Lei Xu

Dario Amodei Is the Most Important Voice in AI Right Now

Sat, 21 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Dario Amodei is the most important voice in AI right now. His new essay is honest about the risks without trying to scare you, and optimistic without ignoring what could go wrong. Long read, grab a coffee, but worth reading every word.

Dario Amodei — The Adolescence of Technology

Claude Code Will Kill More SaaS Products Than Any Startup Will

Thu, 19 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

I think Claude Code will kill more SaaS products than any startup will. Especially paired with a Max plan ($100-200/mo).

There's a fundamental difference between production and personal AI use cases. Production is few problem types, repeated at scale, where you optimize tokens and minimize cost. Personal is dozens of different problems, none repeating. The shape of the problem is completely different — you need raw intelligence and flexibility, not efficiency.

Claude Max plan is incredible. One of the most powerful models available in Opus 4.6, full command line access, browser automation, easy to extend with agents and skills. It's the best personal AI assistant orchestrator I've seen. A lot of the SaaS tools people pay for — automation, integrations, simple workflows — Claude Code just does. No vendor, no extra subscription, no UI to learn. Just describe what you want.

I Spent the Weekend Actually Using AI Agents

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Everyone's debating whether AI agents are safe. I spent the weekend actually using OpenClaw.

Moltbook leaked 1.5M API keys. Agent security is a real and growing problem. The takes are valid. But the discourse has become so focused on what could go wrong that we're missing what's already going right.

I set up an agent on my spare Mac this weekend. Within 48 hours it had:

Researched 39 daycares for my kid (emails, reviews, Google Sheet)
Helped a friend complete their online traffic school
Drafted a hotel negotiation for my upcoming trip
Worked through tasks asynchronously while I was AFK

The combination of browser and CLI access is magical. What used to take a team of people doing grunt work is now a conversation away.

But the part that actually blew my mind was the self-improvement. The agent needed a Google Places integration it didn't have. So it found the skill, installed it, and kept going. PDF parsing? Same thing. Like watching someone learn new abilities in real time.

There's a scene in The Matrix where Trinity downloads the ability to fly a helicopter in seconds. "Can you fly that thing?" Three seconds later, she's at the controls.

That's not science fiction anymore. That's my laptop.

The real story with agents isn't the hype or the security drama. It's that the productivity gain is so large it's hard to explain without sounding like you're exaggerating. Tasks that took hours happen in minutes. Research that needed a team happens while you sleep.

We're living in the future. It just looks like a guy talking to his laptop.

Backlog Is Dead

Mon, 09 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Backlog is dead (at least for me).

This is two foundry pods working in parallel on my Linear issues. Agents that don't step on each other's toes, and carefully merges their work.

<figure> <video src="/videos/foundry-demo.mp4" autoplay loop muted playsinline></video> <figcaption>Two Foundry pods working in parallel on Linear issues</figcaption> </figure>

The bottleneck isn't doing the work anymore — it's deciding what to do, system thinking, and thinking about the outcome. And the model is still the worst that they'll ever be.

What an exciting time to build! 🚀

I Went for a Run. By the Time I Got Home, My Features Were Already Built.

Mon, 02 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

I went for a run last weekend. Had some feature ideas. Dictated them into my phone. By the time I got home, they'd already been built.

Wow.

That moment keeps reshaping how I think about the work. The job isn't to write the code anymore. The job is to design the loop and guardrails so agents can do the work while you're away.

99% autonomous and 100% autonomous are vastly different. 100% autonomous means you can have infinite parallelization. 99% means human is the blocker.

I've been exploring what it means to work asynchronously. Foundry is my experiment this week — an open-source dev loop inspired by Ralph:

Runs autonomously to build in your repo
Uses Linear as a state machine
Collaborates by claiming tickets
Researches → plans → implements → validates
Handles branches and merging

It's early — I'm certainly not running this on production code yet. But I'm learning a lot about what guardrails actually matter.

How are you scaling yourself with background agents — async, AFK, overnight? Curious what's working.

The Small Team Advantage

Tue, 12 Aug 2025 00:00:00 GMT

There's a recurring pattern in technology that I think is underappreciated: the best products tend to come from the smallest teams.

Not always. There are categories where scale is the product — cloud infrastructure, search engines, large language models. But for the vast majority of software, the optimal team size is shockingly small, and getting smaller.

What small teams actually do differently

At Workstream, some of our best features were built by two or three people who understood the problem deeply. Not because we couldn't hire more people, but because adding people would have made the work worse.

