What's it like for American start-ups in China?
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What's the hustle like for startups across the Pacific? Welcome to The Bridge, enlightening conversations on world cultures, life, and everything in between. Hey everyone, this is Jason Smith, host of The Bridge podcast from sunny California. If you like the show, don't forget to subscribe. We love The Bridge.

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while also nursing other projects to life. He has extensive experience working in China and other countries around the world. He has served as COO of Vaults, co-founder and CEO of Hexing Esports Technologies Limited, marketing director, a professional gamer at Cloud9 Esports, Inc., and more. Welcome back to The Bridge to China, Pat. Thanks, Jason, for such a wonderful introduction. It's nice to be back on The Bridge today.

We've been friends for many years, but I have to say the thing I'm most curious about is you are in some way or were in some way interested in horse breeding. Can you tell us about that? Yeah, I watched a video of this horse named Flightline a couple of years ago. And for anybody who doesn't know what Flightline is, Flightline is a horse, a thoroughbred horse that was able to win all of the major races in a single year.

And after competing for a couple of years, he has now retired and do studying, which is helping breed other horses. And you can make up to $200,000 us dollars a day by studying. And I found that pretty interesting and wanted to learn more that culminated into Joel, a lawyer from Chicago and a few other people kind of building through what we consider to be the first thoroughbred horse racing club that allows someone to own a fraction of a horse for as little as $1,500.

That reduces the barrier of entry that kind of historically has cost six figures or more to maintain a horse with like one of these like jockey clubs and allows more hobbyists to actually come in and enjoy the ownership of a century old sport. Our newest horse has done okay this year. It's our first horse and he won a second place at Saratoga Downs. But I think we're just starting the journey now and we won't really know how much the potential this horse has for another few years. So you sell shit or the company sold Saratoga.

shares of horses of their breeding capacity. Yeah. So you're buying into like a fractionalized share, almost like an ETF of a horse like stock. Right. So I think it's better to not put all of your money onto a single horse, but maybe like play the entire field. And so anything from you can buy into additional shares of like race winnings or additional shares of studying if it gets there. And it also provides you more access, like getting down to the green or like the winner circles. A lot of like a lot of like what

kind of makes the sport beautiful, but just lowering that financial cost of being able to access it. That is wild. I never thought that horse racing was, I just imagined millionaire super millionaires with their yachts and owning horses. But yeah, I guess that, that is remarkable that just anyone can get involved in that now for a fraction, literally of the cost. So you, you have, you've worked extensively in cryptocurrency and blockchain technology and,

For those of us who don't know, it's a big mystery. So could you tell us what does the current crypto market look like? And what are those really tiny cryptocurrencies that people should be watching out for, in your opinion? Yeah, I joined the blockchain industry around the beginning of 2021, but I've been interested in cryptocurrencies since about 2010. So kind of like where it first, like a couple of years after it first started. Yeah.

I primarily focus on open source development and nonprofit work while kind of investing in the infrastructure side. So I'm not too in tune with what tokens are popular for day-to-day trading, but I think that based on the US elections, we've definitely seen a market jump already. So a lot of the

The upside of these tokens has already been priced in. I do believe that the macro is going to be quite volatile while the US figures out their regulatory procedures for the next four years and would probably tell retail investors maybe look for a dip period between some of the major tokens like a Bitcoin or Ethereum.

And I guess the word of advice is that when you're working with blockchain assets, it's very much like playing options trading with that volatility. And so put in money that you're OK losing and definitely just don't buy when the markets are super, super high already. So, I mean, do you think it's a good strategy for people who are just jumping in to buy something? You know, maybe I don't know, whatever amount, $1,000, whatever it is of like something that's worth buying.

currently like 0.00005, you know, percent of a dollar, like, and you just buy millions of them. Is that a strategy that people are using in the hopes that these things are going to rise up?

Yeah, it's interesting because like, excuse my language, but I think that we have these things called meme coins or in other words, shit coins. And these are tokens that we would consider the same thing as a penny stock, right? And I would say like, you're buying a penny stock, so you never know if that company is going to be successful or not. You never know if it's going to be picked up and listed by their exchanges. So while yes, like, you know, you could have bought in a Solana or even you could have bought in a Bitcoin at $1 at one point.

Most tokens aren't like Bitcoin. So just let's say have a have an air of caution and be OK to lose that money if you're going into a lower cap token. What about since Elon Musk is related to the incoming administration in some way, he's sort of tied himself to the incoming Trump administration in the White House. Like what is it, Dogecoin? And what's the other one, puppies or something? Those are related to him in some way. Do you think because he's related to the incoming administration that laws will be passed or

that will facilitate his coins being worth more in the future? What's your opinion? Yeah, I actually got to talk with Doge Designer recently and kind of followed the Trump administration's election process. And so I don't think that Elon actually cares that much about tokens per se. He thinks that the Doge is like a Shiba, he's a Shiba Inu, right? That has like, is a popular one from Tokyo. And so I think people have rallied around that meme almost like it's a cult.

The same way that we can look at Scientologists in America, right? There is a Church of Doge and people believe in that. Do I think that Elon will adopt Doge more than maybe just as a possible currency to transact on buying a Tesla or anything else like that? Most likely not. I think that more likely what will happen is that the US will look at what it looks like to build their own blockchain. Could they create a stable US dollar-backed reserve on top of that? That's probably where they're more at.

If you had seen the meme for Department of Government Efficiency, that actually got created into a token just by the community and I think probably crossed $400 to $600 million market cap on the first couple of days. So yeah, I would say wait until regular processes are posted. I don't really trust anything in the news until I see it in fine print.

