I previously had this realization and recently read again from
稲盛和夫 that
visualizing vision is the best way to actually
achieve it. The more vivid the
visualization, and clarity of
detailed path to vision, the more likely the vision will
come
true.
LLM essentially raises the bar for being technical. Currently,
relatively
beginner-level technologies like full-stack programming
could be done by LLMs
quite well. These technologies are also easier
to understand.
So the question becomes: is it worthwhile to understand deep hardware
technologies like CUDA? Jensen Huang previously shared that future
opportunities come from cross-layer thinking. Understanding different
stacks of
technology is becoming increasingly important. Essentially,
the most productive
programmer now needs to understand not only the
backend and algorithms but
also hardware.
Why is that? Is it actually worth the time to dig deep into the
technology stack?
Over the long term, I believe the answer is yes,
especially with the rise of open-
source contributions and frontier
labs (Deepseek) sharing the most advanced
technologies and techniques. The
problem is that much of this knowledge is so
cutting-edge that an
ordinary full-stack programmer might not fully grasp it.
The issue here is that without understanding these advanced
technologies, one
cannot fully leverage them in the long run. Imagine
a future where the most
frontier technology is openly shared—the key
question then becomes whether
one is technically savvy enough to
understand and apply it to build the best
products.
Therefore, understanding cross-layer technology is more important than
ever.
Most technological innovations happen deeper in the stack.
Zhang Yiming once
said: "Often, to judge a technology firm, it's
sufficient to look at how deep the
stack goes." Typically, this depth
enables a firm to build a long-term moat and
develop better products.
The biggest mistake I made for the last couple of startup ideas was
that I
worked on ideas that were not important or valuable enough to
users. I did this
because I wanted to focus on niche use cases and
small markets to avoid
competition. But I mistakenly thought
unimportant use cases were attractive
markets. The biggest problem
with an unimportant use case is that it doesn't
matter to users. So
no matter how great the product, users don't care.
Now I realize user demand should be the number one factor to consider
when
deciding whether to pursue an idea. I think it's more important
to pursue
important use cases and serve a niche group of people who
truly care about it.
Notice that I am still focusing on a niche group
of people, but for this niche
group, the problem has to be really
important to them.
The worst-case scenario is not losing in a competition but building
something
that is not important or that people don't have a strong
need for. Zhang Yiming
said: "看似一片红海的行业，我却觉得是一片蓝海" (An industry
that seems like a
red ocean, i.e. full of competitors, I see it as a blue ocean, i.e. full of rewards).
Take Douyin's Soda Music product— the music app market has lots of
competition, and Douyin is certainly not the only player in it. But
music is such
an important area that users have a strong demand for
it. Douyin focuses on a
relatively niche section of the large market:
music for young people.
Today I found that I actually care a lot about others' perception
of my actions.
And a lot of times, this leads to me being less
effective.
I used to think I care more about what's effective than popular.
But when I go to
the gym, I noticed that I would only start doing a certain
action after I see someone
else doing it. Otherwise, I seem to
be afraid of doing it wrong. This is evidence of
me caring more
about what's popular than what is effective.
This is bad because almost all the time, I overestimate others'
attention on me.
The scientific term for this is the spotlight
effect. 99% of the time, others don't
care about my actions at
all. So it's far more important for me to think about
what's
effective and focus on that rather than what I believe will
result in less
judgment from others.
When I look at today's most valuable companies' stocks, I
noticed that
throughout most of their history, the value is in
fact not recognized by the
market. And at some point, the market
clicks and its value goes up in a very
concentrated period of
time. It took more than 20 years for the market to realize
how
valuable NVIDIA is. And in the year 2022, NVIDIA stock went up
exponentially.
This is pretty inspiring to me because a lot of things we do
today might not be
deemed valuable by the external world even two
years down the way. But if
what we did truly was valuable, at
some point in the future it will come back.
One advice I heard
from Aravind, CEO of Perplexity, about starting a company
was
that before diving into entrepreneurship, one should ask
themselves: "Is
this something I want to work on for the next 10
years?"
