Startups are literally between rock and a hard place in this AI world. Rock = the Googles and the Microsofts that develop powerful general AI models that work as a “thick protocol layer” leaving little room for the applications layer. There’s a reason why many of AI apps we’re seeing are wrapper apps with some … Continue reading Startup Moat In This AI World
Universities encourage faculties to help commercialize their scientific inventions through tech IP transfer. They hold events and provide education resources. But commercializing tech IP, such as starting a tech-based startup company, isn’t easy for the faculty to do, because they don’t have bandwidth and/or sufficient management knowledge/experience, and their career goals often don’t align with … Continue reading The Porsche Effect
Many times in life, we need That One Person. Someone said that the #1 success factor for hiring by far is having a strong internal champion who goes above and beyond to vouch for the hire. (Imagine someone yelling, “We must hire that person, otherwise I’ll quit!”) Same goes for company acquisitions. In many cases, … Continue reading That One Person
Part of founders’ job is to empower investors with sufficient knowledge about their business, so the investors don’t ask dumb questions. In most cases, VCs won’t invest in companies where they find themselves asking dumb questions. Because it means they’re not familiar with the industry; also, no one wants to look stupid, especially VCs with … Continue reading Empower Your Investors
Why do you build a new service when XYZ is already well established in the same space? Because a big market is already proven to be there and you can make a difference when you build a better solution for customers. Just a few quick examples: Pulley (vs Carta) and Beehiiv (vs Substack). Pulley is … Continue reading New Player In A Proven Market
It might be just a pure coincidence that Warren Buffett (93 years old) and Charlie Munger (99 years old) have been working together in the same partnership for a long time and living a very long life, on what often doesn’t seem like particularly healthy diet. Or, there might be at least some correlation between … Continue reading Do What You Enjoy
A few quick points about coming up with startup ideas from my experience (I’m still learning about this as I go): 1/ Start with proven, well-known frameworks — there’s a reason why things like Ikigai are considered as a useful framework by many folks (i.e. finding overlapping areas among what you’re good at and enjoy, … Continue reading Startup Ideas
Upskilling is one of the most important mega-trends now. AI won’t remove all humans jobs, but it will remove A LOT of jobs in the short term. If your job is, for instance, reviewing historical records or comparing many documents or images, it’s a pretty safe bet your job will be replaced with AI within … Continue reading Upskilling
If you’re building a content platform, you MUST have exclusive content – the kind of content people can only find on your platform. You can have non-exclusive content as well, but those are “shelf space fillers”; at the end of the day, people need a reason to go to your platform, download your app, etc. … Continue reading How To Get Exclusive Content
I’m concerned about the long term effect of TikTok and Temu. They’re different (one is social media, the other is e-commerce). But they have more similarities than differences. Both apps are loved by the GenZ/Alpha. Both are Chinese-owned apps. But most importantly, both apps are little dopamine machines, turning people into scrolling/tapping chimpanzees, disguised under … Continue reading On Dopamine-inducing Apps