What about China? What is China doing in blockchain right now? Yeah, so it's been interesting because in 2018, because China blocked all of the ownership of blockchain assets, it actually caused a significant market pullback. And just last week,

China had just said that it is no longer illegal for an individual citizen to own blockchain assets, which was a huge new thing into the market. We just spent a couple of weeks back in Beijing this past month. What I would say is that China is focused on IP. They're focused on RWAs or real-world assets along with CBDCs. They're taking a lot slower of an approach.

You have a 1.4 billion population that you're dealing with, right? And so consumer protections become extremely, extremely important, especially with the less educated class.

Imagine that same token you're talking about, but there's now 100,000 of those tokens in the market and every little city is being pushed to different token. That is the catastrophic issue that could happen if they release blockchain way too early. I would say China's approach will be slow and methodical. They probably care deeply about the macro environment and probably owning some type of the financial service side, similar to how they've treated Alipay or WeChat Pay as a baby.

I think that they want to own some of that interchange relay available in whatever network they choose to go on to. Does the Chinese digital RMB still exist? Is that something that's still around? Yeah, I would say it's not really a blockchain asset.

The only government approved payment systems are this thing called like ERMB, but I would say it's the same way that you would think of like RMB on WeChat Pay or RMB on Alipay. It's a digital equivalent that is tied to like whatever your bank account or whatever you've topped up, right? So whenever I...

Send this company three RMB. I get three RMB of this digital version of it I don't know if they'll ever really make this fully open to the rest of the world to transact on kind of like a forex token But I mean their systems have been built to essentially transact in their own currency So I noticed you were in Beijing very recently announcing a partnership with the Copyright Bureau Could you tell us about that project?

Yeah, so our company NounsDAO, I mean, not even a company, it's what we consider a DAO, which is a decentralized autonomous organization. We are one of the largest in the world at the moment and also have made a transition into 501c3 status, which is a nonprofit organization.

We started talking to China specifically about expanding blockchain efforts in this country. We focus on character IPs, building animation festivals, funding open source development of resources. But also in China, we have remodeled mountains and we are building animal shelters across multiple cities and already partnering with the local governments, most recently with Urumqi in Xinjiang.

And so it's really like a for good project. And I think that's what attracted them to kind of like using us as a consultancy for how they want to implement their own blockchain. So, I mean, what is the blockchain actually going to be used for? Copyright. So this is about trademark or patent law or something. Yeah. So I'm going to step away from my microphone for a second and show you, actually. So think of R.

RWA is real world assets, right? And so we in the West, we're able to build a token out of anything. If I want to make Shiba Inu token or if I want to make Jason token, I can do that. And it's completely OK in the world. And it's a little bit differently. And so I'll use porcelain as an example. And hopefully this shows up on the camera decently well.

But imagine tying a master porcelain crafter and what they want to sell to a digital asset, right? When you scan this code for it as a one-time use, you essentially can prove that this was created by a master crafter versus it being just a factory-made porcelain out of Taobao or something. So then you can really think of their blockchain being used for authentication, like COAs, certificates of authentication, more than the speculative nature that the rest of the world has kind of looked into. So this...

ensures the quality of the product that you're consuming. It's transnational. - Thus far, these systems are built for like within the country. They are currently expanding with like passport access, et cetera, but they're so early on that I believe they wanna test the system out a lot more before trying to go global with it. - Wow, okay, so let's go back to your past in China a little bit because you know, you have spent extensive time in China. I met you here when you were living in Beijing at that time.

What were you doing at that time? Yeah, when I came in 2017, I think we met actually about a month into my time in China. And so 25-year-old me didn't speak any Chinese when I came. And so I think I was really happy to meet some foreigner friends in the show street that we lived in. But my last time around was for esports, for professional video games. And we were focused on creating an IP acquisitions company of some of the largest digital festivals around the world.

and also creating domestic events like the World University Cyber Games, which to date is still the largest collegiate event that's ever happened for video games.

A lot of it was just, yeah, just kind of expanding international esports and showcasing how China's market has enough population to actually support ticket sales, where that hasn't actually happened in the rest of the world yet. I'm really surprised. I thought you're talking about gaming expositions where professional gamers compete with the crowd. Yes? Yeah. So like China's a region, just with population scale, right? They are the largest consumers of video games by total population. And so...

Kind of the same way, we can sell out a Staples Center or a Madison Square Garden in the US for a championship game, obviously. But China has consistently been able to have the population scale to do weekly shows in every single one of their major cities and be able to consistently sell that out. The US, just being as fragmented as it is, we can't sell out a 50,000-person stadium every single week.

And so China has like is definitely a little bit further ahead on that and that they have adopted into this kind of e-sports gaming culture a lot faster than the rest of the world. Wow. You know, games are very, very popular in China. Sometimes the government throws regulations, especially very young people, especially teens who should be in studying for high school so that they can limit the amount of video gaming that they actually do. What do you think about that? I actually completely agree. Like, I think it's important for

kids to be using their time effectively. I'm totally degenerate when it comes to playing video games. If you let me run loose, I'll probably play like 40 hours a week if I really had the option to. But growing up, I went to math school, I went to an English prep class. I also played tennis and I had basketball and all these other extracurriculars. I think that right now with kids, there's such an emphasis on getting to university, but I do think it is important for a child to be well-rounded, not only for sports, but also just things that help you with critical thinking.

I think gaming is a part of that where like in the right situations, we're seeing a lot more collegiate and intramural esports activities. And the reason for that is like, imagine like I'm like a kind of like a scrawny, more introverted child, right? I may not be interested in going to the football team or joining the football team, but I still want to learn some of those collaborative, like this collaborative lessons that you can get from playing in a team sport.

