Back from Asia...

What can be more of a perfect way to fight jet lag than to keep my blog up-to-date? ;) So I just came back from a combination of Taipei, Beijing, and Hong Kong. This trip was half business and half pleasure. The business purpose is to explore my future opportunities in Asia while catching up on some oversees work for Metacentrix. As for pleasure, well, I just haven't had a vacation in ages. So I did the usual Taipei night market, Great Wall visit, LKF parties and such.

Although I didn't have my camera with me for the most part of this trip, I managed to still take a few pictures here and there:



Out of all three places, the most outstanding experience must have been Beijing. While I was there, I ran into my friend, Francis randomly and finally got to catch up with him a little bit. It turns out that he's now working as a program manager at IceBreaker, Inc. What a perfect job I must say. He works half the time in Seattle and the other half in Beijing. It's almost my perfect scenario. The only difference would be that in an ideal world, I would replace Beijing with Hong Kong. Of course, that's only a fantasy especially when Beijing is developing at such rapid speeds. Any entrepreneur with the right mind would hit Beijing over Hong Kong any day.

To give you an idea how fast Beijing is developing, on my first night there, right downstairs from my friend's apartment, there was a barebone empty leased space with construction tools all over which was apparent that they hadn't even started renovating the place yet. However, the next night as I walked by the same place, this same exact space became a restaurant already and was in business with lots of customers inside. That's something that you won't see in the US or even Hong Kong for that matter of fact. Now I only wonder if this speed of development will sustain after the 2008 Olympics. After all, the Olympics is what really prompted the recent rapid development efforts. After seeing Beijing, I am even more excited to see what Shanghai is like. I can't wait. I am just not sure when the next time I have enough vacation will be given my upcoming family reunions.

Lastly, the other worth while event I attended was the Info Expo in Taipei. You have to see it to know what I am talking about. They effectively bring street market tactics into a high tech environment. ;) See pictures in link provided above.

Happy New Year everyone!

Apple scores again on my scale... or maybe not?

I was browsing around the Apple store in Bellevue square yesterday with a friend that wanted to buy a Mac Mini and ran into this:



It was love at first sight. It's too bad that I already very recently bought a Plantronics discovery 655 or I would have picked one up on the spot.

Though I am thinking it's probably a good thing I didn't pick one up considering the reviews I have been reading about them. It appears that the functionality of this slick bluetooth headset is not as impressive as its design.

The almost perfect car dealership...

As some of you know already, my car was slightly scratched up by one of the valet guys in a garage located in downtown Seattle recently. Fortunately, they were perfectly honest with me and told me right away. The manager also offered to take my car to Lexus of Bellevue where he worked in the evenings to get my car buffed out and fully detailed at no charge. So after a few back and forths, I decided that I was going to take him up on his offer but I would take the car in myself.



When I got there, I was thoroughly impressed. They had moved to a brand new location down the street since July. Basically, think of a multi-level elegant building with views of downtown Bellevue all around. They also have all the amenities you can ever think of. There's a showroom, surround sound theater, gift shop, cafe, TV area with fire place, a beautiful fish tank, LCD screens in multiple locations, children's play room w/ video games, work area, and most notably, a mini golf course!



Problem? yes... while I almost had a perfect experience waiting for my car to be finished, I hopped on their guest wireless to get some work done. My first impression was, "hum, decent speeds..." then I found a significant problem. I was unable to connect to any of my e-mail accounts via IMAPs or remote into the office with VPN or SSH. After some investigating, it seems that their IT dept. decided to block all outgoing ports except for 80 and 443 which make their guests only able to browse the web. You would think that a dealership for cars of such prestige would be more sensitive towards business usage when it comes to their IT amenities. Unfortunately, that's not the case. It's one thing to be security conscious but it's another thing to be unaware of customer needs.

Well, maybe I am just too critical.

The IPhone is out...

Quick summary of this hot new item -

Pros:

* Stylish
* Compelling UI
* Fully capable of E-Mail, Browsing, and Searching Google Maps
* Apple Compatible (Sync with Macbook, etc)

Cons:

* No keyboard (Just Soft Keybaord)
* No stylus (Hard to type on soft keyboard with fingers)
* Lacking corporate integration & support
* Still too expensive for someone like me to want to buy one

WiFi Funded To Hotspot Your Digital Camera

This is a pretty interesting idea. We all have friends that always take pictures of the group and swear up and down that they will send it to you later but it never happens. Now if only I can make them all use this technology. ;)

The WebOS Paradigm???

There's a new web-based desktop product out there called DesktopTwo in beta stage that seems like a pretty cool idea. I took about 10 minutes to sign up and play with it a little myself and it seems like that it would be pretty useful for people on the go and always using different computers. However, I suspect that "people" will most likely equal to "students" because the applications available are pretty opensource heavy and you know non-techy corporate users swear by their Outlook and MS Office. As for other non-corporate users, mobility for personal use is just not important enough "to learn yet another thing." That aside, it does provide quite a bit of features and services such as your own e-mail address @desktoptwo.com as well as your own blog off of their server.

Micrsoft Surface

A Microsoft secret project that's no longer a secret.

New computing paradigm? This is just like the movie, Minority Report except for it's not a projected user interface but rather it is in the form of a tangible surface.

Google's "Street View"

Google has launched what they call "Street View." What it does is it allows users to see an interactive 3D image of the street which is pretty cool but it's in too early of a stage to be useful. since it is currently only available for certain areas. With that all said, I am a little disappointed that this is not a live view of the actual street. I guess that's not supposed to be the point?

