English translations are being added article by article. The Chinese collection contains 858 articles; 736 currently have a full English translation. Dates refer to the original posts.
Notes from Dedao’s audio summary of 精進, with Robin’s brief commentary
Reading guide
This concluding piece in Dedao’s 精進 series treats success as a personal path that cannot be copied, revisiting time, choices, action, learning, thinking tools, and focus. It encourages continual improvement to build distinctive abilities while recognizing the cost. Robin humorously opts to remain a happy ordinary person and offers the material to those who want to become more capable. These are not success rules he promises to follow. The piece sits between management methods and personal values and was submitted for a decision on inclusion.
Key points
The excerpt treats success as an individual path that cannot be copied.
It revisits time, choices, action, learning, and focus.
Robin humorously preserves the option of being a happy ordinary person.
Notes from Dedao’s audio summary of 精進; no separate commentary by Robin
Reading guide
This summary of Dedao’s discussion of 精進 considers decision standards and the limits of knowledge, then offers three tools: deferring goals, transferring skills, and making work more like a game. Its Stanford six-year lifelong-learning example needs qualification. Stanford’s official retrospective describes Stanford 2025 as a future-oriented thought experiment proposed in 2014, not an implemented academic system introduced in 2015. The original account is retained, with a separate source note explaining the difference. There is no additional commentary by Robin.
Key points
Use clearer standards to examine choices.
Expand options by temporarily deferring goals and transferring skills.
Improve work through clear goals, suitable difficulty, and feedback.
Notes from Dedao’s audio summary of 精進, with Robin’s commentary
Reading guide
This summary of Dedao’s discussion of 精進 distinguishes hoarding information, understanding words, and actively decoding ideas. Ask what the author claims, why, where it applies, how it can be challenged, and whether it transfers elsewhere. Robin treats reading as a continuing conversation with the author, not wholesale acceptance. He also suggests assigning AI different roles to challenge, defend, and supplement an argument, helping reveal blind spots. This is a thinking exercise: it cannot guarantee that AI perspectives are independent or replace source checking and human judgment.
Key points
Question an argument’s assumptions, boundaries, and transferability.
Do not merely hoard information or accept everything.
Robin suggests using different AI roles to challenge, defend, and supplement ideas.
Reprinted article on AI-powered one-person companies, with Robin’s brief commentary; original author not identified
Reading guide
A reprinted article on AI-powered one-person companies, followed by Robin’s brief commentary; the original author is not identified. Before starting, recognize the gap between observing and doing, and the reality of not yet knowing how to run a company. Three layers matter: distinguish resources supplied by an organization from personal capabilities; build a working business system from positioning through customer relationships; and use AI as a long-term collaborator that amplifies judgment and capacity. AI helps only when you enter the market and improve your judgment through experience. Robin favors leaner teams and more careful hiring.
Key points
Distinguish an organization’s resources from your own capabilities.
Make positioning, products, customer acquisition, sales, and customer relationships work together.
Robin favors leaner teams and greater care in hiring.
Management notes from a Dedao audio summary discussing Fredmund Malik; no separate commentary by Robin
Reading guide
These Dedao management notes discuss four of Fredmund Malik’s tools. Reduce meeting frequency; prepare, follow up, and stay focused on the agenda. Reports should make writers think, rather than substitute breadth of information for depth of thought. Job descriptions and delegation should keep the best people focused on the most important work, including in self-management. Systematic organizational cleanup asks which activities you would not start today if they had not already begun. Set aside a day each year to remove obsolete work and list what to stop next year. The central idea is that focus is the essence of execution.
Key points
Keep meetings on topic, prepare beforehand, and follow through afterward.
Reports should stimulate thought rather than pile up information.
Focus key people on key work and regularly stop obsolete activities.
These notes tagged 未來回推法 describe leaders’ need to manage today while looking further ahead. Three horizons cover optimizing the core business, cultivating new growth opportunities, and working backward from a vision five to ten years ahead to today’s strategy. The central proposition is that the future is designed rather than predicted, and strategy reshapes the future rather than merely extending the present. Robin adds: begin with the end in mind, but take each present step well.
Key points
Optimize the core business while cultivating new opportunities.
Reconsider today’s choices from a long-term vision.
Robin: begin with the end in mind without neglecting each present step.