Gaming actually now becomes an alternative for that where you can still learn a lot of those same leadership values, but it has to be structured. If you're just playing games to play games, then it's not really effective in the same way where Minecraft can be an amazing learning skill. And I've heard enough parents tell me that their child became interested in programming because of playing Minecraft, that there are positive values. It's really just when you excessively play games without that mindset that it becomes a detriment to the child. Mm-hmm.

I have some strange questions just out of the blue here. Are there games that are focused on academics themselves? So can you learn mathematics from a game or science from a game?

Yeah, there actually are a lot. And even in China, there's a live streaming application that had this like brain check where it was just like speed run math questions. Right. And it was meant for children. It was meant for like middle schoolers and high schoolers in China. And the game got taken over by adults. It was all people like in their post 30s who are now trying to compete with high school children over the leaderboard of who's best at simple mathematics. Right.

So I would say there's a lot of games that like, like even a video game, like World of Warcraft, one of the most popular in the world. I would say that my interest in how market economies work, especially at the macro scale come from me playing the auction house in World of Warcraft when I was in high school. It's just that most,

people don't really look for like the real world synergies and most people are just playing to relax right and so once again it's like there are games specifically built for education i you you probably played oregon trail when you were growing up right and to this day i i know if you don't have the right nutrients you get dysentery and so there's always a little bit of education lesson

I'm kind of surprised someone in your generation knows about Oregon Trail to begin with, because I played that when I was like in fifth grade or something on a computer that, you know, made beep and bop sounds. Hey, everyone, this is Jason Smith, host of The Bridge podcast from sunny California. If you like the show, don't forget to subscribe. We love The Bridge. You're listening to The Bridge.

Okay, I wanted to ask you, as an entrepreneur who kind of gets all over the field, in my opinion, what is it like for Americans who are trying to get a foothold in China? What is it like trying to get into the commercial space in China as an American? What opportunities kind of are there? What should people be on guard for? Yeah.

I'll try to split this question into a few different answers. So I think that first, China's always looking for subject matter experts. So that's generally the market that you're able to take advantage of in China. Like when we first got over, we were considered esports experts because we had been

running international events already successfully across Europe and North America, whereas China was only doing events domestically. I think that for someone who's interested in trying to get a foothold in China, you could probably start off with consulting, maybe project-based work as you build up your own client network. Helps to speak the Chinese language. You get a lot more opportunities as you build your own community of peers. But if you're kind of always trusting somebody else to do business for you, you're always going to be losing that cut. And once you figure out something that makes sense, it's always good in China to test the waters.

It's a different country than anywhere else in that in China, you can think of it as if I make one RMB off each person in China, I'm now a billionaire versus everywhere else. It's like I need to be making $100 off of each of these customers. I can only hit 2% of the audience base. It's a whole different type of market. And so I think it's important for anybody coming to China to understand that you are playing for scalability versus like dollar per user in this country.

What about challenges that exist in working in China as an investor or someone who's looking for VC, et cetera? Yeah. I'll explain challenges from a non-financial level and then I'll go back into the VC side. So I would say definitely language barrier and cultural differences are probably the biggest thing. I personally came to China with very, very basic Mandarin and it took me a long time to kind of understand the hidden meanings behind certain phrases, along with like the nuances of like Chinese versus Western business culture.

China has a lot of these bells and whistles, such as understanding kind of like when you're working with government, where should you seat somebody or how should you kind of plan these conversations out through a night or even the concept of like Jingzhou, if you're familiar with that, Jason, which is like going around and kind of having a small glass of drink with somebody or other people at the table. Even how to follow up with those new acquaintances can all it becomes, I would say it was cumbersome at first, but it's also a part of doing business. And once you learn it, it's a pretty awesome culture that they build around it.

Those are the main challenges when coming here is just learning how to adapt to a different working culture. In terms of venture, China is very similar to the UK in that they like to fund companies who have already shown market success.

In America, we focus on a lot of it's speculation. We look at the right team, we look at does this market have potential, and we gauge our first bets on founders versus gauging it on product. Whereas in China, it's very much they want to see that you already have some level of ARR, that you have some partnerships in place before they do any round of funding. So they invest in a little bit of a later stage and they like to have companies find more product market fit before they commit dollars in the country.

What do you think about VC in the United States for companies that are planning to grow into China? Are US VC companies still interested in breaching into China? Yeah, I mean, you've seen companies try to enter the Chinese market. I would say most recently, I would say like Sequoia made a fairly large effort, which is Hongshan in China.

I think part of it is that when you make these venture bets, because of China's way of doing business, you're losing a lot of the upside. I, myself, as an investor, I look at the pre-seed level, so when these companies are at a $1 to $5 million valuation, whereas in China, you can see these first deals happening around the $20 to $100 million mark. You've already lost the 20x multiplier if you believe that a company is going to become a billion-dollar company.

A good example of this is that if you look at the rate of return for, let's say, Sequoia China versus Sequoia India, Sequoia India has been able to take riskier bets, but those bets have paid off a lot better. And there's essentially just a larger pie to be eaten in other markets. I do believe that in China, there's...

Part of it is that they really focus on domestic only. And so a lot of the Western VCs have their biggest strengths in globalizing a company. But most of the companies that are venture investable in China don't really have a plan to go international. They have a large enough of a market to stay domestic. And so that kind of becomes the issue is that a lot of these investors don't understand fully what they're getting themselves into and that a lot of these companies just don't want to go global because of the pain that it takes to actually do that.

Well, I mean, that actually brings me to an interesting question. Because as someone who actually does business, instead of someone who thinks about it theoretically, you're in the United States, which for the 70s, 80s, 90s, was considered the largest consumer market in the entire world. Now maybe that's shifting because China has hundreds of millions of people in what it defines as its middle class world.

