Khosla Ventures partner Andrew Chung argues investors miss massive opportunities by staying Western-focused. WeChat and KakaoTalk each have hundreds of millions of users that most Western investors have never heard of. Real solutions to problems like Delhi's air pollution require 100% improvements, not incremental fixes.
Chapters
More recently, I know Tim spends a lot of time in China these days, and Andy, of course, does as well. And as you think about a lot of the developments that have happened that folks just aren't even aware of here— WeChat and KakaoTalk and Sina Weibo, like a lot of these companies that have somehow just amassed these 500 million person communities and your grandma has never heard of them. Or frankly, your dad or many of your friends and your classmates probably haven't even heard of these companies until all of a sudden there's a big acquisition or there's big news in the US. And that's again another part of why I think it's really exciting, because there's so many people around the world that are doing things to invent the future that if you don't think that way yourself, you're going to miss out on some really big opportunities. So I'm going to kind of have a segue into the inventing the future part by talking about some of the problems that we have in the world. So for those of you who have ever visited Beijing, how many people have been to Beijing? OK, so this is a more global group than I usually see. Usually I see maybe like 20%, 10% of the people who have ever been to Beijing. But this is what— the first time I ever went to Beijing, which was 15, 20 years ago, it looked more like this. And of course, those of you who have been there more recently, it looks a lot more like this. And 60 days out of the year, Beijing's particulate levels are at toxic levels where in the US they would be considered deadly. So you should not walk outside because you may be at risk of getting some kind of pollution-related disorder. And yet Beijing is only the 17th worst city in China. There's 16 cities that look worse than this and have more regular regular problems. There's one city up in the northeastern part, close to Harbin, for those of you who know the geography, that I think it's 120 days a year where the particulate levels are at toxic levels and 200 days of the year where they're at very, very dangerous levels. So imagine living in an environment like that. India now has the highest incidence of chronic asthma in the world. So if you're a child like these kids, this is Delhi. This is the This is the capital of India. So we're not talking about some backwards industrial city out there. This is Delhi. And you have kids that are living in this type of environment creating significant problems. This is my least favorite photo but the most impactful photo, which is for all my friends who are having kids in China, in Beijing, this is how they come out of the hospital. They've got a little nebulizer that goes on their face because the little babies can't deal with the toxic levels of of particulates in the air. So what does that mean? It means that the reason why it's important to invent the future is because incremental alone will not solve a lot of these large problems. So yes, when we were talking about the IT stuff, Pinterest and Facebook and Twitter have changed the course of humanity and changed the way that information flows. What I just talked about are things that fundamentally affect quality of life and whether or not people will survive past their 20s or 50s. So the question is, how do you help 5 billion people who are in developing countries live like the lucky 500? And by the way, now because of ubiquitous internet, everyone can see online the videos of how the lucky 500 million are living, and they want it. They want food, they want education, they want access to cleaner water, access to energy. And so they all want it. And what is it gonna take to be able to solve that? It's not gonna be an incremental solution. It's not gonna be something that is just 10% better or 15% better. It's gonna be something that's 100% better. And that requires you to invent the future and not extrapolate the past. And so what we think about at Khosla is a lot about how one can systematically try to find these things. 'Cause it's great, Andrew, you're talking about all this very theoretical, philosophical notion of inventing the future and why it's important, but how do you— How do you find them? Well, there's no secret formula. It's very much more art than science. And I'm going to talk about now a couple of the ways in which we do it and some of the examples and case studies so that you get a flavor of how we thought about it at investment and what they've meant over time.
