Disqus - Latest Comments for leoalmighty

Re: Why @UpfrontVC invested in Disruptive Rental Car Startup @Skurt

Leo Chen — Wed, 07 Oct 2015 11:39:00 -0000

This is amazing! Love the idea. Hate that I just rented a car at LAX yesterday and am just now seeing this post. :'(

Re: Here’s What’s Driving Collaborative Consumption and Where the Market May Head Next

Leo Chen — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 11:51:50 -0000

Incredible amount of insights & examples packed into 20min. And I noticed your slick new IWC. ;)

Re: Entrepreneurs Don’t Think Enough. Here’s What You Can Do About It …

Leo Chen — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 17:07:20 -0000

For me, writing is a good outlet for thinking. It forces me to think in more depth and organize my thoughts. When we were fundraising over the summer, I wrote a few pieces for Techcrunch with the intention of establishing credibility for fundraising. Unexpectedly, I found that the process of researching/writing about our industry led to deeper analysis and critical thinking which led to more actionable insights. In many ways, the thinking was more valuable than the publicity. Now I find myself writing paragraphs here and there on various topics related to our business, none of it is organized enough to publish but it's making me smarter (or so I tell myself) and eventually I'll reorganize these sporadic paragraphs into concise blog posts.

Thanks for the post Mark and glad to see more frequent posts from you. You were on a short blog hiatus until recently. :) Happy Thanksgiving!

Re: Should Investors in the Same Round of Financing Ever Get Different Prices?

Leo Chen — Sun, 09 Sep 2012 09:56:12 -0000

We just did a priced round with a lead and it actually made the rest of the round simpler because the price was set and there wasn't room for negotiation. Few of my friends raising on notes are negotiating the cap with every investor -- some think they should get a lower cap and know it's easy to do with a note. I'm glad I didn't have to deal with that. The synchronization issue was also less problematic than I had expected, our lawyer had committed investors wire into a trust account, then did a single wire to the company upon closing. Just one data point FWIW.

Re: My Pal Dave: A Triumph of Substance Over Style

Leo Chen — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 15:32:09 -0000

Love to get together. We have demo day on the 17th and 18th next week. Will you be attending? I know you're not a fan of demo days. Either way, let me know what day works best for you for a 30min coffee. I'll email/tweet you as usual to finalize a time. :) Looking forward to it.

Re: My Pal Dave: A Triumph of Substance Over Style

Leo Chen — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 15:53:19 -0000

Gotta love and respect Dave! 2 wks ago he landed at SFO at 11pm and came into 500 at midnight just to help me out with a situation. He's bad with email but always there when needed. Thanks Dave and thanks Mark for the eloquent post. :)

Re: The Scarcest Resource at Startups is Management Bandwidth

Leo Chen — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 17:39:48 -0000

Simple advice needs to be reiterated. Thanks Mark. Your points are spot on and even more true when you're a 2-3 person team in an accelerator.

We're in the current batch at 500Startups now and there're numerous mentors to talk to, offers for introductions, speaker session, workshops etc. Prior to joining 500, I jumped on opportunities to meet with relevant people and advisors because it was fairly infrequent and I wanted to get out and talk to people. As an unproven early stage company, we tend to value "important" people's time & advice more than our own; changing that mindset makes a huge difference.

Now I'm getting better at being hyper selective, often declining intros and skipping talks. Just yesterday, I had a long discussion with my team to cut out 99% of the "maybe we could do ____" ideas and just focus on what we should do now and how good we can be at solving 1 problem before dabbling into other areas.

Looking forward to catching up again in the near future. I'd love to show you our app when it's in beta.

Re: Why You Should Think Twice Before You Send That Intro Email

Leo Chen — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 11:32:51 -0000

I think the same applies to people asking for intros. If you're mindful of the persons you're asking intros from/to, you make life easier for everyone and increase your chances of getting future intros. In fact, if you're the one asking for the favor, makes sense for you to do the extra work. I think I've made more mistakes asking for intros than giving, especially when my network was smaller. Trying to be more disciplined on both fronts now. Thanks for the reminder Mark! :)

Re: Web Second, Mobile First

Leo Chen — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 20:33:57 -0000

I'd like to add that one huge advantage to web second is SEO, it's a huge distribution/discovery channel that doesn't exist in mobile yet.