"Good is the Enemy of Great"

I was just having a drink with an old friend in Belltown near my place and pleasantly met someone in upper management at MS that also happened to be a passionate entrepreneur. He swore up and down to me that "Good to Great" by Jim Collins is a "must-read" for entrepreneurs and corporate executives. So I am giving it a try. So-far, I haven't been disappointed but I will judge it only when I have finished it.

13 Year Old CEO

It was not long ago that the only entrepreneurs were men in their 30's or older. Society has changed and entrepreneurs are becoming younger and younger. Elementeo for example has a 13 year old founder and CEO. Check this VentureBeat.com story:

Craigslist's Craig & Interviewing Logic

Craigslist's Ongoing Success Linked from The Alarm:Clock.


Picture cut from The Alarm:Clock

"Of course, this startup that passed on Craig is now out of business while Craiglist is a top 10 Internet property. It reminds us that sticking to it is the best business model on the Net and that people who do not interview well should not be taken lightly." - The Alarm:Clock

I tend to disagree with the statement of Craig "not interviewing well." The startup that turned Craig down didn't do so because he was technically incapable but rather because he was "weird." I hardly consider that as not interviewing well. The "turn down" was just a result of the interviewer not understanding what were truly the important attributes of his/her hire which is a common mistake made by hiring managers in businesses of all sizes.

Hiring is an art. The biggest mistake that particular start-up made was not turning Craig away. It was hiring the head of engineering who turned Craig down which proved to be the real mistake.

Apple IQ PDA - Imagination Contest

I wonder if Apple will choose this concept from the contest:

If this product came true, I would be the first one to buy it!

Business Ideas

I am one that's pretty excited about almost all business opportunities and given that I have owned a couple of companies of my own too, I tend to be the target for advice with my friends who are considering about starting a business.

The conversation usually starts with, "which idea should I go with?" or "What do you think about this, this, and that..." I think it's become quite apparent that for the former question, I have become accustomed to answering with, "pick what's the simplest..." and the latter, my answer is usually based on "whether or not an idea is simple enough." So why do I stress that?

I stress simplicity because almost all complex products are slow money makers and often times have much greater risk and more barriers to conquer before the company can even start attaining a small amount of positive cash flow. Therefore, unless you are already a fortune 500 company CEO and have all the network and funding you will ever need, a simple idea is what anyone should bank on to "make their first million." Look at the million dollar homepages out there! Look at your 25 year old next door neighbor that does "paid by the click" internet marketing and generates about $3-4 million each year. They all respectively bank on a simple idea.

Furthermore, a simple idea is a pitch that will spread quicker. The faster your customer base can understand your pitch, the faster and easier it is for you to make the sale. In fact, it may even come in handy when it comes to looking for funding. I just caught a WSJ article from my business partner and friend in LA with a quote that really caught my eyes:

"If it takes us more than five minutes to understand what the product is, we are not going to fund it," George Zachary, Partner | Charles River Ventures

A "Must Have?" to Invest in the Stock Market

A while back, one of my long time friends that was quite a talented stock investor decided that he was done with serving his time at a fortune 100 software company and started his own Web2.0 deal. At first, honestly, it was a rough one... but then, over time, it has become quite polished and now, It might even be something that every stock market investor should consider looking into:



I think the coolest thing about this site is that it contains all the tools an average investor will ever need all in one site with trade simulations and the whole nine yards. More importantly, it fosters a community effort in trading which empowers traders to gain a much more insightful way of approaching the stock market. Of course, talk is cheap so you should go check it out for yourself!

After you have had a chance to play with it a bit, feel free to leave your comments here and I will make sure I pass the word along. ;) Otherwise, you can always leave them on TippingMonkey.com directly!

VC Ratings

For those of you who are planning on a big idea that needs lots of funding, here's a site that you might want to keep checking back on for your background research:



Courtesy of VentureBeat.com from TheFunded, the site for VC hatchet jobs

So yeah... from that article, you can probably tell that you can only trust so much of the ratings from "The Funded" but hey, it doesn't hurt to get just one more perspective on VCs that you are about to deal with right? ;)

Common Frustrations of the Business-Centric IT Executive

Interesting article that illustrates the frustrations with those of us who consider ourselves businessmen with technology know-how rather than "just tech geeks." Though I am not sure if abandoning tech research and updates all together like the author suggests is neccessary at all. In fact, I tend to think that if you get too disconnected with IT, you loose your value & niche . Of course, striking a balance and being diligent about not becoming your CEO's desktop support person on the weekend is important as well as one of the readers' suggestion of one should make it known that he/she is capable of taking on a business role.

A Brand New View...

For many years, I have kept a livejournal that covered my personal theories, encounters, rants, business views, technology reviews, and career development topics all in one place. I find that it's distractive to my audience who are after only a concentrated few (most prominently career/business related) of the above mentioned topics of my blog. Therefore, I am now attempting to detach some of these topics away from my personal blog. "Seattle Ventures," the blog you are reading right now is my attempt to focus on creating an aggregate view of my personal thoughts on entrepreneurial, business, career development, real estate, and current events topics so that my business-centric audience will have a one shot, non-distractive place to go. Of course, the end goal on the other hand is to use this as a way to foster my own professional growth and to hopefully provide an environment for discussion of the latest and greatest within the society we live in. So please feel free to drop me comments anytime via e-mail or in this blog so that I can improve on the effectiveness of this piece to accomplish my envisioned goal.

Thanks!