Do you think that China is replacing the United States as the foremost consumer class in the world? Yeah, I think for better or for worse, that is happening. I would say over the past four years in the U.S., I've definitely seen people try to be less consumerist. I think that's a Gen Z shift, actually, in that

Like I would say older millennials, like we are the people who like luxury brands like Prada or YSL or Chanel and things like that. Whereas I do believe that Gen Z is a lot more in tune with kind of like they like Timu and they like these other like kind of shops and they're spending a lot less money and they're more into fast fashion. Part of it is just that trends change so quickly and they haven't gotten to that age yet where they really care about buying something for life.

I myself was a pretty large consumer when I lived in China. And going back to the United States, I've been buying more quality brands, products that will last 10 plus years. So I do agree. China does seem like it's one of the capitals for consumerism. And I would say I would like to see more Chinese domestic brands.

I really like what Anta and I really like what Li Ning have been able to do. I'm actually wearing a pair of these Li Ning slides right now that were fully sold out across all of China. And I would like to see more of an emphasis on domestic brands versus continuing to let foreign brands in. A case in point is like, look at where Lululemon is today.

in China and they have the largest Lululemons in the world all in Shanghai and other places like that. And it would have been cool to see a Chinese brand like kind of take over that like athletic wear area. But unfortunately nobody's really been able to compete yet. So you come to China periodically, but you've also done business in some capacity in Europe and all over the world, actually. What keeps bringing you back to China specifically? Is it just business? My honest answer is probably that I miss the food a lot.

Chinese food is bad and expensive. And I just had Szechuan food the other night and spent 200 US dollars on a takeout meal. But it's kind of like how I see it. China is somewhere from Seattle. We have this term like, and I kind of agree. It's like Chinese food is not, like it's just not as good anywhere else in the world. And it's always way more expensive.

Jokes aside, I think I've always been interested in Chinese culture as a second generation Chinese American. And during COVID, I spent the majority of my time kind of mentoring Chinese nationals who are looking to become entrepreneurs in the United States. I've been lucky enough that three of my mentees are all unicorn founders now, so founders of a billion-dollar-plus valuation companies. And as COVID cleared up, I kind of went back to doing the same thing, started traveling again and just exploring what the opportunities are in China.

Every year that China goes by, there's 10 new things that you can do in it. It's really just making the time and meeting the right people of who has funding available. There's so many new products coming out in China. And I noticed that Amazon finally has home delivery services opening up. I guess that was a legal issue. I mean, with flying vehicles, aerial vehicles. But in China, we already had that to some extent because there are booths around. It's just...

A lot of things that are happening in the United States, they're mirrored by things that are happening in China. It's just really interesting. For example, in Wuhan, a city where you used to live, there's the largest taxi fleet of unmanned cars. It's remarkable. Have you been back to Wuhan since they started that?

I haven't, I was just talking about the, how I wanted to quote on one. So I might have to go back in, in January or February. Um, I I'd like to, but I haven't had the time yet myself. And they also have a flying car service there. I, it does not go anywhere you want, but it goes from specific locations to other locations.

unmanned flying car you get in. It's like 90 RMB, which is like, what, 12 bucks? You get to fly across the city. It's absolutely amazing with some of the stuff that's going. I think it's just regulatory stuff because the technology exists kind of around the world, in my opinion. I'm sure it's just like FAA laws is that there probably is a lot more commercial activity in the United States than we have higher like

zoning laws for this. Like, even I think in Seattle, it's like you can't fly your drone above a certain height, otherwise you like violate something in Seattle. It's really just because it's just protection of consumers, right? I do want to try this like flying car. I was seeing one also, I think, I don't know if it's from Xiaomi or somebody else, but there's this $250,000 like, like,

like a car that turns into a helicopter, and it's fully sold out pre-orders. So it does seem like China is going much faster than the rest of the world for this. But if you look at how their train infrastructure works, it makes sense. China is very, very good at making things very efficient. And the trains this time, it used to

Shanghai to Nanjing used to be a two-hour train before COVID. It's now an hour and 20 minutes. It is so quick to get around China if you just go on the right high-speed rails. So you're mentoring people. I kind of already asked this question, but I want to ask it again. What kind of advice would you give to especially young entrepreneurs without a lot of experience who are interested in doing business in China's mainland?

Yeah, I would say the biggest thing is build your network, but also build your own core skills. So my first time in China back in 2017, throughout 2020, I had to rely on my business partners networks. And that caused a lot of kind of internal conflicts when trying to do business because you're not using your own relationship, you're using other people's relationships.

When I came back in 2023, I spent the time to kind of build my own contacts, the right private business owners, the right networks of people who are already doing business in China, the right government entities to work with, who are already successful in the country in their own right. And that's led to a lot more opportunities based on trust and repeat business.

I think that's the thing about China is that it's really built on trust, right? So it's either an introduction through a mutual friend or it's you building that trust over time. But I think that's why I say build your network first. Yeah, the concept of guanxi is kind of serious. You know, this is interesting because my father was a business person in the United States. He owned a construction company. And when I think of ideas like guanxi or mianzi, I think of my father's business as a point of reference. And it always...

makes me wonder in China is stuff that dissimilar because it doesn't seem like it was like for my father, for example, with Guanxi, he had a very good network in the United States of friends that he did business with on every aspect of, you know, his business. And so in China you have Guanxi. So to me, I always thought, is there really much of a difference? So when you're thinking about networking in the United States and networking in China, what are the similarities and differences in your, in your view? I'm trying to think about this. Uh,

You can do that Elon Musk thing where you just look away into silence for a minute. Yeah. I would say in the US, we're a lot more data-driven, right? In that I think that the US is very calculated in their approach of how they do business.

