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The Making it in Melbourne podcast series brings you conversations with Melbourne migrant entrepreneurs who are reshaping our city’s business landscape.
In this series, we hear the stories of migrant startup founders sharing how their cultural backgrounds have shaped their entrepreneurial journeys, offering insights, lessons, and tips for aspiring entrepreneurs.
From creative and social innovations, artificial intelligence, mental health, and people changing careers, these are the stories of people who journeyed across borders to Melbourne, to build something extraordinary.
This podcast series is brought to you by the City of Melbourne. Follow us at @cityofmelbourne across Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin and X.
We support migrant business founders to incubate ideas in our city through grants, specialised programs and connecting with the local community. Find out about upcoming opportunities at www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/startups-and-innovation
Hi, I'm Jeanette Chia, and this is Making It in Melbourne. My guest today is Michelle Chen, the co-founder of Mental Jam. They're a startup that actually helps people deal with their mental health through the power of video games. Now, Michelle is Filipino Chinese. She was born in Taiwan, grew up in the Philippines, studied in the UK, and ended up in Melbourne kind of by accident.
So listen up for how Michelle curates opportunities for ourselves, really reads the fine print, makes sure that the advice and the people she surrounds herself with are exactly who she needs, and most importantly, listen in for how a cute little wombat game character can help people improve their mental health.
This is how Michelle Chen is making it in Melbourne.
I am here with Michelle Chen, the co-founder of Mental Jam. And Michelle, the first thing I noticed actually is that you and I have some things in common, in that we were born somewhere, grew up somewhere else with a different cultural heritage. Tell me about your background. Yeah, so I was born in Taiwan, and I moved to the Philippines when I was eight months old.
And I basically grew up in the Philippines, and since then I've moved back to Taiwan for a bit, I moved to the UK, and now I'm in Australia. That is quite the journey. So eight months only in Taiwan. Yeah. Um, but you've still got that valuable passport. Exactly. Which will play a role in this conversation, so listen up for that, uh, audience.
Now, tell me a little bit about the, the impact of growing up in a family of migrants. So it wasn't just, you know, your choices to come to Australia, you actually kind of followed your family around a bit. Tell me about how that might have impacted your approach to migration. I think, like, like, first of all, language was a br- pretty big thing.
'Cause, like, growing up, like, my mom was really instilling that we still speak Mandarin, but of course growing up in the Philippines, like, English was our first language. And s- as part of it, I feel like having that mastery of English helped me travel quite a bit. And when it was my choice to travel, like, you know, decide where I get to live, I was like, "I think I'm gonna stick to English-speaking countries."
Mm-hmm. Luckily, there was a few, so there was the UK, and there was Australia. And just knowing how to express yourself in different languages was really helpful, 'cause if you, like, if I meet somebody who is, like, an investor who is, like, clearly from China, I'll just switch to Chinese, and I know that that helps me.
Um, but yeah. That's an amazing superpower, the code switching, language switching. Mm-hmm. Uh, I'm sure it's actually helped you more than you even, even realize. Mm-hmm. Now, you kind of glossed over the fact that you, you chose to go to the UK. So tell me about that, 'cause I, I understand you finished your master's in the UK.
Mm-hmm. And you were ready to work, and you were like, "This is where I'm going to be. I'm setting up in the UK." Uh, tell me a little bit about that journey, the choice to go there, and then the choice to leave, because something happened, I think. It might have been called Brexit? Yep, it was Brexit. Um, so I, I was working in the Philippines and Taiwan in the games industry for a while, and I was pretty burnt out, and I was like, "I think I wanna, like, try something different."
So I quit my job, and then I moved to the UK, and I did my master's there. And I was like, there were so many opportunities in the UK that I really liked. Um, unfortunately, that was the year of Brexit. And it kind of made me realize, like, oh, there was no way for me to physically stay in this country. And in a really weird way, um, after I graduated, I moved back to, like, um, Taiwan, and one of my friends was moving to Australia.
