The Rich Robinson Show - Season 1 - At the Speed of China
Candid and fun interviews with my amazing guests – entrepreneurs, operators, experts - that will help you unlock actionable insights around the Asia region and the entrepreneurial activity that defines it.
Season one is titled At the Speed of China, like at the speed of light. The idea is that there are both outdated and clouded views on China while there is much to be learned from China's rapid rise after opening but even more importantly the lightning quick pace of business execution, consumer adoption and scale.
The Rich Robinson Show - Season 1 - At the Speed of China
Porter Erisman, former head of comms for Alibaba and director of the documentary Crocodile in the Yangtze, talks China Speed
Porter Erisman is an award-winning filmmaker, e-commerce consultant, and entrepreneur who has lived in the Middle Kingdom for more than 20 years.
In this episode, Porter talks about how he found a way to travel back to Asia. He also talks about how he started from nothing in China and saw how Alibaba, China's biggest internet company, grew from small beginnings.
Key Takeaways:
-Hainan used to be called China's "Hawaii," but now it's called China's "Silicon Valley."
-China is much faster than the US in the rate of entrepreneurship.
-996 Culture is China’s working culture that is working from 9AM to 9PM, 6 days a week.
Best Moments:
-Porter shares that he went to business school in the US to get some money for backpacking.
oSo I went to business school in the US, just to get basically some backpacking money to go backpacking around. So I went to business school. I thought I'd worked for two years and then pay off my student loans and just backpacked around the world for a while. But right when, so my first job out of business school was working at a consumer products company, launching this children's candy into China. But it wasn't a good fit for me. And then I ended up at Ogilvy and Mather.
(00:04:40.90-00:05:07.06)
-Porter talks about how he told his boss by accident that his coworkers had broken a company rule.
oAnd so once in a company meeting, the big boss of the company at the time, they're in China, put me on the spot and said, "Porter, why don't you know this? Why don't you do it?" And I made the mistake of saying, "You know, everyone was talking Cantonese and not Mandarin." So I just didn't understand what they were talking about then. And all the sales team stared at me with these just deadly eyes. And what I didn't realize was they had a company policy that you were supposed to only speak Mandarin. And I had to betrayed them by, in front of the boss saying that they had all broken the rules
(00:07:46.28-00:08:22.21)
-Porter shares some Jack Ma’s quotation
oWhen I joined, the internet bubble had just burst, and I was jogging my memory of some of these speed-related references because I know you're interested in the topic of speed, and one of the first things I heard Jack Ma say was, "In the internet era, you have to be as fast as a rabbit and patient as a turtle."
(00:19:00.54-00:19:18.01)
-Rich shared that one of his guests at his event walked out.
oThe guy that I invited left, like, he's like, "Charlatan." And then he stormed out, and I felt bad because I was like, "Oh, don't go. I respect you." And like, oh, and of course, then Jack became the richest man in China. So who's laughing now? But . But back then, like, who knew?
(00:25:40.50-00:25:53.84)
XCD: Post-production, transcript & show notes
Welcome to the Pod, Porter Erisman, ladies and gentlemen. Kaboom Town. Dialling in from Tokyo, Japan. Welcome, my friend.
Porter Erisman:Hey Rich, good to see you.
Rich Robinson:You as well. Man, I always enjoy chatting with you, and I really look forward. It's funny because, even though we haven't spoken face to face that much over the years. I've used your documentary film in some of my teachings or clips from it, and I feel this sort of asymmetrical intimacy, so to speak because I've heard your voice and seen your face there. So, yeah. I'd love to talk about that documentary film that you did about Jack Ma, and your books, and what you're up to. But before we do that, let's go back to the origin story of the very uniquely named "Porter Erisman." It's almost like a comic book hero name.
Porter Erisman:Well, it's my mother's maiden name is Porter, so there was not much innovation in my name.
Rich Robinson:Well, the combination is very, very innovative. It's a very memorable name. And you're all about memorable stuff because you're a world-renowned expert in international communications. So, let's dig in to how you ended up being channeler for one of the best international communicators in China, Jack Ma, let's go back to being bitten by a radioactive PR spider back in the day.
Porter Erisman:Yeah, happy to. So would you like me to start with — just how I got to China real quick and then how it led me to meeting up with Jack?
Rich Robinson:I would love that, all the way from the very beginning. Like, whatever sort of pieces of popcorn along the way to lead you...
Porter Erisman:Sure.
Rich Robinson:There to Middle Kingdom.
Porter Erisman:Yeah. So I'll make it. I'll try to condense 51 years into 51 seconds, but basically, yeah, you know, I grew up in Denver and spent most of my time there, and we always learned about living out on the frontier. And in Colorado, it's kind of the west and the pioneers who were digging for gold out there. And I don't know — there was something in that upbringing that made me want to try to find where the frontier is someday. And my mother took us on a trip to Asia when I was in high school, and I think she regretted it ever since because I ended up coming back and getting stock there. But in it was about 1986, we went to Thailand, Hong Kong, and into the mainland for a day, and then Japan. And at that time, not that many people were doing Asia trips with their kids. And I got fascinated, and finally, when I graduated from college, I really had a big regret, which is I'd never learned a language. So I was going to learn Japanese. I'm here in Japan now, but at the last moment, I decided to go to China in 1994 and study Mandarin, because I had friends trickling back from China talking about all the change that had gone on there. And, I've studied in Berlin in college and was really interested in seeing what it would be like in a communist country making the transition to a market economy. And China was even bigger than Germany or Eastern Europe, and so I just felt I'll go to China, study Chinese for a year and just see if I liked it, and then go back to the US, go to law school, and that would be it for my international adventures. But I liked everyone else, like you, I assume too. I got hooked on China because it was this frontier. It was so exciting to see how much things were changing every day. And I've never really considered myself even a business person to be honest. But after this experience, like in 1994, first as a student, and then I worked as a host of some travel show on Chinese TV for six months, going around.
Rich Robinson:Whoa, tell us about that.
Porter Erisman:Yes. I had a friend who was working at the Washington Post, and he got offered the chance to go host this TV show on Hainan Island. And you know, he's working with the Washington Post
Rich Robinson:The Hawaii of China.