Reprinted second recommendation foreword to 未來回推法; foreword author not identified
Reading guide
This second recommendation foreword to 未來回推法, whose author is not identified, contrasts projecting forward from today with working backward from the future. The former supports daily stability, the latter strategic breakthroughs; both are necessary. It presents future-back thinking as a trainable organizational practice: co-create a future picture across departments, break it into staged tasks, and establish regular foresight mechanisms to counter short-termism. With AI and supply chains changing, founders and corporate investors need to balance survival pressure with long-term positioning.
Key points
Daily stability and long-term breakthroughs must proceed together.
Co-create a future picture across departments and translate it into staged tasks.
Connect long-term vision with near-term work through regular thinking practices.
Reprinted translator’s foreword to 未來回推法, with Robin’s brief commentary
Reading guide
The translator’s foreword to 未來回推法 argues that optimizing the present cannot guarantee future success: past strengths can become constraints. Leaders should imagine changes in their industry and organization five to ten years ahead, then work backward to decide what to invest in, change, and stop. Strategy creates a reason to exist in the future. Facing AI-driven change, organizations need to move from past-experience-driven thinking toward future possibilities through dialogue and team co-creation. The method also applies personally: move from being pushed by the past to being drawn toward the future.
Key points
Past success can become a constraint.
Use a future vision to reconsider what to invest in, change, and stop.
Turn vision into present action through dialogue and co-creation.
Reprinted FDE article; original author not identified, with no separate commentary by Robin
Reading guide
This reprinted FDE article, whose author is not identified, describes trust in enterprise procurement: vendor publicity ranks below analyst reports, public peer cases, and ultimately private peer recommendations. FDE can generate material customers share privately. Three actions matter: turn delivery results into a story with numbers, people, and contrast, preparing a one-page summary, three graphics, and a thirty-second version; make customers’ business success part of their own professional standing, illustrated by Walgreens and J.D. Power; and manage endorsement backlash, because reference-customer failures can spread faster than successes.
Key points
The excerpt argues that enterprise buyers value private peer recommendations.
Present delivery results through specific numbers, people, and contrasts.
Reference-customer failures can also spread quickly; manage delivery risk.
This 2023 column distinguishes an ordinary business from a venture-backed startup through growth speed, scalability, and capital needs. First clarify what you want to build, the life you want, and the sacrifices you are willing to make. Then decide whether fundraising and scaling are the right path.
Key points
First determine whether your business needs rapid growth and scale.
VC return structures shape investment choices and do not suit every good business.
Begin with the end in mind and choose a path aligned with personal goals.
Investors assess a market’s ceiling, but founders should not simply chase media excitement. This column brings together industry size, niche needs, and personal passion. Begin with a problem you genuinely understand and want to work on for years, rather than choosing a venture for fundraising.
Key points
Market size shapes growth potential, but popularity does not make entry suitable.
Solve a small group’s real problems first, then seek opportunities to expand.
Build for your own ideals rather than substituting investors’ expectations for direction.
Facebook’s early investment story illustrates the value of trusted introductions: trust, industry understanding, and an introducer willing to share the risk. The author then compares fundraising to concentric circles, reminding founders to value all money equally and accept the responsibility it brings, whoever provides it.
Key points
Trusted introductions help early teams cross the trust barrier.
An introducer’s industry knowledge and willingness to co-invest influence the result.
The first investment also brings new responsibilities.
Before investing in a team and product, establish who needs it, why the need is urgent, and whether they will pay. Starting with the technology-first approach common in academic ventures, this column emphasizes priorities, niche customers, and continual validation rather than attributing every sales problem to insufficient market education.
Key points
First identify the target customer’s most urgent problem.
Clarify needs through experiments and validation, not confidence in technology alone.
Start with a small, clearly defined problem and win paying customers.
Using Threads’ early development alongside Tesla, SpaceX, and Amazon, this 2024 column argues for focusing on customer problems and distinctive solutions rather than merely catching incumbents. The examples reflect observations at the time of writing, not conclusions about the products’ later development.
Do not choose a listing venue solely for its prestige. Consider customer location, whether investors understand the company, and the fit among scale, liquidity, and cost. Using company examples through year-end 2023, the author explains how Taiwanese small and medium-sized businesses can use listing as a tool for their next growth stage.
Key points
Start with customers and core markets, then consider the exchange.
The company’s investment story, scale, and investor attention need to fit.