Because this rules out starting a company purely based on a
short-term project,
even if it's very tempting. Once we rush to
build a company based on a short-
term project, our expectation
for it to succeed goes up very quickly. And if
there's no
immediate indication of success, we start to question why we are
doing this. This recently led me to ask this question more often:
what are some
invariants of my long-term passion? Previously, I
focused my time on small
projects that I believed could impress
other people. But more often, I tend to
focus my small projects
on my long-term passions. What I found is that even if
some of
these small projects fail, it doesn't stop me from continuing on
a track
forward with my passion. I am even more hopeful to do another
project surrounding
my passion.
One thing I discovered about myself and many others is that: truth
is often just
in front of us; we just need to not try so hard to
avoid seeing it.
I found that our prejudice, aka prior, is often our greatest enemy
to making
progress. I found myself used to believing something so
false yet so firmly. And
progress happened at times when I held my
beliefs slightly loosely and asked
myself: "What if the alternative
is true?" Then I tried to act based on that
alternative premise for
a while and found out that it's actually much more
effective.
This is why I think being open-minded is far more important than
being
knowledgeable or being an expert. Most of what we know is
false to a degree;
it's just a matter of how long it takes for us
to realize and be willing to accept
that.
Paradigm shifts in the scientific realm happen in similar ways. A
person points
out a completely new framework to understand the
world based on some
anomaly that the current theory cannot explain.
Most times, people's reaction to
anomalies is to ignore or deny
them. In fact, people would rather creatively
reinterpret data to
fit existing beliefs than adopt new paradigms.
Being open-minded is also what Dario Amodei said that drove the LLM
breakthrough: "I was seeing the same data others were seeing. I don't think I
was a better programmer or better at coming up with research ideas than
any of the hundreds of people that I worked with. In some ways, I was worse.
This open-mindedness and this willingness to see
with new eyes... that is the
most important thing."
This is increasingly how I value a great engineer: not only by
their current
expertise but also by how likely they would change
their mind, sometimes just
for the sake of trying. The best
engineers I have met are those willing to accept
they were wrong
when seeing the evidence.
When we upgrade to a new iPhone, we get a sense of excitement
while unboxing.
And recently, when OpenAI launches a new
model, a new feature, it makes us
feel excited and look
forward to the next thing.
It would be great if the world can have more such great
products appearing in
people's lives to make us excited about future.
"An orchestrated campaign to change surface appearances without
changing
the underlying reality." I read this from Zero to One by
Peter Thiel, and it really
strikes me.
One experience I had with this is that I built and sold an online
yearbook during
my high school years to my classmates. However,
the truth was that initially, I
had the idea to build a website for
my classmates to communicate, like
Facebook. But the beautiful
thing was that when I completed building the
product, I realized
that this was so much more like a yearbook, and we didn't
have one
that year because of COVID. So I literally changed how I was telling
my classmates about the website at the very last minute!
I said: "This is the first digital yearbook." The idea came very
naturally to
everyone. Looking back, what changed was the perception
of users about
the product. Had I told them, "This is where we will
talk to each other," I bet that no
one would have cared, because
they would ask: "Why would we need this?"
Whereas, the message
completely changed people's behavior, although the
underlying
product was absolutely the same. This made me see the true power
of sales. It completely changed people.
Often times, my friends ask me the question: "How is this product different from
X?" Previously, I would actually try to justify the difference. However, now I try to
minimize this way of thinking. The reason this question doesn't matter as much
is that it's focusing more on competitors and less on users.
I think when people ask for differentiation, what they really want to ask is: "How
can your product better serve users?" And conversely, I think even if a product
is similar to an existing product, it's still fine as long as it serves the users.
The real challenge of having the exact same product is that a lot of times, it's
hard to match the value of the original product by copying it. For example, in the
cases of social network apps, the network effect makes the original product with
larger user base better, and the network effect is very hard to copy.
I now weigh much less on a person's skill and more on the person's ambition.
And I care a lot more about where this person wants to be over the next 10 years
than where this person is today. What I learned from people around me is that
most times the world doesn't lack talent, skill, or intellect; it lacks the will and
drive to get things done and push for progress.
Most times, people I meet don't lack the techniques to get
things done but the
will to do so. I found that being ambitious
is one of the greatest predictors of a
person's long-term
achievement.
I have met a lot of smart people who could have achieved much
more had they
been more ambitious. I have also met lots of
ambitious people who are not so
different from ordinary people
measured intelligence-wise but achieved
tremendously because
they are driven.