Small teams have a communication advantage that compounds. Two people don't need a project manager, a standup, or a Jira board. They can hold the entire problem in their heads simultaneously. When you add a third person, you've tripled the number of communication paths. By the time you have eight people, there are 28 possible pairs who might need to sync, and inevitably you start building process to manage the complexity that the team size itself created.

I watched this happen at Google. Brilliant engineers spending 40% of their time in meetings about the work, and maybe 60% doing the work. The meetings were "necessary" — but only because the team was large enough to need them.

The AI inflection point

What makes this especially relevant now is that AI is dramatically expanding what a small team can do. A developer with good tools and AI assistance can build in a weekend what used to take a team of five a quarter.

This doesn't mean we need fewer people. It means we need fewer people per initiative. A company of 50 can now pursue 25 ideas in parallel instead of 5. The constraint shifts from headcount to taste and judgment — knowing which of those 25 ideas is worth pursuing.

This is a profound shift. For the last two decades, the startup playbook has been: find product-market fit, then scale the team to capture the market. What if the new playbook is: find product-market fit, then scale the tooling so the same small team can capture the market?

What this means for founders

If you're building something now, my honest advice: resist the urge to hire ahead of the work. Keep the team as small as possible for as long as possible. Invest heavily in tooling, AI, and automation. Let each person own a large surface area.

The advantage of being small isn't just cost efficiency. It's that small teams make better decisions. They can change direction in an afternoon. They don't need consensus because everyone already has context. They can ship something on Tuesday that they thought of on Monday.

At YC, the advice was always "do things that don't scale." I'd add a corollary: stay small enough that you can do things fast. Speed is the real advantage of small teams. Not just speed of execution, but speed of learning. You ship, you observe, you adjust. The cycle time is days, not quarters.

The uncomfortable truth

There's an uncomfortable implication here for the industry. If small teams with good tools can build what large teams used to build, a lot of organizational complexity in tech companies is not just unnecessary — it's actively harmful. The meetings, the layers, the roadmap reviews, the alignment sessions — these exist because the teams are big, and the teams are big because... well, because that's how it's been done.

I'm not arguing that every company should be five people. But I think the default assumption should be smaller, and you should have to justify every additional person as a multiplier rather than an addition.

The companies that figure this out first will have a structural advantage that's very hard to compete with. They'll be faster, more coherent, and — counterintuitively — more ambitious, because small teams that move fast tend to attempt things that large teams would committee into oblivion.

Hiring Is Broken for the People Who Need It Most

Thu, 20 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMT

When we started Workstream, one of the first things we did was visit restaurants, gas stations, and retail stores to watch how managers actually hire people.

What we saw was remarkable. A general manager at a fast-casual restaurant, already working 50+ hours a week, manually sorting through paper applications between the lunch and dinner rush. Texting candidates from a personal phone. Losing track of who they'd already talked to. Scheduling interviews on sticky notes.

This wasn't a rare case. This was the system. Across America, the businesses that employ the most people — restaurants, healthcare facilities, retail chains, logistics companies — were running their hiring on a patchwork of paper, personal phones, and sheer willpower.

The invisible workforce

There are roughly 80 million hourly workers in the United States. That's about 60% of the total workforce. They stock shelves, care for patients, prepare food, drive deliveries, and keep the physical world functioning. During the pandemic, we called them essential. And they are.

Yet when you look at the hiring software landscape, nearly all of it was built for knowledge workers. LinkedIn, Greenhouse, Lever — these are excellent tools designed for a world where candidates have resumes, email addresses, and the time to sit through a multi-stage interview process.

Hourly workers live in a different reality. They apply on their phones, often while on a bus or between shifts. They might not have a traditional resume. They need to start working this week, not in four to six weeks after a recruiter screens them. Time-to-hire isn't a metric to optimize — it's the difference between making rent or not.

What building for this world taught me

Building software for hourly hiring taught me a few things that apply far beyond our product.

Speed is respect. When someone applies for a job and doesn't hear back for a week, that's not just a bad candidate experience. It's disrespectful of their time and situation. They might be choosing between three offers, all of which came from whoever texted them back first. We built our product around the idea that a manager should be able to move an applicant from application to offer in hours, not weeks. The technology to do this isn't particularly complex. The insight is that it matters.

Mobile-first isn't a feature, it's a worldview. We learned early that most of our applicants don't have laptops. Their phone is their primary computing device. Designing for mobile isn't about making the same desktop experience fit on a smaller screen. It's about reimagining the process entirely around how people actually live. Short forms. Text-based communication. One-tap actions.