And she was like, "Hey, I'm going to Sydney." And I'm like, "Ooh, I've never thought about Australia." But I had a Taiwanese passport, which means I could get a working holiday. And I remember, like, just, um, like- The day after our conversation, I applied for a visa, and it, I just got it, and I'm, and I just came. It was meant to be.
Yeah. And so your friend was going to Sydney- Yeah ... and you decided you were going to follow her along- Mm-hmm ... get that working holiday visa. What were your thoughts about, like, when you landed in Australia and where to settle? Mm. So how did you kind of finally get h- here to Melbourne? I came to Melbourne for Melbourne's International Games Week, and I, I remember taking a bus, 'cause, like, the tickets were too expensive for the plane, so I like took a bus here.
And then just experiencing Melbourne and Games Week, and seeing all the support and all of the, like, really vibrant games industry in Melbourne, and I was like, "I think I'm gonna stay here instead." And then, so yeah. So shout out to our friends in New South Wales and South Australia. Mm-hmm. Uh, it was the, uh, it was the games conference that- Yeah
encouraged you to stay. So- When you were in Melbourne, you actually started creating Mental Jam as your PhD thesis. Mm-hmm. And it's not an obvious link to probably me and, and many others who might think video games, mental health, haven't we always been told that actually they make it worse? Mm-hmm. So tell me a little bit about the combination of video games and mental health and, and how you came up with that as a thesis.
So when I was in UK, I was quite... I think also on the lead up to UK, 'cause I was quite, um, mental health isn't something that we talk about in Asia. And when I moved to the UK, that was the first time that I learned that it was okay to talk about it. And for my master's by practice, I decided, like, hey, maybe I wanna make a game about what I was feeling at that time.
And I was really depressed, um, for all the reasons. I mean- Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. Yeah, so and somehow, like, making games became my way of sharing how it feels. 'Cause I'm not really much of a writer, I'm not really much of a, like, a talker, but I'm, like, but I'm a programmer. And I, I write game mechanics.
So I created this game, um, like, through the game mechanics, showed what depression felt like to me. And after I did that, I was like, "Hey, this is really cool, and I wanna continue doing it." And, like, the logical next step was like, oh, I'll, I'll pursue it as a PhD. That's so interesting that you sort of saw your programming ex- expertise- Mm-hmm
and gaming as a creative expression- Mm-hmm ... um, similar to writing or journaling or- Yeah ... music or something like that. And so can you paint a picture for us now about the game that you're currently working on? Mm-hmm. And, and how does it work? What does it do? What does it look like? Yeah, so the game that we're currently working on is called Bobarista.
And it's- Sorry, Bobarista, as in a barista who makes boba? Exactly it. Wow. Yeah. And you're this cute little wombat 'cause it's, um, set in Australia. It's based on this little coffee truck in the middle of Warburton. It's like, so like a redwood forest. So in the same way, this boba truck will just pop up in a forest, and you're this wombat barista, and you're serving all these other different, um, Australian animals.
Like, there's a quokka, there's a blue-tongued lizard, and you're just helping them through their different mental health challenges. Oh, that's so interesting. So you've taken a real-life location- Mm-hmm, yeah ... so Warburton in Victoria. Mm-hmm. You've popped up a little boba truck. Your character's a wombat, and he's helping his customers- Mm-hmm
that are Aussie animals. Oh, it's such a beautiful mashup . Yeah. And the funny thing was one of my teammates actually grew up in Yarra Junction, so that's her backyard. And she was the one that came up with the bubble tea idea, and I was the one that came up with the, um, like, the, that location. So even though we're...
Like, I picked her background, and she picked my background, so like, that's fun. Sounds like a match, a match well-made. Yeah. Now, I'm curious about, about how we sort of take something that sounds cute and fun- Mm-hmm ... and expressive and creative, and how do you start to commercialize this into a business?
