Looking at China Speed through the lens of smart glasses

Hello and welcome to the Rich Robinson Show. I'm your host, Rich Robinson. Over the past 25 years, I've been an entrepreneur, investor, advisor, and professor here in Asia. After nearly a quarter of a century in China, I'm now based here in Bali, Indonesia, the island Of the gods. Asia is my home now. 60% of the world's population also lives here, but I would contend 80% of the world's dynamism and opportunity is right here in the region. On the show, you'll hear candid and fun conversations with some of my friends and colleagues, people I've met along my journey, entrepreneurs, operators, experts, It will help you unlock actionable insights around the Asia region and the entrepreneurial agility that actually defines it. This first season, season one of the Rich Robinson Show, is titled At the Speed of China. Like, wait for it, at the speed of light. Things happen fast in China, and in this season one, we're gonna Take a deeper look at that—the rapid economic development over the past few decades, as well as the speed and cycles of innovation taking place all day, every day, right now. Let's go, Jio! And showtime! Welcome to the pod, Zhang Tian Tian, Angela Zhang, ladies and. gentleman on the pod calling in not from China, but from the US. Where in the world are you right now?

Right now I'm in San Francisco. Yeah.

On the West Coast. Excellent. And I just have to get it out there right from the get-go, graciously agreeing to be on the pod. I really appreciate you taking the time. Thank you. Thank you so much.

No problem. Yeah.

That's great. Yeah. Wonderful for you to be here on the pod. We first met through Virginia Tan, who is the founder of She Loves Tech, which is the biggest tech competition for female founders in the world. And I've been teaching— this is my 7th year at Peking University, the Guanghua International MBA program. I'm clinical professor of entrepreneurship. And I said, I want kick-ass Chinese female entrepreneur. And she was like, I know just the person. I couldn't even finish my question before she was like, you got to talk to this powerhouse woman. And you came and spoke to my class, and it was fantastic because you have a great story and great storytelling ability, but your journey in the hardware space is amazing. And we're going to deep into that, but let's go back to the origin story about you. You're like a Joling Ho, as they say, 1990 and above. Like, you know, tell me where you grew up and some stories about your sort of path to now, please.

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me here today. Yeah, I'd love to share A lot of things about myself and everything I learned through my startup journey. So I was born in a city called Zhengzhou. I think if you're not from China, you've probably never heard of this city before, but there's one thing I can help you to connect. The city is actually most of the iPhones now are produced in Zhengzhou. Yes.

So it's one of those cities, like there are so many cities in China that are gigantic, big, you know, pretty big cities. But America only has like less than 10 cities of more than a million, but China has, you know, over 100, right?

Yeah, I think so. So actually Zhengzhou is a capital of Henan province and we have over 100 million people in that province. So my parents actually, they're like from the very classic Chinese family that Western people probably will think what China will be like. Like their parents were all farmers. And they just grew up in the village, super poor. My mom, when she was 8 years old, she only had one shirt every day. She couldn't afford school, so she didn't make school until she was 8 because she couldn't pay the tuition. My grandpa passed away during the Cultural Revolution, so my grandma had to raise 6 kids herself. Both, both my parents came from big families, so my dad has 6 siblings and my mom has 5 siblings. So that was like a very classic Chinese family in that generation. And both of them started really hard to leave the small village and move to Zhengzhou, which was a capital of the province. And then they met, fell in love, and then gave birth to me. And I was born during the one-child policy. So I'm the only daughter in my family. When I was a kid, the way our family commute was just a bicycle, you know, we didn't have cars. We didn't have any fancy electronic devices, which is funny because now I'm building like the world's, I would say like one of the most advanced smartware device. And so in that age, if you want to get married, there's 3 things you need to prepare. One's a bicycle, one's a TV, and one's a radio. So that's the 3 things they prepared and they got married. They had me. So by then I've never heard, like, I've never been abroad. Do you know, actually I've never been abroad till I was 21. And that was when I applied for a foreign internship myself. I got a chance to go abroad. But before that, I never got a chance to travel abroad or see like, how is the outside world look like, or like what kind of people. They are. But the weird thing is, like, since I was in primary school, I set up the goal that I need to go to US to study.

All the way back then. Wow. But obviously you went to Beijing to Beihang for undergrad, terrific school. So you must have been a really good student because the Gaokao, the whole like SAT of China, is brutally competitive, right? And to be able to get into Beijing school Being from a different province, and such a big province too, because so many provinces are allowed to get in. So Henan has to be one of the most competitive provinces because just so many people. So you kind of have like the numbers against you.

Totally, because actually it's a really good story because I remember in that year for Gaokao, there were over 900,000 students to attend Gaokao. And for example, Beihao only recruit like 60 students or maybe 80 students in that whole province. So it was super, super competitive.

But you're talking about 900,000 from your province, obviously, right? Yeah. Not even like, yeah, I mean, like that's already a ridiculous pool, right? 1% of that is 900, right? Is that right? I'm sorry. 900,000. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. No, I'm sorry. 9,000 is 1%. 9,000 is 1%. See, I would've failed the Gaokao because I just couldn't even get that. So a 10th of 1% is 900. And a hundredth of 1% is 9. So it was like 7 hundredths of 1% or something, the chance to get into a school like that, right? It's like the odds are really not good.

Yeah, it was funny because when I talked to my husband and he told me all the crazy things he did there when he was a teenager, I just realized I didn't have time to do those things. We don't know what party was at that time. All our time we just spent on academic, like, studies, just like Endless homework. We woke up at 6, had breakfast and go to school, start our early recitation at 7 or 7:30 and study all the way till 9 PM. And then you go home.

It's still not enough, right? Because everybody's doing that. In America, you'd be like, that's crazy. And like, nope, everybody's doing that. And then you still have to beat everybody else, right?

Yeah. So you extend your hours from 9 since you got home to 11, as long as you can last.

