Journey to the East (ft. Rich Robinson) (1/2)

This is Robert Tee.

Here on the podcast today, we have with us Rich Robinson, who is a serial founder and currently entrepreneur in residence at Animoca Brands. Rich, it's great to have you on the podcast with us today.

Roberta and William, any Peking University students are students of mine. I've been a proud clinical professor at Beidah for 8 years now. at the Guanghua MBA teaching entrepreneurship in China. So I know you guys are at the HSBC program and studying something different, but yeah, it's— for those of you out there, you know, Harvard back in the city of Boston gets a 5% admission rate, but Peking University, that's 1 out of 20. Peking University is like 1 out of 1,200. So they say that Peking University is the Harvard of China, and it's actually not true. Harvard is the Peking University of America.

Oh, too bad. Thank you so much.

I told that joke. I gave a guest lecture once at Harvard. I got to drop my ass with my Boston accent, and that didn't get really much of a laugh at all. Oh, gosh.

Crazy. I didn't actually realize that was the stats, to be honest.

Yeah, it's insane.

Yeah.

Can we ask you about your entrepreneurial journey? We can say that it started in China, right? How did you get to China? How did this all start? Let's go back to me being bitten by a radioactive dumpling back in the '90s. So actually, I went to University of Southern California and they had an exchange program with Cambridge University. So I studied there in 1988. Um, it's like Harry Potter for grown-ups. It's pre-Harry Potter, but, uh, that's what it felt like. And, uh, I did the ugly American travel whistle-stop tour after that. 'Murica! And, uh, I met this, uh, kind of proud of myself. I've been on the road for 4 weeks.

Good rock.

I'm kind of like Indiana Jones. And then I meet this Aussie guy on Walkabout who'd been traveling for, I don't know, mate, 4, 4 and a half years. And it was like, My mind was blown. And he told me 2 things. One is he had no money. He just worked and traveled. And the second was he was afraid of flying. So, he'd done everything by boat or land.

Right.

And I thought, that's impossible. There's almost 300 countries and territories. And he's like, yeah, but there's only 4 trips, mate. There's, you know, the world is a silhouette. Think about it. There's North, South America, one swath of land. Europe, Asia is the second. then Africa, then Australia. And that's it. And if you do those 4 trips overland, you can see and hear and feel, but more importantly, mate, you can smell it. You can smell the world. And I was like, I want to smell the world. I heard Cookie Monster say, me want smell world. So I graduated, no money, no job. So I'm like, I'm doing that. I'm just going to work and travel like a crazy Aussie guy. And I was a bartender in the Virgin Islands and then Ski bum in Switzerland. And I taught English, this is like the early '90s, taught English in Prague after the revolution, lived in a nice fishing village in Norway, picked grapes in France and worked at the BMW factory in Germany. Kind of work, travel, work, travel. And then, uh, I hopped on the train. I hitchhiked to Prague and then I took the train, Prague, Ukraine, Moscow, Siberia, Mongolia, Beijing, Hong Kong. And that was 11 days on the train over a 30-day period.

And was this, was this the train that goes all the way from, uh, Russia right through to Vladivostok and then down into—

That's the true Trans-Siberian. There's the Trans-Manchurian, which goes around Mongolia, and then there's the Trans-Mongolian, which cuts through Mongolia. So I wanted to see Mongolia since I've always had a fascination with that place. I mean, those guys controlled more landmass than any other civilization in the history of the world.

And, you know, And any, any horse riding out there at all in Mongolia?

I know they're, they're pretty famous for it, but certainly, yeah, I, I was only in the, in the, uh, train station, but I'm sure there were probably ponies trotting through there in the, in the early '90s. Um, but yeah, I got to China and, you know, I was doing this overland trip. That was my intention. Let's, uh, let's do an overland trip. Let's see people's, you know, facial features and language and, uh, architecture and landscape and food just like slowly change. Like overland travel is pretty wonderful in that regard. Um, but then China, I had a low expect— like very low expectations. I'm 55, so the '80s was my, you know, high school, university years, very formative. And it was the Cold War. Russia was gonna destroy the world if Japan, you know, didn't take it over. China was not even, it was still, you know, um, you know, '89 happens.

Yeah.

