English articles

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Robin sees market economics and access to capital as the best response to egg shortages. Extreme heat and cold reduce laying rates, while disease and avian influenza kill chickens. Traditional farms have poor conditions and unstable supply; guaranteed off-take arrangements offer little incentive to upgrade, while aging smallholders cannot scale. Policy support can accelerate transformation through automation, branding, and better poultry houses. Robin’s own proposal is direct: encourage and guide large egg farms toward IPOs so they can raise capital for upgrading and expansion, reducing environmental and disease threats.

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Appier was scheduled to list on Japan’s Mothers market on March 31, 2021, under stock code 4180. Robin includes links to the Japanese- and English-language prospectuses on JPX and jokes that the prospectus is in Japanese. A brief record of a Taiwanese AI company listing in Japan.

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After receiving 科技巨頭解碼’s (Tech Giants Decoded) analysis of Google’s explosive new quarterly results, Robin jokes that he made the same point in early 2020. Google is beginning to reap revenue from related products: Google Photos, which began charging midyear; the long-promoted YouTube Premium subscription; Google Play commissions; and hardware sales. Related quarterly revenue reached US$6.62 billion, up 29.25% year over year. These figures refer to 2021.

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Sharing-economy giant Airbnb posted four consecutive profitable quarters. First-quarter 2023 revenue was US$1.82 billion, up 20% and above analysts’ US$1.8 billion forecast. Net income was US$117 million, compared with a US$19 million loss a year earlier and expectations of US$90 million profit. Robin’s one-line conclusion: ultimately, running a business means demonstrating your ability to make money.

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The Taiwan Innovation Board substantially relaxed its listing requirements: the first category’s minimum market capitalization fell from NT$1.5 billion to NT$1 billion, and its revenue requirement for the latest four quarters fell from NT$150 million to NT$100 million. The second, biomedical category’s market-cap threshold dropped from NT$3 billion to NT$2 billion; the third remained at NT$4 billion. The waiting period to apply for a board transfer shortened from two years after listing to one. A record of regulatory easing in Taiwan’s capital markets, as of September 2022.

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An observation from an afternoon corporate-governance class: topics like this have little to do with an ordinary, cash-strapped person. In this #WhyStartABusiness post, Robin says that if you can talk Alibaba’s 18 founding members into joining, as Jack Ma did, and persuade Joe Tsai to leave a job with an eight-figure annual salary, move to Hangzhou, and accept RMB500 a month, you may be ready to begin that great journey.

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It is time for Perfect Corp.’s financial statements. Robin’s hope is straightforward: Taiwan’s investors should grow more accustomed to negative shareholders’ equity—and, of course, so should securities regulators. A succinct observation on the gap between startup financial structures and conventional thinking about listed companies, as of November 2022.

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After FITI, the From IP to IPO Program, ended, Robin continued introducing startup teams to a listed company with a market capitalization of NT$10 billion for business discussions. There seemed to be substantial progress, and investment was being discussed, too. A brief glimpse of day-to-day work in venture capital.

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The second half of an interview with Shen Nanpeng. On an era dominated by leaders: the internet is winner-take-all, with perhaps two food-delivery companies and four or five e-commerce survivors. Mergers need clear commercial logic: no one wants 1+1=0.5, while everyone is eager for 1+1=5; investors act as advisers who articulate that logic. Three investment criteria have remained unchanged for fifteen years: the entrepreneur, industry size, and business model, including natural barriers to entry. Early-stage founder assessment remains an art. “Invest in the track rather than the racer” is a major misconception: the founder comes first, and confidence in values and ability can justify a “blind bet.” Long-term thinking requires resisting short-term temptations, intellectual honesty, and the courage to knock again on the door of a company you misjudged. Fund life matters more than size: how can you think long term with only seven or eight years?

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Three interpretations of long-term thinking: Luo Zhenyu describes compounding over time, with long-term certainty helping us withstand external uncertainty; Liang Ning describes meeting uncertainty with inner order; Harvard Business Review describes Amazon’s success as a victory for long-term thinking. The main text is a long essay by Zuoyebang founder Hou Jianbin: invest time, energy, and resources in lasting competitiveness, and ask whether each day’s work builds something or consumes it. If something can simply be bought, it does not distinguish you from peers. His examples include achieving 80% market share in photo-based question search, building an internal teacher-development system, and separating curriculum research from teaching. Milestones mean stronger core capabilities, not a listing or market share. Hiring weights culture six parts, ability three, and experience one. Written in 2020, before the subsequent upheaval in China’s tutoring industry.