So it's funny because I don't think that doesn't change much in college, right? People aren't partying in college. And even at the Guanghua MBA program, I have 1/3 locals, 1/3 Asian, and 1/3 Western in my class. I remember a conversation where they were like, the Chinese students there, right? If you're a Chinese person getting into Beida, that's a different story than an exchange program from the US, right? And they were like, what's your goal here? And then one of them was like, I just want to have fun. And the Chinese student was like, what? You, you, you came to Beida to just have fun? Are you kidding me? What are you even talking about? But then if you look at like, you try to get into Harvard, Harvard is 5% acceptance rate, 1 out of 20, right? But then Beida, like if you're not from Beijing, even if you're from Beijing, to get into Beida, like that acceptance rate is like 1 out of 1,000. Or maybe, you know, it's like 50 times more difficult to get into that school than it is to Harvard even, right? So it's like— And Beihang is right up there. That's like a terrific school. So that must have been some partying in your house. When you got that acceptance letter?

Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah, I still remember I felt pretty relaxed for the Goethe. I don't know why, like I slept in for my Goethe and my parents literally woke me up for the test. Like, it's time to go. I didn't have any like sleepless nights.

That's great. That shows why you're such a badass. You were like, man, I could do it. No problem. Just do it. And that's probably a lot to say for that, right? Just to be able to show up and you're like, I'm ready.

Yeah. And now I'm just thinking like going back, like I think because the time, that time and now are so different. Like I know so many kids from Zhengzhou now, they started to apply overseas school since during high school. For me by then, since I didn't know that, so I decided to apply school in China and then continue my graduate school. Abroad. So I was just thinking like, wow, if I was born like 10 years later, probably I would just start my college in the US already.

But then if you were born 10 years earlier, maybe you would not go to college at all, right? It's how quickly things change in China.

Yeah, totally. Yeah.

And like, I even think about our story, like my grandparents were farmers in Ireland, so it's not that far off, but it's just such a much softer landing because they moved to America and then like It was so much easier for me to go to school or go to— like, the competition level is so much higher in China in so many ways. You're kind of like holding like literally like 5,000 years of generations, like on your shoulders, like to go. And it's like such a big change.

Yeah. For my parents at that time, being a good student, to have a good academic performance is the only important thing in my life. And it's the only requirement they had. A fun story is like, if you want to date someone, I remember when I was in middle school, me and like some other boys, we had a crush on each other and we even just tried to go home together and then got caught by my teacher and she called my mom. So my parents literally went to school to pick me up to go home, even though I was already in middle school. So they just tried to cut every other possibilities. that could distract from study. That was very interesting.

Fascinating. Now you're married to a foreign guy and you guys are living in the US, right? I remember there's a book called Chinese Lessons by a guy named John Pomfret. He was the bureau chief for Washington Times and he studied in China in 1981 and he met a Chinese woman there and they're both like college students, right? They're kind of like, hey, you want to go for a date? And she's like, okay, well, this is what we're going to do. We're going to go to The fragrant hills all the way up in the northwest of Beijing. But I'm going to get on the bus in the front and you get on the bus in the back, and then we're going to start walking. And then once we're in the mountains, then we can start talking to each other. So they walk to the bus stop, they get on the bus, they take the bus 45 minutes, an hour out there. They start walking. 20 minutes later, they start walking next to each other and talking, and a guy jumps out of the bushes and then runs away. And that's how it was, like 1981, right? Things were so different then, right? And of course now Like if anybody's going, it's the Chinese woman with her phone on her own and then posting it to Weibo, right? So it's like 40 years, right? And it feels like that's 100 years ago or more, right? So anyway, wow. And then so Beihang, and then from there, did you go directly to an internship right after school? You went to the US to do that?

So the first year I was in Beihang that summer, because it was Beijing Olympic Games, so I did all my volunteer thing, like the Olympic closing ceremony dancer.

Come on, that's not a normal volunteering job. I saw the opening ceremony, it was amazing, and you were actually dancing in the closing ceremony.

Yes, that was, uh, dancing while Jackie Chan was singing Beijing Beijing. Yeah, that was a really fun and unforgettable experience. But in order to keep it like secretly, we normally woke up at 11 or 1 AM and go to the next bird, the Yao Chao, to practice, do all the rehearsals till 7 to 8 AM.

Big commitment. How many days of that?

So the Olympic Games was in August and we started training since April. So we prepared 4 months just for that 4-minute performance.

But what an incredible— yeah, I was there. It was like Li Ning was like running with the fire in the opening. It was just— and the drums and it was just crazy. Crazy awesome. Wow. Excellent. That's a terrific experience. And then from there, from '08?

Yeah. So for the second year, the second summer, I was like, I want to do some internship, but I want to do a different one than all of my other classmates. So I want to do something really cool. So I was like, is it possible for me to go to another country to do an internship? So I started to look up online myself. And I found a lot of places and submit my application. And then eventually me and this water park in Greece called Bloom Water Park, we both like each other and they passed my resume review and they need like someone to do their website design. So I end up going there. The craziest thing at that time was because that was 2009. So the visa was not like nowadays, there's so many people traveling abroad. So it's very easy for you to get a visa. It was still very hard for me. I mean, it took me a very long time to get my visa. And that summer I also had my military training, which is a junshi. I don't know if you've heard of it. So after my junshi, I have to be there in 2 weeks. But normally, if in order to get that visa, it will take you a month or 2 to get that special internship visa. I didn't know anybody at the embassy and I only had 2 weeks. If I can't make it, then the company won't let me go. And so I literally just went to the embassy every day in the hottest time in Beijing, which was like early July. I stayed outside and then wait for my turn and just walking every day. And eventually I think all the staff in the embassy know me and they said, what kind of document do you need? I'll help you. I'll do it for you.

Wow.

So they literally call around, they called like the Certification Center to help me get all those documents approved and got me the visa right one day before the due date of my program start. And I just literally emailed the people there in the noon. I got my visa and I emailed them right after I got my visa and then booked a ticket on that night, 11 PM. I even didn't get the reply email from The other side, I even don't know who's gonna pick me up in Greece. I just ran to the capital airport and took the earliest flight I can go to Greece, to another country. But luckily in the airport, because the people wear the company's t-shirts, so I recognized this must be the people the company sent to pick me up. But now I think about that, it's pretty crazy. Like, I even don't know anybody in that country. I was not super fluent in English. I only had a few hundred euro cash in my pocket. And I was just a young girl, like by myself. And I just did it.

And you were in Athens?

Huh?

Were you in Athens, Greece? Is that right?