Take Foursquare for example: when I search for a local restaurant on the web, yelp and urbanspoon are consistently at the top, but the 5 star rating system and long list of reviews from strangers has its limitations. I still dont know what to order or which reviews to trust. Foursquare results are starting to show up on the first page in rare instances; when I do see a Foursquare result, I find the information to be more meaningful. I can see which one of my friends have checked-in, taken a photo or written a review. That gives more perspective and I know which friends have similar taste buds as me. In some cases, I can just text a friend and ask him/her what're the must have dishes at a restaurant.

I think Foursquare has the potential to oust Yelp & Urbanspoon, but to do that, they need more frequent and better reviews, something that absolutely requires a strong web presence. Reasons being: 1) check-ins usually occur at the beginning or during an experience, reviews happen after the experience. 2) the best reviews on yelp have substance, writing something of substance on a mobile device is still a strenuous task. 3) web increases sharing, every time I get an invite to a venue, it's usually a yelp or google maps link. I'd love to see more Foursquare links being shared.

Re: How to Develop Your Fundraising Strategy

Leo Chen — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 05:04:52 -0000

Thanks for the timely & actionable post. From an entrepreneur's perspective, would love to see a post on how to approach early stage fundraising with the proliferation of incubators (e.g. YC, TechStars, 500Startups, LaunchPad LA, etc). Incubators do more volume and more diversified deals than VCs so domain focus is harders to compare/less relevant. That leaves us with program structure, funding amount, location, mentors & their domain expertise. Some of this information is available from talking to past founders but few have gone through more than one incubator so there's definite bias. Perhaps VCs like yourself who have worked directly & indirectly with all of these incubators & their founders can provide a new perspective. If you were an entrepreneur again today, how would you approach this?
P.S. just sent you a short email with an update on our progress -- (putting your advice to practice ) ;)

Re: Spend 2012 on the Right Side of the Haimish Line

Leo Chen — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 03:08:52 -0000

Thanks Mark for a year of inspirational blog posts & wisdom. Looking forward to 2012. Happy New Year!

Re: Package-tracking startup Fara looks to move e-commerce away from email

Leo Chen — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 16:27:55 -0000

Thanks Slice, we're fans of your product. Hoping to be more complimentary than competitive with our approach. :)

Re: Track Your Packages with Fara and Win a Kindle Fire!

Leo Chen — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 01:05:53 -0000

Sorry, we're legally only allowed to do the giveaway in the US. :(

Re: Track Your Packages with Fara and Win a Kindle Fire!

Leo Chen — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 01:04:43 -0000

If you successfully tracked a package then you're in the giveaway. The label of the package is determined from your email subject line, you're free to change it to whatever best helps you identify the package though. Thanks.

Re: Further Thoughts on Startup Operations

Leo Chen — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 06:48:00 -0000

I agree with your views Mark and I think some readers who disagreed may have missed the point. At my last startup, my co-founder was the CEO and I took the COO role. Mostly because that seemed like the title that should be handed out to a co-founder after CEO. In the end, I don't think my title matched my duties and it was more for ego/aesthetics. In practice, my partner took the lead on biz dev & fundraising while I focused on product, engineering, HR, etc. We still discussed strategy, BD, product, and all other critical business decisions together. When it came to execution, we divided our duties based on our pre-agreed upon roles but filled in for each other when needed. We were a small 4 person team so maybe the slightly larger startups have more in terms of operations.

Regardless of semantics (COO or VP Ops), I think the point of your post is that early stage startup founders should be prepared to wear multiple hats, thinking critically about their business goals and not let titles dictate/limit their responsibilities. Just my 2 cents. :)

Re: Groupon China is Crumbling. Why Do Foreign Internet Companies Fail in China?

Leo Chen — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 03:56:13 -0000

Unfortunately Groupon's struggles in China largely comes down to a lack of understanding of the Chinese market. Particularly in this business, operations is extremely critical and foreign companies have trouble navigating the waters here. The fact that groupon.cn "stole" the domain name has no meaningful impact on Groupon since your average Chinese has no concept of the "real Groupon".

