Bob Lin’s talk for Mount Jade 05 30 2020

What a great guy!  So true that loving to connect with people will enhance someone’s career.  He assisted many startup to go IPO.  Definitely should connect with him.  He is fun and frank.  Touch many industry is great.  

Dealing with the finance, governance and legal challenges at PGI, but I make sure I do the right thing and enjoy the ride - even a bumpy ones.

To build a tall building, the location is essential. The “location” for startup is “market”. You can not create the market, you have to follow it.

Market and the people are the most important components

What pain of the customers that you can reduce?  What pleasure your products can bring to the users?

Mount Jade and Hua Yuan are good association to join.

Typical VC firm on Sandhill receive 10,000 proposals per year.  Select 1000 to meet, select 20.  Of the 20, 10 already have prior connection.   Only 10 new projects are picked.  Trust is an important factor.

20 pitches reviewed per week.

Homedepot is doing well, because everyone is working on home improvement!

Political Paradigm Shifting - from plutocracy to meritocracy

1950 saw the world’s political system moved from Plutocracy to Communism.  Corrupted region fell and either national democracy, or communism disguises under the flags, established.  In the 80s and 90s, capitalism, disguised as democracy, become the norm of the political system.

The raise of China, especially in the aftermath of the COVID19, exposed the weakness of the western political system.  Democracy is a great idea - people, after thoughtful discussion and analysis, caste their votes and pick a leader to govern.  Alas, there is less and less thoughtful discussion these days.  Most people are manipulated by the media, which is manipulated by the powerful and wealthy.  

The democracy become just a name, it has become the marriage of two extreme negative forces - populism and plutocracy.  The lower class, easily fooled, voted with anger and fear, to the detriment of themselves.  The rich become powerful and the powerful become rich, and their kids become rich and powerful!

Chinese Communist Party, with all its faults, has lifted more than half of billion Chinese out of property. The lower 50% of the Chinese people, have never have this level of prosperity. One can argue that this has happened in spite of the CCP, but it is never easy to argue of success.

One process of that makes the success of the CCP is strict meritocracy, most government workers are selected thru a huge human resource department, the CCP’s organization department, since the person is admitted to the party.  They go thru as small roles as a village chief, to a town, a county, a province, a small city, big city and to the central government.  At least from my observation, in the public sector, there is no “royal family”, such as Trump, Kennedy, Bush...

CCP pick their leader as a CEO, while the west pick their leader as rock star.  The result is drastically different style and personality of the leadership.

It is said every 60-80 years, three generations, there will be a regent change and political paradigm shift.  A shift is happening to bigger, more controlling, more effective, and merit based government.  We shall see.

Eric Tao

05 22 2020 Carmel