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the magic of networking...again
I was on my way to Aon’s interview and met this guy called Jacky who is part of a company called Uniprecision. We went on to talk about our aspiration and outlook for the comeback of hardware manufacturing, from 3D printing (injection molding and CNC prototype) and eventually owning our own factory in America. We met up today at Olympus Cafe and had a talk. He told me that he’s been working on this project since 2013, and has found 5 excellent team members that are on the technical side. His first product was a fitbit like device, from which they closed the deal by going through the process of signing NDS, then uploading the requested materials onto an “analysis tool” and giving the quote to the customers on the spot and then asking the customer to find replacement for materials that no broker can provide and closing the deal (he used this example as a case for not able to estimate a delivery to a client usually). He told me about the teammates, a chinese name dude and his sister (sis does the microscopic soldering stuff), Ben (old guy, whose mom has recently has a stroke and is backed out. but he has started his own company and sold before), Andi (CTO who is responsible for technology side). He also has an app on the side called Anineed (task rabbit for college kids). Ken, is the CEO of Uniprecision who let him use the Uniprecision name to get American customers (but all finances and operations separate). Jacky believes that if he uses Uniprecision for manufacturing, he will just let them take care of the shipping side even if they mark up the price. Our goal is to grab customers early from 3D printing, and then onboard them into production. I have to start developing a sense for finding customers that will give us growth, and when is it the customers’ job to do a certain thing (eg. finding a broker that can provide them with that specific material or having their own manufacturing SOP). Now the game plan is for me to see a process from beginning to end to onboard a customer, and then i will write out some protocol (50/50 with andy, perhaps he can help me do instant pricing!) for Uniproto, and learn about production.
his personal story: he was born in 1986, he flunked christian high school in monterey, his dad is a business man, after flunking he went to De Anza to study business and met his wife, and went to Davis but did not like Davis. he has two kids.
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Obstacles
I want to reflect on one of the most interesting interviews i’ve had ever in my life so far. It’s for a process improvement analyst opportunity at a solar panel distribution company. From the first person i met who has worked at Tesla previously, to the CEO and CFO, I was amazed at the energy everyone has. I also met Emily, who is the process external consultant that help them onboard to Kenandy. This position really gets to see things happening from across and up down, and under the supervision of an experience process improvement professional as well. I’ve never felt closer to a dream job. Although I would have preferred to have it in healthcare, but regardless, I think environment is a good place to be. I didn’t care about the possibility of moving to Oakland, it was a for sure yes for me. The clarity has never been stronger. I think process role is perfect for me because it’s half technical and half personal, and I just love digging “what is going on”. Regardless though, I was stuck on a very simple financial projection question, and most likely did not get the position. Vivek, my mentor, said that i shouldn’t have to know accounting questions, i know why they asked, it’s because I said i know FEBP so of course, they tested me on it.
Lesson learned: learn to sell but also learn when to stay humble.
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Reflections
Many things have happened in the past months. In fact, so many that I might need to organize by listing them.
1. Mom got cancer as of 2/7. Initially, it was dealing with the complexity of healthcare system, then it’s about handling her mortgage, now it’s about dealing with what happens afterwards.
2. I quit my job a week before my mom told me she has cancer. It’s been a long 3 months since then, I’ve travelled to austin and switzerland, but i’ve been hit by being jobless so hard.
3. I decided to go into product management and process improvement.
4. I’ve widened my network like never before. I acquired a new mentor Vivek, who really pushes me, and I’ve joined Health Technology Forum and started talking to more entrepreneurs.
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My submitted article to Thrive Global
We all try our best to take care of ourselves and the circle of people we care deeply about. We do this by taking the time out of a day to exercise, refueling our mental juices by reading our favorite books and telling our loved ones that we are there for them. However, we are mere mortals that are not immune to accidents and the workings of genetics - one day you or someone around you will have the worst day of their life. It may be a car accident, a bad news from the doctor, a fire at your house. In the face of these unpredictabilities, the best we can do is harm reduction and do so by preemptively preparing for the future.
When my mother was diagnosed with cancer, I could not cry. I could not cry because I knew at that moment, she needed me to be at my peak performance. I needed to be strong, logical, and resourceful. What hospital should she be going to? How should we be paying for the hospital bills? Who is going to be filing for her 2017 taxes? Can we pay her mortgage? I was aging by the hours and took on many responsibilities that I was not ready for. As she is finishing up her chemotherapy, I decided to put together a practical guide on how to put in place mechanisms to protect you and your family's health.
