My CMO Jun recently has been making quite a few video projects on FutureDelivery.tv and Livingthestartuplife.com to let people check out our fun and productive company culture, and get all of you to live life like a hardcore gamer. With these videos, I had a good chance to check out what I look like and how I talk. You know how the first time you ever heard yourself on tape, you really disliked your own voice? It’s a bit different from what you expected and its a totally new person who you innately are inclined to evaluate and judge. It’s the same for me when I was watching these videos.

It’s pretty interesting in the sense that, everyone who sees me in these videos feel that it is normal. I’m still the usual Yu-kai, being all weird but having some method to the madness. Obviously I did some especially corky things for humorous effects, and thanks to Jun and brilliant editor Chris Lew, all the little stupid/funny things I do are all condensed together into a collection of Yu-kaitis, which sounds pretty painful if you think about it. I don’t mind that much. It’s good for the videos. Afterall, people don’t watch these videos to find someone they can respect or derive inspiration from (I think). They watch these videos to be entertained and look at unique characters, which I am unashamed to admit being one. However, outside of these videos, I have time to self-reflect and really move towards the person I want to be. These are some of the observations I have on myself:

1. I have a nasally voice that could sound like a digital effect. Along with my fast talking speed, it could really resemble the sound of a bee. Quite annoying, and definitely not an impactful way of speaking.

2. My posture is somewhat slouched and awkward. I resemble an old man.

3. My body language is stiff and rigid.

4. Since English is my second language, sometimes I get trapped with strange diction or needing to rephrase my sentence midway through because of grammar issues. Taking ESL and Honors English with Shakespeare at the same time in high school didn’t really help much. Luckily, I still use my original name Yu-kai, so people kinda expect that and I get away with a lot of it.

5. Even without the language issue, I seem to make a lot of socially awkward comments that just entertain myself. To be honest, I’m just truly a socially awkward guy due to my strange blend of all the cultures I grew up with. I used to think that being my friend would be lots of fun, but after watching these clips I feel that being my friend requires a good amount of tolerance, haha.

So with all these things going on at the same time, I’m looking at myself and thinking, “This guy looks like a sleezy dork! Why would anyone want to work with him?” Its strange, because it does seem to be the case that everyone who meets me and interacts with me are impressed with me, and tell others about all these great things about me that I don’t think are necessarily true. I get so many referrals of accomplished and successful people asking for some kind of help one way or another. Just in the past 2 months, I was referred to help organize the Social Cap Marks, invited as one of the 100 young leaders in California to attend the Govorners’ Global Climate Summit hosted by Arnold Schwarzenegger. These things don’t come to most 22 year olds, especially one who seems like a sleazy dork (to himself). So what’s the trick? The lesson for myself is summed above, and I need to work my hardest to change them, but I could possibly share with the readers what got me a decent brandname in the world DESPITE those awkward things that I do. You who don’t have the dorky awkwardness, how much easier it would be for you to brand yourself well!

1. Quality Vertical Networking, or making your current network successful (as opposed to Horizontal Networking, where you just try to amass a bunch of new contacts). In a previous blog, I wrote about the 6 Core Concepts of good FD Networking. It goes with the principle “networking starts with the self” and “in order to network, you need to be someone worth networking with.” The 6 Core Concepts are: Integrity, Sincerity, Optimism, Confidence, Initiative, and Persistence.

2. Strong work ethics and a sense of mission. In a previous blog, The Top Y-gines I have worked with, I mentioned that a lot of people in this world become flaky and unreliable. That actually means as long as you show good attitude and make sure everything that is in your responsibility gets done and gets done fast, you will have already stood out among your peers. It pretty much means that if you have an uncompromising ideal to fulfill all your promises, and do everything you SHOULD do, your reputation spreads fast. That actually goes along with integrity, sincerity, and intiative.

3. Don’t be afraid to create unique value. School, work, and society overall often asks you to conform, to be like everyone else. However, you need to constantly find opportunities to break through your comfort zone and challenge what has always been working with a new idea. It may not be a better idea, but unless you bring it up and think about it, there will never be any better ideas in the system. The burden of innovation in your environment lies on your shoulders, not people who are smarter.

4. Work with good people. If you associate with passionate and bright people, your reputation will be associated with them too. Not only does the group accomplish great things that you will be known for too, but the experience itself makes you and your public image stronger.