Because- Mm-hmm ... you know, you've, you've kind of, you've done the research, you've done the creative part, and then it's about, okay, well, it needs to be sustainable. How do you make money off Bobarista? So one of the things that, uh, so we did one of the programs with CSIRO, um, on Prime, and they told us, like, "Go and talk to 100 people."
And so we did that. We talked to over hun- 200 people, and some are people, um, guidance counselors, people who work in schools, parents, um, different people. And one of the things that we learned through that was that mental health support currently is mostly focused on people who are in crisis. And while there are some work being done in the early intervention space, I feel like there needs to be much more.
So we decided that we wanna focus on that early intervention space and promote mental health literacy and with a younger audience. 'Cause in my mind, I'm like, "Hey, if we could prevent the crisis from happening, isn't that better?" So right now we're focused on trying to sell to different schools- Mm-hmm ... and really introduce that as part of the curriculum and, like, try to teach mental health literacy for a younger audience as soon as possible.
Okay, so we're embedding this game that's going to help with literacy earlier into curriculum, working with, um, young people. Mm-hmm. You've also worked with some of Victoria's amazing, I guess, cultural institutions, right? Mm-hmm. So tell me about some of those highlights and how that sort of added to the journey.
Yeah, so, um, I worked with Museums Victoria through their Culture Makers program. So it was a program that they wanna encourage people from diverse backgrounds to create programs for the museum. And as part of that, I, um, organized different workshops at the Immigration Museum and Melbourne Museum. And the fun thing about working with museums, like, you get to work with such a diverse set of audience.
So you have, like, a six-year-old, but you also have the grandparent of the six-year-old. And together with that audience, we were creating a different game, which was actually called Mini Melbourne, and it was about, like, sh- the experiences of living in Melbourne. And that really helped me, like, work with different types of audiences and really understanding the space that I want to be in.
Mm-hmm And I'm curious about, you know, you're, you're taking the game build and bringing it to the population more broadly. Mm-hmm. But you're also coming at it with the perspective of someone who has been a migrant- Mm-hmm ... who has moved across oceans m- many times. Are there any sort of cultural nuances that you think, um, that come into the building and delivery of video games?
Is there anything that has- been woven in from your personal experience to make your games more applicable to a broader range of people? Yeah, that's the interesting bit because the games industry worldwide has still been quite white, cis, male. And through this co-creation process and working with different groups of people, I was able to work with different people from different backgrounds, particularly with my PhD because, um, the other thing that happened was COVID.
And so all of the... So I was running these workshops, and they all ended up being online. So because of that, I was able to work with people who were based at V- in Vietnam, in the Philippines, people from other migrant backgrounds. Um, there was one game in particular that we were working on, which was kind of had the, like, stories about being that model minority migrant expectations, and so we incorporated that into one of the games.
And we were showing this game in ACMI, and then I see people with similar backgrounds as me, and they were playing it. And they're like, "Oh, that's me. That's my experience." So yeah, that's kind of plays into it. That must be so rewarding as a, a creator of something- Mm-hmm ... to see people actively engaging and relating with it.
Mm-hmm. And I guess I'm curious about as you're sort of going through this journey, so you've done the PhD research. You've built- Mm ... a bunch of different games, and now we're, we're sort of working and focusing- Mm ... on Boba Barista. I'm curious about whether you've received some great advice from different business mentors or how you've kind of shored up your experience and expertise in actually running a startup.
So I have two. Um, one was from you, which was- Oh, thanks. Yeah, which is, like, as you go out there and start building, you talk to different people, and you get a lot of advice. And you compared it to, like, a Velcro suit, and see what sticks. And I think that was a really good way of filtering, um, a lot of the different advice that you get because, like, as you said, like, there, pe- everybody comes from different, um, experiences and different industries.