The wall falls in Berlin, uh, apartheid ends in South Africa, winds of change, that Scorpion song. But then China takes 3 steps backwards with Tiananmen Square. Um, and, uh, so low expectations for modern China and nothing in the press about how dynamic and amazing it is. And then I get there and then the dragon just Game of Thrones swoops down.

Then this, then this dumpling, uh, emerged, right?

Yeah. And then, uh, Um, I, uh, the dragon dug her talons into me, and then the dragon and I had 2 kids together. And now we're divorced, but we're still good friends. But anyway, thank you. Good night. Um, I, uh, I fell in love with China. I just felt like, yeah, this is the biggest story of our collective lives. The rural to urban migration, the increase in GDP per capita. And indeed, when I was growing up, 70% of China was in extreme poverty.

Mm-hmm.

And the official statistic today is not just zero, it's fucking zero. It's zero. Fucking zero is the official statistic. Yeah. And you can't, you know, rely on all statistics in China, but that's, you know, extreme poverty is so close to zero that that's the official, like, you know, like World Bank statistic.

I think, I think that that was one of the big things about, you know, Deng Xiaoping raised, I think they said a million out of poverty with, uh, some of the reforms.

But then it was a billion. It, it turns out to be a billion. Yeah. A billion raised outta poverty. And, you know, sure, China gets a bad rap these days and, uh, some of it, uh, deservedly so and other, uh, not so much. But, you know, that's one thing that's, um, you know, certainly miraculous in, in modern history.

I do think it's interesting, the, the, the kind of press you get on China, uh, particularly, I don't know, in the, in the UK these days. Yeah. It's, it's always tends to focus on the negative issues. For example, like, you know, I, I speak to people about China and You know, Avatar was based on parts of on parts of China, for example. You know the the yeah Zhang Jiajie right for example like which is and and kind of people are shocked and I say this to to Americans as well and and why why do you think it is that we get this kind of sort of press outside of China that's very negative but when we go there the experience is very very different. You know you talk about the dragon, the talons. The dumplings.

Yeah. You know, I think some of it is, you know, deserved, of course, just like a lot of the criticism of, of America or the UK or Italy or whatever. Right. I mean, like nobody, everybody has, you know, nobody is a hero to their footman and anything up close is looking not, you know, not so good.

Yeah.

It's just sort of, you know, surjanza male bava. It's the way things are, but they're, you know, Like, you know, if you think about the sweeping history of, I like to say in my MBA class, GDP since Jesus, like from the year zero to now, China absolutely dominated the entire planet up until the Industrial Revolution and it got really left behind. And, um, it, uh, you know, it was mostly a function of population. India, China, you know, you could only work from sunrise to sunset and you could only have so many beasts of burden. But they also had technology innovation and they also had amazing systems and they also had true enterprise and industriousness that I think is still unrivaled by the rest of the world. That's my other podcast. It's called At the Speed of China, like at the speed of light. And the thesis is that 4 years outside of China is a year inside China. And I would stand by that over the past few decades, even accounting for COVID. Um, you know, that being said, you know, their, uh, their ideology, their approach is quite different from the West. You know, democracy is the worst form of government except for all other forms of government, as your man Churchill once said.

And, uh, I think, um, you know, uh, it's the perfect imperfect system or something like that. Imperfect perfect system.

So it's super, super messy, but you know, there is, you know, there is something to be said for, um, You know, democracy, just as I have 3 kids, I'm not giving them democracy till they mature. And there's a great book called Future of Freedom by Fareed Zakaria. And he, you know, says there has to be a certain GDP per capita for democracy to work. Otherwise, it doesn't really work. People are still struggling for their, you know, Maslowian hierarchy of needs.

Yeah.

And, you know, they don't really care so much about freedom when they're like barely able to sustain themselves. So China doesn't quite have that yet. And, you know, it will eventually, but that doesn't mean it's gonna be democratic. But in the meantime, what's the, what's the method? Like, not everybody should be democratic. Like, it's not like, you know, at least not, at least not immediately.

I mean, look at, look at Singapore, for example. I think, yeah. You know, they're, they're, they're kind of one of these sort of gray areas that's sort of not really talked about so much. Right.