You're right that protectionism and censorship does create an unfair environment for foreign companies, but cultural and social economic factors require the gov't to make tough choices. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but I don't doubt the US gov't (or any gov't for that matter) would do things drastically differently if they were in China's position. It's easy for us Americans to sit high-n-mighty and criticize China, but those standards aren't always reasonable, at least not immediately. Entrepreneurs in China are still hard working and ambitious and deserves respect for the companies they've built. Having spent time here working at local startups, I've corrected many of the biases I used to hold. It is a different ball game, a different culture and a different internet.

Re: Explaining FNAC: Feature, Not a Company

Leo Chen — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 06:33:20 -0000

Did any of these companies begin with the intent of building a feature to sell to a bigger player? Do you think that's a viable/smart startup strategy? Some features can be of strategic value to the bigger players but are not yet on their roadmap. Many Twitter apps (e.g. tweetie, tweetdeck, twitpic) were built with the goal of being acquired; though it seems wiser to go after a "feature" with multiple potential acquirers rather than just Twitter.

Thanks Mark! :)

Re: Can Sina Weibo Become the Facebook of China?

Leo Chen — Tue, 24 May 2011 00:38:28 -0000

One of the challenges that both Weibo and Twitter face is content filtering. It's really hard to distinguish btwn signal vs. noise when their main objective is user growth and encouraging free-form content generation. I don't think becoming the Facebook of China is the right analogy/goal -- it's more of a media buzz line. RenRen is the Facebook of China, but that doesn't mean the market here has the same appetite for a Facebook equivalent as the US.

Re: DianDian (点点) – China’s Tumblr Clone

Leo Chen — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 14:00:28 -0000

There is one. It's called Ushi.cn

Re: DianDian (点点) – China’s Tumblr Clone

Leo Chen — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 14:00:27 -0000

There is one. It's called Ushi.cn

Re: Groupon in China, Part I: why it could succeed where others have failed

Leo Chen — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 03:17:05 -0000

I think Groupon has a chance to win in this market, especially with Tencent as a partner. Both companies have boat loads of cash and Tencent has distribution. A few existing clones are doing well based on anecdotal data (i.e. looking at how many people purchase each deal, etc) and self-reporting. My guess is Groupon will make a couple of acquisitions to obtain critical mass quickly...

Re: Aeviou makes typing Chinese so simple even a caveman could do it…

Leo Chen — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 00:35:17 -0000

there's a greater need for faster Chinese input vs. english. Swype is cool but takes a lot more getting used to. With iPhone auto-correct, i can type english pretty fast so not craving Swype that much.

Re: Groupon China Giving, Like, a Billion Reasons It’ll Beat the Clones

Leo Chen — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 01:23:47 -0000

It's not entirely impossible. Groupon's business model is unique in the sense that the biggest value to consumers is the quality and breadth of deals. Thus there's a little less dependence on understanding user behavior and preferences -- both still important, but everyone knows a good deal vs. a bad one. The key for Groupon China to succeed is to get the right sales force (must hire local sales guys) in place to get the most attractive deals. Acquiring a few clones with a decent user base would be a good way to get things off the ground... The advantage that Groupon will have in China is the ability to get deals from international brands active in China (e.g. McDonalds, Starbucks, Amazon, etc...), that won't be the crux of their business but a good way to build a reputation and a following. China-clones will have a harder time securing deals from these big names.

In a way, one can think of Groupon as a non-tech company. Purely tech companies fail in China, non-tech companies have had great successes (Starbucks, KFC, Zara, etc.). The core Groupon business isn't technological.

Re: Why Facebook Would Have Failed Even If China Were a Free Market

Leo Chen — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 04:01:01 -0000

Good points, but I wonder whether user behavior is driving product design or vice-versa? MySpace designed their product in a way that attracted teenagers and 'encouraged' spammy behavior + random friend collecting. Then Facebook came along with a better product designed to encourage real relationships. So maybe we're observing trends that appear to be culturally tailored when in reality, people just don't have a better product to use.

Re: Why Facebook Would Have Failed Even If China Were a Free Market

Leo Chen — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 23:32:42 -0000

I think culture is overrated when it comes to social networks. I'd be willing to bet that 80% of the features and interactions that drive adoption/growth are the same globally: picture sharing, status updates, commenting, flirting & stalking... all of which Facebook has a superior product over competitors. Would love to see some data on this... :)

At the end of the day, on a level playing field, I think the company that puts users and UX first will prevail. RenRen is so great at copying Facebook but failed to copy the user centric philosophy, hence all those annoying banner ads. ;)