And sometimes, like, they're all giving you advice, but it might not be applicable to you, and see what sticks. Um, and the other one was, like, with Hex, I went to a trip in Vietnam, and the mentors there were, like, amazing. And so, um, his name is Adrian. He was the one that brought Uber to Vietnam, and his advice was, you know, "If you wanna ask for money, ask for advice.
And if you ask for advice, and they say no, then they're an asshole." And I'm like, that is really true. So with, even just with that, you know how to, like, at least the people who wants to talk to you, you know that they're there for the right reasons, and they're there because they really care about what you're doing.
Absolutely, and it's interesting to hear that both of those pieces of advice were about filtering. Mm-hmm. You know, filtering the, the information that you receive, filtering what you read in the media- Mm-hmm ... and then also filtering who you wanna surround your startup with. Mm-hmm. So important. I love that, and thank you for, for sharing that forward.
So I'm curious about, I guess maybe some of those key milestones from moving, uh, Mental Jam from PhD to business. So were there also some programs in terms of, I guess, at the university or- Mm-hmm ... state-based that have helped you actually kind of level it up? Tell me about that journey. Yeah, absolutely. So my PhD was a creative practice one, so I had the physical, like, presentation and, like, examination.
But because my examiners were in Europe, so I had, like, a month, so I pre-recorded my presentation, and I had the month to kill, and I came across this, uh, program through the RMIT Activator, and it's like, "Oh, do you want to, um, try to explore, like, what it's like being a s- trying a startup?" And at that time, I was, like, just curious.
I was like, I, I didn't think about, you know, commercializing my research, but through those programs, and I've since then probably done all of their programs, and I really learned a lot, and learning that, oh, there is actually a pathway for me to turn my research into something commercial. And the other one was Breakthrough Victoria, so they have this fellowship where they want to support, um, PhD graduates to really commercialize their research.
So, and so yeah, that's been, like, so instrumental 'cause I'm like, "Oh, cool." Like, I'd, uh, like I've worked on the PhD for so long, and now I see that there is, like, a pathway for me to bring it out to the real world, which is what I really care about I mean, those are magical words for any university or government body, commercialization of research.
Yeah. And, but tell me a little bit about, I guess, the, the Breakthrough Victoria grants and- Mm-hmm ... and the support that they have. Is that, was that difficult to get? Because I think sometimes people look at bringing their research to life, and they're kind of immediately looking at grants and- Mm-hmm ... and writing all these different applications.
Tell me about the journey of actually getting a grant and getting some funding into the business before it was, you know, a real thing. Mm. So I have, one of my personal things, it's a basketball quote, which is, "You miss 100% of chances you don't take." So I apply to a lot of things, and, and it also helps me practice as well.
You apply to a lot of things, some of them you might not get, but then you can ask for feedback, and, you know, you learn how to be better. So how many grants do you think you applied for before you were successful with one? So many. Probably hundreds. Really? Yeah. Oh, gosh. See, to, to someone who's starting, that might feel really overwhelming and go, "Oh, I don't have the time or the energy, and the rejection's going to hurt."
Mm-hmm. But you're seeing it as, "I'm gonna miss all the shots I don't take-" Mm-hmm ... "and every shot I miss is a learning experience." Exactly. Mm. Amazing. So given that you've made hundreds of shots- Mm ... uh, towards the, the ring. I'm not a sports person, anyone who knows me- Yeah ... knows that. Um, ball sports, into the ring.
Um, which were the shots that you have won? Because clearly- Yeah ... you, you've been successful in some, so I'd love to hear some of those success stories. Um, so there was quite a few. So for Mental Gem, so far we've raised over 200,000, and they're mostly through grants and, um, convertible notes. And a lot of times that you might not think that you qualify for a lot of them.
So one of the ones I wanna highlight is Study Melbourne and the State Library. They have this program called Future Founders, which is specifically for international student alumnis. 'Cause a lot of times when you're on a visa, so as I'm on a visa, I'm on a graduate visa, you think that you might not qualify for a lot of the grants.