Porter Erisman:The Hawaii of China, which now some people are trying to position as the Silicon Valley of China or something, but he couldn't do it because he was working at the Washington Post, and I said, "I'll do it." So I went to Hainan Island. I met this team, and the show was travelling around China, talking about investment opportunities and travel. And so my goal at that time was to write a book about it. I wanted to do sort of "behind the scenes of the Chinese TV station," and I didn't end up writing the book, but I did get a really unique insight just from travelling, embedded with this Chinese team of journalists, and immersing myself in China that way. And I quit because they wanted me to get into politics. I didn't want to work for the Chinese TV station and do that. So I went to business school in the US, just to get basically some backpacking money to go backpacking around. So I went to business school. I thought I'd worked for two years and then pay off my student loans and just backpacked around the world for a while. So my first job out of business school was working at a consumer products company, launching this children's candy into China. But it wasn't a good fit for me. And then I ended up at Ogilvy and Mather.
Rich Robinson:Was that intentional? Like, you wanted to do something that bridged into China? Or was that sort of serendipitous?
Porter Erisman:So I was the guy at business school who was like a China maniac. So I went to business school in 1996. Kellogg and Northwestern.
Rich Robinson:Excellent. And how was that received, then? Like, people were like, "What? What are you talking about?"
Porter Erisman:Yeah, exactly. The year before me, I think there were two people from China who went to Kellogg, and then my year, they were like 14. China was just getting on the radar of business people. And so, I did things like I started the "Chinese Corner," where you're supposed to sit at a table and speak only Chinese during lunch. It didn't last that long, but I was obsessed. I was just obsessed. And I basically said, "No matter what, my dream is to get back to China." But no one was hiring really back to China except the one company. Ironically, before I went to business school, I said, "My worst nightmare is coming out and working, selling craft singles to the China market." And then I ended up working for Craft Foods right after that. Some people don't name names. I don't mind. We're for craft foods on this children's candy.
Rich Robinson:This company will remain craft.
Porter Erisman:Yeah, this will remain unnamed until I say it's craft. But it was just — I got in, and I think I saw that it was like a finishing school to business school to get this traditional consumer marketing, brand management background. And then the goal was to do something entrepreneurial but to get that nuts and bolts practice. But I was eating alive. Let me put it this way, I don't know if craft was the problem, I was the problem because I went into this company that was mostly a China operations. I had zero business experience. And I was eaten alive by, like, all kinds of every mistake you could possibly make as a foreigner in a Chinese company. I probably made it, and luckily I made it all in about eight months. And just left with my tail between my legs and said, "I got to start over. This is not working."
Rich Robinson:Like, can you give an example of some of the things that you know?
Porter Erisman:Sure.
Rich Robinson:Should not, or you would not have done in hindsight?
Porter Erisman:Well, for example, they had just moved the headquarters from Hong Kong to Beijing. So there was a lot of concern about politics. Like, "Who's going to survive?""Who's going to get laid off?" And I was just naive. I went to a business school where it was like, hold hands and sing about rainbows, right? And I get there and everyone's fighting for their jobs, and for example, the teams, like, I spoke Mandarin, but I didn't speak Cantonese, and the sales team would speak Cantonese around me, and I felt it was to kind of cut me out of the conversation. It wasn't just using it. And so once in a company meeting, the big boss of the company at the time, they're in China, put me on the spot and said, "Porter, why don't you know this? Why don't you do it?" And I made the mistake of saying,"You know, everyone was talking Cantonese and not Mandarin." So I just didn't understand what they were talking about then. And all the sales team stared at me with these just deadly eyes. And what I didn't realize was they had a company policy that you were supposed to only speak Mandarin. And I had to betray them by, in front of the boss saying that they had all broken the rules. I mean, there was just one step after another. I think I was the foreigner who was kind of the worst-case scenario. A foreigner with a fancy title and a fancy MBA, but no practical experience it was pretty much the worst thing you can imagine in China. And so, I'd never experienced this before, but the team this Hong Kong team that had moved to Beijing. They just did everything they could to cut me out, and it was the most difficult situation.
Rich Robinson:But could you blame them in a way, right? It's almost like the people that have been fighting in the front lines, and then some guy comes out of the military academy and he's like, "Okay, we're going to go marching today." And they're like throwing a grenade in his tent, like, you know, "opss."
Porter Erisman:So I can't blame them for being skeptical, but it was the company was run. We're not here just talk about this. But it is an example of a mistake that you make. It was run like, just this old school, top down, very strict management. And they had just no sense of putting the company objectives sort of over their own personal objectives. And so I can blame them for the tactics. And basically, the lesson I learned from that was it got so bad. I even asked my friend, who was working at Ogilvy and Mather, I said, "Hey Jake, I got a question,"Do people laugh in your office?" I mean, there was no laughter in this office. And so he left to go to business school. So I took his job and moved to Ogilvy and Mather, and there I found everything I'd wanted — fun, creative, supportive, and I realized I could enjoy business. The other job I was going to look for at that time was working in Tibet on a microfinance nonprofit. So I said, "I'll give business one more chance." So this taken fifty years of explanation.
Rich Robinson:No, that's great. And I want to hear much more about your Ogilvy time. But I remember meeting with you once, it must have been maybe 10 years ago in Beijing. And we're exchanging notes as foreigners working in China, both loving it there. And I said something like,"Well, we're like a bridge." And you're like, "Uhuh." And I was like, "Okay, maybe you have a better metaphor." And he's like, "You're like a bridge, it's like strong and stable and smooth and like we're cartilage." We're getting crunched between international expectations and local realities, and sometimes the bones come together and like, turn the cartilage to just dust. And I was like, "Oh, yes, thank you. You're right." And I think, I experienced some of that as well too. That sort of transition between the power base in Hong Kong moving the corporate power base moving to the mainland. And kind of narrowed it, even though it's both China, there's like such radical, it's like Greece and Norway or something, right? And it was like you were just, so when I say that I am blaming them, I meant more like, "You weren't. There was no way you're going to win." Like you're going to get crunched in between there.
Porter Erisman:The common thread of all this tension as mainland managers. When I got to Beijing, the only requirement for getting some amazing job in 1994 at some multinational was speaking Chinese, basically. They could say, "What was your experience?""Oh, I studied like Oracle bone, Chinese character writing." But then there was a tension because one of the amazing things that I witnessed and you witnessed too is that the local employees went so quickly from looking up to and admiring Hong Kong managers or the foreign managers to learning and then overtaking them, and doing it better. And I think to me, that is a great thing. This is what I saw at Alibaba I was teaching a seminar one day on how to do marketing. And then a year later, everyone was doing it better than me. I'd played golf in high school. My colleagues at Alibaba learned it and were beating me at golf within a year. And so, when you talk about the cartilage, just to talk about that, like, what it really means is like, I thought coming out of business school that, "Oh, isn't this great. We hold hands and build this bridge by understanding both cultures." And I think what I tell people now, obviously, I loved my job at Alibaba, I loved my job at Ogilvy, but you come between, especially we're talking about speed. You come between the rate of entrepreneurship in the US and the rate of entrepreneurship in China. China's so much faster, and US, I would argue it's still slower than China, that it's this tension, rather than this bridge, that if you're a foreigner in between China and the West, or you're Chinese in between China and the West, you are going to feel this pain because you're at that point. But that is what you get paid for and that's your value is bridging it and so...