Simplicity is the hardest product requirement. The managers using our product are busy. They don't want to learn software. They want to fill an open shift. Every feature we add has to earn its complexity. If it doesn't make the core job faster or easier, it's noise. This discipline — the relentless question of "does this make the hiring manager's life simpler?" — has been the most valuable product principle I've ever followed.

Why this matters beyond hiring

I think the pattern we've seen in hourly hiring is playing out across many industries. There are enormous populations of workers — in healthcare, logistics, trades, food service — who have been underserved by technology because they don't fit the Silicon Valley archetype of a user.

They don't have time for onboarding tutorials. They don't read documentation. They don't file support tickets. If the product doesn't work immediately and obviously, they simply won't use it, and you'll never get a second chance.

Building for these users makes you a better product builder, period. It forces you to strip away every unnecessary step, every clever-but-confusing interaction, every assumption that your user is sitting at a desk with time to spare.

The next wave of important software companies, I believe, will be built for the workers who've been overlooked. Not because it's charitable — because it's a massive market that's been poorly served, and the companies that figure out how to serve it will build something durable.

Why You Might Build Your Start-up in China over Silicon Valley 🇨🇳🇺🇸

Tue, 22 Aug 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Location matters. There's a reason that talent from across the world congregated in the 50-mile stretch of land spanning San Jose to San Francisco. (You might be interested to check out Steve Blank's Secret History of Silicon Valley, a wonderful talk on how this place came to be.) In this decade, though, China and its tech centers — Beijing and Shenzhen — are emerging as the Valley's counter-weight in Asia. Different and full of opportunities. Looking forward 20 years, China will be an epicenter of technology, no doubt about it.

Personally, my next big decision is where to pursue my next venture — Silicon Valley or China. Through this lens, I embarked on an 8-week trip to China, meeting with friends, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and investors across Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong. I wanted to learn from their first-hand experience what it's like to do a business — do a tech business — in China. Some of these are native-born Chinese; some are Chinese returnees; others are expats.

These are my findings.

<div class="image-grid"> <div class="image-row"> <figure style="flex: 0.75"><img src="/images/china-startup/01-minigolf.jpg" alt="Mini-golf on the rooftop of a startup" /></figure> <figure style="flex: 1.78"><img src="/images/china-startup/02-catered-lunch.jpg" alt="Catered lunch at a startup" /></figure> </div> <div class="image-row"> <figure style="flex: 0.75"><img src="/images/china-startup/03-office-park.jpg" alt="A startup office park in Shenzhen" /></figure> <figure style="flex: 1.33"><img src="/images/china-startup/04-cafe-coworking.jpg" alt="A cafe and coworking space in Beijing" /></figure> </div> <figcaption>It's not too different. 1) mini-golf on the rooftop of a startup; 2) catered lunch; 3) a startup office park in Shenzhen; 4) a cafe / coworking space in Beijing</figcaption> </div>

For a perspective on how it's like to live in China, check out my previous post: Where Technology Meets Culture: Week 1 of Living in Beijing.

China and its businesses are actively embracing technology

First, macro trends.

Chinese enterprises are wholly embracing technology, across industries. It's happening across industries, no matter if it's a traditional or state-owned enterprise, or even how knowledgeable company leadership is about technology.

It's widely accepted that adopting technology — especially artificial intelligence — will "upgrade" the company.

Of course, there are gaps in understanding technology across traditional industries and the tech industry, let alone true understanding of AI (which is used more or less synonymously as big data in China). This leads to partnership opportunities, whether by leveraging existing solution such as e-commerce, social networks, or by creating new solutions. There is particular appeal in Silicon Valley technology based on conversations I've had with management and investors.

Granted, many of these planned partnerships may be shallow and more of a PR stunt in the near-term, but the foresight and determination of a country and its businesses to up-level and willingness to embrace technology cannot be underestimated. The central government is hugely supportive, and AI now plays a prominent part of the government's current five-year plan (Economist article link).

<figure class="image-wide"> <img src="/images/china-startup/05-fourth-industrial-revolution.png" alt="Industrial applications per the Fourth Industrial Revolution" /> <figcaption>Industrial applications per the Fourth Industrial Revolution, just one area where traditional industry is eager to adopt digital technology to "upgrade". Source: <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/06/leadership-challenges-of-the-fourth-industrial-revolution/">World Economic Forum</a></figcaption> </figure>

In the near-term, this presents ample opportunities for creative product managers to bridge business needs with tech solutions.

