By August 30 of this year, it will be eight years since I resigned from Google to start my own business. As a typical VC-based company, we rode the wave of the most frenzied capital years and also witnessed the recent collapse of the dollar VC logic; as an overseas company, we experienced the honeymoon period between China and the U.S., and also went through the increasing tension in geopolitical relations. As the founder of the company, I have been holding my breath, either cutting through thorns and running bravely or overcoming difficulties and crawling forward.
Many people say that starting a business is hard. From an objective standpoint, it seems indeed not easy. It feels like the CEO works for everyone, and everyone is my client and someone I am responsible for. But subjectively, I find it quite interesting. Maybe my masochistic nature suits entrepreneurship perfectly.
The primary reason for feeling that entrepreneurship has gone relatively smoothly is due to good interpersonal relationships. When I first started my business, an elder relative who was successful in business gave me one piece of advice: it's better to take a loss when dealing with others. Over the years, I've encountered fewer pitfalls in interpersonal relationships and more benefactors. The internal partnership is complementary, and the early group of friends are still with the company now, having passed the adjustment period and working together more seamlessly. Outside, there are many supporters helping us. With the attitude of not harming others, making more friends, and creating fewer enemies, I try to help others whenever possible, so along the way, I've met many benefactors who have helped us.
Another main premise for this positive subjective experience is that I started light. On the way to the airport yesterday, I was still discussing this topic with Brother Lei. He said the core reason is that I am single, I can feed myself without worrying about feeding a whole family, and I don't need to support a large household. Moreover, my lifestyle is simple, and the fixed cost of supporting myself is very low.
Back in the day, I was the number one spendthrift, selling my house to start a business—I sold my (very small) house in Beijing. All my personal savings, as well as some initial funds and support from friends accumulated over many years through reputation, were invested into the company. For all these years, it seems I haven't seen any return on investment. If I hadn't started a business back then and instead stayed at Google or jumped around among internet companies, saved some money, sold the company-granted stocks at a higher price, dabbled in cryptocurrency, and bought a house, my personal financial accumulation would definitely be better than what I've gained through the hustle of entrepreneurship.
However, if I bring the memory of entrepreneurship back 8 years ago and give me a chance to choose again, I would choose to start a business without hesitation (I still hesitated at that time because of considering the opportunity cost). The mental stimulation brought by these 8 years is something that no material can offer. I would rather keep my life simple and plain, and exchange for this ups and downs experience.
In a blog post by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, he mentioned his view on "adventure": treat "being able to take risks" as a personal quality, try to keep your life cheap and flexible for as long as possible, and it's best if you can move with just a backpack.
Make it easy to take risks
Most people overestimate risk and underestimate reward. Taking risks is important because it’s impossible to be right all the time—you have to try many things and adapt quickly as you learn more.
It’s often easier to take risks early in your career; you don’t have much to lose, and you potentially have a lot to gain. Once you’ve gotten yourself to a point where you have your basic obligations covered you should try to make it easy to take risks. Look for small bets you can make where you lose 1x if you’re wrong but make 100x if it works. Then make a bigger bet in that direction.
Don’t save up for too long, though. At YC, we’ve often noticed a problem with founders that have spent a lot of time working at Google or Facebook. When people get used to a comfortable life, a predictable job, and a reputation of succeeding at whatever they do, it gets very hard to leave that behind (and people have an incredible ability to always match their lifestyle to next year’s salary). Even if they do leave, the temptation to return is great. It’s easy—and human nature—to prioritize short-term gain and convenience over long-term fulfillment.
But when you aren’t on the treadmill, you can follow your hunches and spend time on things that might turn out to be really interesting. Keeping your life cheap and flexible for as long as you can is a powerful way to do this, but obviously comes with tradeoffs.
In fact, if we can put down various desires, the things needed to maintain a comfortable life are really few.
Speaking of the company, in the past 8 years, we are still the same group of people, still adhere to the original direction, and still the same company from the beginning. Currently, we are still operating healthily, and constantly iterating and self-improving. Although there are all kinds of potential risks, I think as long as we are still here and our fighting spirit remains, we can get through any setbacks. Moreover, with the emergence of new technologies such as Web3 and AI, there will still be revolutionary opportunities in the future. Therefore, I still firmly believe that the future will be better.
In recent years, I have been paying attention to Web3. I think there are still many opportunities in it, but the current infrastructure is not perfect, and products with large user volumes have not yet appeared. At present, in the field of Web3, the business model of transaction-related products is relatively clear, but due to our lack of financial background and accumulation, we are not good at this direction. However, we need to continue to follow up and learn, and we also have some participation in this field, maintaining an attitude of observing and learning beside the table. As for AI, I have paid a lot of attention to it. Without changing the general direction of our product, many product forms that can improve internal production efficiency and external user experience are emerging, and we have already started working on this. Although I know that there will definitely be many AI Native products in the future that we cannot see today, staying in the game is very important.
hard is not as good as selling well. But if you don't like men, then you won't choose to get married; similarly, whether the exit price of a company is good often depends more on the market window period, and what we can control is only to operate the company with all our efforts.
