Venture with Grace
00:56:40 · Grace Gong, Jay Zhao
[00:56:40] S0: Yeah, I really like, so last week I also chatted with Boris and Kevin's company Bedrock Robotics. I feel like those are like, so those are like a lot of the companies that I feel like coming out of that space is that actually become huge is like people with industrial experience. I feel like physical AI is a space that like you literally need like industrial experience to actually understand like what's going on. By the way hi everybody. I really like everyone's like, yeah. So, yeah. [00:57:13] S1: A different comment. Yeah, [00:57:15] S0: yeah, it's like people's random comments. I appreciate everyone's yeah, like I feel like, yeah, like there's like a certain aspect of like, I feel like AI infra you need like the AI needed founders like YC, the high school dropout, blah blah blah, but like I feel like for physical AI it's like one of the space that you really need to actually have Yeah, work like on the capital, it's like very intensive and it's like also life or death, you don't want your car to be out on road and then five people die from it. Yeah, sure. Okay, so I wanna end with a quick one minute feral for you. Sure. What's your favorite book? [00:58:10] S1: Yeah, that's a good question. [00:58:13] S0: No one reads anything these days. [00:58:15] S1: Yeah, no, there is one book that has impacted a lot of my thinking in this channel. I need to find the book name, it's called Twilight. It's actually a history book. [00:58:25] S0: Oh, okay, so not Twilight the Empire.
00:58:25 · Grace Gong, Jay Zhao
[00:58:25] S0: Oh, okay, so not Twilight the Empire. [00:58:28] S1: The Empire. It's actually the top of the China Opium world at the time. It describes how I wrote that history through a history book like everybody else, right? The writer is a really good writer and he actually went through the whole geopolitics dynamics and how UK was viewing China at the time is not as straightforward as the history of world portrayed. There was a lot of internal debate within China, within The UK at the time. Just how the whole thing unfolded is quite mind blowing to me because it kind of talks about human psychology and how history unfolds in certain ways that's sometimes completely out of random. Anyway, so that's the book I recommend to a lot of people to read because [00:59:17] S0: I love reading history stuff, it's kind of interesting. Who made the biggest impact in your career? [00:59:26] S1: I would say my first mentor when I was starting my own company, he's like, I don't know, probably three years older than me And he helped me a lot when I was just a young founder with nothing. A lot of people don't know about this, I actually come to this country by myself, which is quite unusual. Yeah. Oh, turn? [00:59:51] S0: Yeah, I think, but in my era, I feel like there's a ton of people who just come to The US by themselves.
00:59:51 · Grace Gong, Jay Zhao
[00:59:51] S0: Yeah, I think, but in my era, I feel like there's a ton of people who just come to The US by themselves. [00:59:57] S1: Yeah, and I think you actually have to fight pretty hard, be very crazy independent, be where you are. But along the way, you actually have to meet people willing to help you, and I'm really lucky a lot of you helped me along the way, just completely out of goodwill. And my mentor, his name is Alan, and he was the one that helped me a long way. We're still in touch. I'm gonna see him at Thanksgiving later this month, which is kind of incredible. So he gave me a lot of business advice, and he didn't really expect much out of me. And he actually become the first angel investor in my first business, which is kind of crazy. So anyways, lot of trust, lot of pay forward type of mentality. That shaped a lot of my thinking as a VC these days. Who [01:00:48] S0: would you mind to your dinner party? [01:00:52] S1: Party. [01:00:53] S0: We're gonna invite the three guys who's burnt and slit dissolved them in making one
01:00:53 · Grace Gong, Jay Zhao
[01:00:53] S0: We're gonna invite the three guys who's burnt and slit dissolved them in making one [01:00:59] S1: perfect meal. Yeah, invite all the companies. That's what I would suggest. But I don't know, I think so we just had our founder dinner event actually a few days ago, this Monday. I think our dinner event, at least at Leonis, is just more about knowledge sharing, pretty chill. Same with our AGM as well. AGM, we have a Founder Day, which is right after the LP meeting. It's not founder, not a pitch event, it's not a demo day, because we used to call it demo day, that confused people because they're not fundraising. But it's more like a mini tech talk, so all the founders share about what they have learned and some paper they are publishing, the benchmark stuff, and I think we're gonna expand on So one thing that kind of surprised LPS is that the wide range of companies that we've got, we have a company that's working on a model for RNA prediction in the bio health space and they were at our end of day sharing their white paper and stuff. And we also have a company that's doing AI for cybersecurity and they were talking about red teaming, kind of how to build an offensive mechanism with the labs and stuff. Yeah, anyways, but for the dinner events, personal ones, obviously tech stuff, and then some art stuff that would be nice as well. Just some more diversity Love to that. [01:02:27] S0: Where do we find you awesome at work?
01:02:27 · Grace Gong, Jay Zhao
[01:02:27] S0: Where do we find you awesome at work? [01:02:29] S1: I do climbing, I do like everybody else in the valley, a lot of bouldering. I also tried last year, most of the cases this year, a bit tough. Jiu-Jitsu Ju, I do Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu wrestling, it's a lot of fun. But other than that, you know, pretty boring, kind of just between apartment and then the office. You take a lot of coffee shop. [01:02:54] S0: Sounds very Bay Area. [01:02:55] S1: Yeah, sorry to I'm not for you. [01:02:57] S0: Well Jay, thank you so much for coming to the show today. Was such a fun chat. [01:03:01] S1: Yeah, thanks Grace. [01:03:02] S0: Leave you quickly and create.