Beginner's mind

It's 2017.

We are back after the long break. This is a special episode, because we recorded twice, one in Chinese and the other in English. It was accidental. We usually spend 10 to 20 minutes running through the key points before the actual recording, so we talk in Chinese and put down some show notes to discuss later. But this time, while we talked about on-demand bicycle startups in China, we just went along. Though we recorded later in English, following loosely the previous structure, we felt the first run has a better flow than the second version. Yet, we think it's important to let non-Chinese speakers understand the craziness and innovation in this business.

So here we are, with two new episodes for the new year!

Chinese Version

Here are the questions we discussed from the very beginning, roughly in this order.

00:00
Why does the on-demand bicycle business bloom in China at this point?
How does the government react to this new business?
How did they receive five rounds of investment in one year and why did they need that much money from very early on?
What's the biggest innovation of these bikes?
How do these bikes work? How much do they charge?

11:00
What's the difference between the two main competitors, ofo and Mobike?
How do they maintain the bikes on the street?
What are the main differences from a user experience's standpoint?
What are the main use cases for these on-demand bikes?

17:00
Technical broken down. The screen was frozen for a while and you can hear it here.
Have they made profit yet? What is the business model in the long run?
How accurate is the GPS on bikes?

25:00
It was called bike sharing sometimes, but we think it doesn't belong to sharing economy.

27:00
Defining the three terms, sharing economy, O2O and on-demand.
What might be their next step?
What are the oversea markets they are expanding to?

37:00
We tried to do the calculation of how many bikes are needed around some of the busiest metro stations in Beijing.

Bo started using AWS cloud service to stream games to his old macbook. The experience was really good and that got him thinking about the cloud computing a lot lately, the opportunities and the problems. For me, it's more like a learning process, to understand the different concepts in cloud computing.

01:00 Long story short, Bo explained how he started streaming games from AWS and got really awesome experiences, which led him to find out new personal cloud computing products like Sixa and Paperspace.

10:00 The differences between SaaS, PaaS, and Iaas, the last of which is what we are going to focus more in this episode. We went further to explain the difference between public cloud and private cloud.

19:00 Will personal cloud computing be widely used in the near future? It depends on various elements, like the speed of the Internet, privacy issue, and other technical issues. On the other hand, to promote a wider adaptation of the technology requires a work-around with existing cloud structures in the companies, and to persuade CTOs or CIOs to buy the product.

40:00 Similar to the success of Slack, the adaptation of personal cloud computing is most likely to start with startups, or teams in big companies. Relating to Joy's experiences in China, we touched a bit on regulatory level.

Hello, December! We skipped November due to Joy's two-week visit to India, and the holiday season. We've been thinking about this topic for a while, startups in Iceland. There are a lot of interesting things going on in Iceland, besides games and the VR boom.

Three major topics we are covering are: the overall startup environment, the reason behind the startup culture, and moving forward, what's the advantages and disadvantages.

01:00 Online gaming is one of the industries that Iceland is known for, but it's also the ground for startups in fishing, and renewable energy. 

14:00 We spent some time discussing how the geographical and demographic elements are shaping the startup scene in Iceland (as compared to Southeast Asia we talked about before).

26:00 Moving forward, not enough funding resources is definitely one of the disadvantages entrepreneurs in Iceland are facing. 

The episode was supposed to be about startups in Iceland, which we both have read some fun articles and would like to share our findings. Yet, the election last week struck us so hard that we couldn't avoid. I was quite hesitated to share my thoughts on this topic: it's controversial, complicated, and until this point, I am still trying to figure out what exactly happened. We tried to go beyond our emotions – anger, depress, fear, etc, – and try to reflect on how the result affects us, and what we can learn from it.

01:00 We share about our feelings on this result. Then get into the reflection mode: the electoral college, the voting rates, how Americans exercise their political rights, etc.

11:00 Another main reflection occurs is the feeling that we've been living in the bubble, or tribe, which is constructed by the social media, like Facebook, Twitter, Medium, etc. How this can be changed?

24:00 The election revealed that advanced technology, like machine learning or personalisation, is rapidly changing the way we consume information, as well as the media landscape. And it's going to affect us further in the future. More work can be replaced by machines, and people in the future need to find new ways to create value to get income.

Here it comes this time of a year, when temperature drops and layers are put on. We start the conversation with weather, like a lot of conversation goes, then we talk about weather apps, which leads to crowdsourcing and other related products.

01:00 It’s quite surprising that people have made so many different types of weather apps. The ones that caught our attention is Weather Underground, Dark Sky and Poncho. They are adding data collected by amateur meteorologist to the app to provide more accurate prediction. Besides official data and data collected by amateurs, what else can be added for future prediction?

19:00 Other examples of crowdsourcing data, like Waze, Kickstarter, etc. We talked about the caveat of the crowdsourcing data and how people apply it in different areas.

40:00 Can crowdsourcing be scaled to more complicated areas, like healthcare?

There are a lot of things going on not just in the Bay Area or Beijing, but everywhere is witnessing certain changes brought by new technology, investment, etc. Last episode, we realized the way we consume the overloaded information today limits our reach to things happen in other countries, like Southeast Asia, or Africa. So we decided to do some research and talk about the startup scene in Southeast Asia, especially Indonesia and Singapore.

01:00 Why the region is getting attractive to foreign capitals and local startups? We listed some of the main points, including the large and relatively young population, the mobile penetration, the prevalence of English, the geographical difference, digital nomads, etc.

13:00 The region is hot for now, so what might be the hurdles or challenges to run businesses in this area? Joy listed some of the challenges in Indonesia, including language, logistics, banking, etc. all of which is on the infrastructure level. Political environment and regulations is also affecting how far the startups can go.

