08.20.09
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”.
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06.05.08
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.
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06.03.08
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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11.14.07
Posted in Random thoughts at 5:21 am by Ray Wu
Last Friday was my last day in HP and it feels great to be outside of the corporate life. After 10 years in Cisco and then HP, it is wonderful to be independent again, to work with passionate startups and ventures, to dream about new possibilities, and see the results happen quickly. I am grateful to have had opportunities to systematically build operations under large corporate umbrella and make them into success, maybe I would do it again years later when the right opportunity strikes again, but now, it is just too much fun to miss my freedom…
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09.02.07
Posted in Random thoughts at 4:46 am by Ray Wu
Recently, a story told by a friend of mine from old IBM days keeps on popping up in my head. It is a profound story and I really enjoyed it at that time when he told me about 10 years ago.
Here is the story:
A business man is looking for a boat to go cross a river, but it is a lunch time and no carrier is operating. He looks around and finally finds a fisherman with a small boat laying there sleeping.
He approaches the fisherman, wakes him up and says: “Can you take me to the other side of this river? I will give you a lot of money.”
The fisherman says: “But I am sleeping! Why do I need more money?”
The business man replies: “If you have more money, you can buy a bigger boat.”
The fisherman says: “So what if I have a bigger boat?”
The business man replies: “If you have a bigger boat, you can capture more fishes and buy a fleet of boats”.
The fisherman says: “So what if I have a fleet of boats?”
The business man replies: “If you have a fleet of boats, you can have a lot of money and then hire professional managers to manage them for you.
The fisherman says: “So what if I have a lot of money and professional managers?”
The business man replies: “Then, you truly have your freedom! You don’t have to do anything and sleep anytime you like!”
The fisherman says: “Well, that’s exactly what I have before you wake me up!”
Hmmm… Who has more freedom, the fisherman or the business man?
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03.30.07
Posted in Technology Ventures, Random thoughts at 12:53 am by Ray Wu
Here is a nice web site that aggregates venture information together called Discoverion: http://www.discoverion.com
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