AI is white-hot

New York Times posted this in a May 2015 article: (link)

"It's a race in the new generation of computing," said James Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "The difference is that China seems to think it's a race and America doesn't."

I think that sums up the attitude in China towards AI. If you think Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Deep Learning are overused words in the valley, try going to a business meeting in Beijing, or even just turn on the TV. True, compared to tech people in the valley, many people probably barely (or not even) understand how it works, but that doesn't diminish its influence. China is seeing AI as the first tech arena where it can actually compete head-to-head with Silicon Valley.

And folks in Beijing may just have an advantage in language. Think about it this way: most engineers in Beijing can easily understand and have access to English-language papers on arxiv. How many engineers in the valley can/will/want to get access to research and discussions made in Chinese in Beijing? In 2017, there were more accepted papers about AI by Chinese authors than American authors.

<figure> <img src="/images/china-startup/06-facial-recognition.png" alt="Facial recognition used to dispense toilet paper at public restrooms" /> <figcaption>Less than glamorous, but real application. Facial recognition used to dispense toilet paper at public restrooms, so people don't take the whole roll.</figcaption> </figure>

Talent, talent, talent

Hiring is hard. That's almost universal. It's true in China too.

First, let's talk demand. Take this number: 15,000 companies are formed every day in China. Just think about the demand for talent!

Then, let's talk supply. Yes, China has a lot of people and a lot of college graduates, domestic and returnees from study/experience abroad. However, skills vary. While the education system is reforming and graduates are more and more capable, there is still a gap in the average graduate's ability to work independently and creatively. It takes time to find a qualified candidate.

Finally, competition. For a startup to out-compete BAT (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent), they have to offer the whole package: growth opportunity, equity, and higher salaries. Many people simply don't care about stock options and prefer cash-in-hand. Compared to valley where entrepreneurial engineers will sacrifice salary to join a startup, the culture in China trends conservative. Here's a glimpse at the comp levels (Zhihu link).

All these lead to the fact that competition for talent is fierce. Some of the best talents are poached, oftentimes very aggressively, from other companies. While the best (or most connected) startups are able to build teams full of returnees and top talents, others are less fortunate.

Startup culture is driven by a reality of needs

To understand startup culture, we need to look deeper at the motivation for the current generation of 20- and 30-somethings.

Lecture 1 of YC Startup School (YouTube link) tells, essentially, "don't do a startup for the money" because joining a "Facebook" in the early stage leads to much better financial outcomes. But the calculus behind that is different in China.

We need to talk about housing. Let's do some back of the envelope math. An average "starter home" costs about $1MM both in San Francisco and in Beijing.

<div class="image-grid"> <div class="image-row"> <figure style="flex: 0.75"><img src="/images/china-startup/07-beijing-buildings.jpg" alt="Nice looking buildings in Beijing" /></figure> <figure style="flex: 0.75"><img src="/images/china-startup/08-rush-hour-subway.jpg" alt="Rush hour subway in Beijing" /></figure> <figure style="flex: 1.34"><img src="/images/china-startup/09-beijing-condo.jpg" alt="A condo inside 4th ring, 2br for US$2M" /></figure> </div> <figcaption>Beijing, where making a living is a real concern. 1) these nice looking buildings are out of most people's range. 2) rush hour subway. 3) a <a href="https://bj.lianjia.com/ershoufang/101101947306.html">condo inside 4th ring</a>, 2br for US$2M</figcaption> </div>

In a country where housing prices are stratospherically high, many young adults simply can't afford a home in their lifetime. Let's do some simple math. Couple this reality with the rags-to-riches stories of Alibaba, JD, Xiaomi — essentially all the tech giants — that are showcased in spotlight, many entrepreneurial folks decide for themselves that the only way to make it is by starting a company. One may say the economics of it forced their hands.

And this is the culture in which the tech ecosystem lives in.

And to talk about culture of tech companies, we have to talk about the culture of the people in general. The culture of a company to an extent is dictated by the culture of its customers, and to serve the 1.3 billion local Chinese customers, a company needs to appreciate the local culture. Put in product terms, that's appreciating the local user behaviors and adapting your product to it, rather than expecting your users to change so they can use your product. When first introduced, Uber was credit card only. In a cash society where only the elite had credit cards (this was pre-mobile payments), Uber was relegated to only the white collar workers and foreigners, while Didi built a strong local base.

Differences in customer expectations.

