English articles

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The book excerpt says that tactics address the present and focus on what already exists, while strategy creates the future and focuses on new growth. It quotes Bezos: when you think about what to do within a year, many competitors immediately come to mind; when you think three years ahead, there are far fewer; and when you think about what to do five, seven, or ten years ahead, you can no longer think of who your competitors are. An obsession with tactical effort traps you in a vicious cycle. Do not use tactical diligence to conceal strategic laziness.

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The reposted material says that real progress in science and mathematics often occurs in the gray area between black and white. Major discoveries begin when someone senses that something is not quite right, keeps probing a small gap, and eventually opens up a whole new world—as with relativity and quantum mechanics. Robin compares entrepreneurship to scientific exploration: in a gray area where demand seems to exist but is uncertain, you keep exploring and experimenting with passion. Along the way, you may unexpectedly disrupt established giants and ways of living, bringing new possibilities to the world.

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Speaking with Yicai, He Fan says that this generation of young people is highly educated, broad-minded, and creative. What he struggles to understand is that they often speak of self-realization without putting much effort into knowing themselves. He advises being honest with yourself and listening more closely to your inner voice, invoking Thoreau’s drumbeat metaphor: find your own beat and follow that path. Robin adds that this applies not only to young people but to every founder: take time to know yourself, be honest with yourself, and find your own rhythm rather than following someone else’s footsteps.

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The post retells the stonecutter metaphor displayed in the Spurs’ locker room: after a hundred blows, the rock has no crack, but the hundred-and-first splits it in two—not because of that final blow alone, but because of the consistent effort. The text says that only founders who have endured countless setbacks and life-or-death trials, then finally seen a glimmer of success, truly understand perseverance. Robin adds that the great differences between people ultimately lie in persevering when perseverance is needed, but also decisively choosing to quit or change course at the right moment.

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Entrepreneurship requires experience, but experience must also be acquired through entrepreneurship. Starting a business can be seen as venturing out into the wider world: leaving the ivory tower and your comfort zone, then stepping into society to experience conditions firsthand. That is the first step. Avoid putting early-stage entrepreneurship on too high a pedestal. In the beginning, it is about getting your hands dirty in the real world, learning more, and pushing yourself to grow faster.

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How do you win in an increasingly competitive industry? The article uses a line from The Godfather: the old Godfather says he will give the other person a reason they cannot refuse. Its argument is that with a strong enough reason, you can always find a way to secure cooperation. In retail, that ultimate reason is a low price. The same applies in other industries: victory depends not on piecemeal packaging but on finding the reason people cannot refuse to work with you. Robin concludes that finding this ultimate, irresistible reason is the key to winning.

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After listening to an episode, Robin feels that DJI is a highly competitive Chinese company and that its global success is no accident. He recommends it to product managers as well. The key is to position the product clearly and understand consumer needs precisely. He adds that listening made him want to buy a POCKET 3.

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Robin says that a startup’s revenue naturally needs to keep growing, and its headcount will inevitably increase too. But revenue growth should, as far as possible, avoid a linear relationship with headcount growth. If more revenue simply comes from adding more people, the startup becomes labor-intensive. Allowing the two to become somewhat decoupled should show up in operating results as a continuing increase in contribution per employee.

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The reposted text recommends that founders develop a habit of writing a journal every day as a way to keep talking with themselves. Your greatest enemy is yourself, so keep examining and working through your inner life, remain mindful and respectful, and treat yourself and others sincerely. Journaling is an outward action that deepens self-reflection. Most reflection, the text argues, is merely an illusion with which we deceive ourselves; genuine, deep reflection requires wholehearted engagement. Robin adds that journaling is a conversation with yourself that enables deeper reflection and the pursuit of continual improvement.

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The post observes that in entrepreneurship, we often attribute success to internal factors such as talent, ability, and effort, but failure to external factors such as luck—a sudden pandemic—or timing—changes in the economic climate. It recommends a more rigorous review, preferably with help from an objective, experienced person rather than doing it alone, so that you can move beyond your blind spots and limitations. Even mistakes may reveal new opportunities.