1. Make sure you and your family are communicating during Open Enrollment Periods. Whether you are covered by your employer or selecting a plan from the government marketplace, there are decisions to be made on what kind of healthcare you will be receiving in the next 12 months. If you are expecting to only see your primary doctors for regular check-ups, HMOs (Health Maintenance Organization) will be a good option. HMOs match you up with a doctor and you usually can get all your medications and exams all in-house. If you have a doctor that you have been seeing for a long time, check beforehand whether that doctor is in your health plan's network or else you will be incurring out-of-network charges. PPOs (Preferred Provider Organization) give you more options in choosing doctors, and your doctor will have a higher chance of being in-network. This is also great if you expect to be seeing specialists, such as a podiatrist, an oncologist, etc.
2. Set up an FSA account. Think of this as a tax-free accumulation account for all your medical expenses. You don't even have to report it to the IRS in your tax return! You can go on your days and pay out-of-pocket for all your cares, and submit claims by the mid-March of next year to have them reimbursed through your FSA account. Some eligible expenses include contacts, lip balms, breast pumps, etc.
3. Using HSA as a healthcare account as well as an investment vehicle. Often confused with the FSA account, this is an account that follows you as you move along employers. Employers typically will contribute at the same time you are contributing to it. You can easily rack up in thousands depending on your company policy. It's also the only triple tax-advantaged account out there, meaning your contribution via payroll to the HSA is tax-free, the account balance grows tax-free (eg. interest, dividends or capital gains), and withdrawals for medical expenses are tax-free. It can't get better than this.
4. Be an owner of your health data. With the lack of consumer protection surrounding digital health data collected by companies such as Fitbit, your health data may already be exposed. However, that should not discourage you from actively tracking your health data. Take advantage of advancing technology and feed it your data to gain visibility into your health. You may be able to predict higher stress level by the irregularity of your sleeping pattern, gain insight into your metabolism or just the basic calories intake versus daily recommended amount. This takes time and effort, but it is taking the guardian of your health into your own hands.
Just having the awareness that your health assets can have added protection will relieve lots of stress when the time comes. To lead a happy life, you will also need to lead a prepared life.
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Tired..and death
I’ve been tired. Physically and mentally. It’s as if God knows that I will be so drained by my experiences in the last two weeks, so he prematurely told me to quit my job so that i can handle every adult shit that is possible under the sky. I had to jump in half way for mom’s mortgage. But to up the game level, her boss has agreed to adjust her paystub so that she can get her desired loan, also, we are comparing two lenders, and also she’s in China so we have a huge time difference where I wake up to huge walls of texts and can’t ask her for clarifications. And to top that, i have a dad that has been living under the cave for years and is no help. Oh yea, so the story goes that my mom has breast cancer, and got one of her breast removed. She tells me that i have two priorities: 1. switch her to a great medical network 2. finish her mortgage and sign the house. Wow, thank you for giving me clear directions. Thank you too for bringing me into the world so i can handle the shithole you put yourself in because of the poor decisions you’ve made for yourself.
Jim, Professor at UCSF, told me that i should get myself checked for the BRCA gene to see if i carry the ticking bomb of genetic cancer. He went to China recently and had a blast. He was teaching a stats class at a nursing school in Hunan, and he felt like he changed many lives there. He’s going back again and offer maybe to hire me to be his assistant so i can see how healthcare works in China and perhaps add in some AI stuff.
As much as i am glad that my mom is better, i still look at her and tell myself that i will never ever want to be like her. A life where she did not actively choose, and when she does actively choose, she did not make a sound decision based on the information present. Lack of patience and the over-eagerness to please others. Let this be my lesson and her lesson.
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Austin
Back from a week trip to Austin. The initial goal was to visit some factories and some manufacturing facilities, but the logistics was too difficult and the factories were reluctant to let me tour. Eventually, we just had tons and tons of bbq (briskets so good and so is the bbq sauce). Went to the zoo (which is a nonprofit/rescue center in Austin) and the peacock sanctuary. Went to Banger’s on Rainey street and had sake on tap (Norman lost his g card there). Also went to see the graffiti wall (which was underwelming) and saw cathedral of junk which is someone’s backyard. A guy came up to chat and was very nice, he lives there and he also showed me how his dogs likes to slide down the slides. There was this aura of calm about him. Asians are minorities in Austin, with very limited restaurants. There was a start up called Capital Factory that is a incubator for Austin. Weather was very cold so we couldn’t swim in the famous Barton Spring, but overall i enjoyed my trip.
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Feel good journal
Angela is visiting from Mississippi. We went to escape room and played Switch on a game called Overcooked where we have to coordinate to cook something. It felt relaxed and slightly mentally stimulated bc of the games. However I still notice that I dislike disharmony and conflict. Saturday was Cherry's birthday and we went to play arcade and eat Italian food and play a board game called exposed. I enjoyed expose for its social aspect and also tracking and having to arrangement shapes.