5. Live your day to the fullest. This means that you want to use your time well and constantly stay productive. You have 168 hours a week, and it is really up to you how you want to spend that time. A 40 hour week job is really not “full time,” it’s actually slightly lower than quarter time. If you use the other quarter to sleep, that means you have the other 80 hours left to either do nothing, complain about your 40 hour work or make a difference in this world. If you want to accomplish uncommon things in this world, you need to live your life uncommonly. If you live your life just like everyone else, you will end up like everyone else.

If you play this game of life long enough and seriously enough, you will slowly build up your stats, level up, gain a distict reputation, and conquer quests that will open up new ones for you. Life is a game, in which only hardcore gamers make it to the leaderboard.

(Oh btw, when I started the blog, I didn’t plan to write out things that others could learn from. It flowed out naturally and I just decided to keep the title since it was genuine. I SERIOUSLY have a lot of things to work!)

J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement from Harvard Magazine on Vimeo.

This is a very good presentation that will help startups focus on the important metrics and have the right expectations. I find it interesting that it plans to have an average user to go back on the site 2-3 times a month.

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1. Create unique value for the company
2. Fit within the company culture

Take your resume seriously
A resume is like a brochure for yourself. Companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and months
of expert work to finalize on a brochure that can represent the company. The average student only
spends a couple hours piecing vague descriptions together without considering what effects it will have
on their recruiting process. Your one page resume is extremely valuable real estate, and everything you
put on it must have a purpose. If a sentence does not create value in the recruiter’s mind, you should
take it out; if a word does not create value, you should take it out. With a well?optimized resume, you
would be able to get interviews even with a less?than?competitive GPA.

Few seconds to establish a connection
One thing to note is that most recruiters only spend around 10?25 seconds on each resume. Therefore,
your resume must not only have good information, it must “feel” impressive. Within those few seconds,
you need to already have made a connection with the recruiter. Having a high GPA is obviously the
fastest way to do that, but I have seen resumes with extremely high GPAs get rejected simply because it
was not put together in a way that makes the applicant seem valuable.

Build a holistic image of yourself
Recruiters are trying to figure out if you are a good person to be on their team. As a result, your resume
must reflect you as a person, not just a brain. You must show that you are a well rounded, qualified
individual as an employee, coworker, potential leader, and someone to hang out with. A very important
concept to pay attention to is Diminishing Marginal Image, which means that if seven lines on your
resume say you are good finance person, the eighth line that says you are a good finance person would
mean little in the mind of the recruiter. Instead, say that you are a team player, an organized person, or
did something creative, even though your next experience might still be dealing with finance.

The Ins and Outs from an experience
When you are building your resume, keep in mind that your goal is not to say that, “I am impressive
because I had so?and?so experiences.” Your goal is to say that, “I am impressive because WHILE I had
these experiences, I did so?and?so things that others would not have done.” In essence, ten other people could have the same position in the same company, but your resume stands out because you went
above and beyond your daily duties and actually accomplished great things. This brings us to the topic of
Ins and Outs. Ins are what you absorbed through an experience, such as the financial skills and the
softwares used. Outs are what you did that created value in that organization. Companies are more
interested in Outs because it clearly reflects you as an individual, instead of simply the job title of that
experience. Ins are often reflected within your position already, such as “treasurer,” “web development
analyst,” but it is your Outs that ultimately define you as a person.

Four Phases of optimizing your resume
Optimizing your resume could be a year?long process. Some people have spent hours every week for six
months, and still only reach around 55% of its capacity. This is mostly because they do not have a
systematic approach in improving the resume, and as a result work on the wrong things. If a student
does not build her resume correctly from the beginning, she could spend months on it, and still need to
start from scratch to obtain all the interviews she deserves. In order to truly optimize one’s resume, it
needs to go through four phases.

Phase I: Formatting
Remember, a recruiter only takes 10?25 seconds on each resume. In those precious seconds, your
formatting is extremely important in giving them the right “feel” of your resume. Bullet points are the
most efficient way to present what you have done in each experience. You should allow enough space
for each bullet point line in order to put in as much information as you can. Make sure that you do not
waste any space, and everything is consistently formatted. Inconsistencies in your resume could
instantly ruin your chances with your dream job. You can easily find sample resumes and templates
online, so make sure that these key points differentiate you from others.