Rich Robinson:Well said.
Porter Erisman:Yeah, you're like the cartilage between the bones that would otherwise destroy each other. But to be honest, if you know that, and that's the tough thing, and that's why you get paid, then you can have a little bit of distance, and understand"Hey, that's what I'm here for."
Rich Robinson:Well, like there's good data that shows "I'm on the wrong side of 50 as well too." It's like, "It's better to move." Your cartilage gets stronger, your tendons get stronger if you're actually moving, right? As long as you're not straining them to the point of injury, right? So you actually can, if you're flexible and you move well then it's all good, whatever the metaphor is. So let's go to Ogilvy. You worked in the PR department there, is that right?
Porter Erisman:Yeah, just one year. I joined when there was this telecom group, and Nokia was the only client. And then Yahoo was this company that was maybe coming to China. And in that just 12 months, we worked on the launch of Yahoo China, which really was a big moment in China. We had suddenly, after 12 months, 10 Internet clients, it was booming, and I had always had this dream of joining a startup. And so, suddenly, I had all these clients having all this fun and traveling around the world. So I heard about this English teacher, actually, Duncan Clark introduced me and went to Shanghai, met Jack Ma, and here was an English teacher trying to build a global company from China. And the job would be based in China, but then traveling all around the US and Europe.
Rich Robinson:But this wasn't business development for Ogilvy. This is you. Like, "I'm going to find a kickass startup and entrepreneur and go work for him."
Porter Erisman:Yeah, so I was at Ogilvy. I loved it. Worked with Scott Cronick, who I think you've talked to, and...
Rich Robinson:Scott and Duncan have both been on the pod. Yeah. Love those guys.
Porter Erisman:Yeah. But I was just too tempted to join a startup and...
Rich Robinson:Wow, you picked Jack Ma back then. That's pretty fantastic. I think that you were able to...
Porter Erisman:It's going back to that original experience of getting burned up in my first job. Because I interviewed... I'm not going to name names, but it was the VP of marketing at Sohu at the time. And I interviewed with this guy because I was looking to join a company and I told him, "Look, I would love to be a part of the senior management team helping craft the vision that we..." and he said "No. I set the vision. You execute it." And so I said, "You know what? This is too familiar to me from my first job, where it was this top down old-school management." And then I met Jack Ma, and he was fun. He was a Chinese entrepreneur who had been curious about the West, and I was a Westerner, curious about China, and there was this middle ground that I had with all of his staff. And another thing, I could see that I would actually have a value in there, because I could just see that the role of a foreigner in a foreign company localizing would not last long. So, I thought better to be in a Chinese company going global where I had something that could really offer.
Rich Robinson:Well spotted. That was really opposite, I think most people would think, right. And like you were able to cycle through some experiences around that. And then also, you're right like fun. Like it really makes a difference who you work with at that stage in your career. Like, if you can really work with somebody and you can learn instead of earn then it's huge. And I remember I knew you and then I was like, "Huangzhou." Like Huangzhou back then was; it was like, going back in time. It was like, you pretty much disappeared off the face of the planet. Huangzhou's an incredible dynamic, beautiful city, now, but back then, holy shit, like there was like, there'd be dragons.
Porter Erisman:Yeah. That was one where it was a nice, pleasant surprise to find out how amazing Huangzhou is. It was not a logical place at the time for an e-commerce startup, really. And we even moved our headquarters to Shanghai, that lasted about one week. So, talking about speed, Jack Ma called me up. I was hired and worked in Hong Kong. Jack Ma called me and said, "Porter, we're going to make Shanghai the headquarters. Do you wanna move to Shanghai?" I did. And I moved, everything, got in my apartment. Jack came for like one week and said, "I don't think Shanghai's really where we're going to be." And so, they want us to move to Huangzhou. So, it was a tough and kind of lonely place at times in those days, because there weren't that many other startup folks around.
Rich Robinson:Wow. And that was what year that you moved there?
Porter Erisman:So I joined Alibaba in 2000, in April 2000. And then, that's right when basically the bubble burst of the internet. And then, I was going to Huangzhou all the time. And then, I lived in Huangzhou 2003, 2004 full time.
Rich Robinson:And tell us out in podcast land about your day-to-day role there. What was Alibaba like then? How many employees? And what was the focus of the company? And what were you tasked to do?
Porter Erisman:So when I joined the company was I think when I interviewed, they were still in Jack Ma's apartment. They had 40 or 50 people in these two apartments. And then, by the time I joined a month later, I think they'd hired another hundred people, and I joined and just moved into an office.
Rich Robinson:So that was April 2000, you said?
Porter Erisman:Yeah. April, 2000. Yeah.
Rich Robinson:So that was, like, the".com" that was like April 14th, 2000 was when everything completely..."Shǔyú shì hā" or I would say, "Double fours."
Porter Erisman:So I interviewed in March, signed my contract, and then I went to the Philippines on a week vacation to celebrate that I was going to join this internet company and just hang out on the beach. And I didn't go on the beach because the whole time I'm watching CNBC, the ".com" bubble bursting. And by the time I showed up, I said,"Hey," to my boss who hired me, I said, "What's up with the IPO plan?" Because we're supposed to have an IPO in three months. And he said, "Yeah, I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon." and so I realized, "Oh, we're in for the long haul."
Rich Robinson:Wow. The long haul in Huangzhou. So is there some dues paying going on there? Yeah. Wow.
Porter Erisman:Exactly, and I was thinking about it, and when I joined, the internet bubble had just burst, and I was jogging my memory of some of these speed-related references, because I know you're interested in the topic of speed, and one of the first things I heard Jack Ma say was, "In the internet era, you have to be as fast as a rabbit and patient as a turtle." Have you ever seen this quote of his?
Rich Robinson:No, but that's going in the book. Thank you very much.
Porter Erisman:I mean, I think if there's anything that sums up.
Rich Robinson:Attributed to Jack and you.