Oh, so the internship was in an island called Chios. So it's the 3rd largest island.

Yeah, sure.

Yeah. Oh, you've been there?

That's great to be there. That's beautiful, like place to be, right? Like the white buildings and the blue ocean and the Greek food is great. And wow, that's your first time abroad to go to Greece. That's a nice job.

I know. And actually my dorm was like right by Aegean Sea and I can see Turkey islands on the Aegean Sea. It was just so amazing.

Wow. Yeah. And you're lucky it was Greece because if that was the US, there's no way you show up there every day for 2 weeks and they're like, nope. But Greece still has that sort of like Come on! And they're like, all right, all right, come on in. And then after that, did you get to travel around Europe at all, or did you just stay in Greece for that, for that summer?

I just stayed in Greece. So after I finished my internship in Hughes, my friends invited me to Athens and stayed there for about 2 weeks. So I stayed there in total about 2 months, and then my new semester was supposed to start, so I flew back to China. I got so tanned. Like, I remember it was funny when I was at the Chinese casino. They were like, where did you come from? Because on the visa, the country name was Elas, not Greece. So they didn't recognize the country's name. They were like, did you come back from Africa or something? Because I was so tanned.

And if you were in America, people would be like, oh my God, that's amazing. You have an amazing tan. But in China, there's still like maybe a negative thing with a tan, right?

Yeah, still too today. But I mean, I definitely see like girls becoming like more diversity, like their perspective of beauty is more diverse.

Yeah, it's so funny because it's like the exact opposite in America. It's like, oh, try to having a tan means that you have time and you can go in the sun, right? But in China, it means that you're like you're a farmer, right? So it's like you want to be like whitish skin, right? So it's still funny how that's kind of like a holdover in some ways. But yeah, I'm glad you got a lot of sun in Greece. That must have been a great summer. And now you're back in China. What's next? Like what's your path to this hardware startup? That you're running now?

Yeah, so after that, the next summer, like, it's a time that you normally will start to prepare, like, what you're gonna do for the next stage in your life, right? So some people will prepare for kao yan, which is like in China the exam for graduate school. If you want to study abroad, then you will start to prepare like TOEFL test or all those English tests and start to prepare like any other documents you need to essays or like some paper or portfolio. Portfolio, all those things. So the next summer, I just stay in school to prepare my English test and my portfolio, all those things to be prepared to go to U.S. And so I finally got my offer in the last year, and it was my dream school. I was so happy. Yeah, so Chinese parents, they're very competitive. They would like compete their kids' performance, especially their academic performance, like. Even though I'm not as rich as you are, but my kids go to a better school than you, so my life is more successful. Anyway, my mom's coworker, her daughter, she claimed that she went to Penn. So I was like, really? So I went to the school's dictionary and looked up her name. I didn't find it. I was like, really? How could I not find it?

Ah!

Yes. So I went to Penn State. And I found her name.

UPenn, which is your school. Ah, that's so funny.

Yes. So I was like, you know what, I'm gonna prove it. So I applied and I got the offer. Yeah. So sometimes I feel this kind of competition is good. It encourages you.

That's great. Excellent. Yeah. I mean, UPenn is, you know, terrific school. Yeah.

Yeah. And also it has like the program I'm just so obsessed with. It's called integrated product design. So we literally went to 3 different schools to study engineering school, design school, and business school. So it was really challenging for me at the beginning. I remember day one after the first class, I came back and cried so hard. So a little bit about my personal experience was, so, you know, as a Chinese, if you want to study abroad, I mean, if you want to go to US to study, you need to do a, like a health check. Like a physical check. And my doctor said, there's something unclear on your kidney. You better go to another hospital, do another check. So my mom is a dentist. So I called her and she literally just scheduled the next appointment for me. And I did the check. So one thing I still appreciate my parents is that at that moment, they just tried to be like the best parents. They didn't tell me what was the result was, but actually all the doctors said I got cancer. Oh my God. My kidney. So my mom was like, Tingting, you had like a cyst on your kidney. So we need to do a surgery for you as soon as possible. Maybe to some extent after the surgery, you could not go to school right away. We need to take a break, but just relax. You will be fine. Anyway, so I did the surgery like 2 days after my physical check. It was a really intense surgery because they all thought it was cancer. But turned out to be, I was lucky. I just had a double kidney system on my right side, which means technically I have 3 kidneys, which is very rare. But from the CT, everything, all the checks, you couldn't tell from those checks. So it was still a very intense surgery, lasted for 4 hours. And in the last 15 minutes, they successfully separated the additional system from my body. So now I only have 2 kidneys, but it was still a huge surgery. Like my wound was over. 20 centimeters small. Yeah. And I remember after the date I finished my surgery was around August 25th. And I, my first class supposed to be only 10 days away from my new semester. So I emailed them and they said, sorry about that, but if you're gonna skip like one month, we probably push it to January. Now I was like, wow, that's a big trade-off because I need to literally wait another half year. What should I do? And then in the end of the day, I talked to the people in the hospital, like the professors and the doctors. They said, you can leave 3 weeks after your surgery. So I ended up doing that, even though I was not fully recovered from a huge surgery. And I just flew to the US by myself. And I last—

What? You just did it. You started on September 5th.

I went there 5 days late. So yeah, it was really intense because I flew to US by myself. I even didn't have time to schedule a pickup. And even though I didn't schedule a pickup, again, my English was not perfect at that time. When people say, how are you? I even don't know how to answer them. Or when they say, what's up? I don't know how to answer that question.

I still don't know. I'm not sure what to say.

Yeah. But luckily I met someone during my flight and she asked her landlord, give me a ride to my student dorm and I made it there. And then next day I had my first class. And because IPD is a very small program, we only had 12 students in my batch. And most of them, besides me and another American guy, all have work experience. Some of them were used to be a company's VP. Wharton, they were ex-Wharton MBA, graduated from Princeton, Johns Hopkins. There were only 3 foreigners in my class. And I was the youngest one. Even the other 2 girls used to work for Samsung, all those big names. So at first class, I couldn't understand everything. Just had a lot of problems understanding.

Yeah. So it wasn't even English. It was all new terminology and language that they're all already fluent in and already understand. Right. So it's like 2 different things. Right. Wow.