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Wu Jun’s article argues that focusing on picking up sesame seeds means forever losing the chance to pick watermelons. It uses Yahoo as an example: the article says it took only ten years to go from the world’s leading internet company to being sold. Besides encountering Google and Facebook, Yahoo hurt itself by collecting countless small product lines without a world-leading one. By contrast, Apple’s product lines could be counted on one hand, yet it was the world’s most profitable company. After returning to Apple, Jobs crossed out many small projects, kept only a single-digit number of products, and made each a watermelon. The article concludes that those pursuing watermelons must be able to tolerate solitude.

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Robin argues that at critical moments, you must recognize the situation and resources available, avoid clinging to past glory, and have the courage to make the right choice. He cites the post’s account of Intel’s history: in 1985, during the Moore and Grove era, Japan’s memory business overtook Intel. Despite a financial crisis, Intel decisively abandoned memory, closed factories, laid off one-third of its workforce, and moved into CPUs, paving the way for its semiconductor dominance. The event referred to as “this outcome” at the start of the post is not specified.

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The article compares entrepreneurship to mountain climbing: after reaching a summit, you discover that it is only a small hill on the way to a higher peak. You must refocus and keep climbing ever steeper mountains. Robin adds that you can slow down and rest, but should not stop completely. The climb has highs and lows; find ways to keep moving, and do not go alone. Finding companions for the journey allows you to keep going longer.

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The post says that for a company, losing money is not the greatest concern; having no cash flow is. Companies do not die from losses, but from a breakdown in cash flow. Its tag says to keep a constant eye on cash.

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The post observes that Taiwan has roughly 23 million people—less than 0.3% of the world’s population—yet has a profound impact in the AI era. As a small country with limited resources, especially human resources, Taiwan should focus on fields where it can compete and win. Facing the challenges of a new era, it needs strategy, focus, and trade-offs so it can become one of the crucial few. It need not expect to win an Olympic gold medal in every event. Even South Korea and China focus on events where they can win medals, while firmly defending the disciplines in which they excel.

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Wu Jun’s article offers two explanations for Japan’s many Nobel laureates: a craftsperson’s dedication and a stronger pursuit of academic reputation than wealth. It cites Yoshinori Ohsumi’s more than forty years devoted to yeast and Koichi Tanaka’s decision to pass up promotions and work quietly in hands-on research for twenty years. The point is that they wanted to do things better rather than chase fame or money. Robin draws a lesson for entrepreneurship: the devil is in the details, and details reveal both problems and answers. Love a project and devote yourself to it, rather than pursuing only financial returns. Genuine fulfillment goes beyond money.

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Alongside Know Why, Know How, Know What, Know When, and Know Where, Robin proposes another entrepreneurial capability: Know Who. Knowing the right people to do the work and the right people to consult—recognizing talent and placing people in suitable roles—is also a key to success. The prerequisite is being able to persuade those people to join you. Robin uses Liu Bang, founder of the Han dynasty, as an example: his ability to recognize and deploy talent was a major reason he rose from a local ruffian to defeat Xiang Yu. You do not need to be good at everything. If you can find the right people, trust them, and give them room to do the work, you can still solve problems effectively.

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After listening to a program about Chinese companies expanding overseas—mainly into Nigeria’s used-car market in West Africa, with references to Central Asian markets such as Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan—Robin observes that Chinese entrepreneurs often choose difficult challenges. Taiwanese founders cannot simply seek easy markets either: the easier something looks, the harder it is to make it work. Entrepreneurship means doing what is difficult and right. The greater the difficulty and cultural shock, the greater the sense of achievement if you succeed.

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The article says that successful people differ greatly from others. If you think and act like mediocre people, your results will be mediocre too. Greater success requires thinking and acting differently, with the courage to swim against the current and question deeply entrenched popular views. All new ideas and innovations, it says, pass through four stages: being ignored, ridiculed, opposed, and accepted.

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The article says that answers are often embedded within questions. It uses the example of a children’s hospital in Pittsburgh, as recounted in the text: children moved during computed tomography (CT) scans and had to be scanned repeatedly. Instead of designing a special scanner, the hospital asked how to reduce their fear. It turned the imaging room into an immersive adventure in which children had to stay still to complete the challenge. Image quality improved markedly, and some children wanted another turn. The article quotes Wan Weigang: a question begins with discovering a conflict between something in the world and your mental model. Robin concludes that entrepreneurship means asking a good question and developing a solution that effectively changes the status quo.