Whereas in China, sometimes we look at potential and we look at lower hanging fruit. That goes into more of a philosophical question of do we like to become a more efficient economy or do we like to innovate an economy? And I think that's something I learned in the West is that we're able to take a lot more risks. And that's why we kind of have very innovative companies and you see a lot more. By venture-invested business, we see a higher percentage coming out of the U.S. of becoming these billion-dollar companies is that we do have that kind of drive of innovation there.

But you look at China and military technology like surveillance, you look at them and IOT like China has won pretty much all of the markets outside of AI for anything that's like high tech. And that's the US that really gets to take some of this technology because China focuses on manufacturing. Right. They make like really, really good like base products. And then the United States can take that same technology, package it and kind of innovate on top of it, blending that together.

Both countries have their own merits. It's just they focus on different areas of the pipeline. But I do see China becoming more and more innovative. They're bringing a lot of foreign talent back. I would say AI during COVID was like a really big letdown for me to kind of see so many AI researchers leave for Canada around the world. But I do believe, like, especially in surveillance, like future military technology, like everything that I'm seeing outside of China is like looking absolutely amazing and even just like a 5G itself.

China is the only place in the world where I genuinely feel like I have 5G everywhere in the country, whereas you go to other countries and it still kind of feels like a 3.5 to 4G experience, even though like the button on your phone says 5G.

You know, I actually had someone complain about a previous show where they were like, oh, Jason, you've deceived me because I didn't have 5G for this like 10 minute period on a train. So it's not I just want to say that it's not perfect everywhere, but it is a lot better here. I wanted to ask you about the gaming sphere in China for people who are interested in moving into gaming in China. What cities or localities are especially interesting?

Yeah, I think recently, like if you look at like TikTok or anything else, I was going to tell you Chongqing is like the cyberpunk city. But I think that like Chengdu, Wuhan, Hanzhou, Zhuhai specifically for games development, these tier two cities that kind of focus on like kind of younger audiences, like Wuhan being the city that has the largest amount of college students in the world.

I think these two cities are getting more and more influence for gaming. You kind of have two choices from a business perspective. You can either choose to join Tencent or NetEase, the mainstream network.

Or you can try to go with a smaller developer or try to make an indie game yourself. The latter generally gets acquired instead of trying to compete with a duopoly that is Tencent and NetEase inside of the company. And so even like Kuro Games, which has been like a sprawling star this past couple of years making their game Wuthering Waves, they were just fully acquired after their first success also.

And so I would say go to a tier two city. It's cheaper and more fun. You have just as many people who are interested in games and it's a lot cheaper cost of living. I got to say, I love Wuhan personally. It's an amazing city. So I have actually been watching some of Tate and Rogan and some of their people that are like them. What are your personal philosophy when it comes to startups and companies and with whom you do business?

Yeah, Tate's definitely one of those influencers who has both sides to it, right? People either love him or hate him, but I think in the end, he's just a more controversial creator.

I think that young people see so much advice online, but they don't really have real world experience to judge alongside that advice most of the time. One of the reasons that I think we see this culture of like Tang Ping in China now, which is for anybody who doesn't speak Chinese, it's like kind of like laying flat. And it's really this like kind of Gen Z and onwards thing because they don't have that intrinsic motivation to be more than what they currently are.

I think that's something that you have to find passion in and then spend that time to become an expert in your field or have a reason to become an expert. And the reality is that like part of building businesses is luck. Like I would say like, like even for some of my businesses, like it just that one lucky social media moment or something else that's like played a large part in my businesses. But a lot of it is the, it's your ability to work harder than anyone else. Right. Which requires you to actually need that motivation. I try not to take these influencers like, like,

videos to heart because they're always cut out and it's clipped, right? It's meant for social media engagement. But I think that it's good for you to kind of have these role models. And I would say maybe it'd be better for you to read some books from people instead of maybe watching clips. It'd be better for you to kind of like understand the entire thought process of like how that motivation can work.

versus you kind of getting a short dopamine hit. That's my only worry with these TikTok videos is that you get the dopamine hit, but then you don't get a solution after that, right? So you're continuously looking for that dopamine hit without really finding what's next after. Well, what one or two books have you read that you think are highly motivational for people who are entering into business as a young person?

Yeah, I think that any book that kind of talks about how you can like turn your learning more efficient. I'm trying to think there's this one book that's, is it Atomic Habits? Is that what it's called? I believe it is called Atomic Habits, but that was a book I read really early on in my career and I still recommend it to this day. And it's really the concept of

If I get 1% better at something every single day, right? Then eventually over the course of a year or two years, that 1% compounds over time. It's the same way where we try to teach financial literacy and say, $200 here, $200 there, you're essentially maxing out your 401k or your other retirement options, right?

By the time that you're actually retired, the market has compounded over and over and you have a retirement button. It's a good one. The other one is like, there's a book that I really like is like "How to Win Friends and Influence People." And alternatively, there's a Swedish book called "Surrounded by Idiots."

It's really the concept of kind of understanding the world you live in, right? Like you always want someone else to understand you, but you don't understand, like a lot of people don't understand that every single human is unique, right? And it's understanding how to understand each other that makes you influential. And I think that it's a soft skill that you need to have, which is essentially negotiation and communication.

being able to do banter. These are very important soft skills to have when doing business. So I think it's just as important as your own technical abilities. MARK MIRCHANDANI: I think it was the CEO of Nvidia posted something on social media recently where he talks about the 1% thing, where if you just become better at something, 1% over time that it adds up. So I saw that as well. Because basically, he was like, OK, say if your investment every day is 1%,

versus someone who is 1.1, then he shows how that if you just multiply it one times 1.01, 365 times, you end up with this much, much, much larger number. And so, yeah, just putting in a little tiny bit more effort than your competitors is going to matter over time.

