11.11.09

Amazing Numbers

Posted in Technology Ventures, Globalization at 8:39 am by Ray Wu

Li Yizhong, director for China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said at 2009 China Internet Conference held in Beijing that the scale of China’s network users has been increasing. By the end of September 2009, China had 1.044 billion phone users, including 324 million fixed telephone users and 720 million mobile phone users. The number of websites in China had reached 3.2 million. The number of China’s mobile Internet users had reached 192 million, a year-on-year increase of 62.7%.

The 720M cell phone user number is amazing and that represents only 54% of the population, in comparison, US has about 270M cell phone users and the cell penetration is already 88%. India is next to China in term of number of cell phone users, with about 510M cell phones and at 43% of penetration.

 

08.27.09

Do we have a lot to lose?

Posted in Technology Ventures at 4:59 am by Ray Wu

I am reading “The 4-hour workweek” book for the 2nd time. At the end of book, the author quoted a statement from Steve Jobs that I think are worthwhile to share:

“For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something…almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. ” — Steve Jobs

In addition, I also like the quote from Tim Ferriss, author of the book:

“The heaviness of success-chasing can be replaced with a serendipitous lightness when you recognize that the only rules and limits are those we set for ourselves”

Hope we can all enjoy our experience in our life time, because we bring nothing when we come to this life and we will take nothing with us when we die…. What we have today is really what matters.

08.20.09

Was I crazy to leave a big company?

Posted in Random thoughts at 10:13 pm by Ray Wu

It has been almost 2 years since I left HP. Most of my family thought I was crazy to leave such as highly paid yet COZY job, especially when I was only months away from my 2nd new born baby. I left behind a large option pool priced at $20s when HP stock was flying high at $50/share. Even when I saw my auntie in Shanghai 1 month ago, she was still asking me why. Thinking back, I am glad that I took a leap of faith and started on my own. I guess entrepreneurship is not for everyone, that’s why not a lot of people enjoy taking that risk. It is one of the most rewarding journeys in my life. It feels absolutely thrilling yet lonely at the same time. It is fun and adventurous. Most of all, when things get accomplished, I know I made a difference.
 
Boundary Free now covers 2 business dimensions:
 
1) We own and operate a network of web sites that currently attract around half a million visitors per month and growing fast. I am happy that not only the sites are designed, developed and operated by yours truly with a programming language I never touched before (PHP), we spent almost zero on marketing and promotion. This is probably the dirtiest startup I have involved in my life that is truly bootstrapped from zero with no funding and no resources. Not because we can’t spend, but we chose not to because I want to see whether it is possible to be a poor entrepreneur at this day and age and make it. I won’t go through that process again, but it does build characters :) We still have a long way to go, but so far so good.
 
2) We act as co-investor, advisor and partner to venture capitalists and help their companies with strategy, business development and implementation. We concentrate on helping companies expand into China and help Asian companies expand in the region and into the US. We work closely with Cybernaut Capital Management, a large China focused fund started by Min Zhu who was the founder of Webex, a good friend and one of a few people I truly respect, on Education and Clean Tech. We also work with Baring Equity Asia, a $1.5B fund on cloud computing and IT technologies. I am also an advisor to a cross border fund called China Century Fund. The only exception was with Cisco, a company that I am still very fond of. I was fortunate enough to work with a group of great people and helped Cisco design its China 3.0 education strategy that includes training, certification, and publishing. The world is getting smaller, education is one of the best ways to give back and help people who are less fortunate.
 
It is an incredible journey that gives me time to think, build and test my own boundary. The reason the company name is boundary free is that I believe human spirit, capability and what we can accomplish are truly boundary free. If our minds are open to new opportunities and we are willing to give 100% of ourselves to the goal, I think everyone of us would be able to break the boundary set by the society and become “boundary free”.

07.25.08

China says its population of Internet users rises to world No. 1 at 253 million

Posted in Technology Ventures at 6:39 am by Ray Wu

This is quite interesting from the news:

China’s booming Internet population has surpassed the United States to become the world’s biggest, with 253 million people online despite government controls on Web use, according to government data reported Friday.

The latest figure on Web use at the end of June is a 56 percent increase over the same time last year, the China Internet Network Information Center said. It said the share of the Chinese public using the Internet is still just 19.1 percent, leaving more room for rapid growth.

The United States had an estimated 223.1 million Internet users in June, according to Nielsen Online, a research firm. The Pew Internet and American Life Project puts U.S. online penetration at 71 percent.

06.05.08

Global Inflation and Opporunity

Posted in Technology Ventures, Random thoughts, Globalization at 10:10 pm by Ray Wu

Fed Chief Ben Bernanke talks about his worry on inflation in the last 2 days. The problem is that Fed can no longer control the pricing alone in this globally integrated market. Since 70% of US GDP comes from service sector, it is almost impossible to see how heavy inflationary environment in China and India is not going to have a significant impact on US. We have seen heavy demand on not only industrial commodities such as oil and gas, but also agricultural commodities like rice and pork. As a matter of fact, Costco is limiting number of bag of rice a person can purchase at one visit. As more of more citizens in the developing countries become richer, they will also seek better life that most Americans get used to: better and more food, a car, a house etc. Imagine several billion of people flood to this new demand curve and its impact on the overall resources? We as a human race will come up solutions to deal with this resource demand/supply gap overtime, but the shock is unavoidable. It is actually good for the digital economy because digital economy is based on bountifulness of unlimited supply (ie. 1M download of a software is not going to be add noticeable cost than a single copy of download). While physical economy gets more constrained, the digital economy would be in favor. For example, as airline ticket goes up, people would use virtual meeting more than flying to meet in person. I see a lot of opportunities for us in the valley to benefit from this trend.

06.03.08

Donate to China earthquake

Posted in Random thoughts, Globalization at 7:13 am by Ray Wu

I have always been an advocate of donation efficiency. It took me a while to find a few donation services that pass 100% of the donation back to China. The one I decided in the end is Silicon Valley Tsinghua Network that is run by about 15 volunteers who are helping all donation and website details. So I donated a few thousand bucks for this effort and hope you can join me to help relieve the suffering just a little. 60K+ death and counting, what a tragedy! There is an incidence where a school building collapsed and every student died. Thinking of this makes my heart ache as I know how sad it is to lose a loved one, especially a child.

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