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Reflecting on focus, Robin asks why a growth bottleneck makes it so hard to resist doing more things. Jobs’s remarks about saying no to hundreds of other good ideas can be compared with Fortune’s 2008 interview. For the Top 100 meeting story about reducing ten priorities to three, the documented review found a secondary summary of Isaacson’s 2012 HBR article, but did not obtain the full passage from the original publication. Although the idea of selecting five of twenty-five goals and avoiding the other twenty is often attributed to Buffett, CNBC’s video page from the 2013 shareholders meeting explicitly states that he denied originating it. It cannot be presented as confirmed Buffett advice.

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The excerpt says that defining a problem is easy: when you describe it to someone, they should say, “Yes, I have that problem too.” The more people describe the problem, the more certain you can be that it is real. Before rushing to devise a solution, repeatedly ask people with the same difficulty how painful it is, how valuable solving it would be, and how often it occurs. The text says that when Google considered acquiring Waze in 2013, Larry Page expressed interest in the “toothbrush model”—something used twice a day. It places problems in a matrix whose axes are total addressable market and degree of pain; the figure is not available.

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The opening text argues that founders today often set excessively grand goals, with everyone talking about changing the world. The intention is good, but a slogan that does not match your abilities, environment, and resources cannot connect with who you are now. The person you can change most is yourself. Robin adds that ambitious goals and ideals must connect with your own situation. Instead of changing the world or other people, start by changing yourself. Break a distant goal into small goals at each stage that can be acted on, tested, and achieved.

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Many founders are drawn to the hardest, coolest, most disruptive challenges, such as carrying people through the air. But frequent, low-risk use cases addressing essential needs may offer a more practical starting point for deploying technology. Mature the technology first in settings with greater tolerance for error. Find a way to survive before trying to change the world.

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Robin says many companies pursue growth by doing a bit of everything. Borrowing a remark attributed to Ma Huateng, the additions are all fat: can a sluggish, bloated heavyweight fight effectively in the ring? Robin recommends focusing on the core business and building lean, strong muscle rather than accumulating fat.

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The post lists eight short statements: the present is the future; survival is development; innovation is advantage; capability is opportunity; the global is the local; evolution is growth; understanding is value; and conviction is the future. It offers no further explanation.

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The excerpt defines disruption as a change in the balance of market supply and demand. It argues that disruption creates a much larger market, with opportunities outweighing threats. The book says that after Uber disrupted ride-hailing, the market grew tenfold and the number of people using licensed taxis became three times what it was before Uber. Online travel booking similarly disrupted travel agencies. Transparency, it argues, creates disruption more than anything else. Markets ripe for disruption often lack information, have information asymmetries, and are full of useless regulations. It gives the example of U.S. healthcare costing approximately fifty times as much as Taiwan’s. TomTom’s CEO says that if a market can be disrupted, it will be. Robin adds that Uber and Airbnb repackage the narratives of traditional industries, creating larger markets and more value.

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The post says that the core of business-model validation is finding genuine needs and ensuring that you can meet them sustainably while earning a reasonable profit. Successful business models often do not create new needs; they meet existing needs in a new way.

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The excerpt explains the screenwriter’s “one-sentence rule.” Hollywood producers hear hundreds of script pitches every day, and a writer may have only a few dozen seconds in an elevator to explain who the protagonist is and what happens. If you cannot state the core of the story in one sentence, you have not truly thought it through. A one-sentence premise is like a book cover: it should make people want to open the book immediately. Robin underlines the lesson: explain exactly what you do in one sentence.

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Feng Lun’s article argues that genuine achievement requires giving up some options, and genuine freedom requires self-restraint. Time is limited. Rather than doing ten things for less than ten years each, keep deepening your work in one area. Time is both an investment good and a consumption good. Sustained effort in one direction produces increasing marginal returns, freeing time to enjoy life. But choose carefully what you persist with: if you choose wrongly, more time can mean a greater disaster. Revisit your values from time to time as well. The closing line is that doing one thing well in a lifetime is fulfillment enough.

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The post quotes an English line: humanity built most nobly when limitations were greatest. The source of the quotation is not identified. Robin’s point is that having too many resources—money—is not necessarily a good thing. Limited resources often bring out founders’ greatest potential and creativity, helping them find ways to make things happen and break through constraints.