Western infrastructure is developed. After all, it's called "developed" nations for a reason. China's is not. That presents opportunities to perceptive eyes. But there's a common string among everyone that capitalizes on those opportunities — they're ingrained in the local culture. Just as you don't expect a Chinese student who went study abroad in the US for college to found the next Facebook, you also can't expect a foreigner, expat, or recent returnee to found the next disruptive company in China. Not alone, at least. The founding team needs to have local context.

One example I've seen is that SaaS companies targeting SMB needs to have a local, offline sales (not customer success) team. What?! Because local consumers expect the guidance for certain services to be done in-person. After all, they're used to it, because/and labor is so cheap.

Blending Silicon Valley and China

More and more Chinese nationals are coming back from the US (and in particular from Silicon Valley) to start companies. The companies they found is a blend between the Valley and China.

The Valley is often seen as a place of technologists, idealists, and purists. It's accepted when it comes to hard tech, algorithms, and emerging technology (AI, VR/AR, biotech, etc.), Silicon Valley is the place to go. The Valley is also seen as a place where people are chasing idealistic dreams of "changing the world," where people do things the proper way.

On the other hand, entrepreneurs see China as a place that's real, down to earth, and practical. People care about the application of technology; as a result some of the best product managers grew up in China. Founders and investors care more about cashflow and making a profitable company, and are less patient for pay-off in the long run.

Culture adjustment takes 18 months

A founder needs to respect the reality of operating a company in China. On average, founders have told me it took them 1–2 years after they moved from the US to China to fully appreciate and adapt to the macro culture.

The best companies run product and engineering like a Silicon Valley company, things like agile, design, collaboration, fail fast, etc. They run operations like a pure blood Chinese company, knowing how to handle government, local partnerships, and veer into the gray areas as needed.

Operations is highly efficient

If there's one word I've heard over and over that describes running a tech business in China is efficiency. Capital efficiency, time efficiency, resource efficiency. Translated differently, it's the rallying cry of startups: move fast, and be scrappy.

Labor costs are cheaper.

This is true both for skilled labor and unskilled labor. A senior engineer at Baidu makes a base of ~US$40k (source), about a quarter of the costs in Mountain View. If fundraising in the US, that means the same capital now affords you many more engineers.

A popular myth is that local talent isn't as "good" as US ones, but think about it: China is a country of 1.3 billion people, and a country that highly values education (and that's an understatement). Many graduates go on to study abroad to get a BS, MS, or PhD. There are talents, but just like people anywhere, you have to hire and manage them well.

<figure> <img src="/images/china-startup/10-bike-sharing.jpg" alt="On-the-ground logistics team of bike sharing companies" /> <figcaption>On-the-ground logistics team of bike sharing companies</figcaption> </figure>

Having access to cheaper unskilled labor can potentially make an even bigger difference in how a startup operates. Many tasks may not need to be automated at an early stage, but rather handled by people. This allows a company to be more nimble and flexible. It may also directly factor into the business model. To an extent, bike sharing works in China because Mobike/ofo can afford to hire on-the-ground operations team to organize bike parking at every subway station, and shuttle bikes around.

9–9–6 / 9–9–7

This stands for "9am-9pm, 6/7 days a week." It's the modus operandi for most early stage startups in China, both founders and early employees. It's possible because of a generation of young, hungry workers wanting to make something out of their lives.

Something magical happens with this round-the-clock cadence. A company moves fast, either iterating quickly towards success, or fails quickly. Either way, no time is wasted; a year feels in China feels like many years elsewhere. Time efficient.

💩 or get off the pot

Putting it altogether, it makes the case that building a company in China is actually very efficient. A VC once told me that you can generally tell whether a company is going to make it based on just one month after investment.

This is seen time and time again. While a Kickstarter project may be seen as fast if it ships within 6 months, a hardware project is considered late if it doesn't ship after 2. Each successive round of funding is expected to take place after 6 months.

(As an aside, when someone first told me about bike sharing being the hottest thing in China last year, I acknowledged her intellectually but didn't think much about it. It blew my mind seeing it and trying it in person. Goes to say how much of, literally, legwork is needed to truly understand a market.)

SaaS is still in its early days

The biggest tech companies in China have all been B2C businesses, BATJ, gaming companies, etc. It makes sense — there's a huge consumer base and consumption demand. However, it was curious to note the absence of B2B SaaS companies, which constitute a large part of Silicon Valley's ecosystem.

My conclusion after many discussions boils down to this: China hasn't yet built a habit for buying software. Whereas in the US, people and businesses are happy paying for the value delivered by software, China is coming off two decades of rapid tech adoption marked by rampant piracy.

