Q&A with Ben Horowitz

20140730_184148

With Ben Horowitz

托朋友的福,昨儿去参加了Andreessen Horowitz Co-Founder Ben Horowitz的一个Q&A活动. 原本是本着他的名号去的,想必大佬的Q&A内容挺精彩,确实也没有让自己失望. 不过到最后才发现原来这个活动应该是只邀请那些summer internship在他们公司投资的portfolio公司的实习生。难怪是Invite only.

Ben分享了他的一些经历,作为CEO,作为GM,作为现在的VC。同学们都问了很多问题,有人问道他看中什么样的创业者的时候,他分享了三点:一个是Smart,聪明的家伙谁都喜欢。二是能发现unlearned secret, 举了AirBnB创始人的例子. 所谓发现unlearned secret的能力或许就是能够在通过事物的表象发现背后影藏的本质与商业机会吧。第二是,能够抵抗social pressure的,be yourself。因为创业的人或许都有自己的特性。保持本真,即使本真有有时候是ass hole. 他说Steve 本人其实也非常的ass,并没有什么朋友,但是并不影响他成为great people。他就是那样的人,他也没有刻意去改变. 虽然那或许会是他的一个缺点。

Ben 也提到了作为创业者,其实follow your heart有时候并不是好事,更好的说法或许是找到那些能够发挥你才干你能make contribution的领域,那样会使你获得成就感。而成就感在一定程度上会促使你继续努力。

Ben 喜欢Hip-hop,自己也偶尔写一点。应现场同学的要求,他还表演了一小段他自己觉得不错的段子。

Ben还分享了两个有趣的故事。

一个是另一个联合创始人Marc Andreessen的故事. 说他Marc当初在学校的某个部门干活啥的,在自己业余时间做了个东西,觉得挺好玩,就想着把他商业化,就是后来曾经红极一时的Netscape。这下学校不开心了,想要敲一笔,就起诉了Marc。Marc和学校说是公司小,在发展,是否可以给学校点equity和小比现金。学校不鸟他,不想要他的trash equity,说要cash。貌似他给了N million的cash化解了此事。学校更过分的是,把他当时写的代码卖给了微软….这使是他非常的生气。每当学校有人打电话来要Donate的时候,他都会接电话,和人家解释说自己不会donate….

另一个故事是说Paypal的Max Levchin。说他们是移民家庭,俺家在芝加哥。但是Max要申请大学,然后报名了顶顶有名的MTI(其实也是MIT),立志去MTI学习。但是别人告诉他,美国没有MTI这所大学,他肯定弄错了。然后他最后就去了美国伊利诺伊大学。不过这听上去更多的像是个笑话.

活动结束时,和Ben合了个影,并咨询了下他对于Bitcoin ATM市场的一些看法. 不过因为后面还有MBA同学的活动,和一个CMU Tepper的MBA小聊了会后就离开了。这兄弟的兴趣方向是无人驾驶汽车领域相关的.

Continue Reading

"追尾了“

都说破财消灾….自从我买了车后, 破财我是认真的做到了…消灾我却一直没有感觉到啊…

昨天才开心嘚瑟的终于拿到工资了,还晚上屁颠屁颠的上网给自己买了170刀的一把剃须刀作为礼物

今天上班路上就把车头顶上了人家的车屁股…我都不记得咋会发生那一幕…那片刻…貌似灵魂出窍了吧..我们都停着车呢,在高速上, 然后我貌似一松油门,车就上去了…反应过来已经晚了….估计又要折损几百刀了吧?如果太贵就走保险了..虽说有可能会使得保费上涨啊…

最近真是各种走神啊!有些昏沉沉.

Continue Reading

Magical Place

Bay Area is a magical place, even I just stay here for three weeks….

During the past three weeks, I already met different types of entrepreneurial, one from CSDN, one from DeepGlint, and one from BitAccess. Pretty lucky to talk each of them, one just a coffee talk,  have a dinner together, and one I even started to work with him for some small things.

All I want is just a close look about the YC startup, and how they grow up to a more successful startup. Everything more than 4000 startup apply the YC program and only maybe 80 will be enrolled in the program through a very competitive process. They will have three months to improve the product and expand the business and then will have chance to pitch their company,facing around 450 VC from all over the world. Maybe the big exposure to all those VCs is the major attractive things for most of them. YC will invest 20,000 for 6% of the shares and another 100,000 for 1 percent of the convertible shares( not sure what’s this or I misunderstood it). So actually 120,000 for 7% of the shares in total.

It’s a good place to stay in touch with the most amazing things happening here.

Sometimes I just wonder when will I start my own journey.

P.S. This Saturday, I went to Big Basin for hiking with a girl from GSB. She started to work on her own project in education area. She was really a brave girl, not only for her courage to work on her project, but for the experience when we hiked.

I made a mistake at Saturday and chose a hiking trail with almost 11 or 12 miles. We started to hike like 3pm….and I still didn’t change my hiking plan. I shouldn’t do this if there is another chance. She was so afraid when she realized that we walked almost 3 hours and in the middle of the forest. And maybe we couldn’t walk out of the forest before sunset. She started to walk so fast, even running later. At the last 2 miles, she started to cry as she used up all her energy and couldn’t walk any more. What’s surprise me most was even under such a situation, she made it and she didn’t fully complain about the whole thing. She just went through what we did good and what we did bad. I felt so regret when I looked at her sleeping in my car, I can feel her tiredness from her face.

Thanks very much for not complaining…..

I think she will be very successful as an entrepreneurial.

 

Continue Reading

2014 MBA Intern W3D3

The same as last two days, I had a feeling of losing the direction.

Have no passion about what I did now and I just can not calm down and do what I should do.

What happened to me those days? Tired or bored?

Lunched with the technical product marketing directer at a HK restaurant.

Held three meetings with China team after 5:00pm and ended up at almost 7:30 pm.

Maybe all the big company will have the same problems…….and it’s hard to solve it.

I spent most of my time surfing online and reading the tech news.

I messed up this week and tomorrow is the last day of this week and I almost did nothing so far…

Hope I will recover soon.

 

Continue Reading

2014 MBA Intern W3D2

Again….wasted one day and didn’t do anything…

Met with product marketing director of Tippingpoint and lunched with my mentor.

Still struggle to figure out the project scope and the timeline for that…..

A little lost of the direction after the two weeks talk with different people…

Maybe I could continue to collect more information about the business.

 

Continue Reading