Yeah. It was just a huge shock.

None of them had kidney scars either.

They were all healthy. Wow. Yeah. And I remember that day after class, I went to buy a sandwich and I used to live in China. I eat all the hot stuff, warm things. I bought a cold sandwich. I'm eating in my dorm, eating cold stuff, like cloudy day after stress class and still feeling pain of my surgery. I was crying. I was like, why I'm here? So that was a really tough Beginning for me.

So, hey, can we peel back to that surgery? You know, it's funny, it's actually an interesting phenomenon in China that I think there's a movie about that as well too. And I've seen it again and again where somebody is sick in the family and then the family doesn't tell them the full story, right? But they do it out of love. They do it out of love, right? It's not out of like, you know, they do it.

No.

I know from personal experience with many Chinese friends of like, They don't tell, and it's usually like telling the mom or the grandmom, right? Like you're— and they just tell a different story, right? Because it's out of a place of love, right? It's really different from the West. Like in the West, people would never do that, right? But it's a really interesting thing because of that Confucian sort of like bubble where people are like, you know what, I'm going to take this hit. I'm not even gonna— 'Cause in some ways people feel so bad themselves. Like, oh, my mom is sick and I'm gonna like cry and then I need support, right? And like, They're not even giving themselves support. They're being stronger by not telling them. Am I right?

Totally. Yeah. I've seen that movie too. And actually this did happen to me. It's the same to my grandma. So my grandma got cancer last year and all her kids, like my mom, my uncles, they decided not to tell her. And I asked them like, why you're not telling her? Maybe there's something she wants to do. It's exactly like the girl in the movie. She asked her parents like, Maybe there's something she wants to do in the last time, last period of her life or something. And they told me if she knew she got cancer, then she probably won't even try to give up her life, like give up on her life, because she think she just couldn't make it. And also because my grandma was a very traditional Chinese woman, she believed in all those, like the gods, all the power. Like those things. So she'll see like what I've done wrong in my life that the God sends like those kinds of sickness to torture me. It must be something I've done wrong. So I got this sickness. She won't think about like genes or there's just something like scientific way.

Yeah. So it reduces her suffering. Right. And also I think I've also seen too with like Chinese people, they're like, hey, I don't want to be a burden. I don't want to be like difficult for the family. So I'm just going to give up and die. Right. It's just like, oh no, stay around, grandma. We want you to stay around. Right. And if she thinks, okay, this is just a minor surgery and I can get past it, then I'm just going to be happy and hang around. It's okay. Right. And like, yeah.

Yeah.

So it's really interesting. Like, I just love those like differences between East and West, right? Where you're just like, like once you actually open your mind up as a Westerner. You're like, I get that now. I wouldn't even think of that, you know, but I understand why, right? So anyway, I mean, that program is excellent. You even met one of your co-founders from the program. Is that right?

I met him at school, but not from that program. But there was an interesting thing about my program is 6 out of 12 students after we graduate, we started our own company. So 50% of the graduates started their—

That's great. Which is kind of like mission accomplished, right? Because isn't that really kind of one of the reasons starting that program, Right? Because they just see this kind of like rise of this democratization of like hardware, right? Where you can be like, I don't need to be Sony or, you know, some gigantic company. I can be a grad student and just be like, I'm gonna go and do it, right?

Exactly. Yeah. And I think all the classes we took from the program were all perfect to help you to understand different perspectives about like creating a product and running business and understanding consumers. Your customers. So yeah, that program really helped me to start my company. And also during school, so I met my co-founder Jason and we co-founded a talk show called Three Fellows. The reason we started that was because that was still kind of early, like back to 2012, 2013. And you know, the自媒体 in China, so all the social media in China was not that popular at that time. So traditional media like paper, those were like still gets people's majority attention. And when they talk about overseas students, especially students in those private school in U.S., normally describe us as like just some rich kids. You don't study hard or work hard. And we want to tell people what was a real like overseas student's life like. So we decided to do this talk show.

Yeah. And first of all, like definitely true. Like there's a lot of new Chinese students that are really rich that are just like, I'm gonna take pictures of my cars and like hang out. But like, it's such a small percentage, right? Like the vast majority of Chinese students are exactly your profile, right? Which is like, I worked my ass off as a student in China and I am like the person in my family that's gonna take our whole family to like another Like it's such a different profile of a student in the US for the most part, right? There's a lot of immigrant students in the US that are like, you know what? My parents are from Mexico or from Africa or from wherever, right? And I'm like, I'm a lot of pressure on me to be able to do that, right? And I'm gonna have a different level of seriousness. But in some ways, like I felt it in college in the '80s and grad school, of course less, but like there's a certain element of like, I'm in college and like it is time to party. Of course, what am I here for anyway? Right? And yeah, like you just don't. You just. And of course, there are spoiled rich kids in the U.S. too that are just like I'm just gonna just go to you know undergrad and grad school. But yeah, I think that story needs to be told just like the same reason I'm telling the story of like the speed of China so people can understand what's really happening. So tell me some of the stuff that you did and like how you put that together. Yeah.

So first, we want to let people know like does it really worth you to spend that much money to study in U.S.? So we did interviews to students, like foreign students in the campus to ask them like, do you think it worth your parents to spend that much money for you to send you here? And then we did like, is it easy to find a job in US after graduate? So people will care about like, I spent this amount of money and what can I get afterwards? And also we do a little bit like entertainment topics, like what are the Chinese beauty, like Asian in Western perspectives. So We give them like some celebrities photos and ask them to rank like who is the cutest girl among all this. And also like try to match like some popular topic in China. So at that time, like if you in China, they just launched a new policy. If you run into yellow traffic light, you get a ticket. So we interview people here, like if you see a yellow traffic light, What would you do? A lot of people say like, oh, I will speed up. Some people say I'll wait. It's just something like from like a daily school life to like real life here.

That's funny. Yeah, because in most of the world it's like, you know, green means go, yellow means slow, red means stop. But in Beijing, green means go, yellow means go really fast, and red means stop, right? Until they change the traffic cameras in Beijing, things really changed a lot. But also that, that aspect of beauty, like Lucy Liu, the Chinese actress, you know, like Awkwafina said that she was her kind of hero. Like people in the West love her and like, oh my God, she's gorgeous. And then you got like Chinese men look at her and go, really? Like, I don't, not at all. Right. It's really funny how even those things like perception.