But people like you, I think specifically, because I mentioned you a lot, a lot more than you, I think you know, to people as my example of a young person who is highly motivated because of the amount of stuff that you're engaged with versus the other young people your age that I know. So I'm kind of curious. It doesn't feel to me like you just got your knowledge or your desire to be successful from books. So what...

what drives you to move to the next thing into the next thing and the next thing what what do you think in your childhood or an education lesson your dad or your mom taught you or or is it just the way you're built i mean what keeps you going and keeps you coming back for more and more yeah i've thought about this question a lot and i would say part of it is like i i do have adhd and i think that i got the lucky kind right so it's like i got the kind that's like instead of being hard to

focus. I like to focus on a lot of different things. So in essence, I think it's a blessing and a curse in that I normally don't stay in industry as longer than five years. And I kind of always like to see what's in the cutting edge. But I would attribute that partly to growing up in Seattle. I got to see the rise of Boeing, the start of Amazon. I got to see Microsoft and Nintendo kind of grow to power here. And I grew up in an area like

My hometown, Seattle, it was once known for the highest percentage of books read per capita and the highest percentage of books sold per capita and the highest percentage of PhDs per capita, right? And so when you think of that combination of kind of like the learner's mentality coupled with really, really like large,

a lot of days of rain, you get to spend so much more time reading as a child. I'm lucky in that the industry I chose was technologies. And so I was at the start of e-sports and then I went into blockchain at the cusp of it becoming globally adopted. And then I've been now investing in AI and now going back to blockchain again as an infrastructure provider. And so for me, it's really just exciting. I like to see how technology changes.

I grew up in the transition between DSL and, sorry, from dial-up into DSL. And so I only had dial-up internet in my home for about half a year before we made that transition to DSL. So when the microwave turns on and your internet disconnects, I didn't get to experience that like pioneering of the internet.

I know that for you, I'm sure that maybe it's like, oh, yeah, I'm glad that we don't have that anymore. But I never got to experience the first 1.0 iteration of the Internet. And so for me, I think part of it is I want to be part of that cutting edge of the next generation of Internet. You're listening to The Bridge.

Can we talk about Boeing for a second? Because they seem to be a company that is trying to reinvent themselves. I think it was the Starliner was making a beeping sound. So two astronauts who were supposed to spend eight days at the International Space Station are going to instead spend eight months. They're supposed to come back in February, if I'm not mistaken. They also have had quite a few...

with some of their planes, even mainstream American media is commenting on that, and they usually don't dog their own companies. So what do you think about the way that they're restructuring and focusing on less and doing more with it? What do you think about the new CEO? Where do you think Boeing is going? Yeah.

I don't know enough about Boeing's CEO or their core business to talk on that, but I would say, like, they... Coming from, like, I was... In Beijing, I was talking with their head of Asia sales, and so I've kind of heard the internal conflicts along with, like, what you see in the press. I think Boeing has an issue in that they...

third party too many things and they don't own enough of their supply chain, right? In an effort to save overall costs in the long run, they decided to kind of outsource areas that they most likely shouldn't have. There was a 787 that I think it was a 787 that

the door actually fell off of because it wasn't hinged correctly. And I would say like, when issues like that happen and you find out it's a third party, maybe it's time for you to maybe reacquire some of those process lines and supply chains and maybe bring them in house for a higher quality standard. I don't know what to do to fix this though, because the reality is that

whenever you're a public company, you have to make money for your investors, right? And so like from the upper level management side, they're weighing risk of like, you know, like, can we cut a little bit of costs on this area to generate higher percentage returns for our accounting? And so,

That's the unfortunate side when you get to these large businesses is that even this small 1% change to your profit line could actually be catastrophic if you have a bad PR event. This year, they've just been really unlucky in multiple areas of their business. They've had sour news and they even had the employee strike this past month, which I think lost them billions of dollars also. And so...

They'll get better. I mean, it's Boeing. It's like there's like they're a top three company in their industry. Right. And so I'm sure that they'll get through this. And it's really just kind of tightening up how their supply chains work. Can I ask you about EVs? Obviously, Tesla is a huge player in the global community for electronic vehicles. It's not going anywhere, especially with Elon's just personality.

He's a global force. I don't think I can meet a Chinese person who doesn't know who Elon Musk is. And so he's a global personality, probably more famous than our presidents. What

What do you think about Chinese EVs? And what do you think about Tesla? Is there enough market space for everyone? Yeah, you're putting me into a type predicament here. I am team Chinese EV. So I started saying this, I think back in April when I got to Dubai the day of the great floods. And so it was actually a

BYD, a nice brand new BYD that saved me during my trip there. And he helped me wade the waters across 12-inch muddy water and the largest rain flood that they've ever had in the last 100 years. So I think that Chinese EVs have caught up already. I think Tesla has a better brand name, right? But my biggest worry is actually, it's not so much about the EV companies, but I'd really like to know what happens to these batteries after 10 years, like

I hear that Tesla is going to have issues with some of these batteries as they kind of go into like into the end of their life cycle. I haven't looked enough into it, but like I didn't notice like that Noza brand of electric cars. I'm very happy when I'm in Thailand or Dubai or anywhere else and a BYD picks me up because I know it's going to be a newer model of car.