Today's decision makers aren't used to paying for a purely digital software without a human touch — SaaS in the vein of Calendly, Gusto, Pipedrive. They didn't build this habit as consumers, and similarly SaaS never became a trend in the business world. An interesting analogy is in gaming. China is the #1 market for digital games, but it all comes from in-game purchases. People are more willing to buy things in-game (services) vs. the game itself (software).

However, this is changing. The youth in this generation is growing up in an environment of digital payments, and are starting to be introduced to subscription models. For example QQ, iQiyi, and Tencent Video all have VIP member options, similar to Spotify and Netflix. This generation's consumer habits will eventually filter into the workplace.

Increasingly, startups are coming to fill this space. A CRM offering Xiaoshouyi has raised over US$50MM. There's a Google Drive clone in Shimo. Alibaba's DingDing is a successful Slack clone. It's only a matter of time before the market of willing-to-pay businesses expands.

Conclusion

One thing I'll conclude with. This trip showed me how blinded about China. It's no longer simply chasing after the US; rather, China and the US have forked in their developments. If you're at all interested about China, I'd urge you to look out, pay attention, and visit if you can. It's an exciting world there.

Thanks to everyone that I spoke to for their generous sharing of time and insights, and letting me have an inside glimpse into the market.

If there's anything I missed our got wrong, please let me know in a reply. If you like the post, please show your ♥ :)

Startups Are Simple. Just Get Two Things Right.

Thu, 03 Aug 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Startups are hard.

Yet startups are also simple.

Don't overthink it.

<figure> <img src="/images/startups-are-simple-just-get-two-things-right/01-zhenresidence-cohort-8-zhenfund.jpg" alt="ZhenResidence Cohort 8 + ZhenFund team" /> <figcaption>ZhenResidence Cohort 8 + ZhenFund team</figcaption> </figure>

Thanks to ZhenFund 真格基金 (the world's largest angel fund, based in Beijing), I got to participate in an EIR program called ZhenResidence 真驿站 over the past 10 days. We were led by ZhenFund founder and New Oriental (NYSE:EDU) co-founder Victor Wang on a tour of 14 portfolio companies in Beijing, chatting in earnest with CEOs and founders about their stories and businesses.

It's been an amazing and intense experience. As the program comes to an end, I realized that despite all the complexity of a starting a business, being a founder is quite simple. It boils down to two things.

First, people.

People is everything.

Throughout the program, we heard heartfelt founding stories from 14 founders across industries. Some are first time founders; some already went public. Most are in tech; some are not (e.g. restaurants). The single factor they all explicitly attributed their success to is having team of trusted co-founders and employees.

靠谱 — to be exact. That's the personal characteristic these founders sought for in their partners. Translated loosely, it means people that are trusted, reliable. These are the people that you're going to charge into battle with. You better be damned sure that you can count on them. One co-founder described his CEO as this: "from this day on, my life is yours; let's get this done."

There are different ways of finding such partners. The most obvious is people that you've known for a long time, whether through school, work, or as friends. Then, there is the friends-of-friends approach. The least recommended is through so-called co-founder dating service. What you're looking for is shared values — which is built over a lifetime of experience. Values only manifest themselves through small details and over time.

从来是从人品好的人里选能力，因为能力可以培训

I've always picked people first for their character, and then for their ability. Because ability can be trained.

After filtering for trust, values, and character, the next most important thing is learning ability. Many may think that industry experience, technical knowledge, or education are crucial. They're important, sure, and may be even more important in some industries. However as attributes for co-founders, raw intelligence, genuine curiosity, and a supreme ability to learn are even more so. There are an infinite number of problems to solve throughout the journey — far more than a single person's prior experience can support. A founding team without the ability to quickly learn and adapt will be quickly left in the dust.

So here's my humble hierarchy of founder must-haves:

Trusted > Values / Character > Intelligence + Learning Ability > Education / Experience / Knowledge

This isn't a secret; in fact it's probably common knowledge. But this trip had left me with a much deeper, personal impression its importance.

Then, direction.

Direction is about knowing what you want to do, and how you want to do it.

There are different levels of having a direction for your business. At the most basic level, it's about deciding to work in a certain industry or on a certain technology. More specifically, it becomes solving a particular pain point. Quantified, it becomes a specific set of goals to aim for. And holistically, it's planning out the business, in addition to the product.

Technology < Pain Point < Product < Business

While it may be daunting, every founder need to think through their chosen direction in terms of both product and business. This is something that the founders I've met have consistently excelled in — with an uncanny ability to structure a business, utilizing and integrating all their advantages and resources. They thought thoroughly about monetization, defensibility, competition, and future expansion — even at the idea stage.