Certainly Singapore hums. But, you know, of course, when you have a tiny population of less than 10 million and you can Really, you can control things. Then you know, I think I think that's a different story. But you know, with China, like you know, there is an argument to say that there needs to be some sort of you know centrally planned you know government to be able to like keep things going. And the fact is, the average Chinese person—I was married inside a Chinese family for a decade. I had companies, me and one Chinese person, and me and four hundred Chinese people. And you know, I was there. You know, I I know from the inside people aren't faking it. People love the government. They, they do, right? They, they don't have any expectations that they should have a say cuz they never had a say. They don't have any expectations that, you know, there needs to be this sort of, um, uh, you know, I guess big change sort of, you know, like this new generation from the West. Yeah. And, and people, but you know, I think, I think the mask kind of came off, uh, in the past few years with COVID Um, and people are kind of maybe, you know, rethinking some things and maybe some people are relocating, but For the most part, I think don't underestimate China. I think the innovation engine, even though there's a declining— the population is— the birth rate is declining and there's a lot of challenges to be able to compete when they have limited access to semiconductors. And I think the biggest story of our life right now is China-US and even more specifically China-US AI. And, yep. You know, with the, you know, I'm a, I'm a US citizen and from Boston, and, you know, we are adversaries with China. We are cooperation partners with China, and we are competitors to China. It's a very complex, nuanced position that we've never encountered before. With Russia, it was, you know, adversaries, not com— not cooperating partners, not—

Economies not as tied together, I suppose.

Not at all. Yeah. Caviar and vodka, maybe. From Russia, that was it, right? Yeah. So it was easy to be arm's length. Now it's this weird, messy thing, just like democracy, where wow, they're adversaries. Okay, so let's ban semiconductors and let's, you know, eliminate espionage, both like TikTok or something like that. Yeah, potentially, right? You know, I'm that's a whole other story there. But yeah, and then but let's also cooperate. Like you can buy our soy and we'll buy your you know, textiles, and, you know, let's also compete on, you know, tech and, you know, other, you know, other areas as well too. So, um, yeah, I, I, I believe that engagement is important. I, you know, doing some sort of disentanglement, you know, I don't think is necessarily quite feasible, but I think it's really important to stay closer. Otherwise, then, you know, nasty things happen in the shadows.

Exactly. And, and now just turning more towards your, I guess, adventures in China, let's say, and leading up to sort of being part of Renren. Can you tell us a little bit how you got involved in Renren and how it kind of blew up? We read your article in the Times, and I'm just keen to find out more about how did you sort of get involved from this sort of, you're backpacking, you're traveling, And then suddenly, you know, we, you're involved with this really cool sort of experience in China with a startup. You kind of got the China bug, let's say. So, could you tell us a little bit more how that happened?

Certainly. Yeah. So, I go to China and I just was like, okay, that's visceral, atavistic, like in my bone marrow. Like, I know I got to be in China. I had spent time in Prague after the revolution and I like the messiness. I like the, fact that things were still way underdeveloped. And I was like, this is where I belong. And then I got my MBA in Europe at Erasmus University. And that was August of '94. And Marc Andreessen, the founder of a16z, Andreessen Horowitz, the founder of LoudCloud, the founder of Netscape, he actually started a browser when he was in university. And it was called Mosaic. So I surfed on the web, August of '94, on his browser. And that's when Yahoo was still hosted on a university server. And you could pretty much— so what'd you do last night? I surfed the internet, like all of the internet, right? It was like, and you couldn't, you wanna buy something on Amazon, which I did, you gotta go write a check and mail it. And it was clunky, but I was like, this is another epiphany. Like I just—

Yeah.

I didn't have any choice. My second current and final wife, like I was like, wow! Like this, this yes please. This is it monster. This is it right? And I think that kind of head heart gut, like don't like listen to that shit right? Listen to that shit. Get as many experiences as possible, and then like and then be like ding ding ding ding. You know win a win a chicken dinner. Go after that. So I was like all right China internet let's do that. And, you know, my classmates, I remember having like a dinner and they were like, well, I'm in the oil industry, but I really want to go into consulting around energy or things. Oh God, I've had that. I'm on the agency side, but I want to go to the client side. What about you? And I'm like, I want to be an internet guy in China. And this is like, you know, 1994. And they're like, you want to be a what and where?

Is this one of those This is one of those tough ones to explain at the Christmas dinner. What are you doing with yourself?