And they won't get mad because like You guys, I think once some people just pick up a beauty standard, they can't associate at all and just say, this is Asian beauty. And yeah, I know people are just not happy with it. Yeah.

Yeah. Fascinating. Wow. Interesting. And is it worth it? What sort of consensus, like back then, like, yeah, sure. It's totally worth it. Or I guess it really depends what you study and where you study. There's a lot of different factors, but what was the general idea? Like going to grad school or going to school in the US? Worth it, not worth it?

I think to me, definitely is like one of my best choice in life because before I went to Penn, I never thought about my own company. I never thought it's something I could do before I went to Penn. I just thought, oh, I'm gonna go to a big corporation, like maybe, you know, in China, Baidu was like the superstar, like ByteDance Nowadays, maybe go to Baidu or those cool internet companies or consulting companies like McKinsey, BCG, those companies. But when I went to Yuhans, I figured out, oh, there is another possibility in my life, which is start my own company. So I think it truly changed my life in a lot of ways.

That's great. Yeah, going to China changed my life too. I think in some ways, one of the things is like, just get out of where you are and that can help to open your mind up. Right. But what about those other students you interviewed? Like what was their kind of, could you say that there was like a score at the end of it? Like thumbs up, thumbs down in general, like you should study abroad, you should not. Was there a trend?

Yeah. Well, in my impression, I think most of the students I interviewed, they said worth to study abroad. Like I think most of them think it's a really cool experience. Just to experience a different culture, different country, different life. But whether they think they should stay in US or not after they graduate, that also varies a lot.

Yeah. So I think that's going to change. That's probably changed a bunch because it's been 8 years since you graduated. Right. And I think back then most people said, yeah, I'm going to stay, I think. Right. Yeah. But now what do you smell in the air? What's the trend?

Well, I think because of COVID tons of my friends moved back to China, which I feel it's a bummer because lots of them are like super smart, like genius in different industries. And because of visa, because, you know, Trump's visa policy, huge bummer. And also the COVID because they can't go back to China to see their family. And so they end up moving back to China. So all those things, just Surprised me this time when I come back to San Francisco, I realized, wow, I don't have many friends here this time, you know? Before I have all my friends here, like I'll be pretty busy hanging out with them. And now, I mean, on one hand is COVID, so we still need to do the social distancing, but on the other hand, like just tons of them are in China right now and they even don't know when they'll get back.

It's America's loss, right? Like I said, my grandparents were immigrants. I'm second generation, so I can still taste it, right? I think if you're second generation— I knew my grandparents and I knew the struggles that they had back in Ireland. You know, they were born in 1899 in rural Ireland, right?

Yeah.

And I appreciate what they gave me, but America's built— the entirety of America, or everybody's an immigrant, right? Unless you're from, you know, you're an actual, you know, American Indian, right? Who actually the original people of the nation. But the entire country is built on that, and not just specifically like the gigantic advancements in America are from like well-educated, ambitious, just hardworking immigrants. And China, there's so many of those profiles from China, and to be able to push that back, I think it's throwing out China and America should compete. Like there should be competition, right? And they. Should engage, but you know there also has to be like cooperation as well too in many ways. And I think if there are no worries if there are some like sensitive things, you know doing stuff with military or other stuff, okay great. Like people should be blocked from that, right? There's a certain level of competition in that, but the vast majority, 99 something percent, are people working in mobile advertising or AI for e-commerce or. Hardware like yourself, right? It's just like, there are so many amazing Chinese people and then to be able to, you know, not have access to stay in the US because of visa policies, I think is absolutely ridiculous. Right. And it just doesn't make any sense.

Totally. Yeah. All of my friends, they're just super smart. They work for Google or have their own business here, or like they run startups here. All those people, like now they're just in China because of like all those other things. I just feel it's just a huge loss of the country.

Yeah. Amazing adventure with Vigo and View Glasses. So you decided to tackle like your glasses wear yourself. Like where did the origin idea come from to like get into this space that you're in?

And maybe you could tell people more about in podcast Yeah, so after I graduated, I like, you know, actually in Penn, it was very popular if you go work for Wall Street or work for a consulting company, or if you're in engineering field, you go to Silicon Valley. I was also thinking about doing my PhD, and then I was talking to my friend, I realized like all those things, you always can do them in the future. Like Google won't shut down in 10 years, so you always can start a job application in Google. But is there something that's a kind of unique opportunity for you right now? And I just realized like start my own company right now is the perfect time because I'm just so young. And if I made any mistake, I least think, and I can learn the most in this time of my life. I don't have a family I need to raise. My parents, they're healthy and young, and I just graduated and I just think it's It's just a perfect time and it will be the most challenging thing for me because I'll start a company in a foreign country, a different culture, which I think is just very exciting for me. So I ended up being like doing the hardware company with my co-founder Jason, who actually also did the 3 Fellow talk show with me together.

And Jason's also from China.

Yes, but he also spent a lot of time in New Zealand, so he went to their For his high school and primary school.

Oh, okay. So pretty bicultural. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So the reason we started Veo Glasses was because when we were in Silicon Valley, after playing with all those like wearable devices and like see what are the smart companies doing at that time, I noticed like people are obsessed with the theory of like design for Silicon Valley. Which is people obsessed with the technology or think in the Valley what people think. But I was thinking, what about beyond the Valley? Like, then the 99.9% of people in the world, like, because they were super obsessed with some technologies, but they don't care about design because they think like latest technology is a key. But I was like, it's something people are going to use every day. Of course, they're going to care about like, is it comfortable? Is it easy to use? And like, does it look good? So at that time, like, you know, a lot of smart glasses just launched, but none of them were designed for people who actually wear glasses.

Yes. Yes. Designed for Silicon Valley. You're right. That's a great term. Keep going. That's great. I love it.

Yeah. So if you wear the smart glasses they designed, people will put you into a certain image, like you are a techie person.

Yeah. Like a loser geek. You know, image. Yes, it looked ridiculous. Google Glasses, those original ones looked ridiculous. It looked like I was, you know, a loser from the future, right?

