Sarah, the 'Why and What If' Girl

In a lovely, lovely city called Singapore, Sarah lived with her mummy and daddy. And Sarah was a very, very curious child. For everything she would ask, "Why?" and "What if?"

"Why?" and "What if?"

One day she was sleeping and she asked, "Daddy, why does the fan blow out cold air?" Her daddy tried to explain, but then she would always have a second "Why?", and a third "Why?", and a fourth "Why?", and a fifth "Why?".

For example, she asked, "How come the air conditioner blows out cold air?" And her daddy would explain, "Because it's got a compressor. It blows in hot air and the compressor converts the hot air into cold air." Then she would ask, "What is a compressor?" And then daddy would explain, "A compressor is something that does this and this." And then she would have another question. So her questions would never stop. And it was exhausting!

But her daddy and mummy kept trying to keep up, and they taught her how to do research on her own. So when she grew up and was 12 years old, her daddy taught her how to learn things on Google on her own, so that she could type the question and find the answer.

So now she had more and more ability to go and find her answers on her own. Like if she wanted to ask, "How does the car run on the road?", she could do research and find that the car has an engine, specifically an internal combustion engine. When the petrol burns, the fuel goes in there, which makes the engine make the wheels go round and round.

So now, whenever she had questions, she could go and do her own research. And then if she had more questions, she would ask her daddy. But she was a curious child. For every question, there was a "Why?", and then there was a "What if?". So people used to call her the "Why and What If Girl."

Then she grew up, she studied hard, and she got a job in a big bank.

One day, she had gone shopping. She had gone to Bangkok. And in Bangkok, she went to this place called Chatuchak Market. She was doing shopping there and she saw these beautiful, beautiful stalls of all these people—poor village people—selling handicrafts and clothes. They had beautiful necklaces with intricate designs, and they were selling clothes with a lot of design and color. Very nice clothes.

And they were very, very cheap. She saw people haggling with them, asking them to reduce the rates. Even though they were so cheap, people were getting them to reduce the rates because people who come to these types of markets always want to negotiate and bring down the prices.

But she kept looking, and they were so beautiful. And then she asked some of these people, "How do you sell?" They said, "You know, we make these things at home. The whole family works on these things, whether it's a necklace or jewelry or clothes or handicrafts. And then we bring it here, and we sell whatever we can here, and then we make a little bit of money."

So she said, "Wow, these are such beautiful things. Why don't we sell them on the internet so that the whole world can see? And people from all over the world can buy it." But they said, "We don't know how to sell, you know. We don't know what the internet is."

So she said, "Okay, what I'm going to do is make a giant, giant shop on the internet. It's going to be called a marketplace, where all these people don't need to do anything. I will send somebody, and that person will take all the pictures of things that they sell, put it up on my website with all the nice descriptions. I will make the whole website so that people from Singapore, from Thailand, from Indonesia, from Malaysia can come to my website and buy."

And then she did this. She put in a lot of effort. She got people who made the website, they made the design, and she made a very beautiful, beautiful shop on the internet.

And then lots of people started coming to the website and started buying. And you know, she named her website "What If and Why?"

After that, that became a very, very popular website. Hundreds and thousands of people came and bought things. And that way she was helping the people because they were getting all these nice items, like clothes and handicrafts, at a cheap price.

And then all the people who were selling handicrafts didn't have to go to this silly market and sell it to people who would negotiate with them. They could sell it at a much higher price. Earlier they were selling for $10, now they could sell it for $20. And she would sell it for $30 because she also needed to make a profit.

And people in Singapore, Indonesia, the whole world could buy these things which they couldn't buy before. So she had helped everybody. She helped the sellers. She helped herself because she made a very big business and she hired a lot of people. And she also helped all the people who were buying because they could not get these things otherwise.

And she built a very, very successful company that way. And she did all this because she was a curious child and she always asked, "Why?" and "What if?".