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Success stories are often distilled into three to five principles, or seven to eight steps, making them sound clear and simple. But what really keeps a company alive is the thousands of invisible details behind it. The continuous, mundane work that words cannot fully capture is the truth behind a company’s success.

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Robin proposes the direction “AI + Edge Computing + Smart XX,” where XX could be manufacturing, healthcare, factories, retail, cities, homes, agriculture, transportation, and more. He wants to organize an investment framework around cloud, connectivity, edge devices, and applications: cloud includes cloud services, streaming, and AI; connectivity includes 5G/6G and low-Earth-orbit satellites, which he marks with a question; the edge means edge computing. His rationale is that an autonomous vehicle cannot wait to upload images to the cloud and receive a response. Hospitals, factories, and households may also not want to upload every piece of data. He hopes investors can capture the opportunities presented by vast numbers of endpoints in the AIoT era.

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Robin suggests that the internet advances by a generation roughly every ten to fifteen years. The first, based on PCs, took shape between 1990 and 1995. The second moved from PCs to mobile after the iPhone’s launch in 2007. He asks whether the third will be the metaverse, describing Facebook’s renaming as Meta as its opening act. Taiwan, he observes, seems to have fallen behind in the mobile-internet era. China’s tighter policy restrictions that year—2021—have instead created an opportunity for Taiwan. He hopes innovation and increased investment can restore Taiwan’s leadership in the next internet generation. These are his views and aspirations from October 2021.

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Robin recalls that in his years in the industry, the vocabulary has moved from IoT, big data, blockchain, and VR/AR/MR/XR to AI in more recent years, and now—2021—the metaverse. He cautions against dressing things up with too much jargon. Explain clearly and simply what you actually want to do and which problem you want to solve; glittering terminology can conceal empty substance. He also observes that the blockchain community has cycled through ICOs, STOs, IEOs, DeFi, and NFTs. It often feels like one term replacing another, and he is unsure whether much has changed at the fundamental level. These are his personal observations.

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After seeing crispy fried-chicken NFTs on Facebook, Robin reflects that new technologies inevitably attract an early bubble of enthusiasm. Founders cannot wait until the technology and market are mature before entering, because by then there will essentially be no place left for them. Investors, however, should approach trends and booms cautiously; waiting a little longer may be the better choice. Technologies such as radio and the internet have profoundly changed modern life and created enormous business opportunities, but many technology crazes simply fade away. This is a personal view from late 2021, not investment advice.

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Robin recalls Steve Jobs announcing three new products in January 2007, before the audience realized they were one product: the iPhone. It launched a fifteen-year mobile-internet wave, taking the global online population from hundreds of millions to billions. Innovations in business models rested on one revolutionary product. Robin says that venture capital spent the previous fifteen years pursuing rapid business-model innovation, with every software company’s market capitalization far exceeding that of hardware companies. Looking ahead another fifteen years, he argues that the windfall from massive growth in internet traffic is gone. New change and energy are needed, so VCs at the frontier must refocus on the opportunities and transformations that technological innovation can bring. These are his views from April 2022.

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Beginning with “Today, five years later,” Robin notes the rapid rise of Web3 and the metaverse, then lists earlier investment keywords: ESG in 2021, and electric vehicles, autonomous vehicles, vaccines, and biotechnology before 2020–2021. Innovation and investing, he says, ensure that he always has something new to learn. This is a brief personal record looking back at trend keywords from 2020 to 2022, not a prediction or investment advice.

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Robin sees a hidden risk in a company’s promise to improve efficiency by 20%: placing greater emphasis on operational efficiency may displace its capacity to innovate. He cites Google’s former innovation mechanism, which allowed employees to spend 20% of their working week on projects that interested them and helped generate creative products capable of changing the world. A Google that loses its capacity to innovate, he argues, may remain an excellent company but may no longer be a great one. This is his personal, speculative commentary from September 2022.

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Robin observes that advertising remains the most obvious way to monetize an internet business, including for Google and Facebook. Amazon’s advertising revenue, he says, was already measured in tens of billions of U.S. dollars. He describes Apple as eager to enter the advertising market aggressively, while Spotify was repositioning itself away from an emphasis on music streaming and toward building the largest audio-advertising platform. These are his observations from September 2022. The figures are as stated in the post and have not been independently verified.