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A special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), also called a blank-check company, has no operating assets and promises to use its IPO proceeds to acquire a business. In 2020, roughly one-fifth of newly listed US companies used this structure. Compared with an IPO or direct listing, a SPAC skips many steps, has no lockup period, and can take a company public in weeks. Its sponsor, usually a private equity or asset management firm, covers listing costs, initially contributes about 5%, and receives 20% of the equity after listing. A private target must be acquired within two years of the IPO. For the target, it is effectively a backdoor listing through a clean shell containing only cash. Roadshows explain a vision rather than operations—“fundraising by slide deck,” in a sense. A record of the enthusiasm as of August 2020.

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Robin’s extended response to Gogoro’s announced US listing through a SPAC. First, Taiwan’s capital market: it is not psychologically ready for a business with potentially over NT$10 billion in accumulated losses, very low or negative equity, and continuing large losses. Regulators and investors need to learn together. Second, Gogoro itself: choosing the most suitable listing venue is reasonable, but US-market visibility requires a large opportunity, a top-three regional position, and high growth, as with Grab. His concerns include the potential of electric scooters, revenue concentrated in Taiwan, the closure of European partner Coup, and slowing or declining figures. Third, advice to regulators: 91APP is accepted because it has demonstrated its model. Taiwan may not yet accommodate a US$2 billion unicorn, but could best support startups valued at US$100 million–US$1 billion, attracting strong international teams to list here. Written in September 2021.

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Google is among the world’s most technologically advanced companies, yet product development is not always smooth: it has launched and abandoned more than a hundred products. Google Glass provides a case study. Its spectacular skydiving livestream at I/O 2012 was followed by problems: a US$1,500 price consumers resisted, marketing that overhyped a prototype whose features were still in development, Bluetooth and battery issues, privacy concerns about the camera, and no killer use case. A deeper issue was that a star engineering team was still arguing halfway through development about whether it was a consumer device or a professional tool. An unclear direction set it up to fail. Explaining failure afterward is easy; judging it in advance is hard.

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Many entrepreneurs discover halfway through a project that their idea rests on a false premise. The difficulty is judging implementability in advance: something impossible three years ago may work today; what team A cannot do, team B may accomplish. Three tests: first, an idea that plainly violates accepted laws or theorems is unworkable, but distinguish immutable principles from old rules that can be broken—using the former to break the latter is a means of innovation. Second, geographically constrained projects cannot conflict with local mainstream culture; online-to-offline projects especially must respect differing habits. Third, ideas requiring new user habits or skills demand special psychological and financial preparation. Educating a market is expensive, but success can create the strongest barriers, as the iPhone did for iOS users.

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Three excerpts from Tools of Titans. Navy SEAL commander Jocko Willink: real freedom comes from discipline; unrestricted freedom brings the paradox of choice and decision fatigue. Take full responsibility for everything in your world. Humility means listening to others; its highest form is observing yourself from a third-person perspective. NFL champion coach Bill Belichick’s canvas strategy: clear a path for others, give them credit, “be lesser, do more,” and keep doing it indefinitely. Dilbert creator Scott Adams: develop a system rather than obsess over individual goals. Reach the top 25% in two or three fields and combine those skills to achieve something remarkable.

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Learning to relax and rest does not reduce efficiency; it can support creativity. Brain research finds the resting brain as active as the working brain, with stronger connections between some regions. Active approaches include walking to relax your thinking, perhaps as a walking meeting; exercising to improve circulation—Haruki Murakami compares finishing a book to physical labor and trains for marathons; developing a napping habit, even for half an hour, as a learnable skill; getting enough sleep while the brain integrates memories and repairs damage; and learning “detachment,” focusing entirely on something other than work, especially after high-pressure tasks.

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Professor Christensen’s fundamental point: even excellently managed companies can fail. A success formula hardens, trapping a business in a value network governed by customer orientation, profit assessment, and resource allocation. That network cannot accommodate a new-business team, so an independent small organization outside the established system should confront disruption. One company can rarely sustain two cost structures and operating models. Three tests: can the innovation disrupt the original market—did people previously need an inconvenient centralized location, or lack the money, equipment, or technology to use it? Does it work at the low end—will customers pay less for imperfect performance, and can a low-priced model remain profitable while “overserving” them? Finally, can the strategy disrupt all major incumbents?

