See you in HK at the Cyberport Venture Capital Forum 2025!

Hey X friends. I'm hosting an exclusive event next Wednesday - Made in Canada, where I'll be inviting a top Canadian founder in each one of the four categories in AI/Crypto/XR/Robotics. I'm looking for 4 speakers to share in front of 80 founders and investors. This would be a great chance to connect with everyone in the Canadian startup ecosystem and also showcase what you have built and attract clients/investors/talents. If you are interested, or if you know anyone who might be interested, please comment below! :)

Looking at the fastest-growing products by revenue or user growth, prosumer tools clearly dominate. These are specialized products built for professional consumers - think Cursor for developers, Midjourney for designers, and Kling for video editors. Why prosumers make the perfect target for tools: Clear user needs make product development straightforward They're willing to pay like businesses but purchase like consumers They spread the word organically through strong community networks The proof? Just look at the explosion of user-created tutorials for tools like Cursor and Midjourney.

What sets exceptional founders apart is their ability to dive into unfamiliar territory and quickly: Map out the key players and how the industry actually works Articulate their understanding convincingly enough to secure backing Convert this knowledge into actual sales by solving real customer problems You'll find this remarkable adaptability in many of today's most successful young entrepreneurs.

I've noticed something important while refining our product at @allscaleio lately: having impressive big company credentials doesn't necessarily make someone right for a startup. Take engineering, for example. A technical veteran with 15 years at major companies might design an elaborate neobank system with perfect architecture and DevOps. It all looks great on paper—until your funding runs out halfway through building it. Someone who's actually been through the startup journey knows better. They'll focus on quickly creating something secure and functional that customers can actually use, even if it means rebuilding parts later. The same pattern shows up with product management. The big tech approach often involves creating comprehensive feature breakdowns and elaborate mind maps of every possible B2B SaaS function, neatly categorized and prioritized with story points. A startup-savvy product manager takes a completely different path. They start by talking to customers, not drawing diagrams. During development, they don't obsess over perfect frameworks or elegant architecture. They're laser-focused on practical questions: "Which features will help convert this customer?" and "What changes will keep them coming back?" It's messier, but it works.

AI's role in replacing jobs will shift from passive to proactive. Whether you're a big corporation or a scrappy startup like us, everyone is starting to ask themselves before hiring: "Do we really need a new employee, or can an AI agent handle this?" Every new hire now faces an "AI check." As the economy continues to slow, AI's role in replacing jobs will shift from passive to proactive. Companies will actively examine every position, carefully identifying roles that can be automated by AI. Large-scale layoffs feel inevitable at some point.

Planning to host a large Nvidia GTC Afterparty on March 22nd in SF. Already got venue and sponsorship secured. We have hosted multiple events of 300 founders & investors at the same venue in the past year. Looking for more community builders and founders to co-host this. Let me know if you are interested!

A growth hacker who doesn't know how to use Bolt, Lovable, vO, Replit, and Cursor isn’t a good founder.

A really sad thing: I meet more Canadian founders in any random event in the US than in Canada.

More and more, pre-seed investors are looking for founders who know how to generate momentum and attract users—without relying on massive marketing budgets. Being able to organically draw online attention is becoming increasingly important. Meanwhile, AI-assisted development tools and frameworks have significantly lowered the cost of building new products. Large language models can handle much of the technical complexity, and platforms like MGX or Lovable, which can spin up an MVP with a single command, are getting more sophisticated every day. All of this slashes the overhead for product creation. However, many VC-backed “star” projects still burn huge amounts of capital on promotion, which has driven up the overall cost of acquiring users. Early-stage founders without those resources are left with fewer affordable ways to market their products. As a result, having “internet instincts” is a must for any founder or founding team. You need the ability to attract that first wave of traffic yourself. And from day one, your product should be built to spread virally—solving a real pain point, being easy to share, and creating buzz that gets people talking.

Working on an actual project really is the best way to learn. I’ve served plenty of AI video generation clients before, so I understood all the technical logic and jargon. But I was never able to produce truly good content on my own. Then, for my wife’s birthday, I collected our 10 most memorable stories from over the years. I used Liblib for the scenes, Kling for video generation, riffusion for music, and Kapkap to edit the final piece. The results turned out great, and the fact that I used only my clients’ products throughout made it even more rewarding.