Our company was founded in 2016, when the capital market was in a boom period, all the way until the first half of 2018. During those years, although I had the idea of starting a business, my understanding of entrepreneurship was not deep enough, so even if I caught a good opportunity, it would be difficult to fully utilize this market momentum. By 2020 and 2021, although some specific industries were doing well, they were not in our track, and had little to do with us. Now, the global environment is not good, especially the technology stock market is particularly sluggish. The prices in the secondary market have not risen for a long time, the inflation problem in the United States is serious, various economic data are not ideal, and the interest rate of short-term loans is higher than that of long-term loans, all of which indicate the market's expectations of an economic recession, and people's emotions are generally pessimistic.
However, according to historical patterns, it is usually during the downturns in the secondary market that some insightful entrepreneurs seize opportunities, look for new breakthrough points, prepare for big moves, and wait for the arrival of the next market boom period.
I am patient and willing to work slowly and wait. Nowadays, I don't easily make any promises to the team, partners, or investors because I feel that in such an environment, any excessive promise is like being reckless. What I can do is work hard, study diligently, and always adhere to the basic principle of prioritizing shareholders' interests. As for the ultimate outcome of the company, there are too many uncontrollable factors, and the larger the company, the higher the uncertainty. But from another perspective, companies also conform to the Lindy effect, meaning the longer they survive, the longer their expected survival time will be.
During these years of entrepreneurship, I have broken two things:
Pride. Since childhood, with excellent academic performance, from gaining admission to Peking University through science competition to having a good career development at Google, I have always been seen as "someone else's child." Therefore, deep inside me has always resided a proud self. However, as time went by during my entrepreneurial journey, I found out that pride is the great enemy of entrepreneurship. Although this little proud self occasionally still pops up, I must constantly remind myself that running a company means returning to the essence of business, and the essence of business is making money. I need to be more practical, down-to-earth, think more about the logic and rules of things, and not be swayed by my own ego. In fact, as long as we don't overvalue ourselves, many problems can find solutions.
Persona. The key to entrepreneurship is to do well in the company, and other personas are just substitutes when the company doesn't perform well. If we only pursue this simplest truth and let all decisions revolve around this one principle - whether it helps to improve the company, then everything else is fleeting clouds. During this process, what I broke was my persona. All things that go against natural laws are temporary. In the commercial jungle, the evaluation of a person is actually very simple. We need to put down all the intangible things and return to the essence of business. Business is essentially self-serving, but only by benefiting others, such as providing users with better products, improving production efficiency to reduce costs and thus provide cheaper products, can we achieve self-interest. Other than that, nothing else matters.
Giving up the small pride and persona is actually a way of simplification. We always want too much, and if we learn to let go, things will become simpler.
During my counseling this week, I talked with my therapist about how different my recent trip to the U.S. was compared to before. In 2018 and 2019, I frequently traveled to the U.S., always in economy class since the company wasn't profitable at that time. Every 2-3 weeks, I would have to make a round trip. The bumpy journey plus jet lag left me exhausted, yet I still had to arrange many meetings, regardless of whether they were useful or not. There were even times when I collapsed on my way to a meeting, forcing my colleagues to call 911. But this time in the U.S., I no longer felt FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out). I scheduled at most two meetings a day, and if I felt tired, I would cancel evening meetings with others in advance. I've learned to be kinder to myself. I no longer scrutinize myself constantly or set overly strict standards for myself, allowing myself to stay in the gray area for a while.
To interject a philosophical concept about freedom, the premise of freedom is that one person's freedom cannot hinder or harm others. However, we can preserve our own inner world, no matter how dark or evil it may be, because laws do not punish thoughts. If we act on the dark and evil notions within us and harm others, then we must face legal punishment. But as long as we don't harm others, we can retain everything inside us.
From a psychological perspective as well, what we need is acceptance rather than repression of ourselves, learning to accept all aspects of our inner selves, whether good or bad; light or dark; positive or negative; diligent or lazy.
My therapist once said that traditional Chinese thought emphasizes prudence in solitude. Confucius once said, "At seventy, I could follow my heart's desires without overstepping the boundaries." However, when Confucius said this, he was already seventy years old. Such a state is attainable but requires much life experience to reach. Any demand that does not respect human nature may lead to greater backlash. We should not suppress any of our natural instincts.
After discussing human nature, let's talk about the essence of business. Business itself is actually very simple: addition (more revenue), subtraction (less cost), multiplication (higher efficiency), not even division is needed. Being a person can follow one's own human nature, and starting a business should also adhere to the essence of commerce. I cannot control the part of luck, but what I can do is continuously iterate and dig deeper in fields we are familiar with and skilled in. Attempting to increase income, control costs, and improve efficiency through new technologies and optimized production processes. When the environment is good, ride the wave; when the market is bad, quietly hone internal skills. I don't know where the future lies or where it will land, but I am not lost right now. Enjoying the process itself is a form of cultivation.
Strive to keep yourself Stay in the game, and Love the game and enjoy it.