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After Bezos announced that he would step down as Amazon CEO in Q3 2021 and hand over to cloud-business leader Andy Jassy, Robin revisits his decision-making through Keji Daodu’s introduction. Bezos distinguishes irreversible, consequential one-way doors, which require careful, methodical, slow deliberation, from reversible two-way doors that teams can handle quickly. Ideally, the first type takes 10% of working time; avoid it when angry, hungry, lonely, or exhausted. A suboptimal reversible choice can be undone, but reversibility is no excuse for recklessness. Bezos even saw founding Amazon as reversible: if it failed, he could return to work, having learned much and without regretting the attempt. “If I make three good decisions a day, that is enough.”

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The founders of 37signals discuss opportunities. Faced with many possibilities, people often choose what looks easiest: low-hanging fruit. But fruit may look low only because it is far away; approach it and it becomes unreachable. When something seems easy, often the reason is not simplicity but your lack of understanding. 37signals was once overly optimistic about unfamiliar, fashionable areas, only to find everything harder in practice. It then adopted a rule: never enter a completely unfamiliar business, however easy it looks. The psychological explanation is the Dunning–Kruger effect: the less people know, the more confident they are—the half-full bottle makes the most noise.

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Robin began introducing Zoom and Eric Yuan around 2016; Taiwanese entrepreneurs were also its most important angel investors. Born in Shandong, without an elite-university background, with limited English and eight visa rejections, Yuan eventually became a CEO loved by employees. His startup began with unhappiness: at Cisco, he wanted to rebuild WebEx as a mobile-first, video-centered solution, tried for a year, and left when it did not happen. He concluded that life is about happiness, and lasting happiness comes from making others happy. A CEO’s first job is therefore not customers or products, but employees’ happiness: happy engineers write better code. Zoom’s value is one word, “care.” His father’s advice: do your best and stay humble every day. Robin also urges seeing the world with as few personal filters as possible.

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Published in 1966, The Effective Executive remains fresh and thought-provoking. Drucker on time management: executives spend enormous amounts of time on work that contributes nothing, yet few recognize it. If you cannot know yourself, at least know your time. Record and review its allocation; ruthlessly eliminate waste, cancel what should be canceled, and delegate what should be delegated. Stop keeping the organization in firefighting mode, make exceptional situations routine, and consolidate fragmented time into blocks for deep thought. Two priority rules: do not stay busy with yesterday’s tasks—abandon sunk costs and path dependence decisively—and do not let pressure set priorities. “Later” really means “never.” Finally, do one thing at a time.

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A technology giant’s rebirth. Nokia once dominated smartphones, but lost over 90% of its value in four years after the iPhone and Android arrived. Experts thought bankruptcy was only a matter of time. Yet under chairman Risto Siilasmaa, its enterprise value grew more than twentyfold from 2012 to 2016, and it became the world’s second-largest 5G communications-equipment giant. The book offers a firsthand account of the crisis, courageous changes of course, and the details of rebuilding, reading like an adventure novel. At its core are “paranoid optimism” and entrepreneurial-leadership principles for both prosperity and crisis. Robin’s recommendation is simple: browse it when you have time.

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Google is often seen as abandoning products such as Google+ before seeing them through. But Robin also admires its product management: when something is not working, it closes it without worrying about saving face. This reflects bottom-up innovation and high tolerance for failure. Success produces a killer product like Gmail; failures like Buzz, Wave, and Glass are decisively stopped, backed by financial strength and the willingness to cut losses. After acquiring YouTube, Google even abandoned its own heavily funded video service. Apple works differently: top-down, with a small product line and usually one major product in development at a time. Neither philosophy is inherently superior. What matters is finding product-market fit sooner than rivals. Google was fortunate to achieve it before burning through its funds.

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Years ago, Henry Mintzberg flew Eastern Airlines, then the world’s largest airline, and ate terrible scrambled eggs. A flight attendant said frontline staff had repeatedly told management, which never listened. Mintzberg wondered whether management was running a business or merely reading financial statements. Analysts might explain problems through load factors, but he says Eastern closed because of those eggs. Years later, someone from IBM added a story: Eastern’s CEO boarded at the last minute; a paying first-class passenger was moved to economy. The CEO later apologized and introduced himself. The passenger replied, “I’m the CEO of IBM.” The issue was status, not a seat. Management has nothing to do with your customary seat, and everything to do with the eggs.

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Robin: “Do not start a business assuming you can depend on others. Face real-world problems and build a sustainable business from the outset to improve your chances. Fundraising can temporarily conceal problems, but if you have not reached orbit before the rocket’s thrust ends, gravity will bring you crashing down.” Rework challenges the startup myth of a magical place where spending is someone else’s problem and revenue need not spoil the fun. Market forces and economic rules still apply: solve real problems, deliver value, generate revenue, and either make a profit or close. A business built on “we’ll figure out how to make money later” becomes a joke. Without a path to profit, it is a hobby, not a business.