Porter Erisman:Well, that's all Jack Ma. And I think if anything sums up his approach to balancing speed and long-term view, it's that he says it much more interesting than I would've said it. It's like, because that's something that Jack Ma really understood, is that on the internet, yeah, fast is a rabbit. I mean, you have to move with incredible speed day to day, doing what you're doing. You just can't hesitate. But I think some entrepreneurs do that, and they're like a chicken with their head cut off, just running around, they never accomplished anything, or they're impatient just trying to chase the dollar. But you have to act with that speed every day. But what he had that a lot of other people only have is this long term view that you have to be patient as a turtle. So when I joined Alibaba, he was saying Alibaba should be a company that lasts 80 years, like the length of a human life. And then I think he thought it was too short, so he changed it to 102 years. Because he said, "Oh, we wanna span three centuries, we're founded in '99." And then, I think that's a big difference. There are some people who have only that long-term view, but they don't get anything done in the present. And some people have that short-term view and never actually accomplish anything in the long run because they're just running around. Jack balanced it. So we would have to move like sprint every day, but be patient, and thinking about every decision we made should be in the interest of building a 102-year company. And so you make very different decisions when you're thinking like that than if you're thinking,"We want an IPO in three months."
Rich Robinson:Fascinating. So, I met Jack that next month. The first time was May of 2000 through David Oliver.
Porter Erisman:Oh yeah.
Rich Robinson:Who was an early employee from New Zealand there. And I had started this organization called"Eye and Eye: Internet and Information." It was like a networking group with this guy, John Hakim, and a few other people. And it started really small, just a networking drinks and night. And then we started having speakers and eventually grew to 20,000 people across 15 cities and around Asia, with people getting together. South China Morning Post that it was a great place for people to meet .com millionaire spouses. But you know, so Jack came to this thing, and I had heard about him, but you know, I met him, and immediately you just feel his magnetism and his energy, and he looks like a cartoon character in a way, right? And I mean that in the most respectful way. He looks unique, right? He captures your imagination immediately, just the way he looks and the way he animates himself. And then also, like most Chinese people that I knew, they didn't have the storytelling ability even in Chinese, and nevermind, to be able to do it in English and then do it in a way that was like so compelling. Like he was just extraordinary. And he told a story or said something that's going to go into my introduction to the book, which was, there was a guy from South China Morning Post who asked him a question. There was probably 3- or 400 people in the audience at the Furama Hotel in Hong Kong. And he said, "What about revenue?" And Jack looked at him, he was like right next to him in this group. A lot of people were standing, and he said, "Revenue?" And then he ran all the way to the other side of the room, pointed back at the guy, and looked at everybody else. And he's like, "Revenue?" And then he scurried all the way back right in front of the guy, and he goes,"We're running too fast for revenue." And the place went kind of crazy, right? It was like he worked a crowd. Like, George Carlin or something, right? And this guy that I brought in was like an ad exec. He was probably in his late fifties, early sixties, and he was like, "Bah humbag internet," like it was, 2000. And he slammed his drink down, and he was like, "Charlatan." And he stormed out. And I was like, "Wow."
Porter Erisman:So Rich, it's funny because the story you're telling is one of the stories I have been planning to talk about, and this is where our stories on lives totally converge 'cause, when I joined Alibaba, I joined right after the internet bubble had burst. And this was the very first event I went to with Jack Ma, was at your event. I was there and I was quietly sitting in the back of the room, watching my new boss address the crowd.
Rich Robinson:Am I recalling this correctly? because I don't even know what's real anymore because I've told that story so many times.
Porter Erisman:Luckily, it's absolutely real.
Rich Robinson:Okay. Good.
Porter Erisman:But it's so funny how this left a bold impression on both of our minds, and so, from different sort of camera angles, this was my first time to see Jack speak, and the internet bubble had just burst, and I was the new PR guy, and here he was telling these wild stories.
Rich Robinson:Good luck with that.
Porter Erisman:But you know, the funny thing is, this is another one. I love Hong Kong, but this is another example of the difference of the internet entrepreneurs in Hong Kong at that time versus, in mainland China. And when I got to Hong Kong in that event. I remember, when you think about all the people, a lot of the entrepreneurs who were there, they were maybe from really wealthy families, who I had existing conglomerate businesses and they had all just announced this major funding, and there was this sense that people thought they could, through the connections and the wealth and the power, create an internet startup, and here comes Jack. And Jack brought with him that mainland kind of real scrappiness and idealism and a really just a grittiness. And so when I watched him speak, I thought, "Wow, this guy is great and he totally gets it, and I love what he's saying." And then when he said the line about running too fast for revenues, I mean that I will never forget that line because the reaction in the room, in the internet bubble, was sort of, if he'd said that two months earlier, people might have gone along with it and said, "Yeah, okay." But in Hong Kong where it's a very practical and a finance audience, and here's this guy speaking sort of nonsense. The reaction I remembered was just this guy is like a conman, and I'm not falling for it.
Rich Robinson:The guy that I invited left, like, "Charlatan." And then he stormed out, and I felt bad because I was like, "Oh, don't go. I respect you." And of course, then Jack became the richest man in China. So who's laughing now? But back then, like, who knew?
Porter Erisman:And so that's the thing. That room was packed. I think that was your biggest event ever. Probably that was peak.
Rich Robinson:Indeed.
Porter Erisman:Because they had just announced a lot of funding.
Rich Robinson:They've got 10 million from Goldman.
Porter Erisman:And so Steven Swanker wrote this article, was like,"Running too fast for revenues." And that was the headline. And the general response, when I got back to the office on Monday, we had a lot of international managers who'd left investment banks or McKinsey Consulting or whatever, and they pulled me aside and said, "We cannot have our CEO saying this kind of nonsense, running too fast for revenues." And I was getting pressure all the time to pull him off the stage.
Rich Robinson:Oh man. Yeah, wow.
Porter Erisman:I mean, here, you had these Western managers. I actually had someone tell me,"Porter, Jack is a great founder and his co-founders were great founders, they all are going to have to step aside and let the professional."
Rich Robinson:Back then, it was like, "Okay, you replaced the founder with an experienced CEO."
Porter Erisman:It was sort of the Jerry Yang approach. Like, well, Jerry Yang found it and then got all these Tim Krueger.
Rich Robinson:Of course, that was the wrong approach. It was the wrong approach. And so I was dealing with internally people saying, "Oh, Jack's running too fast for revenues." And investors in Alibaba would make little snide comments on the side to me. And I kind of was thinking,"Well, what do I do here?" But it was very clear to me that I liked Jack, I liked his approach. He had that idealism from the mainland, and I thought is, that's pretty strange that these managers are telling me that the guy who just hired him needs to get out of the spotlight.
Porter Erisman:And so, right after that, I went on a trip with Jack, and he was going to give a speech in Switzerland. He said, "What should I say here?" And I said, "Just be yourself. That's what got you here this far." Because I really believe that he should just be himself. And let's just have fun here. Let's not take it too seriously. But the insight, when he said,"Running too fast for revenues," turned out to be absolutely the right approach for a lot of reasons.