So I was like, how can we let everyone get benefits from the technology as well as like enjoying the design of the product itself? So that's why we decided to design Veo. I think it's also based on what I studied in school, so like a combination between Design and technology to try to see the balance on both sides. So trying to make sure people enjoy the design while they enjoy the technology instead of just way too much on one side.

Wow, that's great. I'm glad you didn't get your PhD, but when you do get your PhD, you're going to do it like in Russian and you're going to break both of your wrists, blindfold yourself, like you're going to make Like another level of like difficulty, right? Yeah, it's tough. So, because that's why you went and did a startup, because you're like, I've already done grad school in a different language, in a different country with fresh surgery scar, you know, without any external support at all. And I bet at the end of the program you had crushed it in your master's program. You don't have to brag, but I know you did. And you're also really getting good traction with what you're you're doing now. And Elon Musk said, you know, design and prototyping is fun and the manufacturing is just brutal and being cash flow positive is just excruciatingly painful.

Yes.

Right. And all those steps where you're like, okay, I got the design and I got the whole business concept behind it. But like when you actually go into engineering, when you actually have to make something Manifest itself and become real in a way that is manufacturable, then you really have to chur cool, as they as you say in Chinese, eat bitter. And I think your ability to be able to eat bitter in a way, right, as shown by your decision to be like, screw it, I'm gonna go do it. I'm flying to the U.S. I'm gonna like just push through the pain, right? And I think a lot of entrepreneurship. A lot of life is like that, but entrepreneurship's a different level where you have to be relentlessly resourceful and just willing to chew through the problem. So take us on a journey of like the prototyping and then making this thing happen. That's one of my favorite stories that I've ever heard, and I've heard so many startup stories. And please take us on that journey, please.

Yeah. So after we launched the product and it got pretty like a good, like a reaction from the customer side and got like over 10,000 pre-orders. Like people just pay us first, even before we Kickstarter. Yeah, we raised $2.2 million on Kickstarter in 45 days. And we just know like, this is something like we were so happy. That means like people just agree with us that it's important to balance the technology and beauty, but how to make it work, that's the next challenge.

Describe the product for people listening. Like what exactly was the offer?

Yeah, so Vue glasses is a pair of glasses that they just look like normal glasses. So you can put any kind of prescription lenses into it and we put it on, it just, you feel very comfortable. It's lightweight. It's only 20, 23 to 28 grams, depends on the style you choose, but also you can use it to do a lot of things. So in the first generation, we use bone conduction to transmit sound into your inner ears and the glasses legs touch controls. So you can just simply touch your glasses legs to pick up phone calls or like play music, pause music, report time. You can do a lot of customized features through the app. And the glasses case itself, it's a charging case. So every time after you finish using your glasses, you just put it back into the glasses case. And it will charge automatically. And with the glasses case, it can last for a whole week without like an additional charge. So that's the first product we launched.

What about next gen? What's the sort of vision before you go into product journey?

So last year, August, we just launched our second generation. It's even lighter. It's from 18 grams to 22 grams. And we upgraded the material. So in the first generation, We only use a material called TR90. It's a type of nylon. So it limits a lot of—

Is that what the Terminator is made out of?

I guess so. It's a Swiss-made material. I think they just tried to make it sound fancy, so they made the TR90. But then it limits us like a lot of ways in design. So we only can design them in certain cells, but in the second generation, we can be even more aggressive in design. Like we can mix acetate with acetate frame or metal, play with different materials combination. It's even lighter. And also instead of using bone conduction, which we got some feedback that some people felt really uncomfortable because the pads was a little bit tight on their head, we just use like general speakers and also with a better sound quality and also the standby time is even Longer.

Wow. And then of course in the future, I guess, you know, there's so many other things that could be, you know, added onto that, right? Because it's probably unrealistic to have something like in your eye, right? It's probably gonna have to be a frame, right? Because there has to be some sort of like, maybe in the distant future you could have something so small that you couldn't see it. But I don't wear glasses, but I would wear glasses if it could give me, you know, You wear sunglasses.

Do you wear sunglasses?

I do. I love— yeah, yeah. So it's like, yeah, sure.

Yeah, we have sunglasses version too, so hopefully everyone can be our—

Oh, okay. I need to be a customer too then. That's— I need a new pair in Bali. So AR/VR, I mean, like, I guess that's like something, you know, that you guys can dovetail into in the future as well too, right?

Absolutely. I think we're more interested in AR because right now, like, people still wear glasses to The purpose of wearables is to see the world better, right? So if we can successfully integrate with some augmented reality features to boost their seeing experience, it'll be perfect. But again, we care about how people feel and how they look like when they put the glasses. So right now with the current technology, if we want to put any cheap parts or batteries into the glasses, will be huge. And very expensive. Right now our retail price is only $200, which is like just similar if you buy a normal pair of glasses in the glasses store in US. But if you do all of those components, it's going to be insanely expensive. So I think what we do is we'll wait for a little bit and do some in-house development to see when will be a perfect timing for us to launch like an integration with AR.

I don't think it's going to happen, to be honest. I think somebody's going to come and snap you up. You're too delicious a morsel. A bigger fish is going to come and go, give me. And then, like, I think you guys are just really well positioned for that, right?

But before that, we're also exploring, and also right now we're already working on other senses to make the glasses smarter. Like, there are a lot of other features you can do and a lot of Data the glasses can collect, like some heart rate, all those things. And glasses will be a perfect platform to collect those informations with a user's permission. So yeah, just there are so many potentials besides AR and VR.

Sure. Wow. Fantastic. So tell us about that journey. So it's good that you happen to be from the country where everything is made, right? I mean, that definitely helps, right, when you're trying to make stuff. So tell people who aren't familiar about Shenzhen and why Shenzhen is such an important city and place.

Yeah, so the first time I went to Shenzhen was in 2014, and before I went to Shenzhen, I knew about Shenzhen was like a city with a really fascinating developing speed, but it was not clear to me like why and how. Till I went to Shenzhen, stayed there a few years, it just gets So clear in my mind. So one thing I have a really deep impression was when I first went to Shenzhen, there were only two subway lines: Line One and Line Two. And by the end of 2020, there are over I think 11 or 12 subway lines in Shenzhen. Yes, and over like 284 stops just in six years. That's how. Fast, the city Shenzhen speed. We even have a term just called, literally called Shenzhen speed.

