The FlipSide Podcast

In this episode of The FlipSide Podcast, we open with an AI that almost started a war. From there, we lay out the latest from both sides:· The computer is creeping from your pocket to your face. AI wearables are going to turn us all into cyborgs. The iPhone may be no better than Xiaomi or Huawei, but people try everything and still end up back on Apple's ecosystem.· AI is eating the web’s traffic. In the future you won’t need a website at all, just information AI can read.· The US has Google. China never got any all-in-one search engine like that. But in China you can’t get by without WeChat, the super app even Elon envies.· Ads are learning to talk back, but ChatGPT’s ads only reach the people who get the least out of AI.· Both sides worry the other’s AI is stealing their data, and the US is starting to borrow China’s playbook by taking stakes in companies.Then we circle back to the AI that nearly caused all that trouble. Chris says it’s no different from how we use AI at work every day: AI is great at making crap that looks perfect. AI getting things wrong isn’t the scary part. The scary part is when no one can tell.Fifty minutes with FlipSide, from both sides: how much can we really trust AI at this stage?

This week on FlipSide: Galen Gao, co-founder of Linkloud.Linkloud is one of the largest communities in China for founders building global SaaS and AI products. Alongside the events, growth workshops, and market-entry work, Galen runs study trips — taking groups of founders and operators to Silicon Valley, and separately to Tokyo, a week at a time, with twenty-plus sessions packed in with local founders and partners.Three years of doing that gives you a particular view of things. He came on to lay it out.Some of what stuck with us:

·Services companies are turning into AI companies. Instead of selling the tool, sell the outcome.

·Founders going global have stopped chasing the general-purpose product. They're going vertical, and starting to fine-tune small models on their own data.

·Most brands are still underestimating GEO, generative engine optimization. Meanwhile their customers are already asking AI to compare them against a competitor.

·Japanese enterprises are moving on AI faster than you'd expect, and they want to own their data and their models outright.

·The hardest part of operating across regions is rarely the strategy. It's hiring your first local employee.Near the end, Galen said something that reframed the whole conversation: we all live in a bubble. Outside Silicon Valley, plenty of people are adopting AI at maybe a third of our speed. And in Brazil, Southeast Asia, and India, teams are building for markets nobody was watching. One cracked video translation across twenty-plus Indian languages and grew in a way nobody predicted.The places the models can't reach yet might be exactly where the opportunity is.

Eighty minutes outside the bubble.

For years, China proudly wore the "copycat" label. In this episode, we watch it start to flip.A phone company that began making cars two years ago just built something Ford never thought of in a hundred years. Chris explains why: Xiaomi lives next to the factory floor. An AI prodigy who had an Apple offer, with permission to stay in Beijing, chose to build at home instead, and made Kimi. Apple is only now getting to a folding phone with their iPhone Duo; Huawei, Xiaomi, and Samsung already make one. And the advice that startups should steal IP first and hire lawyers later? That didn't come from China. Those are words straight out of ex-Google CEO's mouth.We also look at the other side of the coin: which of Y Combinator's most-wanted startup ideas belong in China and which only work in the US; why Anker wants off Amazon, and why brands in China are always renting their traffic; and where does that traffic go once AI starts answering the questions for us.So who's copying whom now? Forty-five minutes, two sides, you decide.

FlipSide EP12 is now live.This episode centers on a striking contrast in how AI is viewed in China and the U.S.In China, investors and entrepreneurs are largely optimistic about AI. In the U.S., some of the strongest warnings about AI are coming from people working inside frontier AI companies themselves.That contrast runs through the entire episode.Chris just got back from a trip through the Bay Area, New York, and Los Angeles. Ryan brings the view from Chengdu.They talk about how attitudes toward AI differ across China, the U.S., and generations. They also look at how businesses are changing the way they think about tokens and real-world AI usage.The conversation also touches on some of the latest business stories, from SHEIN's plans for a Hong Kong listing to Tesla's Cybercab.Tune in to FlipSide EP12, and let us know what you think in the comments.

This episode is about the deeper variables behind the AI race.Why did Anthropic release one of the most powerful models and then pull it back? Why does open source AI still come with massive infrastructure costs? How are the US and China competing for top global talent? Why do Chinese internet companies fight so hard over portals, payments, and traffic? And will GEO make future brands more niche than ever?From models, chips, data, and power to visas, capital, platform wars, and the new class divide created by AI, this episode goes beyond AI headlines and looks at the structure behind US-China tech competition.#airace #USChinaTech #chinatech #GEO #FlipSidePodcast

Why can SpaceX tell a $1.7 trillion story, while Chinese AI companies focus on subsidies, scale, and mass adoption?In this episode, we unpack SpaceX’s valuation narrative, China’s AI subsidy playbook, WeChat Pay’s red-envelope attack on Alipay, the US-China divide in AI regulation, and why GEO may become the next major budget shift after SEO.This is a deeper look at how capital, policy, culture, and growth strategies differ between the US and China.

In this episode of The FlipSide Podcast we unpack US and China’s long game across oil, AI infrastructure, and global competition.From the Strait of Hormuz and strategic oil reserves to AI agents that can shop and pay for you. AI healthcare and new language models to HUAWEI chips, humanoid robots, RedNote, stablecoins and AI coding agents. The bigger question is how China turns pressure into optionality. The US attacks problems and threats directly. China often changes the weight of the problem itself. Watch the full episode now.

On this episode of FlipSide, we cover a range of topics. We look at how differences in the talent composition of decision-makers in both nations shape their respective approaches to AI regulation; China’s standout efficiency in infrastructure development; the global supply chain landscape surrounding critical materials including rare earths and solar panels; the distinct paths TikTok and RedNote are taking within social commerce; and GEO, an emerging new industry vertical.

We draw no firm conclusions and take no sides we simply observe ongoing developments. To wrap up, we explore an ideal scenario: what could be achieved if China’s execution efficiency combined with America’s capacity for innovative ideas.

Tune in, and feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

#geomarketing #airegulations #globalsupplychain #socialcommerce #techgeopolitics #FlipSidePodcast

GEO, AI Discovery, social commerce, and creator content are merging into a new growth system. In the past, users searched Google first; now they may ask AI first. This means brands need not only to "be seen" but also to be understood, cited, and recommended by models. In this episode, we discussed AI traffic, data barriers, the differences between starting a business in China and the U.S., and the real costs hidden behind entrepreneurial myths.

#AIDiscovery #GEO #SocialCommerce #Entrepreneurship#MarketingStrategy#FlipSidePodcast

Huawei's new Tau Scaling Law is a bet that China can build frontier chips without the tools, machines, and suppliers America is trying to cut it off from. If it works, the entire sanctions playbook stops working. This is the new tech battlefield, and chips are the front line.

With Chris Sun, CEO of BrandPal, and Ryan Kearney, an American entrepreneur based in Chengdu.

Inside this one:

Why Andrej Karpathy left OpenAI for Anthropic and what it means for the AI race. How Klarna fired 700 customer service agents and quietly hired them back. The Pizza Hut AI disaster that led to a $100 million lawsuit. Why your million TikTok followers do not actually belong to you. How one dress factory made $3.2 million in five months with five people on TikTok Shop. How Chinese factories iterate product designs in three days. And what a company chop is, plus why gangsters once broke in at midnight to steal one.