Assess listing and ongoing costs, shareholder composition, timing, and taxes together.
Shareholders are long-term partners, not funding sources you can replace at will. Comparing CVC and VC resources, interests, and risks, this column advises founders to investigate investors’ reputations while cash is still sufficient and consider whether the shareholder mix supports long-term cooperation.
Key points
Equity partnerships last and are difficult to exit; choose shareholders carefully.
Strategic resources can bring labeling, conflicts of interest, and disclosure risks.
Fundraising is mutual selection; investigate investors’ collaboration records.
Reflecting on VC’s role in innovation, the author argues it must connect talent, policy, and markets as well as capital, and share entrepreneurs’ risk of failure. Taiwan’s fortieth VC anniversary becomes a call to accept responsibility for the next generation of industry.
Key points
VC’s influence cannot be measured by capital alone.
Innovation requires cooperation among government, entrepreneurs, VC, and capital markets.
Look back at history to accept the next era’s risks and opportunities.
A fixed fund life can force investors to exit before good companies continue growing. Beginning with the tension between long-term ownership and shareholder liquidity, this column considers how evergreen VC and public listings might change investment horizons, exits, and room for early-stage investing.
Key points
Fund lives influence investment decisions and disposal timing.
Evergreen investing must still address shareholders’ different liquidity needs.
Listing a venture firm can provide an exit mechanism, but does not remove investment risk.
Looking back at the Great Tree Pharmacy investment, the author sets out four assessment layers: industry potential, competitive structure, the team’s ability to change the industry, and resources a VC can provide. Systems, sharing success with employees, culture, and capital-market capabilities matter more than store counts alone.
Key points
Examine industry prospects and competitive structure before company distinctiveness.
Systems, talent, and culture are advantages that cannot simply be copied.
Investors must ask what resources they can provide beyond money.
Drawing on FITI and research-commercialization mentoring, the author supports government bearing early technology risk while urging academic teams to return to customer needs, mission, and commitment. Interview methods, peer support, and willingness to pay move ventures forward more effectively than technology demonstrations alone.
Key points
Government and VC play different roles at different innovation stages.
Explore customer problems through open interviews rather than leading questions.
Beyond technology, clarify motivation, team commitment, and demand.
Looking back at crises, this column prepares startups for a funding winter: prioritize customer revenue, concentrate on the core, and offer investors a new plan worth backing. It is a strategic view from 2025, not a real-time forecast of 2026 fundraising.
Key points
Strengthen survival through paying customers and the core business.
Help yourself before fundraising; abandon expansion that does not support core value.
Investors need a viable plan, not merely a request for winter provisions.
This 2026 column considers positioning for Taiwan’s frontier-technology startups through AI infrastructure, semiconductor supply chains, and US–Taiwan industrial complementarity. It advocates understanding end-market giants’ needs and pursuing international opportunities through existing supply chains, hardware–software integration, and strategic cooperation rather than doing everything alone.
Key points
Find gaps startups can fill using Taiwan’s hardware and supply-chain foundations.
Stay close to end-market needs and expand through industry partners and technology platforms.
Software startups can consider integrated hardware–software offerings and international opportunities in vertical markets.
Commentary notes; the original post does not identify a separate source
Reading guide
In this note from the end of 2020, Robin suggests that continually adding features may reveal uncertainty about whom a product serves and what it solves. Rather than building an all-encompassing platform, make the first version simple, direct, and relevant to target customers. This is a management perspective, not a causal claim that every complex product must fail.
Key points
Clarify target customers and the problem they will pay to solve.
Extra features cannot replace confidence in the core need.
Concentrate limited resources on the most important breakthrough.
Commentary notes; the original post does not identify a separate source
Reading guide
This note treats strategy as trade-offs. Knowing what not to do creates depth in what matters most. Using quantity, speed, quality, and economy, Robin warns against confusing rapid hiring or broad activity with irreplaceable expertise. Developing one important capability deeply can be stronger than following everywhere. Claims about how many dimensions produce victory or defeat are rhetoric about trade-offs, not a quantitative success formula.
Key points
Strategy includes clearly stating what not to do.
Team growth and breadth do not equal depth of capability.