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From UCLA professor Richard Rumelt’s work. Robin sums it up: “If you cannot make clear trade-offs, you can only produce bad strategy.” Much bad strategy comes from refusing to give things up. Abandoning goals hurts interests and meets resistance, so organizations choose a mishmash to please everyone, requiring neither serious analysis nor rigorous logic nor sacrifice. It covers everything and fails. Operation Desert Storm in 1991 provides a contrast: feint in front and outflank from the side. The difficulty was focus—keeping 8,000 elite Marines waiting aboard ships, using airborne troops to distract attention, rejecting a simultaneous air-force attack on Baghdad, and suppressing proposals inconsistent with the main strategy. Concentrating key resources on a few right targets often produces unexpected victories.

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Most productivity methods draw on management theory. The founders of 37signals approach the issue through brain science: attention is among the brain’s scarcest resources and has high switching costs. Interrupt writing to make a slide deck, and you need time to shift gears. That transition is attention switching. Their culture therefore includes “protectionism”: preserve long, uninterrupted working blocks against meetings, approvals, reports, and other interruptions. They compare time to money: exchange it all for one-unit coins and you buy only scattered trinkets; spend it as one sum and you can buy lasting value. People busy across many projects may achieve less than someone focused on one. An hour and sixty separate minutes are entirely different.

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Ben Horowitz’s book on business culture follows The Hard Thing About Hard Things. He does not offer a universal standard for the “best culture,” because none exists. His point is that culture manifests in concrete behavior, not slogans on a wall. Unlimited snacks and a gym are amenities; value statements help shape culture but are not culture itself. “What you do is who you are”: culture appears in everyone’s actions. The book argues that culture is the most powerful productive force, capable of overcoming seemingly insurmountable structural constraints and even changing behavior across an industry or society.

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Robin recommends Liu Jianguo’s book to technical professionals: a former Baidu manager recognized for outstanding management examines management and entrepreneurship challenges. Robin adds that management principles apply broadly, but technical people have distinctive commitments: pursuing new technology and designing products from their own perspective. Working in isolation, they may build something they admire without considering each detail from users’ perspective, leaving abundant unused features and desired features hard to find. The book describes seven “demons” at the technical-versus-management crossroads: uncertainty about the road, confusion over whether to manage, not knowing how to enter management, wavering about returning to technical work, anxiety about technical competitiveness, doubts about personality fit, and insecurity about performance. Settle your inner direction before managing with full concentration.

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Four concluding points from Rework. Culture: plans, meetings, workaholism, and rules may look useful yet kill productivity; judge them by whether they help the company make money. Scale: a company need not become large to matter. Smallness can itself be a great goal, and limited resources spur creativity. If the business performs and earns money, remaining small and efficient can be a manager’s ambition. People: control headcount, slow hiring, and add nobody unless absolutely necessary. Degrees and experience should not determine suitability; doing the work well makes someone a good employee. Finally, maintain your judgment. Do not copy competitors or let customer demands dictate your direction. Keep doing your own core work well.

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More than a decade ago, Taiwan’s game companies commonly told VC evaluators that Chinese games were poor-quality and uncultured. In under ten years, most Taiwanese firms became operators of licensed Korean and Chinese games, despite earlier leaders such as Softstar and influential titles such as 軒轅劍 and 仙劍奇俠. Film, television, and music have also declined: the gap after Jay Chou, A-mei, and Mayday’s generation is substantial. Huawei offers a comparison. Taiwan’s networking firms dismissed it 20 years ago; now even the United States is wary. A huge market turns quantity into quality. Robin argues that resource-constrained Taiwan must understand global trends and its own cultural strengths, rather than follow whatever others do well. He sees growing opportunities amid US–China tensions and urges Taiwan to position itself for the next wave.

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A once-fashionable distinction says leaders do the right things while managers do things right. It sounds convincing—until you focus only on the right things and neglect how to do them. Separating the two and placing leadership above management harms both. Royal Bank of Canada CEO John Cleghorn called from his trip to the airport to report a broken ATM, one among thousands. This was leading by example, not merely attending to minutiae. The best leaders participate in management. Stanford’s James March put it well: leadership requires both plumbing and poetry. We do not lack lofty leadership; we lack engaged management. Even a grand vision must be drawn through grounded, practical details.