Yeah, indeed. Yes.

Yeah. And Shenzhen is this city, I think before 1979 was literally a small fish village. And now, before the interview, I looked up the data. I was also shocked, like in 2020, the city's GDP was $429 billion. So if you want to get a better sense of that, so Indonesia, the whole country's GDP in 2020 was $1.09 trillion, which means Shenzhen as a city is 40% of that country's GDP last year.

It's the 4th largest country in the world. Yeah. 260 million here in Indonesia.

Fish village just 40 years ago. So that is very, yeah.

Yeah, and Deng Xiaoping, you know, famously said, you know, black cat, white cat, who cares as long as it catches mice, right? Meaning like, how can we become prosperous? And that was like one of the most incredible, you know, up until that time, it was literally punishable. It was an illegal offense to start a business despite all of that natural entrepreneurial drive in China during that time, in that era, there was no commerce outside of the state. And he just set that free and then created the special economic zone of Shenzhen. And but then Shenzhen's, it's not just, you know, and that's already enough, this gigantic thriving metropolis with hundreds of billions in GDP and, you know, this modern city with all these subway lines. It's the hardware capital of the world. And that means something different than where you are now in San Francisco. Francisco, or where I spent 20 years in Beijing, which is kind of the software, you know, Silicon Valleys. Because the hardware capital of the world is going to remain the hardware capital of the world for some time because you can't necessarily make that virtual anytime soon, right? You have to physically be there because there's tool and die experts and actual prototyping and manufacturing, right? So that physical part, that's That's where it gets really difficult. And tell our listeners about your experience there, like being thrown right into the arena as a gladiator in the middle of it all in Shenzhen.

Yeah. So first we got really good impression in Shenzhen when we first started, because that was even a few years ago in the development stage. We tried to get a 3D printing prototype. In US, if we want to order a sample, it will It would take us about 2 to 3 weeks, but in Shenzhen, it only took 1 to 2 days. And yeah, because the factory were literally there. And if you want to even be faster, you just ask like an instant delivery service with additional 20 kuai cost, and you can get it like in an hour once the prototype is done. So we were like, wow, this is amazing.

By the way, 20 kuai is about $3.50, right? So you're like, yeah, sure. Yes. Let's speed it up.

Yeah. And then we decided to continue to build our products there. So we started to talk to all the vendors, like the factory owners. What actually surprised us was they really support startups. We couldn't give them huge PO at that time. I mean, our PO is okay. It's decent, but like can't compare to other clients. They work with like huge companies like Xiaomi, Huawei, you know, Tesla, those companies. But turned out to be they treat us very fairly. They didn't treat us differently because our PO was smaller, and they're super supportive because we're trying to create something that was never existed before. So there are definitely a lot of like manufacturing, even like, and most of those people in the States would run away.

Like you're trying to, you don't have any resources, you don't have any experience, you're doing something that's never been done before. Like no, see you later. Like that's Scary and risky and difficult and not scalable. But these— I have to interrupt there because like, that's exactly why the Chinese would be like, yes, this could really be huge. So we want to be able to invest in this and make that— like, I don't know any other place. There's so few places where you could really get that help, right? You'd be like fighting.

Yeah, they're really open in like trying new things instead of just do the same things they used to do. And they're just all the, like, even the factories we work with, they are very passionate about like creating something unique instead of just be a standard OEM, ODM factory, just repeat doing the same stuff. So that's one thing we got a lot of support from, but we also learned so much in talking to them and working with them. So one thing I learned is like the factories, they always tell you they can do everything. They did try, but the truth is they can't do everything. But somehow you have to get it done. You have to get things done. Eventually you need to figure out how. So it's like you go to factory, they supposed to be the expert in doing this, but because you're doing something new and innovative. Like no one on earth have done this before. You became the expert and you will teach the factory how to—

You know as much or more than them in a way.

Yeah, and that's like we teach the factory what they should do, which is a very unique experience, I would say. And sometimes like not all the factories are perfect, you know, like some of them are really like they have high QC, quality control standards, but some of them, the way they work is just they get all the things done, they give it to you, they expect you could not find the mistakes they made. If you found them, they will happily take all the defects and redo it for you, but they always have hope—

That you don't find it.

That you don't find them, so they will just send you the defect.

Indeed. Indeed.

Yes. So sometimes I was just like, oh my God, why would you guys send me those? It's just so obvious. And when you talk to them, they're just very collaborative. They were like, oh, sorry about that. We'll redo it. Apparently they knew those defects. They still give it to you. I just don't get it. I was like, you think we don't care about our product quality or what? That's something like, yeah, you have to be there.

So I think that's a downside, right? I mean, like. You know, the book China Speed that I talk about, of course there's downsides, right?

Yeah.

And some of it is like the quality is less, but then, you know, the fact is that if you can do more iteration cycles, then you can make a better product in a shorter amount of time for a better cost.

Yeah.

But there's all this friction of like, yeah, you better really be, you know, trust but verify or don't trust, but Look really hard, right? So there's going to be— so I think that's the price.

Yeah, I think things always go on both sides. There are some places they're super responsive and very strict about every single detail of everything they do, but there are also like places they just want to get things done. Doesn't matter in what way. So in the end of the day, since it's your own thing, you need to be responsive in Yeah. So you really need to be responsive.

So you had this kick-ass successful Kickstarter campaign, right? And there's a lot of companies. Well, I mean, it's not that easy to be successful on Kickstarter, but there's a lot of companies that were successful on Kickstarter and then crumbled. Like they just couldn't make the product manufacturable or scalable. And they just fell down and they had to refund money. And like, there was some scams. Yeah. And I think that's where it really becomes so challenging. And like what you needed to do, like you were already in Shenzhen, you're already a completely fluent native Chinese speaker. You already are totally like culturally, it's not like you were, you know, Meiji Hwaran who was like, okay, I speak Chinese, but I don't really understand China or Chinese. Right? Like you, you had everything going for you. Right. And you're smart and educated. and whatever. And yet it was not any criticism of necessarily of China or Shenzhen. It's like manufacturing is tough. Manufacturing is so tough. And like you were basically became an assembly line worker, like the pictures that you showed and the kind of hours that you put in, like tell us some of those stories.