Phase II: Strategy
Strategy is one of the most ignored parts in resume building, which is costly for students. Most people
just think about what they did in each experience, list them out, and move on. To optimize your resume,
you must first come up with a list of the skills and traits the company is looking for. Then you must list all
the Ins and Outs from your experiences that show that you have these characteristics. Finally, you
should strategically plan out which experiences will convey which characteristics. This is where you
should apply Diminishing Marginal Image. You must decide which experiences are the best at conveying
which qualities, and make sure they are in the order that builds value in the recruiter’s mind.

Phase III: Wording
Wording in a resume is the most technical part of a resume, and is what most resume building sites
cover. However, they usually do not cover enough. They will tell you to use action verbs and focus on
results, as well as use quantitative examples. I want to add that for each bullet point, there are four
things you can include: what it is, method, result and impact. Most people rush to write about what they
did at their job, but in actuality, that is the least important thing to list on your resume. This is the order
of importance:

1. Result
2. Method
3. Impact
4. What it is

If you said you “doubled company revenues by spearheading an innovative marketing campaign and changing the distribution channel,” (result, and then impact) the
interviewer will ask you what position you had in the company and then you can tell them what your
responsibilities were. Also, try to word each bullet?point in a way that they all end at the end of that line. That way you will form organized “rectangles” in each experience.

Phase IV: Optimization
This is where you refine your resume so everything becomes a holistic image of who you are. At this
point, you will notice you don’t need to change many things, but tweaking a word here and there,
rewording some of the sentences, and rearranging some of the bullet?points. These tweaks are also
often company?specific, as every firm looks for different things from each applicant. If you get to Phase
IV, you should already have a resume that is over 80% capacity, and the rest fine tuning specifically to
meet the company’s needs.

Creating a resume is a journey. You will learn more about yourself, what you have done, the values you
have created, and will also help you do better in an interview due to stronger stories. You already spend
so much money and time in college just to get a good career. Why get lazy when it comes to actually
applying for one?

I’ve worked with a lot of people in my life, and there have been many who let me down. It’s not always that they lack competency, but often times its a matter of work ethics and attitude. Some people perform very well themselves, but they make their co-workers weaker; some people are extremely smart, but lack the execution abilities (sometimes known as a MBA issue). Many also turn out to be quite flaky, both in communications and executions. I have therefore decided to compile a list of Y-Gens that I have worked with who are simply star performers. I call these people the Y-gines, since they are engines of performance in the Gen Y world. Having and not having these people on your team can literally get your team into a different league.

Note: If you think you should be on the list and are not, either I have not worked with you enough, or there’s something lacking for you to make list. Either way, send me a note, and I will tell you EXACTLY (according to my knowledge and subjective opinion) what you need to do to be on this list. Also, this list is in no exact order so don’t fret if you are not listed high. Finally, if you would like to suggest someone, let me know!

