My story begins inside the confusing cocktail that is high school.

I attended a conservative boys grammar school in Auckland, New Zealand. It was the type of school to confiscate phones and dish out detentions like tacos.

16 years old and without much love for instruction or rules, my grades already lived in the neighbourhood of rock bottom. Unhelpful was the fact that I had to skip an entire semester of school to tend a broken heart (this was after I got dumped by my first girlfriend).

As a last ditch effort to stop me from dropping out, my parents sent me on a flight to visit my aunt in Beijing, where I would stay for over a month. One morning as I strolled through a ‘Hutong’ (traditional Chinese alleyway), I found myself inside one of those cosy hole-in-the-wall coffee shops, stuffed with books, smelling of roasted nuts. Beside me was a couple who sat next to each other reading. Behind me was an old man and his dog. Everyone looked at peace doing their own thing, accompanied only by the trickles of conversation and the odd fly that would enter the room, bumping against the windows.

That was the first time I felt the urge to open a book and read. It was then that I realised how interesting literature, philosophy, history and economics could be outside of a classroom. Who knew studying could be fun?

When I returned to New Zealand, I told my parents that I would go back to school. I thought, hm, homework wouldn’t be so bad if I could hang out with my friends in different coffee shops.

From that point on, each weekend became time for study, coffee & friends. Rinse and repeat. In fact, I would ‘study, coffee & friends’ so hardcore that I’d end up graduating Harvard. I also had a short gig as a London investment banker before quitting to cafe-hop across some 50 countries, sleeping in rented cars, showering at YMCA. To pay my bills, I would tutor English online, teaching one student to begin, and as word spread little by little, over 500. At 23 years old, I incorporated my first company and successfully scaled its services in tutoring and education tourism.

For a time I was at peace with just creating impact as a traditional ‘edupreneur’, but never did I feel true love and passion for my work. It was on a snowy milky day when it suddenly occurred to me why: growing up I never really had a tutor. All this time my one and true sensei was ‘study, coffee & friends’. I myself wasn’t sold on the vision that I was supposed to sell.

Infinite knowledge can be found within libraries and on Google. The world doesn’t lack learning and teaching. What the world lacks is motivation:

Study, coffee & friends.

That had been it all along. People can accomplish great things when they are left free and motivated by their environment. Education shouldn’t be top-down instruction - it should be bottom-up exploration. The educator shouldn’t be obsessed over what we learn, but where we learn.

That was how O3 was born - as a ‘third place’ in between fun and work. It’s got the dna of both a cafe and a workspace, like a perfectly co-workified starbucks. It’s got a motivating community so you’ll never be lonely. Best of all, it’s got enough positive reinforcement to make you more productive and creative.

Even as I write this article, I am sitting inside our flagship O3 space in Newmarket, Auckland, due to open its doors to the public in a week’s time. In front of me is a warm cup of coffee, brewed with the O3 blend. Cigarettes after Sex is playing on the speaker. It’s my favourite band. I’m surrounded by all kinds of books, art, ideas. Engraved on the concrete wall are the following letters: Study, coffee & friends.

My dream is to create a more motivated world. Never have I felt more motivated. The fire inside me glows a little brighter, and its embers trickle from my chest down towards all five of my fingertips.

O3 Founder & CEO - Luca Yang