Rich Robinson:He was right actually, as painful as it, he's like, "Let's build this. Let's grow this thing," right? And he wasn't even saying,"Let's just get eyeballs." Like, it was the right approach. And Facebook early days and so many other companies, people didn't see it.
Porter Erisman:And before you had this sort of "freemium model," I mean, before, that was a known strategy. I mean, that was his theory, we're just going to move quick, we're going to try new things, experiment, and every day something new. See what's sticks and then once our users make money, we can make money. But we're going to first let them make money. But, at the same time, he said, "We don't plan." So I got in a lot of trouble because people said, "Porter, you can't have Jack Ma going out there saying we don't plan." But this is very much like a China internet entrepreneur's approach is, a Western manager's, at least in those days really planned like way in advance. You would have a business plan like an actual business plan.
Rich Robinson:Yes. As if you're really running a company and not a startup, right?
Porter Erisman:Right.
Rich Robinson:And it's just not the right fit.
Porter Erisman:And I think that's a key insight. When I went to business school, we all had a business plan project. When I went back for my reunion, I said, It's interesting in China we didn't do business plans." And they said, "Well, you know what? That's now how we're teaching entrepreneurs in Kellogg, before you put anything on paper, go out and talk to possible customers, and just get some texture." Like, what do people really think when you even talk about this? What are their needs? And, so I think Jack, he saw that. And then another thing I was in preparing for this discussion I thought to myself I'm always trying to ask like, "Why are Chinese entrepreneurs this way, not just our way? And I think that when the Internet hit China, was totally new to capitalism. Basically, I mean, after being frozen in this communist system, the economy was unleashed. So there's no legacy of how things should be done, but when the internet and all this startup culture really took hold in the West, it had to move away from this idea of the legacy of like hundreds and hundreds of years of capitalism, where if you were going to make a business decision before the internet era, you had factories to think about, assets to think about. So you did focus groups, and you had physical products that you had to invest in and do packaging on, and very expensive staff and employees. When your product's a digital product like Alibaba's websites, you can change it in one second. So there's no point in investing in research when you can just try it, and if it doesn't work, you just change it the next day. And so, China really came from this great opportunity where it didn't have the burden of a legacy of the way capitalism had developed it. It was just Daniel LaRusso where people said, "Let's do whatever works." And that's why you see Chinese entrepreneurs just doing whatever works or trying a million things.
Rich Robinson:That's great. And I've been to the headquarters of Amazon. Jeff Bezos just stepped down as CEO, but he's one of my favorite entrepreneurs, and the headquarters in Amazon's called "Day One." And you have it in the prospectus, right? He's like day one. You have to show up every day as if like, it's the very first day and there's no some costs and there's no preconceived notions and day two, if you start showing up like it's day two or day three, then he said, "Then you start this excruciating, just the tail spin into, just the sure death, right? And I think China really gets that. But speaking of mindsets, I want to extract something about you, like really followed your gut in a way, like in high school — like,"Oh wow, I really loved Asia." Like, "I need a taste of Asia." And then you're like, "I love China as well too. I need to go back to China, and I need to go there after grad school, and I'm going to fall that." And then I think you are really good at, like, feeling your way out. Like you experimented with a few things, and you're like, "You know what? I'm not going to go into Sohu, because I feel a little bit constricted." And then you go into Alibaba and like you're getting all of this feedback from all these other senior people that are like, "You should not let him. Your job is to not let him do that." That's what your job is. And then you go to Switzerland, and then you're like, "Let it rip Jack. Let it rip." And there's no way you probably could have made it inside Alibaba had you been trying to like, put reins on him the whole time, but you gave yourself like not only were you not scared by. And be like, "Alright, I'm out. I can't do this." And then you also said, "Have fun." I saw this great TV series, I just love, by Scorsese with friend Lebowitz. It's called "Pretend It's a City," which I really can recommend. She's in her seventies, and she's this humorist, and she talks about like, "One of the things I just don't see people doing enough is like, why are you doing this?" and people always have some reason. She's like, "I just wanna have fun with something. If something's fun, then I'm going to be energized and enthusiastic, and I'm going to pull other people in." And like, Jack's a fun guy, and he really leveraged that ability to have fun. And, like, you were directing that a little bit, but just shine your fun and energy on. And then it'll all kind of come out in the wash. I think that's why I love that.
Porter Erisman:Well, I think where it comes from is it's basically you. So, when I came to China after college, I worked at a nonprofit and hardly made any money, but that was by choice. It wasn't like I was forced into it.
Rich Robinson:I've been part of a lot of nonprofits, but not by choice. Yes.
Porter Erisman:Yeah, well, I was part of one at Alibaba until it finally made a profit. But you know, I worked at a non-profit. I came to China where like,$3,500 savings and spent that. That was my whole budget for a year in 1994 as a student. And after graduating, I lived in this little shanty. It was really hard as a foreigner to get cheap housing in Beijing, so I rented a place on the black market. It used to be construction worker quarters at the Beijing Film Institute.
Rich Robinson:You have to wipe your feet on the way out.
Porter Erisman:Well, what I didn't realize, I got in there the first night, and I'm like, "Okay, now I've got to go to the restroom." And I realized I didn't have a bathroom in my room. I had to walk outside to get to it. But those were really happy days, right? Just the adventure and just living. And it taught me what basically anyone in Jack Ma's era knows. It's like, "You can be really happy if you just have a roof over your head and something that keeps you engaged." And I would sit there at night studying like Chinese characters on cards and just having the adventure of a lifetime. And when you talk to Jack Ma when you see interviews, if he talks about his happiest time at Alibaba, it's usually about those first days where they had nothing and they're just playing cards in the apartment, dreaming of the possibilities, and I think the skill of being able to have fun in a startup is realizing all you really need is a roof over your head and some food.
Rich Robinson:Yeah. It's about the journey.
Porter Erisman:And when you live in China at that time, most of the world lives like that. Half of the world is living like that already, so, people can find happiness. So, that was, it is I had the attitude,"Whatever happens, even if this fails, I just want it to be an exciting journey." And I think, Jack Ma, that's exactly his approach. He's like Forest Gump, running around the world, having fun. And it's the people who, you know, when you get the fancy degree. So I had a fancy college degree. The hardest decision is to give up all that opportunity and just say, "You know what? I'm going to do something that I'm theoretically overqualified for." Or then I had got a MBA.
Rich Robinson:Because your peers are in that race and you see them real time, like, moving ahead. And you're like taking 15 steps backwards, like according to those rules, right?