Here is a list of Y-Gines

1. Jun Loayza: Future Delivery Co-founder/CMO

2. Michael Cox: California Student Sustainability Coalition President

3. Andy Tong: MMOABC Founder/CEO

4. Stephen Johnson: Future Delivery CTO

5. Chen Mei: Knowledge Master and UCLA Law Student

6. Jason Jolley: Developer at Future Delivery

7. Harold Tan: Founder of FastTrackFundraising

8. Nicholas Chen: Architectural Designer from Taiwan

9. Edward Lau: Entrepreneurial Bioengineering student from UCLA specializing in neuro-communication

10. Jackie Laird: JAIC America Analyst on Clean Tech Ventures

11. D’Artagnan Scorza: University of California Student Regent

12. Stuysonnie Lam: UCLA Delta Sigma Pi President Fall 2008

13. Ryuto Kawai: UCLA Materials Engineering Graduate; Business Operations Genius

14. James Chen: Previous Lehman Brothers Analyst, now Barclays Capital

15. Katiyana Williams: Bay Area Market Manager at Greenopia

16. Ian John Lee: Haas MBA Student; former Deloitte Management Consulting Consultant

17. Ben Chiang: Analyst at Bain Consulting

18. Josh Yang: Analyst at LEK Consulting

19. Elizabeth Han: Deloite Management Consulting Analyst

20. Lorna Apper: Entrepreneurial UCLA PhD Student in Geographical and Environmental Studies

21. Crystal Durham: California Student Sustainability Coalition Executive Director

22. Nick Mcghie: Wells Fargo Summer Business Analyst

23. Vivian She: Harvard PhD student

24. Shin Kadota: Barclays Capital Financial Strategist

25. Jason Somers: Project Manager for Pacific Crest Consultants

26. Drew Steranko: Mathmatics and Accounting Graduate from Kansas University

27. Tianqi Zhao: previous Lehman Brothers Hong Kong Analyst (anyone know what is he up to right now?)

28. Jamie Lu: Deutche Bank Summer Intern

29. Dave Liu: Founder/CEO of Good Operating System

30. Amy Nguyen Tran: UCLA Predental Graduate

31. Peter Suberlak: Vice President of Professional Activities in UCLA Delta Sigmpa Pi Fall 2008

32. Albert Chiang: UCLA Delta Sigma Pi Vice President of Professional Activities Winter-Spring 2008

33. Joseph Yi: Campus CMO for Future Delivery

34. Max Bottaro: Campus CMO for Future Delivery

35. Karen Or: Sony Pictures Television Intern

36. Sarah Cha: JPMorgan Chase Entertainment Industries Group Analyst

37. Victor Shyu: Consultant at FTI Consulting

38. Amy Wang: Analyst at PIMCO

39. Steven Wallace: Future Delivery Developer

40. Gabriel Mizrahi: Deloitte Management Consulting Analyst

41. Alex Adams: UCLA Pre-law student

42. Sam Fong: Entrepreneurial UC Merced Student

43. Aniq Rahman: Cornell Student and Seriel Entrepreneur (HireCube, WatchmyCell, and BuzzinMedia)

44. Jared Duval: Social writer and Senior Fellow at ecoAmerica

45. Harsh Shah: Analyst at Hercules Technology Growth Capital

46. Nicole Henderson: Senior Research Fellow at Green For All

47. Lucas Johnson: Co-founder of the BeyongFire Institute

I am helping Xigi.net and Good Capital organize Social Capital Markets 2008. It’s going to be an extraordinary event in SF with over 130 Speakers alone! If you are going to the event, give me a note and lets connect there.

Registration is $1,195. Here’s a 30% discount code: SC30

FDCareer.com is a site that converts career development into a RPG (Role Playing Game). Besides features like self-development quests towards a cerain occupational path, one popular feature is the Company Seesaw. People who has worked in a certain company can write reviews regarding the work, culture, compensation, growth and competitiveness. Their reviews will become a “block” on the seesaw, depends on if they favor or disfavor the company. Viewers can read these reviews and “feed” or “starve” the blocks depending on how useful or informative they are. Feeding a block will make it to be weighted more, and starving a block will make it be weighted less, eventually disappearing. That way you see an aggregated view of the company on each sector and whether you want to work there or not.

Here are some interesting Seesaws that are produced:

Mckinsey’s Profile

Boston Consulting Group’s Profile

Bain’s Profile

Goldman Sach’s Profile

Putnam Associates’ Profile

Deloitte Consulting’s Profile

Navigant Consulting’s Profile

I’m sure you all know by now about the Financial Crisis that’s been going on lately. But why did it happen? What does it mean to us as a country? Before anything, lets have a quick summary of what’s going on (I keep it updated as the days go by):

In a very short amount of time JP Morgan took over Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac were nationalized, Lehman Brothers filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy, Bank of America bought Merrill Lynch, and both AIG and WaMu are in serious trouble. The Government is now putting in $85 Billion to own 79.9% of AIG, in hopes to make an eventual liquidation event less dramatic. JP Morgan is looking to buy out WaMu too. Out of the big 5 investment broker-dealers, only Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are relatively out of the mess, but still have reported huge losses this year.

Lehman’s bankruptcy would be the largest failure of an investment bank since Drexel Burnham Lambert collapsed amid fraud allegations 18 years earlier. AIG has $1.1 trillion in assets and 74 million clients in 130 countries. If it falls apart, the world will definitely fall into some financial chaos (come Fight Club?).

So why is this happening? It’s primarily because of the nature of our economy. The United States economy is run on two things: Credit and Confidence. People lend money, live above their means, and look to pay it all back with their next 30 years of steady income. That’s why credit card companies are making big bucks here in the US, but less so in other nations. Also, the value of certain entities is not based on how much value it can PRODUCE, but more on how much value it is TO OTHERS. That instantly creates a “virtual economy” : something that works because everyone imagines it to work. In essence, money is a virtual good too. It is only worth something because everyone agrees that it does. A farm is a real good, and it produces real value that keeps people alive. However, people start to agree that a virtual good is worth many times that farm, and as long as you can convince the next person that this virtual good is EVEN more times that farm, you are fine. That’s why when people lose confidence in their currency, hyperinflation like what happened to Germany takes over, and the virtual goods on peoples’ hands become 1/10 of what they were worth yesterday, and everyone comes back to recognize the value of the farm. Unfortunately, it is not the farm owners who become millionaires, but the virtual goods people who go broke.

