discovering what\u2019s next, discovering what\u2019s great about this product, discovering what the market needs, discovering what the market is telling me about what I should be doing in my business,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nowadays, Hyrkin has a coaching business where he works with CEOs to help them minimize the distractions for themselves and their team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For many CEOs, while it might be common for them on a Sunday night to sit down and write down the key priorities for the week or the month, \u201cI think you\u2019re pretty lucky if that Sunday night list of priorities lasts until 7:00 a.m. on Monday,\u201d he says. \u201cThings happen all the time. We\u2019re surprised by people around us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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You have to constantly be in a space of discovering, discovering what\u2019s next, discovering what\u2019s great about this product, discovering what the market needs, discovering what the market is telling me about what I should be doing in my business.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

OVERCOMING CHALLENGES<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

One of the key themes for being successful in the business world is recognizing that when you\u2019re in the midst of a challenge \u2014 because there is always a challenge \u2014 you have two choices, according to Hyrkin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe can focus on the fact that we\u2019ve never done this before and not know what to do, or we can focus on \u2026 experiences that can lend themselves to how we navigate through this particular challenge and situation,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People don\u2019t give themselves enough credit for the \u201cresilience\u201d they have experienced throughout their entire lives, Hyrkin says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur lives are one example of resilience after the next, no matter who we are, where we are, what we\u2019re doing,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When a baby is learning to walk, they\u2019re always falling down, which is part of the process, according to Hyrkin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think we have this resiliency built into us as human beings,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd when it comes to business, we have that same resilience that\u2019s been available to us that we can start to apply as we\u2019re moving forward.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Check out Culturs\u2019 full interview with Joe Hyrkin below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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