Latent Space: The AI Engineer Podcast
00:50:46 · S1, Shawn Wang
[00:50:46] S1: Mhmm. [00:50:47] S0: And I think that showmanship that he wears the pink jacket, he... He's so passionate and he's talking. That showmanship plus the technical capability is, again, like, similar to the learning public. Like, I'm a small version of that. Right? Like, I'm technically capable and I can talk. But for him, he's like 10 x on both dimensions. And I think that really comes through when when you talk to him. [00:51:08] S1: And also, I guess my next question is about your your roles on advising other startups especially just you mentioned. I'm just very curious, you know, us an advising role, like exactly what kind of advices that you are working with those [00:51:25] S0: startups and I'm how is also curious what can you, for your listeners and for me, what do you do for other companies? [00:51:32] S1: Oh, yeah. So we are actually a community that started three years ago till we found out there are lot of Chinese based founders want to go global. And then I think they were pretty good at building or shipping products quickly, but they found a huge gap between, you know, go to market and marketing and understanding Okay. The [00:51:54] S0: You're a Chinese founder trying to break in The US. You suck at this. You are very good at your tech [00:52:01] S1: Yeah. [00:52:01] S0: And you suck at marketing [00:52:02] S1: Yeah. [00:52:02] S0: And you better talk to someone who's good because you cannot do it yourself. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right.
00:52:02 · Shawn Wang, S1
[00:52:02] S0: And you better talk to someone who's good because you cannot do it yourself. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. [00:52:08] S1: Yeah. So that's how I truly found out that there's a huge gap between, you know, understanding the local market and, you know, and then ship the product correctly, I found your PMF. Yeah. Yeah. So that's basically, we hold out a lot of meetups and then working with some advisors here, and then try to provide different kinds of workshops and other bursaries to those founders really start to find a little bit on the right track of BMF, but still lack some talents and help from the go to market side. [00:52:40] S0: Yeah, it's interesting. We also host meetups. Diogo actually, before he launched JEV, he was actually here in this room. [00:52:49] S1: Oh,
00:52:49 · Shawn Wang
[00:52:49] S0: okay. We hold this sort of writers meetup thing where people can show their work, and I will give commentary on it on it. And so the the sort of TypeSaf manifesto came out of that. But I I think it's very similar to to that, except that I would... For some peep... Some of them, I'll do it for equity. Mhmm. Most of it, do it for free, and then some of them, they want to have a, like, a recurring call Yeah. Or they... Or something, they... Then then then they offer some equity. It's just easier to do that, and it turns out it's worth a lot of money if it... If the company does very well. Right. So I think that is interesting in terms of, like, a job because it's... You cannot eat equity, And, like, maybe they never sell. Like, Databricks is, like, whatever, 15 years old and worth $200,000,000,000, and it's... And, like, I have my equity. I was like, what is it? But I think it's it's very useful to be able to test your theories on a number of different companies. So when you work as an employee in one company, you only see one example, and your advice only works in one company. But now that I have done 30 something, 35, 36 different companies, I can really see the universal truths among all of them, and I'm better as an advisor to all of them because I've tried everything. Right. Yeah. Talk to everyone, like... And I understand the different scenarios of, like, okay, my advice is not gonna work for you here because I tried it at this other company, and and and, you know, your situation is, like, clearly very different. And, like, I I I feel like, actually, almost all domain subject matter experts, like, I happen to own developer marketing. Right? That's my thing. But if you work in, I don't know, your strategic finance or you're working in, like, GPU compute acquisition or whatever, and you and you are trying to be global number one in that, you kind of have to go through a tour of duty of just advising everyone so you can just take... Fucking test everything. Yeah. Some of it doesn't work, but but sometimes, I mean, some of them is clearly going to work.
00:54:58 · S1, Shawn Wang
[00:54:58] S1: Mhmm. [00:54:58] S0: And then you will learn. And that's the only... Like, your sample size has to be more than one, and most people's sample size is, like, five. But, like, you know, if you can get it up to, like, 50, then, like, you probably are one of the top in the field anyway. [00:55:11] S1: And I can share with you some, you know, something that I find it quite similar in those, you know, global Chinese founders, because right now more and more came from engineering background, even research background. Yeah. And they think that they're building the best products because they have like best harness skill or technical skills and knowledges, etcetera. But actually there's still sometimes a huge gap between what the customer actually wants, that the skills and the product you offer. And sometimes like different local markets have even have different demands and have using a similar things. Yeah. All those technical founders, research founders, because I've There are also a lot of founders from the same background.
00:55:54 · Shawn Wang, S1
[00:55:54] S0: There's a bunch of ways to to survey this or to tackle this. The the most important thing to recognize is that if you are... You you have something smart and, like, you think it's valuable and you're global number one, really, like, you're world best at one thing. Like, that's the most important thing. So everything else is... I always call it. Right? Like, you have the long. Okay. I will help you with the but, like, you have the long. That's the... You know? And most people don't have the long. Mhmm. Right? So, like, that's that's good. Mhmm. I think that there are some percentage of people who don't even have the lung, and they think they have the lung, and, like, then this, like, okay. It's like a arrogance, eco thing. Right? But let's assume that you are... Generally have a very good product. And I think the the important thing actually here is that you should not treat marketing as the last mile of, like, hey, I did everything, it is the last night before the blog post, can you review my blog post and change it? There's nothing I can do. Like, already did everything. But if you involve marketing earlier in the process, right down to, like, before it's really built or specced out, like, what what is the way we're gonna pitch, what part of the segment of the market we're gonna go, then you have more GTM built into the product in the first place. Mhmm. And I think that a lot of engineer or or researcher defined audiences don't have that GTM brain that early. They usually put it all the way at the end. [00:57:17] S1: They're After...
00:57:17 · S1, Shawn Wang
[00:57:17] S1: They're After... [00:57:17] S0: Yeah. They're the most junior part of the company is this GTM organization. It's like some interns or, like, some 22 year old person who is, like, running social media. No. Like, actually try to be serious about your... The... Who... What customer is supposed to use this thing and how... Where do they hang out? What problems do they face? What words do they use to describe their problems? And how is their life gonna be better after they see your your thing? Right. And so very simple things. Most researcher, engineer, founders have not thought about this, but if they have a GTM partner, I think that that is often very useful. I think the other thing that I... And then it comes to more to develop developer tools. I find a lot of Chinese founders are robotics. Right. And robotics is also a very interesting space because it is much longer time horizon and still very early days. Right? Like, how come all of these Chinese robotics founders, all do full laundry? [00:58:14] S1: Mhmm. [00:58:14] S0: Right? Like, Unitree is the best. And at least... Like, but there's still... Unitree is still doing unit three things. And Yes. I would like them to see things that you never expect a unit three to ever do. But right now, you know, the the the thing that they just launched this week, they're doing kung fu moves. [00:58:31] S1: Kung fu. Yeah.