4 days ago[Founder’s Real Talk #23] Silicon Valley Bank crisis & Generative AI disruptionHaven’t been writing since we had our board meeting and strategic discussions. It was a good trip to the east coast and a good change of perspectives to get out of the bay area bubble. The SVB crisis definitely caught a lot of people off guard. Crazy to see a…Startup2 min readStartup2 min read
Feb 24[Founder’s Real Talk #22] Building trust with your investorsLast weekend I was hanging out with another founder friend. He’s a first time founder of a seed-stage startup. The startup taps into a massive market with a lot of old-school large enterprises as clients, partners, and strategic investors. The recent economic downturn is hurting the risk appetite of some…Startup2 min readStartup2 min read
Feb 18[Founder’s Real Talk #21] Distributed Work and Async CommunicationOne of the superpowers of our startup is our distributed work model. However, as our team has grown, keeping a balance between async and sync communication has become increasingly difficult. This challenge will only amplify as we continue to scale. We have been actively leaning toward thought leadership pieces on…Venture Capital1 min readVenture Capital1 min read
Feb 3[Founder’s Real Talk #20] Default alive and race to the bottomThe economic downturn has dragged on for almost a year. And the layoff is getting worse and worse. More and more investors have been pushing their portfolio companies to extend their runway — from ~1yr to 2 years, and sometimes to 3 years. The sentiment has changed from “default investible”…Startup2 min readStartup2 min read
Jan 15[Founder’s Real Talk #19] Founder Market FitThis weekend I met with an amazing founder with a fascinating story. She started her startup originally as a non-profit idea and pitched to YC for the first time without even hoping to get in, but just to learn about the process so she has a better chance later. Even…Startup2 min readStartup2 min read
Dec 23, 2022[Founder’s Real Talk #18] Dealing with time zones in distributed workOne of the biggest challenges of distributed work is the time difference. You can try your best to balance sync and async communications with Slack and email replacing meetings, but the time zones are impossible to change — as long as we live on the earth. As a fully distributed…Remote Working4 min readRemote Working4 min read
Dec 12, 2022[Founder’s Real Talk #17] What does ChatGPT mean for the future of AI?This article is translated by ChatGPT from my original Chinese post, and was intentionally not proofread — so I can demonstrate the capability and shortcomings of AI translation at its best. …Chatgpt5 min readChatgpt5 min read
Published in Startup Stash·Dec 4, 2022[Founder’s Real Talk #16] Lessons From The Fallout of FTX And SBFLast Wednesday, SBF spoke at NYT DealBook’s annual conference. He was basically interrogated by Andrew Ross Sorkin. For those not familiar with DealBook or Andrew Ross Sorkin, I highly recommend them. …Ftx4 min readFtx4 min read
Published in Startup Stash·Nov 19, 2022[Founder’s Real Talk #15] Focus on And Appreciate What You HaveThe fiasco continues — Stripe, Twitter, FTX, Meta, Amazon…Tens of thousands of people lost jobs, and those who are lucky enough to keep their jobs (e.g. Twitter) are not having an easier time. Companies are cutting costs to survive the winter, after building an oversized team too aggressively. When the…Startup3 min readStartup3 min read
Published in Startup Stash·Nov 13, 2022[Founder’s Real Talk #14] Board Meeting is Not ScaryLast week, we just had our 2nd board meeting. It was a great session full of strategic discussions, and very short — only 90 mins, but focused. Many of my entrepreneur friends find it heavy when it comes to board meetings and communications. There are a lot of administrative stuff…Startup3 min readStartup3 min read
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