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Side Hustle Day 1
I am reading this book called Side Hustle and here is what they are asking you on day 1. It’s very disappointing actually. I think essentially they want you to pick the low hanging fruit, which i understand, but i think it’s discouraging for big ideas.
can you describe how to turn your idea into action in one sentence?
connecting the IOT community to a chinese manufactuerer that makes controllers
is there an obvious way to make money with this idea?
yes
does this idea solve a problem for someone?
yes
can you figure out how to make this idea happen quickly?
no, but i have connections
is it relatively low maintenance?
no, because i myself don’t know how it works
Can you get paid more than once for this idea?
yes
is the answer good enough?
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Diversity
It’s unfortunate that many things haven’t changed since my last blog. Trump is still our president and i am still as lost about the world as before. Mo decided to tell Meredith, Ruby about the break up. During the conversation, some interesting things popped up - diversity. They were saying how tech world lowers the bar for women so more women can be in tech (Uber) and it’s insulting. However, Ruby argued that sometimes it’s just a cultural thing and we just need more headcounts of women to balance out the culture.
Another thing is they talked about how their company noticably do things that are not accurate, or wrong, follow metrics that aren’t accurate, or tells nothing.Makes me think about my own company’s, and how frustrated i am about the way we collect data, the way we disperse them and how much i want to fix it. Jenae has left the company and i feel it’s a perfect segway for me to take her position and then as if my prayer is being listened, Fadhi just told me and Stephanie that he’s leaving for a bootcamp to become more “technical”. I know that with the sprout of start up, you are nothing without experience even after you graduate. i need to put up a fight and get what i want.
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The next steps
Data Analytics bootcamp is finally over! I’ve learned lots in couple of months, but lots of gaps still. Went to visit Dana, and accidentally picked up a mentor - her husband, who is a seasonal mentor for start ups and told me some practical advice on how to start approaching what i want to do (a social map). Things on dock for the next half a year include:
1. Finish up the partnership with Tesla List (motive: to connect with The Zackerburg Foundation and Linkedin stakeholders, and hone up my business prsentation skills)
2. CEBS exam (motive: last exam before obtaining the CEBS title, why not?)
3. Angellist (motive: so many have told me that my next move needs to be a start up, so i will look for one)
4. Personal Finance game (motive: trying out how to partner with my software boyfriend, also use up that $4000)
5. look into IoT.
Some notable things that happened include: Venkata, instructor from bootcamp reached out to me to be partner with him on a afterschool program called Afficient. It was pretty good look into franchise, $25k start up fee for 50% equity, but 5 years to make a profit.
Some other notable things: Norman got his wisdom teeth pulled and his google car borken into.
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Reflection on today’s meeting with Dave Channon
I met up with Dave, who is husband to Dana, one of my all-time favorite female figure in my life. He started a company back then having to do with neural plasticity and training of the brain. The idea is even when you get older, you should be able to be conditioned into learning as long as you are under the right context/environment. And then he started teaching and mentoring start-ups and then also did some work with national institute. Some of the topics we talked about include:
1. Connection of neuroplasticity to Ralph Freeman’s neuro lab I was in and vision
2. My UCSF work with understanding clinical pathways and his mentoring of his students on how to figure out the pathway (talked about how entrepneurs might not have access to the data)
3. Lemonade. A start up that I should join because of their innovation in reverse premium. They will charge a small fee for property and casualty insurance, and if they don’t use it, buyers get their premiums returned
4. He thinks that insurance is an interesting space to be in right now; agreed that it’s boring
5. He is interested in digital health, but usually it’s hard to say where in the clinical pathway to plug it into
6. His students who are Chinese went to China to talk to manufactures about their idea of a device that can tell the boundary between a tumor and healthy skin tissue, realized they need to conquer the American market first because china has no place for it
7. The idea of social graph. And how I need to start constructing my start-up social graph, have a warm circle of people who have succeeded, and then bring people who are in the cold circle into the warm circle – many people can’t visualize their network and don’t actively work on it (he wants to check in with me in August on this)
8. Don’t think about, “I have a brilliant idea, let the market speak and drive”
9. He says that it will be cycles of learning, in which you will see how you are as a person; he brought me thru this exercise of remembering what is my daily routine, what I do first in the morning, how the drop of my stock made me feel, and the fact that im actually solution driven instead of curiosity driven, how I don’t really want to be a programmer, when do I want to retire, and eventually, I need to live through a cycle of a start-up, from 30-50 on its way to 300.