I would say, like, 2018, I wasn't convinced. I felt like there were still a lot of issues with their sedans. But I would say I'm very happy when I get picked up in a BYD car that's fully electric nowadays or any of the other, like, rowways or anything else like that. I think that if China can go global with these, like...

We could see like a Toyota Honda effect in that I think a lot of people using EVs could adopt these Chinese models. They're a lot cheaper than the Tesla, right? And I'm not convinced that the Tesla is like, you know, for the price point versus the Chinese EV. I'm not convinced that Tesla actually provides that much more value. You know, actually, I have to say the BYDs that I've sat in and I take a lot of DDs, which is China's answer to Uber here in China, are very spacious. You know, I usually sit in the back, too. And there's just an enormous amount of space to like sit there, like, you know, get

into them is easy. So for me, that is a big deal. But they are incredibly affordable. Not in the United States, though. Even though there's 100% tariff, I think it's actually still more affordable than American brands. But Chinese brands are actually not that interested in exporting to the United States, even though I think they could, even with 100% tariff. So I think that's kind of

Although, you know, Chinese EVs are moving to Europe. It's fascinating to watch. But, you know, I was also interested in the battery technology because I heard a lot of people talking about that. And I did an entire episode of this show about that. And what we learned was that 95% of EV batteries are alternated.

already globally being recycled because the chemical contents of those batteries are actually extremely expensive and it's actually cheaper to just take it back out of the battery than to mine it somewhere in a developing country. So, you know, hopefully they can get that last 5% eventually. I'm sure that chemists are working on it all over the world.

I wanted to ask you about maybe something you didn't experience. I don't imagine you ever had a job as a barista in Seattle. So what about folks, in your opinion, philosophically, who do have a nine to five, and maybe they've been out of college for a few years, and they're thinking, oh, I want to create my own business, but they have difficulty taking that first step,

where they have to invest somehow and take a risk. What do you think about the philosophy of risk-taking to becoming a business person as opposed to just an employee? - Yeah, I'm actually helping a couple founders who are just like that, like a bakery shop owner who started off on Instagram, who's now looking at her first brick and mortar after crossing six figures in sales, like that type of entrepreneur.

I recommend nights and weekends. Like, like I work with enough people who are both parents, but also like, you know, they work like an enterprise level job during daytime. And I think launching your own business is something that takes, that creates risk and uncertainty in your life. And it also takes away from your personal life at times. Like imagine you being a parent and you're not only working a 40 hour work week, but also you're now trying to do nights and weekends to start a side business and

It's really tough depending on when you start becoming an entrepreneur. So I started off at 25 single and also willing to travel the world. I was coming off of a couple years of savings. And so I had very low risk. I hadn't owned a home during the time when I tried to become an entrepreneur. Now as a homeowner, I have to be a little bit less risky.

But I think it's important to take the time to plan out your business, maybe get a little bit of traction and see it's like when I start crossing that, I'm making at least 3,000, 4,000 US dollars a month in profit from this and build that traction. And when you have enough saved to try it out full time, I would give yourself a half year to a year of full runway to be able to take that time off from your regular work.

Eventually, you'll have to make a decision of do you take that leap of faith if you believe that you can make an access or do you not and continue it as a hobby business. That's up to you to decide as an entrepreneur. I would say if your upside is there and you really believe in the business, then I'd say take the shot the younger you are. But as you get older, it gets a lot more hard because you just have so many more fixed expenses in your life.

I wanted to ask you about technology. We actually got to meet in person last year briefly between your meetings. You had a bunch of meetings lined up. And you were talking about the differences between North American technology hubs and Chinese technology hubs. Where do you think there are new opportunities for emerging technology? And what do you think are the similarities and differences between China and the United States and maybe Canada too? Yeah.

So last year we talked on AI and I would say in this period of time, I think that what I was talking to you about last year in which I felt like North America was kind of getting ahead in AI hardware and agentic work. It has come true. They like the U.S. is now the market leader for that. And kind of that it's always sniping a talent. Right. Whenever whenever you're in a new industry, it's like what government stipends can you give for people to move to other countries, which is immigration benefits?

And I had said that Vancouver and Canada was doing the best job of providing these great passports for the smartest AI researchers. And lo and behold, they are probably one of the best hubs for AI research now. And I think that's kind of what I think about when I think of China versus the US, right? Is that China has always been this kind of like semi-closed wall where you need to speak Chinese and you need to do all these other things to get access to

it very good for someone like me who's Chinese American where I can learn the language, I look Chinese, I can get through a lot of these barriers. But what the US does really well is that they don't look at your language ability. They look at what do you bring to the table as a team. My hope with China over the next few years is I'd like to see more of an emphasis of kind of like, and it's sad to say it, but it's almost like Shark Tank. It's like, I wish that they would

create more in America, we've commoditized like the entrepreneurship as like an entertainment value, right? The fact that we have Mark Cuban and all these other people on television, like investing in small businesses where they're not even giving good deals to most of these projects, they're just giving them the publicity. But like most people in America have that idea, like I want to be a business owner, right? Or like they have the dream of that. I think if China could work more on that through both, they're like kind of like with realistic stories, like I want to

know more about the creator of Jingdong or the struggles that maybe a small local bank had when they were going national. I think there's so many cool stories that can come out of China that can help motivate these people. Or even imagine making a TV show that's just talking about the creation of Douyin as a company, right? But then you dramatize it and you place it towards that preteen to teenage audience.

I think that the content always matches the next generation. And that's what I would like to see more of is more opportunities for people to kind of be able to share ideas internationally while also staying intrinsically Chinese, but also content to support the next generation and make them actually want to be entrepreneurs. You kind of already answered my next question, which is going to be what advice do you have for China to...

make its business environment more inviting, but most of the answers that you gave are really China-specific for Chinese young people. What about in terms of luring more investors and more entrepreneurs from the West to China? What advice would you give China?