So how does this Credit - Confidence model lead to what is happening today? Early on, during the real estate inflation, Confidence was high, and a lot of bad loans (Credit) were thrown out there. Later on, people couldn’t pay up with their mortgage loans, and the Subprime Mortgage happened. This is the part where Credit goes bad. The economy tanked, and mortgage companies like Countrywide lost a lot of money. Confidence at this point is not looking stellar.

During this time of Credit gone bad, the 30x leverage that Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers had (for every $1 of asset, they had $30 of debt) wasn’t helping either. Bear Stearns fell apart when Confidence broke and all the entities were trying to withdraw money from it, causing it to be bought by JP Morgan. Lehman continued to suffer from heavy losses based on the bad Credit with the “Subprimates.” It was only holding on by Confidence too. Late August (and this is of course 2008), state-controlled Korea Development Bank engaged in talks about buying 25% of Lehman for $6B. However, it was reported that the Korean bank was “facing difficulties pleasing regulators and attracting partners for the deal,” and they withdrew from it. At this point, Lehman lost its last currency of Confidence, and while debtors wanted to pull money out, Lehman became insolvent and had to finally declare bankruptcy.

Now the Confidence factor is very tricky. It is like the prisoners dilemma in game theory. If everyone felt confident about the situation and kept their money where it is, then things will go fine. However, whoever withdraws their money will be safe themselves and screw over the rest of the people. In order not to get screwed over, everyone becomes the first to withdraw their money, and the system falls apart. This then becomes a situation where fear of a disaster is also the cause of that disaster, quite a self-fulfilling tragedy.

Does a nation have to live by the Credit-Confidence Model and go through this? Not necessarily. However, basing your economy on credit and confidence does make it grow a lot faster during boom (high confidence) times, just like wealth can grow faster if you borrow money to buy a house, and the guy down the street thinks its worth more than what you bought it for. The other side of the flip coin is that it also falls a lot harder when everyone is chasing after the same virtual good with relatively little end value. It is more of a choice based on cultural values. In Asian countries, most people live on the cash they have at hand, save a lot, and mostly start businesses that can be run by retained earnings or profits from previous businesses. In the US, more people rely their standard of living on credit cards and mortgages. The US lives on a huge international deficit, claiming that all is fine as long as it is somewhat relative to the GDP of THAT time. The US is set in a model that is bound to rotate between explosion and depression.

What does this mean for us? In a plane economics model, we should cut down on credit and increase inconfidence? If we all felt safe and do business as usual, things might work out. However, that’s not going to happen. We are all doomed into the “citizens dilemma” of trying to protect our own rights before thinking about the common good, particularly when you are sure that the other guy would do the same thing. When everyone stands up in the stadium in hopes to have a better view of the game, no one can see again. It will only take awhile before the brave optimists start to regain that confidence, somewhat of an “early adapter,”  and have that confidence spread across the nation again. That’s when you see the explosion in economy and a new hand of billionaires again.

As for now, you should definitely think about saving (maybe not in US dollars), consume less, and go on sites that get you a job.

Thanks to my entrepreneurial friend Sam Fong and genius scientist Michael Gao, here is an organized collection of information of what may possibly be one of the largest financial crisis worldwide. I have some friends who worked at Lehman Brothers and now has lost their jobs. We’ll see what happens.

“Quick recap:
JP Morgan took over Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac were nationalized, Lehman Brothers filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy, Bank of America bought Merrill Lynch, and both AIG and WaMu are in serious trouble. Only two of the big 5 independent investment broker-dealers, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, are still standing.”

Some information regarding AIG:

“The prospects of a private market solution to the deterioration of the American International Group appeared to be faltering on Tuesday, as talks involving the Federal Reserve and several banks turned to the possibility of using government money to shore up the ailing insurance giant, people briefed on the negotiations said Tuesday morning.
Fed officials were still meeting with A.I.G., JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and others at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York Tuesday morning to discuss possible options. It isn’t clear that any solution, including one involving government money, will emerge, this person said.”