10. To join a start up: tap into network, then do angel list.
11. Remembering that I will be working with young people in the future. So don’t lose that.
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New York and Sleep no more
Bought a $500 dollar ticket and stayed at a $500 hotel with wonderful seaside view (the standard) to New York with Norman. Went to Met (free entry, with their awesome rooftop installation of “disappearing”), Ippudo, college road with Papaya King hotdog, Momosan, Grand Central station, Bond St Street Sushi with Norman’s cousin and friends, Prince street late night pizza. But the major thing was Sleep No More. It’s this immersive theater experience where participants wear masks and explore a 5 story theater set with a backdrop story to Macbeth. I went in with Norman and was immediate scared outta my mind by the dark alleyway, then was in the Mandalay Bar (later i watched Rebecca to get the reference). I then was led into a door that i can choose to go upstairs or downstairs. I saw a bedroom with baby cloths hanging in the air, and couple bedroom and then saw a cemetary with lightening, and i bravely went across the cemetary into a room with bathtub. All of a sudden, Macbeth comes in and closes the door, followed by a bunch of people, and started going crazy, later joined by Lady Macbeth. And they started the washing blood scene where he goes and kills King Duncan. I then watchd Lady Macbeth dance around. And then i continued to see the scene where Macbeth kills Banquo, and the banquet where the ghost of Banquo visits Macbeth and the Witch Rave with strobelights and extreme nudity. It was a great artistic expression...filled with feelings and emotions..and BOLD. The whole set was also just beautiful. Detailed and well thought-out.
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Parenting Vol. 2
I get really angry at my parents. Really angry. I shout at them, because I am mad that my dad can’t be like those businessmen that I look up to, I am mad that my mom won’t get a divorce with my dad and can’t make a decision on her own. Many people tell me that I am very lucky to have my parents - “your mom is so forward fashion”, “she’s so free spirited”, “she’s chasing her dream at her old age”, “your dad helps you with any thing he can”, “your dad is so genuine and cute”. I understand all that, but everytime they are together, I want to explode. My mom explicitly said to my dad during the LA trip that he’s not welcomed. Everytime they argue, I literally feel a knife stabbing into my heart. I think i might have started feeling that even at a very young age.
I need to remind myself of that good things that is inside my parents, and that they just can’t be my idealized version of what parents are, but at the end of the day, they are trying their best.
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Parenting
My flight to Los Angeles is cancelled. Initially, i was going to make an executive decision not to go to my friend’s graduation. The main goal is to meet his dad again and talk about doing business in china anyways. But then because it involves my dad and my mom having to drive some, i should ask them. Then i got really frustrated because all my mom did was yell at the airline for cancelling and all my dad did was to ask ME to call the airline. i always feel like ever since i was 16, my parents have given me nothing in value spiritually. I never had to ask them for anything, I never had to let them worry about my studies (did i ever ask my dad about physics in HS? i don’t remember), and I’ve been financially independent for a long time because of scholarship. I always get jealous of the landlord’s daughter for having a mom that can cook, and jealous of my friend’s dad that owns a business. I am very envious for other people’s parents, and always wonder why I wasn’t given a pair. But at the end i guess, they taught me kindness.
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The Past
Today is kind of a weird day. I started some conversation with friends in the past, Celina reached out to me for referral, I read Kevin’s blog and messaged him, Rowena sent me a map of New York. All people in the past that i spent enormous time with but no longer in my life. I understand myself at this point now that I have a hard time keeping friends, not making them. Yesterday, i went 5 hour hiking with Cherry, Kayla and Nickie. It was lots of fun. Cherry was telling me how she met Jeewon, and how amazed she is at how fast she makes friends and how extroverted she is. Little does she know, Jeewon is just a ball of sadness. Her story i guess is not told, but her surface of dancing on table and enjoying life freely is the only thing people see.
I noticed that the friends i keep close are getting closer to the type that is more motherly and about to start a family. Is it because of maturity or is it because i have the savior syndrome?
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Girl at the Eyelash place
I switched my eyelash extention place from this mid-age lady with three kids that borrowed a corner of a salon for her bussiness to a 27 year old girl who owns two eyelash salon in Mountain View and San Jose (beauty education institute). I asked her a lot of questions about how she came to where she is, and she answered them all. She’s from Taiwan and started doing lashes when she was 19, then got her license at 21. Then she saved up and signed an exclusive contract with a taiwanese eyelash brand to sell their products in America. She says they could tell she was sincere, so they let her finance it. So now she’s trying to enter the LA market and then will eventually bring it to China. She says in the beginning people were like “what’s your plan? do you have one?” when she was looking for partners. So she was like “screw you, i’ll start it on my own”, and now those people ask how she’s doing and she just goes “it’s going well”. she says she went to a ImagineWorks work shop (she has a lot of connection in AI), and lots of younger poeple and smarter people. She figured, if she can’t be smart, at least make money off smart people.
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Some thoughts
About to go to Andrew Rayel, haven’t partied for a while. Still having cramps, and has started class for a month now, and it’s going aite. But feel like if i had more self controls, maybe then i don’t need to drive 2.5 hours a week.
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