Category: Start-ups

Start-ups

Axiomatic Thoughts on the AI Hype

AI is all the “rage” lately and the noise ratio is extremely high out there. A cool head is needed. Here I would like to ZOOM OUT and lay out some high-level thoughts/questions, hoping they may serve as “axioms” to further think through the practical actions and directions for start-ups and investing.

  • AI hype is over-rated in the near term and under-rated in the long term. At least we can all agree that this time is more tangible and value-adding than the hype around Crypto, Web3, and Clubhouse. Get-shit-done-ethos and continuous creative tinkering will see the AI experience improve from good enough/a toy to irreplaceable workflow tools for knowledge workers.
Continue reading “Axiomatic Thoughts on the AI Hype” →
Entrepreneurship, Personal Leadership, Start-ups

Saying Yes: from “Indefinite Optimist” to “Definite Optimist”

Saying “No” vs. Saying “Yes”

In 2016, I left a seemingly stable corporate America job and took the opportunity to embark on a journey to search for my next life adventure. However, for someone who had just sunk $200K into an MBA, I knew that I had some of that “indefinite optimist”  syndrome (according to Peter Tiel) left in me – “an indefinite optimist thinks the future will be better but does not know exactly how, so he expects to profit from the future but does not see any reason to design it concretely.” One product of “indefinite optimism” is a lack of ability to make clear decisions in the face of too many choices, a situation that often mires our MBA types. The only antidote is to know what one wants exactly and how to get it. In practice, it means having the courage and the fortitude to say No to many things. It’s not easy but life has few shortcuts – I want to build (or help build) a great company in the driver or a major passenger seat! Continue reading “Saying Yes: from “Indefinite Optimist” to “Definite Optimist”” →

Entrepreneurship, Start-ups

Didi & Uber China: End of the Car Hailing War, End of Pride and Prejudice

China's TrailblazersOn the heels of Didi announcing the deal to acquire Uber China, The Economist reflected on some of Western media’s historical pride and prejudice against Chinese internet firms in its cover article – “China’s tech trailblazers”. China’s internet market has many unique characteristics – the Great Firewall, government censorship, unique and complex culture, and some local firm’s unconventional (or highly questionable) competitive tactics. To many Western media, it is easy to conclude that local firms flourished because of protectionism. To me, this inference is more level-one thinking. Would the competitive outcome be different without the above constraints against foreign firms? The answer is No. Let’s first tally the scores of some of the well-known internet wars: Continue reading “Didi & Uber China: End of the Car Hailing War, End of Pride and Prejudice” →

Entrepreneurship, Start-ups

A Mental Model for “Cold Launching” Start-ups (Four Launch Modes)

Disclaimer: I cannot claim originality to the framework used here but owe it to Cao Zheng, a former core member of Baidu’s business analysis group, 4399.com chief architect, and a current gaming entrepreneur from China. He is an avid thinker/ blogger on the internet business, from whom I have learned much (link to Cao Zheng’s public account on WeChat “caoz的梦呓”)

After more than half a year in incubation, a friend recently launched the beta version of his marketplace app for people to rent or buy things from people nearby, yes, the old “neighborhood sharing economy” concept again (aka. using app to borrow a power drill from your neighbor). I have served as an adviser to him prior to the launch. During our conversations, one counterfactual I constantly used to push the discussion was all the neighborhood sharing apps that have struggled to gain traction before, which is well documented by this article on FastCompany – The “Sharing Economy” is Dead, and We Killed It.

“Everything made sense except that nobody gives a sh**. They go buy [a drill]. Or they just bang a screwdriver through the wall.”

Continue reading “A Mental Model for “Cold Launching” Start-ups (Four Launch Modes)” →

Entrepreneurship, Start-ups

Demystifying Bitcoin/Blockchain: How it Actually Works

Note: This my second blog post on Bitcoin/Blockchain. My previous post provided an overview of Bitcoin/Blockchain and some brief commentary on the evolution of its applications, as well as its implications on securities trading. Of course, the potential impact is beyond just payment or exchanging non-physical assets. However, in order to truly appreciate the potential and shortcomings of Blockchain, one has to go back to the origin (Bitcoin and Blockchain were born together as one) and understand how the Bitcoin system works, ACTUALLY.  Only then can one cut through the fog and begin to tell what is truth and what is a myth, and start to appreciate the complexities. Inevitably, this Blog runs the risk of oversimplifying things and may appear naive to the true Bitcoin experts. But for the novice and non-techies, this is where we start diving into the rabbit hole… Continue reading “Demystifying Bitcoin/Blockchain: How it Actually Works” →

Entrepreneurship, Start-ups

Prologue to “Demystifying Bitcoin/Blockchain”

Note: This is a prologue to my next post “Demystifying Bitcoin/Blockchain: How it Actually Works.” I will also be exploring the brilliance and short-comings of Bitcoin/Blockchain, from the perspective of someone who did not understand it three months ago. Special thanks to Andreas Antonopoulos,Pascal Bouvier, Vitalik Buterin, and Simon Taylor, whom I have not met but whose intellectual generosity has accelerated and deepened my understanding of the subject.

The post could also be found on Linkedin Pulse.

Overview of Bitcoin/Blockchain – Where it All Began:

Invented in 2008, Bitcoin is not just a currency or a payment system. Andreas Antonopoulos, author of “Mastering Bitcoin: Unlocking Digital Cryptocurrency,” provided a well articulated definition:

It is “a network-centric protocol and platform for recording [and transferring] ownership and trust on a peer-to-peer basis.”

Blockchain is quite topical recently given hyped up interests by financial institutions; it was also featured on the October 31st cover of The Economist. However, Blockchain by itself is just a boring ledger distributed or replicated among all the participants in a P2P network, it is only with the protocol/incentives (in purely mathematical forms) integrated into the Bitcoin system that Blockchain becomes a powerful trust machine. One cannot understand Blockchain and its full potential without understanding how Bitcoin system as a whole works – Blockchain is Bitcoin. Continue reading “Prologue to “Demystifying Bitcoin/Blockchain”” →