Because I mean, this is something you kind of do. Yeah, I would say a big hurdle that I deal with is that if you don't speak Chinese, it's very hard to do business in China, right? And I would say like nowadays, the AI transcoders are getting a lot better. I remember when I first spoke in China the first couple of years, their voice recording, their live translators couldn't keep up with my English pace. And so like the translators wouldn't even work for me. I think that's like a big part of it. Second part is that

In China, a lot of the businesses, they don't have the same requirements as the United States in that we have to follow a very strict regulatory procedure of where our financial accounting is. And if you're someone who's Chinese, doing that due diligence is fairly simple.

but as someone who's coming from the West, it's very, very hard to understand Chinese. Let's say a government stipend. You might do business with the Beijing government and you'll be billing for let's say 5 million RMB, but someone from China probably understands that that could be trunched and that payment won't come up front with that money immediately. You'll get it over the course of a couple of tax periods and that's how government partnerships work. Whereas someone in the US is like, why was this not stated in the original business terms? They

It's just a different way of doing business. And I think that that's education. It would be really cool if maybe there was almost like a TV show, right? Or something like that, where you have a bunch of foreign investors who all put, let's say, a million dollars into a Chinese fund. And then they get to do the same thing where I joined, which is the Overseas Technology Entrepreneurship Competition. But get to work with some of these Chinese businesses. They get to learn how Chinese businesses operate on a day-to-day basis. And then they get a chance to invest in some of these founders that they can...

know better. I can see that being really, really interesting. That does sound really interesting, but I think you would need a joint partnership between media in the United States and China or an English-speaking country and China in order to produce an English program about doing business. That sounds fascinating. Actually, it's a really, really good idea. Let's talk about your trips to China. We don't have a lot of time left. You came to Beijing recently.

Beyond all of your business dealings, what did you go see? What did you go do? What is fascinating for you about being in China? What did you want to see? Yeah, honestly, I came here for work this trip, so I didn't really have any plans for sightseeing. I went to the Temple of Heaven. It is very commercialized. I didn't realize that they used to sacrifice humans at the top of that altar like thousands of years ago. And then they swapped to... That's news to me. I learned the story. So they used to...

sacrifice humans for, I think it was for rain or for famine or something. And then they essentially said that a hundred normal people is the value of one royal person. And then after that, you could sacrifice a hundred villagers or one royal. And once the royals start getting sacrificed, they're like, oh yeah, we should start sacrificing animals instead. And

essentially they went over to doing livestock after that and i think of this as like one woman who got selected it's like i'm my life is so important okay no more human sacrifice we're going to animals and everything else is decided it was really cool to kind of come back with a lot better chinese language being able to read some of this stuff together but i also was it's cool to see like blind boxes inside of inside the temple of heaven right even myself as a chinese american i'm

talking to you about porcelain, which I never thought I would be doing in my life, but I've become a fan of porcelain. Shanghai was really good for me this trip, too. I went to my grandfather's grave that's a little bit outside of Wuxi, and it was amazing to kind of see how well-groomed the memorial was. It looked like a tian tang, almost like a Hangzhou, kind of like Siyuan. And

We had a trolley and everything to the space and like there is a gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous. And I look back to like, like kind of thinking about how in America cemeteries are kind of depressing. They're like, they're like sad to go to. And like, it like has the ambience of sadness. Whereas in China, I feel like it was more of an ambience of remembrance and like, it made me feel hopeful and like,

It's something that I had never experienced before. It was amazing. Food was amazing. I had Peking duck sashimi with caviar on top of it for the first time in Beijing. Absolutely bonkers. I always feel like Chinese food is so innovative and I will have anything from a durian crane to Peking duck sashimi. And then I'll have Kung Pao chicken over a grilled fish. It's amazing to be back. And I'm excited to be coming more and more often over the next few years too. You mentioned Urumqi. Did you get to go out there?

I didn't. So my wife, she's building animal shelters across China. So she partnered with the Urumqi local government along with the Nodza EV company, actually. And so she's been helping build out shelter programs. So kind of providing these like really well, like these like these sustainable shelters for dogs and cats that are strays inside the winter, providing free cat food or dog food for those regions also. And then also creating TNVR programs, which are trap, neuter and release.

I think with a stray population, it's all about controlling their, just neutering them and spaying them so that they're not continuously reproducing. And so that's what she's focusing on. But I didn't get a chance to go, but she spent a couple of days there, really appreciated the time there and thought it was an amazing, it was her first time in the Xinjiang area too. Yeah.

I'd like to ask one last question. I think if we have time, where haven't you been in China that you really would like to go see? Jingnan, China is like, we had a mutual friend named Steven, right? The break dancer. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I haven't caught up with him. But I remember when I first moved to Beijing, he went and hiked in some year during the Chinese New Year's. But he talked to me about this Niu Jing. So I think it's beef tendon that is air dried

it's so that it stores well, right? And then they bring it down from the mountains and they can make this braised dish. I really like red braised pork. And so I've always really wanted to kind of backpack across Yunnan and maybe even go to Guilin later, like after that.

I want to see more of like the China for its beauty now. I've been to all the tier one cities, most of the tier two cities. And so I'd like to do a little bit more sightseeing. But unfortunately, most of my trips are always like in Beijing or Shanghai. So I haven't had a chance to kind of take that trek yet. Well, that's amazing. You know, personally, I look forward to your next trip to China. Hopefully we can hook up and, you know, hang out and spend some time together. Thank you so much for your time, Pat. Thanks for having me, Jason. I'm excited to be back again probably next year.