Hey U World
My friend asked me a big question in Costa Rica: What's your primary motivation for doing anything?
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I answered: To understand more about myself and explore my relationship with the world.
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About me: Anthropologist at heart, investor in practice. Lucky to have been part of the early crew that built a new kind of travel experience (Airbnb) and a liberal arts university (Minerva). I now spend time learning and iterating on world patterns and contexts through positive-sum games.
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Current interests:
​* Big question: how does cognition contribute to evolution?
- Positive feedback loops in humanity through technology, creativity, and entrepreneurship
- Underlying patterns and emergent properties in the complex system
- Quality possibilities: more with less
- Human agency
​- Neuroplasticity
Things I am currently working on
​Investing
- Partner at Fresco Capital, investing at the intersection of people and technology.
- Building a holding company at The Creator focused on human cognition.
- Selective personal investments: AirAngels & Fund (LP), Outlier, Trela, Seabound, Zerion, Dakota, Anchorage, Wind and Bone, ​Abinitia Lab, and unannounced ones.
- I invest in founders and businesses with an anthropological edge:
1) venture: strong bias towards people who defined their own learning path at Pier
2) evergreen investment: archetype research of enduring business
Investment hypothesis: Vitality—the power of emergence from evolution. Constructing humanity as the context in technology development and business can generate consistently high returns in the long run.
* Excited by:
1) Great people to learn from and work with
2) Ventures that unlock individual creativity and humanity's progress with quality
3) World-class "interfaces" with the mechanism that drives positive feedback loops
4) Approach: Time Capitalist, optimizing for good time spent
Learning
Focus: cognitive neuroscience, economics, and emerging tech
- Visiting instructor at:
National University of Singapore (MBA: Venture Capital)
University of Michigan (Taubman College: Urban AI)
University of California, Berkeley(Haas School of Business: Marketplace)
- Books I contributed to:
Learning to Flourish in the Age of AI ( summary)
​- Books I enjoyed reading
​Craftsmanship
Contributing to a new system of slow luxury that lasts long
- Board member of San Francisco Design Week
​- Strategic Advisor to Shui On Land
Past experience that shaped my mindset
(or bias)
I am rooted but I flow
I started moving to different cities almost every three years since I was three. Currently based in San Francisco and Singapore, but I also spend time in New York and Nordic.
Alternative Education
Founding class student at Minerva, a new liberal arts school (mostly learning how to learn, though I studied finance and computational science, I know!) Being the change agent in a complex system is a continuous journey.
"Cereal Entrepreneur"
Joined Airbnb in 2014 to work across the product (user research), ops (China market entry), and strategy (business intelligence). I got lucky to be part of the journey and learned that entrepreneurship is about designing/executing external and internal systems to create something people need and love.
Business and Design
Experienced top-down and bottom-up strategies during my time at Bain and IDEO. Business and design are not the trade-off but could be complementary for further value creation.
Journalism
Began my exploration of the global economy as a contributing editor at The Economist, where I learned the importance of asking the right questions, choosing the right words, and, most importantly, being open.
Things I got into randomly and might explore more in the future
Linguistics
Narrative
Algorithm
Jazz Bands
Candle Making
Urban Design