Unlike brick and mortar retailers and supermarkets, many of which have been forced to shut down during COVID-19, online marketplaces have enjoyed strong levels of growth over the past two months.
As consumers confined to their homes turned to the internet for necessities as well as entertainment, digital retailers across Asia noted sharp spikes in sales.
I did not start doing VC right after college. First, I must mention I was very fortunate to be in the class of 1993 at Stanford. That was the year Netscape browser was released and the world became a very different place thereafter.
I think Peter Thiel was a couple years ahead of me, and Jerry Yang (co-founder and former CEO of Yahoo! Inc.) was a year behind me, but as a graduate student. So that was the right time to be in the internet business, but I didn’t know anything about VC back then.
What I look for – basically what VCs look for – we’re looking for patterns. If you look at the number of founders, or start-ups that have succeeded, there is a high correlation between what schools they went to and whether they end up becoming a unicorn or not.
The career decisions I had to face in 2005 and 2013 were one of the toughest things I had to face. First, I think one of the hardest decisions I ever made was going to China in 2005.
The other was deciding to move back to Silicon Valley to be a global venture capitalist in 2013.
When I went to China, what spurred me was knowing that China was about to undergo some changes. This was as early as 2003. I liked how the political regime handled their transition, and how they handled the SARS crisis as well. So, I felt that China would be politically stable – at least for the next 10 years – creating a stable environment for start-ups to perform better.
The original question was: As a young investor, I often make mistakes and I try to struggle through and learn from them. I will be grateful to hear from your experience in dealing with failed investments or lessons that has shaped you to become a successful venture capitalist. How did you get through the failure? Here’s my answer to him.
Original question: What advice would you give to a foreigner starting a business in China? Do you see China being as attractive as the U.S. as a place to work and live in tech, for foreigners? Here’s my answer.
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