A business is more than its product. That's something I will never forget from these founders.

To be sure, I'm not advocating for building your vision without listening to any feedback. That's oftentimes a recipe for disaster, because a core competitive advantage of a startup is being able to quickly iterate and pivot — think on the scale of days — to continue getting closer to solving the pain point and building a viable business.

Lastly, this direction needs to align with the founder's personal identity. While others may disagree, I believe that the company should be a continuation of the founder's self. Perhaps that's too idealized, but that passion then becomes the driving force.

Lastly, kindness.

I was touched.

At the end of every ZhenResidence company visit, Mr. Wang gives a summary in a humorous, yet intensely wise, talk. The word he emphasized after every talk was kindness. It surprised me — China tech is such a competitive ecosystem — kindness? But it makes sense. Being kind, to yourself, to your team, to your customers, it will be rewarded at the end.

It also resonated strongly with what YC said in our first batch dinner, "be nice"; as well as Google's motto "don't be evil." Perhaps that's just an ideology, but that's one that I'm willing to bet on and fight for in my culture.

As I've experienced in the past, and as I'm sure I'll continue to face in the future, there will be innumerable challenges and difficult decisions. This trip gave me a potential solution. People and direction — if I do these well right at the start, and continue to be kind throughout, then perhaps the journey can be a little simpler.

After all, working with people you enjoy, on a business you're passionate about — that's a blessing.

Thanks for reading! Click ♥ to recommend the story if you enjoyed it.

Also, check out my experience living in China here: Where Technology Meets Culture: Week 1 of Living in Beijing

Nanjing, Where Dynasties Change Hands

Tue, 27 Jun 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Visiting Nanjing helped me realize the grandeur and success of the Chinese empire throughout history. It also showcased the ebb and flow of a civilization — and how dynasties change hands.

Nanjing was a renowned historical capital of China for a multiple dynasties. Situated in the fertile southern lands, it quickly became the center of government, trading, agriculture, and a significant population center. In 1368, Nanjing had a population of over a million (*claimed by the museum, although Wikipedia* cites a lower figure at 400k+, still the largest city at the time) . Having recently visited Teotihuacan which celebrated having 100,000 inhabitants in the same time era, I was astounded by the higher order of magnitude.

It was the start of the Ming dynasty, and the height of China's influence in the world. Nanjing became the capital that ruled over the entire country, a plot of land not too much smaller than today's China. Even in later dynasties when Nanjing was no longer the capital, it remained a key city in southern China.

<div class="image-grid"> <div class="image-row"> <figure style="flex: 0.75"><img src="/images/nanjing-where-dynasties-change-hands/02.jpg" alt="" /></figure> <figure style="flex: 0.75"><img src="/images/nanjing-where-dynasties-change-hands/03.jpg" alt="" /></figure> <figure style="flex: 0.75"><img src="/images/nanjing-where-dynasties-change-hands/04-delicate-artifacts-from-the.jpg" alt="Delicate artifacts from the 1300s" /></figure> </div> <figcaption>Delicate artifacts from the 1300s</figcaption> </div>

Beautiful palaces and manicured gardens were constructed, such as Zhan Yuan (瞻园) seen below, whose construction took over 14 years as a gift from the emperor to one of his key lieutenants. Culture — music, writing, painting, dancing — was abundant.

<div class="image-grid"> <div class="image-row"> <figure style="flex: 0.75"><img src="/images/nanjing-where-dynasties-change-hands/05.jpg" alt="" /></figure> <figure style="flex: 1.33"><img src="/images/nanjing-where-dynasties-change-hands/06.jpg" alt="" /></figure> <figure style="flex: 0.75"><img src="/images/nanjing-where-dynasties-change-hands/07.jpg" alt="" /></figure> </div> <div class="image-row"> <figure style="flex: 1.93"><img src="/images/nanjing-where-dynasties-change-hands/08.jpg" alt="" /></figure> <figure style="flex: 0.75"><img src="/images/nanjing-where-dynasties-change-hands/09.jpg" alt="" /></figure> <figure style="flex: 0.75"><img src="/images/nanjing-where-dynasties-change-hands/10-zhan-yuan-classic-southern.jpg" alt="Zhan Yuan 瞻园 — classic southern Chinese garden" /></figure> </div> <figcaption>Zhan Yuan 瞻园 — classic southern Chinese garden</figcaption> </div>

Dynasties Change

But dynasties change. In China, the longest dynasties last a few hundred years. The Ming dynasty lasted nearly 300 years. So did the Tang, Song, and Qing dynasties. History has yet to see an evergreen empire. The kingdoms in Europe took turns being in power, and then being displaced from power. The British Empire was only at the height of its power for a few hundred years.