Management notes followed by Robin’s commentary; the opening does not identify a separate source
Reading guide
Robin cautions product teams against merely copying competitors or letting one large customer turn a reusable product into bespoke project work. Preserve your own industry understanding and make products easy to adopt and scale. The note allows an exception for specialized products with long implementations: fewer customers paying higher prices can be a viable model, rather than rejecting such products outright.
Key points
Competitive intelligence cannot replace your own industry judgment.
Distinguish general product needs from customization for one customer.
Consider implementation complexity alongside customers, pricing, and the scaling model.
Commentary notes; the original post does not identify a separate source
Reading guide
This note reverses the planning sequence: describe the desired future, assess today’s position, then gather the people, money, and resources needed. Robin’s stone-soup metaphor describes resource integration and contrasts with beginning from what is already available. This is a goal-oriented perspective, not a claim that startups can know outcomes in advance or must exclude experimentation.
Key points
Describe the goal before assessing present conditions.
Fill resource gaps through people, funding, and cooperation.
Goal orientation and starting with resources at hand are different perspectives.
More accessible funding, abundant incubators and accelerators, founder-friendlier terms, and AI have lowered entry barriers. Success is harder: abundant capital fuels irrational, unprofitable competition; talent costs more and is harder to retain; accelerating technology makes investors hesitate. Understanding the rules and everyone’s motives still offers a chance to win.
Key points
Funding, incubators, terms, and AI make starting easier.
Unprofitable growth spreads through competition, while rapid imitation shrinks the window.
Low birth rates force startups to compete directly with technology giants for talent.
Rapid responses by AI giants can make customers and investors hesitate.
Centralized organizations have enabled pyramids, cathedrals, NASA’s Moon missions, and US–European cooperation on the Webb telescope. Robin asks: if people must organize to achieve great things, what ambitious vision do decentralized organizations seek to realize?
Key points
Centralized organizations enabled pyramids, cathedrals, and NASA’s Moon missions.
The United States and Europe cooperated to put Webb into orbit.
If organizing is necessary for major achievements, what is decentralization’s grand vision?
Founded in 1988, Trend Micro is presented as Taiwan’s most successful and international software company; thirty-six years later, it remains the name people mention. Robin argues Taiwan must value software: business owners, consumers, and creators need to pay for it. That culture is necessary for a truly digital island. The post links to reporting that Trend Micro was considering a sale.
Key points
Trend Micro, founded in 1988, is presented as Taiwan’s most successful global software company.
Thirty-six years later, it remains the leading example.
Businesses, users, and creators need to recognize software’s value and pay for it.
The post links to reporting that Trend Micro was exploring a sale.
Robin argues that America’s strength owes much to sustained funding that attracts leading global talent to study, teach, and conduct frontier research. Funding freezes and interference with academic freedom threaten that foundation. Harvard president Alan Garber’s open letter said the university would not surrender its independence; more than US$2 billion in federal funding was subsequently frozen.
Key points
Generous funding helped America attract leading global talent.
Funding freezes and interference with academic freedom threaten that foundation.
Garber’s open letter said Harvard would not surrender its independence.
More than US$2 billion in federal funding was subsequently frozen.
Founders and investors should sit on the same side of the table. Investors help founders solve problems and face challenges, caring not only about short-term orders or user counts but also their direction and thinking when choosing a path.
Key points
Founders and investors should sit on the same side, not opposite sides.
Investors help solve problems and face challenges beside founders.
Direction and thinking matter alongside short-term orders and users.
Write regularly to employees and investors about the thinking behind decisions, the company’s position, and its challenges. Written communication forces periodic reflection and builds trust across the team and investor base.
Key points
Share decisions, reasoning, company developments, and challenges regularly.
Robin’s compilation; the six points are his signed views
Reading guide
Robin offers six practices for adaptive thinking: read more; think and develop your own views; express opinions and discuss them rationally; remain open; stay rational, calm, and clear under intense pressure; and respond quickly in urgent, dangerous, complex conditions. A surgeon may discover unexpected conditions and rapidly deteriorating vital signs despite tests and simulations, requiring decisions textbooks do not cover. Combat pilots face similar situations.
Key points
Read more, think more, and develop your own views.
Discuss opinions rationally and stay open.
Remain calm under pressure and respond quickly in complex emergencies.
Surgeons and combat pilots encounter situations textbooks do not cover.