But I'm the type of person who goes in and re- reads the fine print, and there are also, um, like the, the university ones, Breakthrough Victoria Fellowship. Actually, the current, the, the round that I was in, there was three of us. All of us were international students, and the other ones are, like, the game-specific ones.
So we didn't actually, uh, get those, but then I, that's one of those that where I went in and re- read the fine print. 'Cause on paper, they're like, "Oh, you have to be a PR. You have to be, like, citizen." But if you set up a company in Victoria and you've been operating for six months- Hmm ... then that actually qualifies you for the, the grants.
So those are some of the things that I've looked into, and I would highly encourage anyone who came as a international student and, and currently alumni and looking into all of these opportunities. And do you have any advice for people that are about to kind of go into that process and maybe start shooting those hoops and- Mm-hmm
knowing that they might miss a few? Like, what advice might you give them? I think it's the have a really thick skin, 'cause obviously you're not gonna get everything. But also learning that sometimes they're not, it's not you. Sometimes there's just, like, maybe it's not the, the right opportunity for you.
Sometimes it's, it's somebody's just much better and, like, you can only try your best, right? And s- so having that resilience and to know that, you know, every failure is kind of like a learning opportunity in how you can improve Yes, and do you, do you also find and observe that some people won't apply for things because they're not ticking every single box?
Mm-hmm. For me it's like, 'cause there's this statistic about, like, for example, a job application, and women tend to want to tick all the boxes. And one of the things that I've learned was a lot of these awards you actually nominate yourself, or you ask other people to nominate you. And, like, I didn't know that 'cause I thought before, before moving to UK, I thought that you have to be, like- Extraordinary
exactly, yeah. But I didn't know, like, oh, like even the Times one- ... like you, you nominate yourself. I was like ... yeah. It's so interesting 'cause, I mean, the people who do get these awards, it doesn't mean they're not extraordinary. Mm-hmm. But I think what you're pointing out is that gap between seeing someone in the media or winning something and not necessarily realizing that they've put themselves forward for it- Exactly
rather than just sitting back and waiting to be recognized. Mm-hmm. And I think this does play a little bit into that, that sort of, the model migrant mindset of- Mm-hmm ... you do the hard work, you wait for someone to look at you and go, "Good job." But actually there's a, a slightly different culture, particularly in entrepreneurship- Mm-hmm
of stepping forward, um, to sort of let people know that you're here. Absolutely, and I think that you have to be your best, s- like, promoter. I, I call it blatant self-promotion. Yeah. But you have to. You have to put yourself out there. Yeah. And this, this is actually something I'm really, um, I'm also passionate about because I think that it's very easy to get knocked down, and people go- Mm-hmm
"Why are you spending your time applying for awards- Mm-hmm ... or trying to get into media when you could be just running your business?" Mm. And I think the, you know, my answer to that is, "Well, maybe I'm just doing both." Yeah, exactly, yeah. Um, so I, I wanna talk now about role models. So you, you've mentioned a few different people that have given you these great snippets of advice in your journey, but also in your own family- Mm-hmm
um, it sounds like you had some good role models. Your mom had her own business. Uh, starting a business is pretty normal in your Filipino Chinese family. Mm-hmm. What else have you, I guess, been able to glean from your family, and how have you been able to recreate that sort of energy here in Melbourne? I think one of the biggest things was just the support from my family 'cause, like, when I told them, like, "Hey, you know, I graduated and, but now I wanna try doing a startup," and because my, because my mom also
I mean, hers is no longer a startup, so she has a Chinese school in the Philippines. Um, but she was, when she was starting out, it was also quite scrappy. Like, it was, it started quite small, but I've seen her journey. Like, now they've been around for probably 15, 16 years, so. And seeing her journey and seeing how she grew that from, like, nothing to, like, something big, that kind of makes it really aspirational for me.