Market summary:
http://www.forbes.com/2008/09/15/scorecard-lehman-update-markets-equity-cx_lal_0915markets37.html?partner=yahootix
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122145492097035549.html?mod=rss_whats_news_us_business
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080915/ap_on_bi_ge/financial_meltdown
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080915/ap_on_bi_ge/fed_financial_crisis
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122139688846233147.html?mod=rss_whats_news_us_business
http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/top-5/2008/09/15/Investment-Banking-Model-is-Dead?tid=true

AIG:
http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/top-5/2008/09/15/Clock-Ticks-for-AIG?tid=true
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122148503202636197.html?mod=rss_whats_news_us_business
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122142474136033581.html?mod=rss_whats_news_us_business

Lehman Brothers:
http://www.forbes.com/home/2008/09/15/lehman-aig-merrill-biz-wall-cx_lm_0915lehman.html
http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/15/news/companies/lehman_endofwallstreet_tully.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2008091514
http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/top-5/2008/09/15/Financial-Risks-in-Lehman-Collapse
http://www.fool.com/investing/value/2008/09/15/why-lehmans-failure-is-the-best-outcome.aspx

Merill Lynch:
http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/15/news/companies/barr_merrill.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2008091512
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122142278543033525.html?mod=rss_whats_news_us_business

Washington Mutual:
http://www.forbes.com/2008/09/15/washington-mutual-meltdown-markets-equity-cx_lal_0915markets38.html?partner=yahootix
http://www.fool.com/investing/dividends-income/2008/09/11/is-washington-mutual-about-to-explode.aspx?terms=washington+mutual&vstest=search_042607_linkdefault

So I have finally moved. It has been quite a rough one. 2 months ago I agreed to live with a friend in Oakland, and I left some of my stuff there. I told him I will go early September.

Then comes September 5th. Before that my friend was in Taiwan, so I couldn’t really get in touch with him. He told me September 5th he would come back. It all works out. I packed everything I own in the United States onto my car, and I called him to let him know that I will be there the next day. Oops, it turns out that he is shutting the place down, moving his operations elsewhere, and he forgot to tell me. At that point I have already moved out of my apartment, but had no where to move to. My friend is a cool guy, and is extremely apologetic. However, my life became complicated.

After living at various friends’ places in Socal, I started my drive up. I passed by my friend’s 600 acre ranch, and spent 2 days there. I met a lot of great friends from the California Student Sustainability Coalition and connected with some awesome old friends like Michael Cox, Crystal Durham and Nancy Brown. During this time, I still had no idea where would I move to.

Finally, when I got here, my Aunt’s friend knows someone who is looking for a person to occupy a room in her home. It looked nice, so I decided to move in.

It’s a fairly nice place. I have my own room. There are a pair of elder couples, a woman, and a college girl living in this house too, and they all seem extremely friendly. The place is 30 min away from Palo Altos (Silicon Valley and Stanford), an hour away from Oakland, and 90 min away from San Francisco. Not bad at all! Most of all, this is 10 minutes away from Eagle’s uncle’s house. Eagle is our developer from Canada, and he is moving to the Bay Area with me. Being so close to his Uncle, he could probably live with his Uncle and save a lot of costs. I pay $600 a month, which I seem to be able to afford for at least a few months. Everything seems to be working out. Now I just need to figure out what is around, and learn how to use the BART system.

Why did I move to the Bay Area? Because Silicon Valley is the High-Tech Startup Hub. If you want to do finance, you should go to New York. If you want to be a movie star, there is no reason to stay in Arizona. You should go to Hollywood. Similarly, if you are building a high-tech startup, you should go to Silicon Valley. All the infrastructure, support system, talents and money are here. You find others who moved away from their hometown to persue the same dream that you have. I can’t explain what it is, but the 3-4 times I came to Norcal, it really felt like home. The weather seems nice, the sky seems more blue, people are supportive and high quality at the same time…it just seemed like where I belonged. A well respected SEO guy Sean Percival told my CMO Jun that there is also a central startup hub emerging in the area between West Hollywood and Santa Monica, and even though it is second to Silicon Valley, if you start making a name there now, later you can be easily recognized as a big name due to low competiton. With that in mind, I would still like to be up here and seek more opportunities, meet great people, and hopefully create good value to everyone who I interface with in my life.

Anyone, if you are around or know good people I should meet. Let me know! I start afresh here, and would love to meet great people!