Porter Erisman:Right. It's like first world problems. And so, I think the key is just exactly what you said: "Having fun, enjoying it, and just knowing if you can put a roof over your head, you can have fun." And that's the attitude Jack Ma had. That's why he had fun with it, and I just took that approach.
Rich Robinson:So one of the things that I have fun with is I produce comedy shows as a labor of love on the side, and one of my favorite comics guy named Russell Peters, Indian heritage from Canada. And he is one of my favorite comics on stage, but off stage. He was awesome too. He was really a terrific guy. And it seems to me that Jack must have been fun to just hang out with too. Like, was there, can you share some anecdotes? Am I right there? Was he like, secretly, like, a two-faced villain? I don't think so. I think he was actually like a pretty fun coworker.
Porter Erisman:Yeah, I mean, our meetings were like comedy shows. Now, he really had a sense of purpose, and over time, he became a much tougher manager, but in the good way. I mean, he was do everything he could to motivate you by carrot and if that didn't work, that's kind of all like he was not much motivation by fear at all. But he was fun. Our meetings were just laughing all the time. And the people who took themselves too seriously people who came in with their MBAs or gave up consulting jobs or whatever is they — just didn't enjoy it because, it ended up, the people who really did well at the company over the long run were just like, Jack, like "Let's have fun." And we would laugh. I mean, it was like our meetings were just filled with laughter and jokes, but also, Jack just also had this amazing ability. If he could meet someone for five minutes in a meeting, he would be able to understand this person so well just five minutes of looking in their eyes, hearing their voice, talking to them. And so, he always knew how to turn up the volume on something, or if he could feel that the staff was getting disgruntled. He'd find ways to cheer people up. I mean, like a conductor kind of the orchestra a little bit.
Rich Robinson:Yeah, it seems like people describe Steve Jobs as that too, as like a kind of a maestro, but I think, as an aside, there's another, he talked about Sohu who the founder there, Charles Zhang, Zhang Chaoyang. He was also a guy who came and spoke at Eye and Eye in the early days. And so, I got to know him a little bit then, not well. But the impression that he made on me was as profound as the impression that Jack made on me, which was this guy's a little, like, he's actually kind of a tough guy, right? And like, in that he's not really like that easy to connect with, and he's kind of not very happy or friendly. And, indeed, like both of those guys, got to meet them in the early stages. They're both now multibillionaires and Zhang Chaoyang was publicly, quoted in a magazine article that he's miserable. Like he's just like, "I'm miserable. Like, I never got married. I can't trust anybody." By the way, you were miserable when you were broke, and now you're miserable as a billionaire, right? And I think it's just an interesting insight, because the cash is not going to necessarily change things if you don't have the right kind of attitude.
Porter Erisman:Right. And I should say my story earlier was about a VP that he'd hired who didn't stay very long, not about Charles Zhang himself. But Jack, who's just someone who would just had a positive view, and he had amnesia. It's so hard, when you make a mistake to move on and Jack wouldn't just move on, he'd just forget about it. Like he, I would be dwelling on some mistake that we made for a long time, and Jack would say, "Oh, what? I don't remember this." He would just forget the mistakes because he didn't view them as mistakes. They were just kind of...
Rich Robinson:Because they're not. It's a feedback and like, "Don't do that again, and then nek shay ga."
Porter Erisman:Yeah, it's just part of the process. And Jack even told me once, "I think I moved pretty quickly when we're talking about speed. I moved pretty quickly for a Western-trained MBA, but not as quickly as he wanted. And so he would tell me, "Porter, I will not punish you or scold you for making mistakes, but I will if you do nothing." I was taking too long, I was being too methodical, and he was always pushing me to do it. And I think — I hate to say it — but I think that Western managers within Alibaba, generally among the co-founders of the company, generally had a reputation as being a little bit lazy. Okay, so it was, we were seen as slow, even lazy. And when you compare the, like, this 996 work ethic, actually, I never heard that when I was there. I never worked 996 at Alibaba. Maybe that's why we had a reputation as lazy.
Rich Robinson:Yeah, and I think it's a little bit of a newer thing as well, too. I don't know if it was really the case back in ".com" boom.
Porter Erisman:Believe me, I put my life into it and, but we worked whatever needed to be done. We didn't think 996.
Rich Robinson:Yeah, and I think there's some pushback on that. And there's like, negative aspects. Like the whole speed thing of course is going to be it's gonna sometimes compromise quality and more mistakes, right? But then, at the end of the day, Elon Musk says it, "Pace of innovation is all that matters." Right? And I think, it's like that's really the ultimate sort of, ruler, the way to kind of, you know, measure. It's like the piece of innovation. How quickly are you innovating? And then what is innovating actually mean, and what are the cycles within that? And like, it's okay to make more mistakes. It's not about reducing the amount of mistakes. It's about increasing the learnings and being able to evolve, move faster, and get to that point where you actually are innovating. And I think, it's really tough in some ways for some more established, markets and cultures to accept that l that level of mistakes.
Porter Erisman:Yeah, and I think this 996 actually gets it the wrong way. I think what Jack Ma would articulate, is that when you love what you're working on, as much as you hope to, you don't notice the time going and you end up spending that much time on it, but you don't separate your life from your work because they're intertwined, and you find ways to bring the two together. And when you start talking about 996, it makes me think of here in Japan, where it's sort of your expected FaceTime, like you should be in the office and set. It's more about how much time you put in than the results. So, when I joined Alibaba, there was a room full of bunk beds, and I walked through the office, I was taking a journalist through the office and it was an office building. It was new, and everything looked like a normal office building. And then you get to a room at the end of the floor, you open it, and it was just dark and bunk beds and engineers. Yeah, just horrible. I mean, engineers who had been sleeping there around the clock. And eventually, when we hired a new COO, he actually said,"We need to get rid of this. This is not sustainable." It's like people were so dedicated to what they were doing. It wasn't that you had to ask them to do 996. They just wanted to do it, and they said, "Look, you guys need to have families, some balance, so we're getting rid of the bunk beds."
Rich Robinson:And now, you can see there's a real pushback around this whole 996 culture. And I think that's one of the things you have to go to the mattresses as the Godfather, right? You have to, like, everybody has to be all in and do some kind of a sprint, literally and figuratively, some sort of software sprint to get it to the deadline. And I think all startups around the world kind of go through that, right? But I think that's to trite and, simplified explanation of the whole speed of China, right? It's not just about everybody working around the clock. There's so many other, elements and mindset and practices around that as well too. So, take us to your documentary that you made about your time at Alibaba. It's kind of amazing that there was footage from, like, day one, Jack had the foresight, to be able to do that.
