To begin with, a long long time ago I was born and raised in Hong Kong and I came over to Utah, Salt Lake City to meet my elder brother, who works for IBM, study through my graduation. There was a professor, Dr. George Fuller, Economic 101. He's the one that enlightened me. He's the one that changed my life and gave me a different, uh, direction. I talked to him and he said, "There's no right and wrong, all the economic theory Adam Smith and all". Then we went into a deeper conversation, exchanging ideas of my British Hong Kong ideas versus his good old American ideas. So we become more than teachers and students. We become a friendly conversation. He would invite me to his, thanksgiving party and because most of the foreign students, don't have an American family in Salt Lake, and we usually spent the holiday alone. So he invited me. It was very kind of him. So kind that I remember him and his family. So for the last 40, 39 years, I've been calling, making a phone call to the family since Dr. George Fuller is gone and I've been sending my regards to them every year for the last 39 years, and I think that shape my opinion of the economy and things that we can do. That shaped my career path in the venture business. I started my first company and then I used the word problem, there was actually a problem statement. Why is that? It's because a lot of people are saying that "Oh, I got my vision. I got my mission and build something". But that's not the optimum way to start a business. You have to find a problem. The problem is a pain point, something that really pisses you off. Excuse my French, but that's the best way to express it. I know I'm from Salt Lake City too, so I become conservative. So something that is of pain points a problem statement that you're unhappy and then you never give up to find a solution for it, and persistence will succeed. And my example was that I was on, in those days we were American online AOL. Some of you may not know what AOL is all about, but it was a Dial-up modem where you put your phone set into a coupler, I can't believe I said the word Coupler, doesn't exist now. And then your phone transmission will turn from analog, a sound into Digital, 0101. And that was the beginning of it. So I say, why is this so slow? I want to download, Grand Canyon pictures, and it takes forever, he said, "Well, because you are using an Analog Modem." Modem is modulating the modulator. And so I said, "How can it be better?" They said, "Digital." I say, "What is a digital modem?". They said that it doesn't exist yet, but you can go to our friend in National Semiconductor, Gary Johnson, who was the product manager for the digital modem. And so I called him up and went over to see him. People were pretty friendly in Silicon Valley then. You can just about call and see anybody you want. So he said, "Well, we're just rolling out the Alpha release, and would you like to try it?" So I said," I'll take it". They said, "You have to write your own API", I say "what?" Writing an application program interface, API is not an easy task. So I said, "Well, I'll take it anyway", so I took the disk, we don't have a stick, we have a disc and back to the office and asked one of my software engineering managers to help me out, to do the API programming. So that was after a few gyrations and trials and errors. And that was the birth of the Alpha model of ISDN, Integrated Services Digital Network. ISDN was born about the same year that, it was 1980, 85-86. So that changed my whole life in my career. I got so excited about starting new companies. So one after the other, I started five different companies.

I am an early-seed and early-stage investor and I focus on TMT because in Telecom Media Technology, I have, after the University of Utah, I went to Golden Gate University in San Francisco and finished my master's degree in telecom management. I have a lot of experience with the fortune Fortune 100 companies that I work for. I learned all about SNA, BNA which is a system that will architecture from IBM and Barrows network architectures. I know those names are such a long time ago, but they work. So I studied micro to the mainframe, and 32 seventies transmission protocols, and so on. So I believe in TMT because I'm very familiar with it. Do not invest in anything that you are not familiar with, just like applying for a job that you want to be a medical doctor. But you are an economics major. It won't work. So waste of time, concentrate, focus, focus, focus on what you do best, and do it right. So some people come to me and say," I know this really well". I said, "yeah, you should do, but you are a one-man army, what happened to the balance of your team?" And they say I can do it all. No, no, we don't do that. This is a no-no. When you have a one-man army who knows everything and not willing to share the patent, the company, the founder's stock shares with other co-founders. Why is that? I tell you and you won't even believe it. A startup company is supposed to save money. So whenever you have a chance to go to a trade show, you are supposed to take the least expensive flight, which is usually at midnight. And maybe the pilot is dozing off. Oh, my God, that will be deep, deep trouble, right? Not only do I lose you and nobody else knows anything about the company because you are the one-man army. Haha! We're in trouble. So even key man insurance wouldn't compensate for what I've lost. So we never invest in a one-man army. That's a no-no. We want to invest in the best-balanced team. No egotistic founders. Of course, everybody got an ego, but you gotta check out your ego at the entrance to the door in a startup, and you kind of roll up your sleeve and work 18 hour days just to get to be number one in the market. So you are the first to introduce, first to launch a new product, and so on. We believe in founders that are, well, well versed and well-balanced ego. After the seed, we do the prefer a and we follow on with prefer BCD, depending on the size of the investment, and go from there.

Every VC will tell you the same. Investment is a statistics game. If you look at 100 to the business plan, you receive 100. You look at now you receive probably 200 business plans. You look at 100, you will pick out 10 to read. If you have the time to read and then you'll pick one to meet and shake hands and shake hand's an old word now. The new normal, you cannot shake hands. So the slide deck is only one out of a 100 or one out of 200. And so how can I get impressed to the mission that you need to do. Number one is the word AIDA. Remember this, write that down. AIDA means arousal, interest, desire, action. Why? Because if I listen to something and I don't get aroused my interest and I don't have a desire to take action to look deeper and say, Is this guy telling the real thing? Is this the real problem on Earth right now today? Maybe if I invest in this particular business proposal, it might give me a good return. So, AIDA will be the first sentence to catch the attention of the reader. Who's probably a Junior VC who is responsible for scanning all the deals. He got straight methods of compliance to me, is its air, water or candy. What does that mean? You put this model on top of any kind of equipment proposal you see, without air, you die right away. It's for 30 seconds. Without water, you die in 5-7 days, painfully. With candy, you won't die. It's a sweet little thing. That is nice. So if you classify your product as air, water, or candy, then you will be able to see how important it is to read that business plan.