Nanjing witnessed its rise to the greatest city in the world at one point, to its fall during the Sino-Japanese War in the 1930s-40s. Visiting the Nanjing Massacre Victims Memorial was a solemn reminder of the cruelty of fascism. 300,000 unarmed citizens were looted, raped, and murdered in a span of 6 weeks. It may be lesser known than the Holocaust and Nazi extermination camps, but not any less brutal and inexcusable.

<div class="image-grid"> <div class="image-row"> <figure style="flex: 0.75"><img src="/images/nanjing-where-dynasties-change-hands/11.jpg" alt="" /></figure> <figure style="flex: 1.33"><img src="/images/nanjing-where-dynasties-change-hands/12-nanjing-massacre-victims-memorial.jpg" alt="Nanjing Massacre Victims Memorial" /></figure> </div> <figcaption>Nanjing Massacre Victims Memorial</figcaption> </div>

The Memorial, like other Holocaust memorials that I've been to across the world, serves as a clear reminder that the peace today is hard-won, and not to be taken for granted. Discrimination and segregation can and will lead to future disturbances. History repeats itself (see above, there hasn't been a single evergreen empire/country as of yet).

Present Day

Unlike is sibling Beijing in the north, Nanjing has forever lost most of its historic buildings and artifacts during the war(s), but it has risen again as one of the New Tier 1 cities in China.

<div class="image-grid"> <div class="image-row"> <figure style="flex: 0.75"><img src="/images/nanjing-where-dynasties-change-hands/13.jpg" alt="" /></figure> <figure style="flex: 2.24"><img src="/images/nanjing-where-dynasties-change-hands/14.jpg" alt="" /></figure> <figure style="flex: 0.75"><img src="/images/nanjing-where-dynasties-change-hands/15-sights-around-nanjing-1.jpg" alt="Sights around Nanjing: 1) recreation of Nanjing in the early 1900s. 2) recreation of a traditional tea house. 3) motorbikes dot the city streets" /></figure> </div> <div class="image-row"> <figure style="flex: 0.75"><img src="/images/nanjing-where-dynasties-change-hands/16.jpg" alt="" /></figure> <figure style="flex: 1.33"><img src="/images/nanjing-where-dynasties-change-hands/17.jpg" alt="" /></figure> <figure style="flex: 1.33"><img src="/images/nanjing-where-dynasties-change-hands/18-sights-around-nanjing-1.jpg" alt="Sights around Nanjing: 1) an eatery. 2) Qinhuai River night scene. 3) Confucious temple" /></figure> </div> <figcaption>Sights around Nanjing: 1) an eatery. 2) Qinhuai River night scene. 3) Confucious temple</figcaption> </div>

It's got a beautiful, albeit extremely crowded and touristy, Qinhuai riverbank (秦淮河), a happening bar street, and modern malls to match any in the world. Plus, there are always delicious treats to be found.

<div class="image-grid"> <div class="image-row"> <figure style="flex: 1.33"><img src="/images/nanjing-where-dynasties-change-hands/19.jpg" alt="" /></figure> <figure style="flex: 1.33"><img src="/images/nanjing-where-dynasties-change-hands/20.jpg" alt="" /></figure> <figure style="flex: 1.33"><img src="/images/nanjing-where-dynasties-change-hands/21-food-1-saltwater-duck.jpg" alt="Food: 1) salt-water duck; 2) mix veggies; 3) duck blood with vermicelli" /></figure> </div> <div class="image-row"> <figure style="flex: 0.75"><img src="/images/nanjing-where-dynasties-change-hands/22.jpg" alt="" /></figure> <figure style="flex: 1.33"><img src="/images/nanjing-where-dynasties-change-hands/23.jpg" alt="" /></figure> <figure style="flex: 0.75"><img src="/images/nanjing-where-dynasties-change-hands/24-buns-everywhere-1-duck.jpg" alt="Buns everywhere: 1) duck buns; 2) pork buns with chicken stock; 3) soup dumpling" /></figure> </div> <figcaption>Buns everywhere: 1) duck buns; 2) pork buns with chicken stock; 3) soup dumpling</figcaption> </div>

The one-day "layover" (well, a stop along a train ride) showed me more Chinese history and made me contemplate more than I thought I would. I came in with no expectation, and left with a richer appreciation of the world today. 24 hours well spent.