Right? My buddy got a job at Yahoo. I remember he was number 17. He hasn't worked in 21 years now. But so it's got a good ending. But his parents are like, oh, I heard you got a new job. Did you get a big raise? And he's like, took a big pay cut. And they're like, what's the name of the company? And they're like, he said Yahoo. And they said Y-A-H-O-O. And he's like, yes, an exclamation point. The company has an exclamation point? Yes, it does. And they're like, Oh, that's nice to hear. Right. He was like, did I fuck up? Right. And like, we'll, we'll, we'll see. Right. And I think, I think it's good. I think it's good if you feel like, mm, did I fuck up? Then it's probably a little bit of like, hmm, maybe this is the right path. Right.

Yeah.

Because if everybody, if you're like, this is so secure and clear, everybody else is doing it, then like, you know, then you're not, you're leaving too much on the table. You should be taking risks where you're like, this, this might be kind of dumb, but Who knows, right? Let's see. Yeah. So, yes, I was like China. Yeah, go ahead. I was thinking maybe it's something that is happening now with Web 3.0 and blockchain technology and all these. Totally same thing. Yeah. Monkey JPEGs, bah humbug. Right? What's this bullshit? And you know, I like that's why I got involved with Animoca. I'll I'll I'll go back to Rembrandt, but. Basically, I knew the founder of Animoca back in '97 in Hong Kong. And he's just an extraordinary human being and entrepreneur. And we always stayed in touch, never worked together. And then in 2021, when Web3 really took off with Axie Infinity, that's when he called me. And we were the first money into Axie. And it really took off when they introduced the Ronin sidechain. He's like, you've been through Web1, Web2, smartphone, China, every step along the way. People are like, Amazon? I can get books at my or at the store or like you know at the library, right? Or like that's that's dumb. Or you know Google has no business model and Facebook Web two Facebook has no business model. Instagram for one point two billion that's bullshit. iPhone that's a silly toy. No keypad, right? China can't innovate. And now you know top three internet companies in the world are TikTok, SpaceX, Shein. And many, many, many other unicorns coming out of China. So I knew that there was just— I wanted a front row seat at the show. So I went to Hong Kong. I spent 4 years there. I spent 20 almost in Beijing. And yeah, I did 8 startups during that time. And back then it was when there's a new paradigm shift, either in a market or introduction of like Web3 or smartphone or whatever internet, Then, you know, a young person can make their way. Like you can just, you, because you're, you're basically on the same starting line as everybody else. And, and, and here's a hack for you people to like get ahead of that starting line, which is, uh, and it's something I advocate to all my students and something that I did for Fun and Profit, which was to be a thought leader in the space by bringing people together. So you create a group, virtual group, but then you have an in-person group. You start a podcast like this and you bring in thought leaders, but you have like a very, like, like a, like yours, yours is, I, I, I, I, I like what you guys are doing, but I think having like one niche, like, and kind of stacking it, like, I don't know, like enterprise, uh, uh, uh, software and social media in Asia. Right. And like getting all the expertise in that and doing, you know, and then getting all the guanxi and relationships with that.

Yeah.

And then like, kind of like, putting your flag in the sand and then you're building up this, you know, user base that's—

And then transform— transforming to sort of physical events, I think is the—

Physical events. And then you bring people together and you become a connector and a thought leader. And then later you're like, hey, I need a job or I need to raise money or I need to hire somebody. I need to do a partnership. I need to get in press. And like all that, you know, becomes, and you can do that if the industry, and that's what I did. I started this networking group called Eye and Eye. And when I was at Renren and we had a speaker come in from mainland China, small 50-person company, they just raised $10 million and he just crushed it. And that guy was Jack Ma. Jack came in and spoke and he, we had 300 people show up and the SCMP was there and the South China Morning Post said, what about revenues? And he is like, revenues? And he like scurried across the ballroom. the Farama Hotel. And he's like, points back to the guy and he's like, revenues. And he runs back again and he is like, we're running too fast for revenues. And the, and the guy that I had brought like slammed his drink down. He's probably my age, you know, back then, 20 years ago.

Yeah.

And he was like, charlatan. And he left. And, you know, of course Jack became the richest man in China, but, you know, he now owns the South China Morning Post. But, you know, back then you could do shit like that, right? You could just, you know, have somebody come and speak to, to your group. And, um, yeah, so, and then, you know, I've been involved with 50 other startups as a partner, co-founder, and so on. And, um,