Hsu Ken Ooi and I had such a great conversation, we had to cut it short. Otherwise, it felt like we could have gone on for hours. Hsu Ken is a co-Founder and Managing Partner at Iterative. Iterative's vision is to "Increase the GDP of Southeast Asia through entrepreneurship" with a mission "to build the most vibrant, supportive, and intellectually honest community of founders".
Some of the topics that Hsu Ken and I discussed:
Born in Penang, Malaysia and traveling back and forth between the United States and Penang as a child
His father was Intel's fixer and reported to Andy Grove
Moving around as a child and the importance of adaptability
Working for a small consultancy right out of college for only 9 months
Coding during his free time, loving it, and realizing he wanted to do it full-time
Meeting Brian Ma
Working with his friends to build a new product every week
The building of Decide.com
Working with Oren Etzioni, a well-known entrepreneur who had built and sold several ventures including Farecast
Thinking about the world probabilistically
Translating that company building experience into the way they invest
Silicon Valley cardinal sins - Stealth Mode and NDAs
How to apply technology and crypto to set incentives in the VC spaceSome of the other titles we considered for this episode:
I Was Making PowerPoints All Day
This Thing Is Fun, How Do I Spend All My Time Doing This?
I Missed the Boom of My Generation
Startups Just Seemed Fun
Can My Brother Come?
We Thought There Was a Bug
Do You Guys Have Any Money Left?
The Only Thing You Have to Be OK With Is Looking Silly