I was like, oh, I... You know, seeing that role model, seeing that there is a path forward. Um, so even though when I'm still, like, building, I'm like, "What am I doing?" Um, but knowing that if you just keep at it and if you don't give up, like, 'cause with a PhD or with, like, startups, it's like there's no- Like, real failure.
Like, nobody's grading you. Um, you just have to show up, and also keep showing up The consistency thing. Exactly. Yeah. And now t- so where, where is the company now? So now you have a team. Mm-hmm. Now you have some funding and backing. Mm-hmm. Where, where are you at now, and what's coming up next with Mental Jam?
So currently we're focused on building our new game, and also building, um, our relationships. So we're, we... The fun thing about startups that's very different from research is you can pivot, and you can pivot really quickly. So, um, we recently, I went, recently went to San Francisco to a games conference, and one of the biggest things that I realized from there is that we wanted to sh- now shift our focus to a B2B2C model instead.
And so right now our focus on, is more on rou- outreach, getting to know, um, schools, seeing how we can focus, um, and working with a younger audience. And that's the fun thing about startups is, like, you can pivot, and then you, um, and you talk to people, and you really learn what the problem is and what's, like, like, you have to have a product that people wanna buy.
Totally. Now I'm gonna pick you up on a little bit of jargon that we just used. Yeah. So B2B2C. Mm-hmm. What does that mean, and how does it actually work in the real world? So B2B2C means that business to business to customer. So our customers will be, uh, school kids, but the one who's paying for them will actually be school or maybe government organizations or local councils.
So you're, like, who you're selling to is actually not the one, like, benefiting directly. Mm-hmm. Tell me a little bit about what the city offers you. Have there been challenges? Are there things that are better than other places now that you've experienced San Francisco and other, other sort of cities?
Mm-hmm. Tell me a bit about what Melbourne means to you as a founder. I feel like the s- just the support that the city of Melbourne has. So one of the other funding that we've gotten was through Study Melbourne and the State Library, through their Future Founders program, and the Start Space at the s- uh, State Library.
And just having, they do, like, a monthly breakfast, and, like, they do lunch and learns. Just seeing that community, and sometimes when you, when I started out with, through my research commercialization, I was a solo founder for a while before I found my team. And when you're a solo founder, you often feel quite isolated, and just having that community of people who are going through the same thing, who are going through similar challenges, but also seeing role models.
You're like, when you see someone and you're like, "Oh, wow, if they can do it, I can do it too." And now you're stepping into the role of being a role model, which is super exciting. Um, now I'm curious, what would be the one thing you wish someone had told you about this journey before you got started? I think just do it, and sometimes you just do it scared.
Um, like you might not know all the answers, but you'll figure it out, and also you don't have to do everything yourself. And I think one of the things that I really appreciated, um, just being in Melbourne, the startup community, the games community, were mentors and really leaning into your different mentors and, like, asking for advice.
So one of our advisors is Kenny Robertson, so she used to work, um, at StartSpace, now she's at Wyndham, and just, like, having these pe- surrounding yourself with these people, um, who are willing to help you. I love that. Just do it, and do it scared if you have to. Exactly. And get the right people around you.
Mm. Uh, Michelle Chen, co-founder of Mental Jam, thank you so much for joining us on the Making It in Melbourne podcast, and, uh, thank you for being a role model for young people today. I hope so. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.
That was Michelle Chen, co-founder of Mental Jam. I really liked how Michelle repackages all those little bits of advice that she's gathered in her journey and generously pays it forward. And who knew that the path to entrepreneurship could sometimes look like a PhD? I'm Jeanette Chea, co-founder of Hex, and I've been building my business in Melbourne for nine years.
Listening to entrepreneurs' stories is one of the favorite things about my job. On the next episode, I talk to Nick La, the co-founder of Weploy. Join me wherever you get your podcasts