Posted 8:14 PM by Andy
Personal History. I come from a middle-class family where my parents are well-educated, diligent folks who work hard for a living. Sometimes I think I lead a charmed life where I take unexpected turns but always end up on the right path. Maybe Someone is looking out for me. As a rambunctious young kid, I would wander all over Taipei unattended. I’ve rolled down stairs and escaped numerous near-fatal accidents with hardly any scrapes. I’ve been lost on numerous occasions and someone would always come and fetch me. In private primary school, I would read comic books in the back of the class and be called up by the teacher to be dealt physical punishment. I would usually finish in the top 5 of my class despite my disdain of authority and cavalier study habits. After the third grade, I moved to California. In a year, I mastered the basic English language. In the fifth grade, my buddy Eric and I finished the year’s math curriculum in the first month, then spent the rest of the year playing with the newly released Apple II. In junior high, I picked up basketball during recess and on weekends played with some Chinese dudes. That was when I developed the fundamentals of my game today. In high school I played Street Fighter 2 at the arcade, Lakers Vs. Celtics, and Romance of the Three Kingdoms on the PC. I rolled with wannabe gangsters. In between perfecting my Guile moves, uniting the Middle Kingdom as Liu Bei and riding in tricked-out Civics, I finished my career there 10th in my class of 365, the only blemish on my record being the C in freshman biology due to my strong aversion to animal dissection.

Next, I enrolled in arguably the toughest major in the most cut-throat school in the country, Berkeley EECS. I had no clue what I had gotten myself into. Very quickly I found out I detested the tedium experienced by all engineers in the quest for the perfect technical solution to problems. I balled a lot at the first-rate campus health club RSF and hung out with my fellowship friends frequently. The rest of the time I spent studying whatever interested me, mainly finance and economics. I devoured books on the history and mechanics of leveraged buyouts as Milken and some of these other cats seemed larger than life. I graduated thankfully by padding my curriculum with lots of soft engineering classes from IEOR. After college, I hopped around a few jobs, starting with one that required wearing suits at One Market Plaza in downtown SF. My attire became progressively more casual throughout my career. The best gig was consulting with one of the Big Four accounting/professional services firms. I was sent to Hawaii for 6 weeks so I parasailed and tried diving in my spare time while my boy Albert did the heavy lifting on our assignment. I did a short stint at an Internet services firm that peddled insurance online before the bubble imploded. I took Extension classes throughout this time to keep my mind sharp and picked up a Microsoft certification. Next I stumbled onto a gem of a company located in San Rafael. I worked on a location-based server product and recruited my buddy Tom (now a HBS grad and future captain of industry) to help me. This design software firm proceeded to quadruple in stock value over the next few years as it consistently beat Wall Street expectations quarter after quarter. In my foresight, I bought and exercised all the options available to me. Our product was early for our target market by about 5 years and I chafed under a new project manager so I left.

After some time off, I enrolled in an international relations graduate program in New York. I was intrigued by the political theories exposed to me in my classes, and ate up economics tomes on campus. A nice bonus was witnessing the rise of Carmelo Anthony as he led the Syracuse team to the national championship. The downside was the inclement weather which drove me to depression. I ditched the program and went back to Cali. I picked up poker that fall and proceeded to spend the next half year learning and refining my game while awaiting the next career opportunity. This was before the current poker craze and its mass popularity. The next spring, the CEO of a semiconductor foundry called me from China with his pitch. In the short call, he asked whether I was interested in participating in China’s economic development. I responded I had always considered my options to go back after my first visit during the summer of 1997. He offered me a position over the phone. After two weeks to mull over his offer, I moved out to Shanghai in April of 2004. Situ took me under her wing and trained me on the nuances of the job. I learned other aspects of the business like drafting licensing agreements on the fly. During my tenure there, I was fully engaged in the community, teaching English, socializing with colleagues, playing ball, performing and hosting Christmas programs. In late 2005, I was recruited by eBay. After several interviews, I changed industries and moved downtown. The business is in a mature phase and faces severe competition. I’m absorbing as much as I can for future ventures. That’s my life history in a nutshell.