Porter Erisman:Yeah, well, here's what's interesting about that. So the story of that is in 2002. Oh wait, 2000. Yeah, end of 2001. I sat down to start writing a book about Alibaba, but literally, I wrote one page and I said, "Wait a second. What's the point? This company might go out of business pretty soon here." It really looked like we were running out of revenues, not running too fast for revenues. And there was a good question of whether or not we'd survive. And so I only wrote one page, and I think it said something like,"Whether we succeed or fail, it'll be an interesting story." And then, of course, the company survived and thrived. And then, as I was leaving the company in 2008, I sat down with Jack Ma, I said, "Hey, I wanna write a book telling the perspective I've had as a foreigner working in Alibaba, are you okay with it?" And he said, "Sure, you're in the best position. You've seen both sides of the story." And I said, "But Jack, you do realize that I'm going to tell the good and the bad? The successes and the mistakes." And I think because he was a teacher. He said, "Look, we have a responsibility to share our story with people, and I think you could tell it the most fairly." So that was really nice. So I wrote a book proposal and pitched it. Got a great agent in New York. So I thought, but when she didn't get an immediate home run at a major publisher, the feedback seemed to be saying, "This is a big company, but it's not household name yet." She just sort of disappeared on me, my agent, and wasn't interested in the book anymore. But I had this thing, I had to tell the story, because I had seen this thing I thought was so inspiring. I mean, honestly, try to find a more sort of rags to richest story about an entrepreneur, who has such an influence and impact who came from being a school teacher. I mean, that's crazy.
Rich Robinson:Or he'd been tells a story about being rejected, going to work at KFC.
Porter Erisman:Yeah. So he is like rejected at KFC. He probably thought, "Wow, this big global company, I'm going to work for them." right? And they did it. So I had to tell the story. It was just like, no matter what, I have to tell it. And then what happened was, before I left Alibaba, I had gathered all the footage I could because I wanted to write the book from like actual speeches and quotes. And it turned out I had about 200 hours of footage. And it is not even just the early days of Alibaba. The footage goes back to, like, 1994, '95 when Jack started a translation company in the Huangzhou. And he started what most people think is China's first internet company, "China Pages." So basically, I had all this archival footage. Some of it the company had filmed, other documentarians had filmed because here was this interesting-looking guy doing crazy things. And so he was like a magnet for video cameras. And I also had all the news reports, and so I said, "Okay, if I can't tell the story in a book form, I have to tell the story somehow." And so, I decided to make a documentary and so I went to, this is an example of starting from scratch when you're like giving up. I gave up a great job at Alibaba and started from scratch. I went to New York and did this New York Film Academy for a month, learned film editing, because I knew this was really just an editing project. And then I went around the world with my little video camera, filming B-roll of outside of buildings to kind of capture places that we'd visited. And then I stitched it all together into this documentary. And my goal was just show it at like three film festivals, and put it on YouTube, and then show it to some universities like, that was just it. I just wanted to tell the story so I made the film, but I hid from the company for three years. I didn't want them getting their fingers on it or hands on it or because it's a scary thing when a former employee goes to make a film. And I should say Jack Ma, on my last day, I said, "Hey, maybe I'm, don't write a book. I'll write make a film." And he said, "That's fine." So I just took that as a yes. That's what Jack Ma would've done take it as a yes and then go.
Rich Robinson:Forgiveness rather than permission.
Porter Erisman:Yeah. So I thought, "I'm going to do it." And then, after three years, I contacted Jack and said, "Hey, do you remember we mentioned this film? Well, I've actually made it now." I didn't interview anyone for it. I just made it in a way I didn't even have to contact the company, but it turned into this great adventure, because I just started showing it, and it was like I was living. The experience all over again. I went with Jack to Berlin, and he gave a talk to a room full of a thousand seats, but there are only like three people sitting in the seats. And when I showed my film, it was the same thing. I went to Hollywood, showed it at Man's Chinese Theater. There's 500 seats, but like three people came to see my film at this festival.
Rich Robinson:No, it's such a good film. I so enjoy it, and I make all my foreign students watch it. It's like such an excellent example of the zeitgeist and everything else.
Porter Erisman:Well, thank you for saying that. But I would've given up long right at that moment. But the inspiration I'd gotten from my experience at Alibaba had taught me not to give up. And so I said, "I believe in this. I don't really care if people don't know about it. This is the process." I started showing it, and the crowds got bigger, and I started figuring out what I was doing. And then Alibaba's IPO came in 2014. And of course everyone said, "Well, who can we talk to about this? And well, what about this guy who made a film?" And then it just led to this really fun adventure where I finally realized the goal. I wanted to share it with entrepreneurs around the world, and I ended up taking it all around the world, meeting, showing it to the co-founders of Toki Media before they were a big deal in Indonesia, and went to Nigeria and showed it to the Nigerian startup community in Legos, which was just getting started. And it reminded me just like Eye and Eye, back in 2000 and go to Berlin. So basically what you could see was that same thing that happened in China was beginning to take off in other countries, and China was the test case. China proved that the emerging market style of entrepreneurship could build companies that were even more valuable than the ones from developing countries. And so, it was fun to go around and share the story and talk about these issues, like how entrepreneurs in China operate. Because when you go to India or Nigeria, Columbia, the entrepreneurs there are so similar to the entrepreneurs in China.
Rich Robinson:Yeah. There is a tribe. There is like a self-select group who are, my peeps. And there are a lot of commonalities. Yes.
Porter Erisman:Yeah, you have a common language. Like, you can go to a conference in Bogota on startups, and immediately, we could all have a lot to talk about with people, right.
Rich Robinson:Wow. That's great. Excellent. Thanks for sharing that. Yeah. It's funny because I started the first chapter of the Entrepreneur's Organization, EO, which is the world's largest entrepreneur. And in '07, my buddy Jim James and I went to Dubai, on their dime because they were trying to talk us into starting the Beijing chapter. And it was like a hundred entrepreneurs from around the world, all in Dubai. And there's this great movie called fun movie called "Over the Rainbow." And it's based on this true story of when they made Wizard of Oz, they brought together all these, drawers and little people, right? And statistically it's such a low likelihood of being a dwarf that you probably never met another one. And then there's hundreds of them all together, just partying, and fighting, and hooking up, right. And just being like, "Woohoo." And these are my peeps, and, like, it was awesome. And that's how I kind of felt at EO, right. And to be able to go around the world and, like, talk to those tribes everywhere else, right? And that's what I hope to do with this book as well too. About the speed of China is that talk to entrepreneurial communities around the world and what can be extracted and learned from this Chinese startup ecosystem and just pace and pulse.
Porter Erisman:It's so relevant to them.
