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The Makings of a Founder: Reflections with Former CEO and Co-founder of Rotten Tomatoes, Patrick Lee
This edition was a collaboration with The Early Newsletter by Michaela Gordon. You can read her thoughts on our conversation with Patrick here. Thank you Michaela for collaborating and please go check out her article! The startup ecosystem has gone through a lot of changes over the years. From the dot com era to the […]
Tracy Young Returns to Lead TigerEye After $875 million PlanGrid Exit, Reflects on Innovation and Identity
Tracy Young is a founder who has been on my radar for a long time. Beyond the fact that she is a successful exited founder, having sold PlanGrid to Autodesk for just under $900 million, Tracy’s family–like my own father–immigrated to the United States following the Vietnam war. With one major success under her belt, […]
VC Veteran Ann Lai is Leading the Charge to Fund the Future of Science
Venture capitalist Ann Lai is, by all measures, an absolute beast. From earning a PhD from Harvard at 25 to becoming Managing Director at her own firm–Skeleton Key, Ann has clearly achieved a great deal of success throughout her career. Ann is also notable for speaking up publicly about the misogyny she has faced in […]
Weee! Co-founder and CEO Larry Liu reflects on his underdog journey
Welcome to another edition of AHN awaken*! Apart from our guest, I’m excited to introduce a new member of our team, Han Yue Yin! Han Yue is a current Stanford GSB student and was my fellow jazz bandmate in college. Although this article was written by me (Edwin), Han Yue co-interviewed with me and will […]
Candid Conversations on Venture Capital and Entrepreneurship with Anna Fang
Anna Fang is the CEO of ZhenFund, an early-stage venture fund that has invested in over 600 startup companies, particularly in e-commerce and AI, with successful investments in unicorns like RED (XiaoHongShu), Perfect Diary, and Horizon Robotics. Anna began her career in investment banking at JPMorgan in New York City and later helped expand M&A […]
A Candid Conversation with Karat’s Co-Founders on Entrepreneurship and Authenticity
Karat Financial is a startup that provides banking services to content creators. At first glance, you may think this is a non-issue, but consider that popular chess streamer Alexandra Botez was rejected twice when applying for a business credit card, despite bringing in over $100,000 a year through her content. Clearly, investors also agree that […]
Quick Tips with Carl Pei
Quick Tips is a condensed version of our longer-form articles where we offer some quick one-off tips from established Asian founders. In this edition of Quick Tips, we spoke with Carl Pei, co-founder and CEO of Nothing Technology–a consumer electronics startup seeking to challenge the smartphone giants and make tech fun again. Lots of my […]
Behind the Scenes: A Conversation With Neal Jean About the Birth of Beacons.ai
If you want to see what the next generation of Asian leaders looks like–look no further than Beacons.ai co-founder and CEO, Neal Jean. Backed by Y Combinator, a16z, and even our former guest Bryant Chou, Beacons is an up-and-coming Operating System for creators. A one-stop shop for creators to do email marketing, make their online […]
Navigating Startups and Challenges: A Conversation with Webflow’s Bryant Chou
On November 10th, I had the honor of chatting with Bryant Chou. Bryant is the co-founder of Webflow, one of the leading website-building platforms in the world with a valuation of $4 billion. Within startup-land, Webflow is especially notable for being mostly bootstrapped, waiting five years before raising an additional round after their seed round […]
Behind the leading payroll solution in the US for SMBs, Gusto founder Eddie Kim established himself as a legend in tech lore
On January 3rd, I had the honor to chat with Eddie Kim. Like myself–Eddie happens to be a Stanford alumni. Unlike me–Eddie is the CTO and co-founder of a $9.6 billion company named Gusto: a payroll, benefits, and HR solution for businesses in the US. It’s already hard to find Asian unicorn founders, finding Asian […]