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After listening to a Tim Cook biography, Robin returns to a previous question: which matters more, zero to one or one to N? Jobs and Cook exemplify each. Jobs was a creative genius and business legend whose epoch-making products changed lives and left such a personal imprint that Apple still evokes him ten years after his death. Any successor faces intense scrutiny. Cook exemplifies one to N: a reserved, careful master of operations and supply chains. Under him, Apple’s market cap rose from over US$300 billion past US$1 trillion and US$2 trillion, the first company to do so. Robin believes business talents who scale one to N are relatively numerous; legends who create disruptive businesses from zero are rarer and more readily remembered.

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Good leaders have views but stay open, adjust when appropriate, acknowledge weaknesses, ask questions, keep improving, and stay connected to team members. Technical leaders often mentor colleagues and have more experience in some areas, but cannot know everything. When facing the unknown, they should still support people and guide them toward solutions. It is normal for team members to be stronger in some areas: their combined knowledge exceeds any leader’s. Good technical leaders admit ignorance and ask apparently stupid questions. Better to look foolish and learn now than remain ignorant throughout your career. “Ask a stupid question and you may feel stupid; do not ask, and you stay stupid.”

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Many founders distrust everything teammates do, repeating instructions to prevent surprises. But employees may simply think differently. Working on the front line, they may have better ideas than senior leaders. Growth requires trial, error, and improvement; without mistakes, people cannot see shortcomings or know what to improve. Trust each employee as a capable person responsible for their work. Merely allowing mistakes is not enough: share the consequences when they happen. Robin adds: “The founder’s progress alone is insufficient; the team must move forward together. Allowing mistakes is part of learning. Demanding perfection may stifle employees’ room to grow. Give them enough trust.”

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Observe not only how a company performs in good times, but whether senior management can lead it out of trouble. Robin’s long-term assessment of Netflix’s team is positive: DVD-by-mail disrupted Blockbuster; streaming disrupted its own DVD business; then it invested heavily in original content. It transformed substantially at least twice. During the first-quarter share-price plunge, he retained confidence in a battle-tested team that had challenged giants and reinvented itself. The shares later rebounded 50% from the bottom. Beyond price increases and account-sharing enforcement, Netflix was entering advertising, linking viewing time to performance. Past growth came from subscriber numbers; future growth would come from keeping subscribers with video and games, turning longer attention into greater returns. Written in 2022.

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Robin jokes that he may soon be removed from FITI’s mentor database after telling a team to revisit why they started: not every venture must keep growing, raising capital, and listing. A grand dream helps in a FITI competition, but is it the life you want? Another option is a lean software company with annual revenue of 50–60 million, twenty-some employees, annual profit of 15–20 million, good benefits, modest growth alongside customers, and several million in annual shareholder dividends. No endless pursuit of acquisitions, overseas expansion, and listings, nor investors interfering after financing or small shareholders watching after listing. Life involves choices: more people can build practical businesses, solve problems, create value, and serve stakeholders without immersing themselves in grand dreams.

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Robin: “Find a business model that works in the real world over the long term, rather than scale built solely by burning VC money. When spending stops, you may fall from heaven back to earth because you have not created real value or solved real customer problems.” The reprinted observation is equally sharp: new consumer brands can reach 100 million more easily than ever, but annual sales of 1 billion are harder and 5 billion less likely than ever. VC-backed projects may race to 100–200 million, stall at 300–500 million, then shrink. Burning VC cash, promotion on Xiaohongshu, and loss-making livestream sales create no defensible niche or position in consumers’ minds. Stop the stimulant and sales contract, morale falls, talent leaves, and a vicious cycle begins.

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As physical retailers pursue online-merge-offline (OMO) commerce, they must grow store sales as well as capture online demand. 91APP product chief Li Kunmou describes three engines—a data-driven cycle, traffic-growth cycle, and OMO momentum loop—to connect websites, apps, and stores in an omnichannel member experience. Responsive-site advertising and app operations acquire new customers and increase repeat purchases. Online/offline coupons and points create seamless shopping. A distinctive “referrer engine” awards points, bonuses, and revenue sharing for store service, helping online and store sales grow together. OMO is more than integrating channels: it is digital, and even organizational, transformation.

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Many factors cause startups to fail; running out of funding is probably the main one. Watch cash flow constantly and prepare more than one script in which fundraising succeeds and problems disappear. Smooth operations plus smooth fundraising are rare; setbacks, harder fundraising, core-team departures, and giant competitors are more common. Prepare for varied and worst-case scenarios. Stable cash flow keeps you from losing in the short term; the right talent is what lets you win. Find a way to attract exceptional people, as Liu Bei’s three visits illustrate. Different talent models have trade-offs: Netflix’s high pay, top performers, strict removal of low performers, and “not a family” approach is harsh but effective; others favor a family atmosphere. Make your culture clear and find people who fit.