I used to have fever only once every three to five years, but in the past three months—traveling to nearly ten different cities—I’ve caught the flu twice. After doing some research, here are a few tips for frequent travelers to help prevent the flu and protect yourself: 1. Get a Flu Shot Every Year: An annual vaccination is one of the most effective ways to reduce your risk. 2. Prioritize Sleep on Business Trips: Pulling an all-nighter does more than just affect your next-day performance. Lowered immunity can derail your entire trip if you catch something. Know when to shut down the laptop and rest. 3. Carry Hand Sanitizer & Practice Good Hygiene: Wash your hands frequently and avoid touching your eyes, nose, or mouth. On planes and at conferences, minimize contact with surfaces that many others have touched. 4. Wear a Mask in Crowded Places: Keep your nasal passages moist and try to breathe through your nose as much as possible. Exercise for at Least 30 Minutes Daily & Supplement Wisely: Regular activity plus vitamins (especially Vitamin C) and zinc can help bolster immunity. 5. If You Feel Unwell, Consider Canceling Your Appointment: Spreading the virus to colleagues or clients is both unprofessional and discourteous. It’s better to rest and recover than risk infecting others.

Coding, Writing, and Selling are the three most important skills for anyone to earn their first bucket of gold in 2025. Coding – You don’t have to grind LeetCode. What matters is working with AI to clarify requirements and product architecture. With Cursor, you can quickly iterate, and with ChatGPT, you can read tech docs and debug in the terminal. A little design sense goes a long way. Writing – You don’t need to produce lofty, polished content—typos are even okay. The key is to express deep thinking in a concise way so your ideas resonate with your audience. You also need the courage to keep creating and keep distributing. If you have a good sense of the online world, you’ll establish a positive feedback loop faster. Selling – You don’t need a silver tongue. You just need to understand customer needs, how they make decisions, and how budget approvals work in their organization. Be bold in trying different pitches, and be willing to tell stories. If you have domain expertise and lots of hands-on experience, you can become a consultative seller and break through quickly. So… 2025: always be coding, writing, and selling!

Any one hosting events during NeurIPS 2024 in Vancouver? I have in total $10k cad budget to sponsor any AI events (plan to do 1.5k - 3k each). If you are looking for sponsors, please reach out! :)

The Most Important Growth for Startup Products... Isn't Actually Growth, It's Commercialization. 1. While any growth strategy and product strategy need metrics to measure success, the best indicator is actually revenue, not the number of users, user activity, or market size. "You get what you measure." Refusing to focus on commercialization and solely concentrating on growth can be self-deceptive. Be honest with yourself. 2. Effective commercialization of a product can open up more growth opportunities. From a macro perspective, a company with better cash flow has the chance to leverage financing to add an average of nearly $100 to its valuation for every extra dollar earned monthly (calculated as $1 x 12 months x 8 times). From a micro perspective, increasing the lifetime value (LTV) of customers also raises the acceptable ceiling for the cost of acquiring a customer (CAC), which in turn opens up many growth channels.

Overthinking Kills Both Creativity and Productivity. My self-reflection on overthinking: 1. Often, the reason we procrastinate is the desire to achieve perfection in our tasks. However, completing a task is much more crucial than perfecting it. It’s important to clearly understand the marginal benefits and costs of a task. 2. Allocate your time to switch your brain into two modes: dedicate at least 10% of your work time for short-term and long-term planning. Spend the first 30 minutes of each day deciding what the most important tasks are, then spend the rest of the time executing without overthinking. 3. The key to accomplishing a task is simply to start. All the preparation, thinking, and learning you do may just be excuses delaying your start.

Good artists borrow, great artists steal. Creating content is not primarily about the challenges of post-editing or the process of writing and recording; rather, it’s about finding inspiration. A significant part of a good creator's standard operating procedure should involve sourcing inspirations. Don’t just rehash content with AI or resort to outright plagiarism; instead, aim to think deeper and explore broader than the original works. Here are my three strategies for finding inspiration: 1. Make good use of tools like TikTok, YouTube, and other recommendation algorithms. Be aware that every like, save, and follow tells the system what you like and what you need, so be smart about it. 2. Use tools like follow.is/ to organize blogs, news, podcasts, and other content that can be consumed via RSS feeds, allowing you to quickly find the topics you're interested in. 3. Think like an SEO expert. Tools like answerthepublic.com/ allow you to enter any topic and receive a plethora of the most searched questions related to that topic. 4. Observe how others create hits. With tools like tweethunter.io/ , you can see which pieces of content have been most successful for any creator and draw inspiration from their themes and styles.

Which salesperson would you rather hire? Knows your industry but not sales Knows how to sell but isn’t familiar with your industry