Rich Robinson:So then you actually took it up even another notch and wrote this incredible book. You finally got past that first page.
Porter Erisman:Well, it's like, I was living all these things I learned from Jack Ma. It goes back to when I was at Alibaba. I felt like I would describe what it was like working there. I would say, "Yeah. I don't know why I've survived here and other western managers haven't." I said, "When you first get here, you're flailing around, like in the water, splashing around, trying to stay up on the wave." And then over time it's this intuitive sense when you relax in the ocean it's much easier. And I was always thinking this. And then I started asking myself,"What was it about Alibaba?" And then I realized, it's like almost the Dow-West belief of just sort of going with the flow. And even though they may not know it, like, Jack Ma's really into Tai Chi, and he's influenced by all this. And that was his approach to entrepreneurship is just you don't have a plan. You go with it. And as new opportunities present themselves, you don't try to force it, you just go with the flow of the river. And that's what I did. So I didn't get my book deal when I was really, rigidly trying to get it. And then suddenly, when the Alibaba IPO was about to happen, I got an email from a publisher and they said,"Have you ever thought of writing a book about your time at Alibaba?" And I said, "Funny, you should ask. I have a proposal from eight years ago and I'll send it to you." Which is the exact opposite of how you think it would happen.
Rich Robinson:Yes. No. It actually is the exact opposite. You're supposed to send that out to 135 publishers, and they're all supposed to say "no."
Porter Erisman:Right. That's the story, and that was my story. But then it was just the more I was going with the flow and just following my film around like a bouncing ball and not trying to force things. So then I got that, and so I wrote the book. I wrote it in two months because it was just all in my head, all fresh. I didn't have to research because I knew it all and then when I went to New York to promote that. Then I also pitched my second book to them, which is about 6 billion. It's called "Six Billion Shoppers," about E-commerce in emerging markets, which is kind of like the sequel. So my first book was about China and Alibaba, and my second book was about e-commerce in other emerging markets. And so, it just all kind of led you could see eCommerce entrepreneurship spreading around the world at that time. And it was fun.
Rich Robinson:Wow. Fantastic. I did not know that you were able to write that book within two months. That's an extraordinary achievement. Nicely done.
Porter Erisman:Well, I had three sample chapters already, and that's the fact I had to write, to be honest, I was going to give up on it. I was getting ready to write the publisher, and then, I realized they're already selling it on Amazon. And so I said, "Oh crap." But it's just much better to write something when you have to do it than when you have forever.
Rich Robinson:No, you're right. And I got a coach last year when I was kind of in pandemic refugee in Bali, and I'm like, "I need to shift gears in what I'm doing next." And he's like, "This is what I do. I write the book until it's 80% done. And if I don't self-edit, there's four things, there's maybe three or there's maybe six." He's like, "I just do it," right? And I've had other authors on the podcast. And Shaun Rein was like,"Nobody really reads it anyway." I think people actually did read your book, but I think it doesn't matter. You're like, "Oh, I'm a best seller." Like, it's making art, there's not going to be so many Mona Lisas or bestsellers. It's really about sharing your thoughts with the audience so that there is a select group that will self-select.
Porter Erisman:Well, the challenge with business books about technology, or like e-commerce and emerging markets, is that it changes so quickly like a normal public publisher's timeline will be, so I think that's the key, making it evergreen as much as possible, but at the same time, it gets dusty quickly. But, I think the story of speed in China — I mean, this is something that can be distilled into some pretty evergreen themes.
Rich Robinson:Indeed. I think there are evergreen themes, and I think there's also like, a revision of the book in a year or two that can show, what's changed. And I think it's going to be a constant theme for quite a while, right? I mean, of course, as things scale and mature, then, speed does diminish. But I think there's going to be amazing examples of China speed in other markets around the world. So, Porter I really appreciate you taking the time, my friend. What's next for you? What makes you excited, besides your beautiful family in Tokyo?
Porter Erisman:Well, what's so funny is that it's like I'm always, by the time I'm like wrapping up, for the last year or so at Alibaba, I was thinking,"I've got to move on to something new." Actually, the party was great, but I wanted to move on to something new. And actually, now I'm just trying to once again pick those things that I'm passionate about. For whatever reason. It's like you can't really force it. And I have a idea for a novel. It's kind of startup related, that I'm pursuing. And then I have some, I want to get back a little to sort of adventure travel as much as it can allow, but you know, the beauty of having the chance we've all had to kind of reconsider our careers is that for better or for worse, certain things have dried up or in other case is like, my expertise is in e-commerce. Well, the things I predicted what happened in five years have all now happened because it had accelerated it. And so, I have some, I just wanna do creative projects that have meaning and fun and let me spend time with family. I know there's so many serial entrepreneurs out there, and I can totally understand that, just the joy of building startups, but somehow I'm not a serial entrepreneur in a .com phase
Rich Robinson:Well, as a serial entrepreneur and a guy who's worked with serial entrepreneurs, it's actually much more of a mental illness, where you have to suspend all disbelief and go into eating, chewing glass while staring into the abyss. But I'm really getting much more involved into like blockchain and NFTs, not just because, you know, NFTs are a hot thing. It's really about, like, I think there's this gigantic shift, like paradigm shift on disk to online to now unchain, and I think every time it's a 10 X, multiple evaluation. And I think, everything has been just a kind of like a bootcamp or just kind of a prep for what's going to really happen when everything is on blockchain around the world. So I think there's some incredible things that are going to be unlocked around that. But anyway, here I am turning, like I asked you, "What's next for you?" And then what I really want to do is talk about what's next for me. But anyway, enough about you. Let's talk more about me. No, I'm just kidding.
Porter Erisman:No, no, no. Let me tell you, my uncle has the best joke on this topic. First, I'm happy to have this discussion with you, but my uncle, at a party, he'll turn to someone and say like, "You know what? I'm tired of talking about myself. Why don't you talk about me for a while?"
Rich Robinson:That's why I have a podcast.
Porter Erisman:I'm tired of talking about.
Rich Robinson:Yes, indeed.
Porter Erisman:Well, it's fun. The thing that's amazing when I left Alibaba, I started going to film festivals,and I realized the filmmaking community is just as passionate and driven about filmmaking as we all are about .com. So every now and then I like to pick myself and drop myself in a totally new world, and try to catch that passion and see what else is out there.
Rich Robinson:Beautiful. Love it. Excellent. Hey, maybe I'll see you here in Bali, for a little travel adventure with the family. And all the best ,my friend. And thank you once again.
Porter Erisman:All right. Enjoy the Bali Dream down there. We all wanna join you.
Rich Robinson:Thanks, buddy.
Porter Erisman:All right. See you.