Yeah, I remember like, 'cause our glasses is, they never existed before, so we designed a lot tools to test a certain part of the glasses because that's not like a standard tool that exists before. So even the assembly line worker didn't know how to use it. So we had to be there, like teach workers side to side and show them how to do it and just sit there for hours and watch them to make sure that they totally learned how to use it. That's like one example. And other things like, you know, sometimes we are rushing time, but factories, they're not. Like we want to deliver things before certain date, but factory has their own policy. Like if their worker continue to work after 6:00 PM, they need to pay them like twice hourly rate. So in order to do that, sometimes we have to sit on the assembly line, just do some quick work to make things more efficient to get our goal, because I think one One thing we're trying really hard is cost control. Because, you know, the longer you extend the production period, the more operation cost you're gonna spend. And also, if you just leave everything to the factory, you're gonna get an endless bill. I think that's a very dangerous thing for hardware company. So one thing I tried really hard was just make sure every item Every single thing we did, every component we bought, and every fee we paid were in the original budget range. It is so easy to spend more money or like, yeah, there are people can solve every single problem for you if you spend a lot of money. But the truth is you don't have like endless money. You only have a certain budget. And on top of that, we were even trying to be profitable. So I think if you don't learn how to spend your money wisely on day 1, it will be hard for you to learn that on day 100 still. Excellent point.

Yeah. So you put that discipline in from the beginning. Wow. So that's great. So please keep going.

Yeah. So I think a lot of time we spend in the factory is also trying to figure out Like where are the bills come from? Given time, we were there, their assembling time, every single step. Instead, the factory give us a quote about like how much, like what's assembling fee, wait time, every single step to verify. Is it true to spend 3 minutes just to put this thing there? Or actually you just need 1 minute. So we're crystal clear about every single thing we paid for. And if we have questions, we can talk to them immediately. Like we even can say, oh, look, I'm not an experienced assembly worker, but I can just put this lead in 20 seconds. But in the quote, they charge us 45 seconds. I think it's all those little details that can—

All adds up.

Yeah, that all adds up.

Great tip. So let's say I'm a Norwegian woman or I'm a guy from Boston and I have a hardware startup and I want to be able to optimize for time and reduce my budget and maximize the quality as well too. Like you guys joined HAX, the hardware accelerator under SOS Ventures, you know, where I've been a proud mentor. I've actually had Benjamin Joff on the pod as well too and love what those guys are doing. Doing. I guess there's the option to do that, to join an accelerator. But like, what advice would you give to somebody who doesn't understand China or speak Chinese? Like, I think what you did was pretty badass, right? Because you're a badass woman, right? You're like yawning before the Gaokao and showing up to grad school all injured and doing all kinds of other stuff that mere mortals, normal people can't do. But like, that's not so accessible for Somebody who's not really from China and has that sort of like global perspective in a way too, right? Like even I'm on the board of another Chinese startup company and they do hardware and they have funding from Xiaomi and they suffer like everybody suffers, right? But they're also based in China, right? So if you're not in China but you have to do your manufacturing in China, like what can be done? Do you think realistically?

The honest answer I would give is. You have to at least try to come here, like physically yourself. It's so important, even though you may have a language barrier or like there are some, like a culture difference exists, like you can't accept at the first time, but it's just basically like me decided to go to US, which is a totally different country to get my education done. If you really want to achieve something great in your life, you have to step out your comfort zone. It's fine if you can't become fully fluent in Mandarin. I know it's hard, but being there personally, it's a totally different experience than just reading emails or do Zoom calls with people factory. Standing in the assembly line, see how your product get done, or like stand by an injection mold machine and see how you can get The warm, fresh, even a little bit hot pieces of your product. It's just a totally different experience. You can learn 100%, you can learn 20%, but doesn't matter. It's just, this is something you can never experience that through any virtual experiences. So I think you have to step out your comfort zone and being here even one time or twice. As many as you can. And it's not something like you have to do your lifetime. So for example, for me now, I feel comfortable just sending my coworkers to the factory and whatever they told me, like all the issues they report to me, I feel very comfortable and I can easily understand what they're talking about and how to solve that. But you have to build that solid experience. with some costs, like some price, like some like challenges during that time, then in the future you can, it will just save you so much in the communication and problem solving, all those things. I think it's just really crucial.

That's great. Yeah. Maybe get a consultant or a lieutenant, somebody who's bilingual and can help you to navigate stuff. I think that's sort of Moving from the prototype to actual manufacturing, like I've definitely experienced a lot of pain moving from sort of wireframes to actually launching products in software. But there's a whole another level of pain. But also, like you said, like smelling. Like I've been to a few different manufacturing facilities and also the headquarters of Hacks, and to see it's almost like fresh bread coming out of the oven. Like when You can hold your product and see it's a whole different level of like satisfaction. And there's like a sublime pleasure in that to be able to be like, wow, I made this. Hey, so I didn't know you guys made sunglasses. I'm buying myself a pair. And it's the website. I'll put it in the show notes, but viewglasses.com. Is that right? V-U-E?

Yeah, it's www.viewglasses.com.

Terrific. Hey, thank you so much. You're doing this. Very high energy, very compelling, insightful podcast.

A very unique recording I'll play to my kids in the future. You're a part of the conversation already.

Excellent. That's great. Hey, really appreciate you taking the time. Loved hearing about your journey, and I look forward to seeing amazing adventures and outcomes in the future, and I'll be in touch.

Awesome. Yeah, thanks for having me here today. I had a great time and so much fun. And I hope I can just give anyone who is interested in hardware anything that you feel helpful. Now I'll be very happy.

Oh, that's very gracious. Wonderful. Thank you. Yeah, I know you were helpful to some of my students at Beida, so thanks for that. Appreciate it.

Cool.

That's a wrap. Thanks for listening to this episode of The Rich Robinson Show, season 1, at the speed of China. Visit therichrobinson.com/show to smash that subscribe button. Please also go to iTunes or whatever platform of choice, rate and comment. And until next time, thank you very much.

Zaijian.

See ya.