New investors can use several books to build a coherent system and methodology. At some point, Robin argues, they should leave the textbook framework behind. After over a decade of experience, including the 2008 crisis, he believes exceptional investments cannot be assessed solely through due diligence. Excessively rigid investigations may select mediocrity. Investments producing thousandfold or ten-thousandfold returns may initially look completely implausible, yet achieve extraordinary results.
Key points
Use books to build a coherent investment methodology early on.
At a certain stage, leave the textbook framework behind.
Overly rigid investigation and processes may select mediocre investments.
Potential thousandfold or ten-thousandfold investments may initially look implausible.
Robin argues that low interest rates, inflation, and wages, alongside exchange-rate controls, have prolonged the survival of firms needing to upgrade or exit. He sees a positive role for inflation and normalizing rates, exchange rates, and prices in stimulating transformation. Major improvement, he believes, requires innovation and investment, directing a small portion of capital toward early-stage venture opportunities and future trends.
Key points
Low rates, inflation, and wages, with exchange-rate controls, can prolong firms needing to upgrade.
Normalizing rates, exchange rates, and prices may stimulate transformation.
Robin sees innovation and investment as the route to major improvement.
Allocate a small portion of capital toward early-stage venture investment and future trends.
TSMC’s Night Hawk program used round-the-clock shifts of PhDs to break physical limits. Robin argues that doubling effort to compensate for weak strategic thinking no longer suits the times. Choices matter more: creativity and innovation should let excellent researchers fulfill their potential, rather than merely tend machines on shifts.
Key points
TSMC’s Night Hawk program used PhDs working research shifts around the clock to push physical limits.
Extra work cannot compensate for inertia in strategic thinking.
Choices matter more; the future calls for creativity and innovation.
Let PhDs fulfill their research potential rather than merely tend machines.
Robin begins by arguing that disruptors look different and achievement requires differentiation. He uses analogies: Nokia’s feature-phone dominance was challenged by Apple’s smartphone market, not a stronger feature phone; a Baidu challenger might enter like Toutiao rather than build a better search engine. He similarly imagines TikTok rather than another social website challenging Facebook—an analogy, not an established outcome. A Starbucks challenger might open a delivery-and-takeaway online market like Luckin rather than copy its model.
Key points
A disruptor will look completely different.
Nokia’s challenge came from smartphones, not better feature phones.
TikTok versus Facebook is the author’s analogy, not an established outcome.
A Starbucks challenger could develop a different delivery-and-takeaway market.
Silicon Valley has long emphasized believing before seeing, and much of Holmes’s defense revolved around that idea. But the distinction between ambition and fraud lies in details: sending tests to outside laboratories when machines do not work, and dressing claims with celebrity photographs and endorsements. Robin’s conclusion is that founders can have vision and ideals, but must not deceive, overpackage, or fabricate for investors who trust them.
Key points
Believing before seeing is a longstanding startup theme reflected in Holmes’s defense.
The line between vision and fraud lies in details such as outsourced testing when machines fail.
Celebrity photographs and endorsements can dress up claims.
Vision and ideals do not justify deception, exaggeration, or fabrication.
Responding to Facebook claims that donations merely move money between pockets, Robin argues that few people give away their entire wealth. He favors the Gates Foundation over governments, less effective foundations, or direct gifts to individuals, believing it can maximize impact through health, medicine, and education in developing countries and billions in annual spending. He considers foreign billionaires’ thinking worth learning from: Buffett pledged 99% of his wealth, mainly to the foundation, while Larry Page preferred entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk who seek to change the world over conventional charities.
Key points
Few people truly give away their entire wealth.
Robin believes the Gates Foundation can use donations more effectively than the alternatives he lists.
Buffett pledged 99% of his wealth, mainly to the Gates Foundation.
Page favored entrepreneurs seeking to change the world, such as Musk, over conventional charities.
Robin argues that government has long protected living costs through electricity, fuel, and water subsidies, while resource-limited Taiwan imports almost all energy. Rather than single out milk, compare overall price changes with other countries. Taiwan cannot expect everything to be cheapest while wages match global standards. He considers its combination of strong growth and controlled prices enviable and urges appreciation of those advantages.
Key points
Government subsidies have long protected electricity, fuel, and water prices.
Taiwan has limited resources and imports almost all energy.
Compare overall price changes internationally rather than milk alone.
The cheapest goods and world-level wages are difficult to combine; appreciate existing advantages.