28:00 There’s concern that foreign investment might be major threat to the thrive of local startups, but it seems it’s not that easy for big tech companies to establish similar success in this market either. The business model applied to the Western markets might not be applicable to Southeast Asia.

36:00 Why knowing what’s going on in this region matters to us? And how about the future of this region?

Hola! Finally updated!

We have been away for more than a month, due to a lot of things, such as Joy has gone for Burning Man for a while, some vacations in between, technical issues, and failed recordings. We did try to talk the last two weeks, but the recording was disappointing, so we decided to postpone the update.

The original topic was Joy’s flight experience from China to US, and US back to China, what have changed, what can be changed, etc. Later we realised it would be better if we focus on one specific part of the travel experience, so we ended up with the ride-sharing experience in China and US, and how two products, Didi and Uber, offer different experiences. It’s also a timely topic since Uber exited China few months ago. We made comparison between  regional and international business model. For us, this is a good start after a long break, and we hope you enjoy it as well.

01:00 Start from new proposal in Shanghai and Beijing on regulating the ride-sharing services in China. Drivers are required to have local residential identification to drive for Didi or Uber-like service. And extends the discussion into some features of how didi works in China.

17:00 Discuss the different experiences that Didi and Uber offer. Didi provides more transportation services like taxi, carpool, designated drivers, etc., while Uber focuses mainly on ride-sharing. Didi designed more features specifically for local market while Uber offers the same experience worldwide.

24:00 Digress a bit to talk about emerging market, like Indonesia and India. We came to the realisation that information in these countries are quite invisible to us because of increasing personalised or tailored information service.

36:00 Bo speaks from a passenger’s perspective and talks about which service makes more sense to him. It’s surprising that there are only few companies provide local services internationally.

48:00 We talk about the latest Uber pass in San Francisco. And wind back to the comparison between regional and international businesses from the perspectives of a designer and an engineer. 

Have you ever lost your phone somehow? And have you ever gotten your lost phone back? I have experienced lost my phone on a cab and got it back in about an hour by using “Find My Phone” feature. It was the most emotional hour I have ever experienced and we decided to talk about this experience in depth.

01:00 My first-time ever almost 10-min monologue, without any interruption by Bo :P We also talked about keeping chat history. I have been keeping my chat history on Wechat for a long time and it will kill me if I lost it.

10:00 We started to analyze what terrifies me most, losing the phone itself, losing my private data, or losing the record and files on the phone. There are three buttons (sound an alert, lock your phone and erase your data) on the Find My Phone app and it’s interesting how people under different scenarios use the three features differently.

22:00 While iOS users enjoy the benefits of Find My Phone app, Android users seem a bit helpless when scenarios like the above occurs.

38:00 We get into serious debate whether Apple should backup the phone before user erase their data on the phone.

50:00 How can people keep track of other things in their lives, like your wallet, a jacket, etc. ? And Bo talked about the new gadget he got for his other belongings, TrackR.

By the end of last episode, we were talking about Pokemon Go as a platform. The idea got both of us excited and we realized there are more we would like to explore. The keyword is platform. It’s like the word “location” to real estate agent as to the tech world today.

00:00 What is Pokemon Go providing or generating as a platform? How is it different comparing to Facebook? Facebook is considered a gigantic platform that hosts social interactions, connections, news, ads, games, etc. It has been taking our attention for such a long time. If Pokemon Go evolves the way like Facebook –– carefully craft everything to grab people’s attention and keep them on the platform, what will it be like?

20:00 Will Pokemon Go last as a game if it’s not adding more features to make it beyond a game?

30:00 We kept saying “platform”, but what exactly is “platform”? Bo gives his definition: (1) high engagement; (2) a lot of users; (3) the service itself is free, but it generates profits from services sit on top of it. We also make comparisons between the platform thinking in China and in the Bay Area. We talked about common platforms like Facebook and Twitter, and also examples like Home Depot, the home improvement retailer in the States, and Haier, the once biggest home appliances company in China.

51:00 And whenever we talk about platform, one name is often mentioned: Wechat. When I think about platforms in China, usually I mean all those feature-compact and all-look-alike e-commmerce or service apps in my phone.

For two weeks, everyone has been talking about it. Pokemon Go swept the world and created buzz that none has done so far. Bo has been playing it in San Francisco for a while and is addicted to it. For me, although the game is still not available in China, I am able to witness friends around me trying every possible means to reach out to the game, especially engineers, who created easy-access location-simulator-loaded versions for people in China to feel the game. We talk from our different experiences and reflect on this pokemania that we are all experiencing.

00:00 It seems hard not to notice Pokemon GO around you. The players show up like mobs on the streets, into the shops, or by the Ocean Beach in the middle of night. All those seem suggest it’s location not AR made Pokemon Go this popular today. And speaking of location, it reminds me of two things: Ingress and Foursquare. Ingress, created by Niantic Lab, is a location-based game prior to Pokemon Go. The two share a lot in common as in game mechanics and business model, but Ingress didn’t get that much attention and active players.

18:00 Though Pokemon Go as an app works terribly sometimes, it doesn’t stop people from using it. This reminds us of earlier version of Facebook, Twitter, etc. –– great products that didn’t look perfect from the very beginning, but there’s something unique about these addicting products. And also we talk about the business model of Pokemon Go and how it’s similar to Foursquare.

38:00 Everyone has also been asking the question: how far is Pokemon Go going? The question itself makes us think that in the future, Pokemon Go is going to be part of people’s life. It becomes a local-related platform that will support a lot more social interaction.