I first met Siqi Chen at a Lightspeed CEO dinner hosted by Jeremy Liew. We bonded over our mutual love of product design and fascination with customer engagement. Ever since, I’ve followed Siqi’s career from Zynga product lead to fast-pivoting startup CEO to VR executive. I love how Siqi’s ideas about vision and leadership keep evolving. This is a guy who’s always learning. Listen in and learn how this globally-minded entrepreneur is applying his hard-won innovation lessons to carving out a new category of location-based entertainment.
Check out the video here: https://youtu.be/55kMlsfoEq8
I first met Siqi Chen at a Lightspeed CEO dinner hosted by Jeremy Liew. We bonded over our mutual love of product design and fascination with customer engagement. Ever since, I’ve followed Siqi’s career from Zynga product lead to fast-pivoting startup CEO to VR executive. I love how Siqi’s ideas about vision and leadership keep evolving. This is a guy who’s always learning. Listen in and learn how this globally-minded entrepreneur is applying his hard-won innovation lessons to carving out a new category of location-based entertainment.
Check out the video here: https://youtu.be/55kMlsfoEq8
Intro: [00:00:01.6] From Silicon Valley, the heart of startup land, it's Getting2Alpha. The show about creating innovative, compelling experiences that people love. And now, here's your host, game designer, entrepreneur, and startup coach, Amy Jo Kim.
Amy: I first met Siqi Chen at a lightspeed CEO dinner hosted by Jeremy Liu, our mutual investor.
We bonded over our love of product design and fascination with customer engagement. Since then, I followed Siqi's career from Zynga product lead to fast pivoting startup CEO to VR executive. I love how Siqi's ideas about vision and leadership keep evolving. This is a guy who's always learning.
Siqi: The role of market feedback is to hone a vision that inherently does have long term product market fit, and you're doing your best to build a product that as quickly as possible, as efficiently as [00:01:00] possible, capture that market that your vision implies. But if your vision is wrong and there may not be a market in the first place, all the market feedback in the world is going to tell you everything that you're doing is wrong.
And so you have two choices, you can adjust your vision or you can keep on slogging away at it. And I feel like A lot of the time we end up spending many, many years on a vision that may not have any demand in the first place. Before product market fit, we should be a lot more willing to pivot the vision entirely.
Amy: Listen in and learn how this globally-minded entrepreneur is applying his hard won innovation lessons to carving out a new category of location based entertainment.
Welcome Siqi to the Getting2Alpha podcast. Thanks for having me, Amy. I'm so thrilled to get to hang out with you for a while. Any day I get to hang out with you is a good day. So to give, uh, everyone, [00:02:00] uh, just a quick day-in-the-life glimpse, your, your current work life is pretty interesting and crazy.
What are you doing on a typical day? What, who are you interacting with? What kind of decisions are you making? What does your work day look like?
Siqi: Uh, yeah, it is probably the most varied, uh, job I've had in a while. So I'm President Chief Product Officer of a VR company called Sandbox VR. So, on any given day, I might be at the store looking at our operations.
Uh, I might be taking meetings with the partners that we work with, either uh, studios or investors or influencers who might come to our store. And we're a Hong Kong based company. So I find myself, uh, spilling my time between two different countries. So it's a ton of fun and, uh, it's definitely the most fun job I've ever had.
Amy: Let's rewind it back. How did you turn into the person that's running this company now and having these pretty amazing days? [00:03:00] Where, where did you first get started in design and tech and startups? And what were the really key pivot points along the way that affected your career?
Siqi: Yeah, I mean, I think it goes all the way back to probably college.
I think the first thing I read that really influenced what I wanted to do and what I felt passionate about was probably uh, Luke Wroblewski, who currently works at Google now. But, um, he had a blog and a portfolio at lukew.com and it was such a beautiful portfolio. It was the first instance where I saw like really high level property design.
And so I'm an engineer by training, um, and throughout college I was working for NASA JPL as a machine vision engineer. But what I found myself being super passionate about in my spare time is, are these product management, product design blogs. So that's how I got started. So I was working at a company called [00:04:00] vo.com, uh, which was way back in 2006, 2005, where, when YouTube first started, and it was a site much like YouTube.
And so I find myself, I found myself there as an engineer. One day I, uh, was exporting some data from the database and, uh, all of a sudden the site went down. I didn't really connect it to until a couple of hours later when I found out that it was because I was exporting that data and then from that point on, they, uh, made me a product manager.
So it stopped ruining and taking down the site.
Amy: That's great. Failing upwards.
Siqi: Yeah. So that was my first product management job. And that's kind of, uh, what led me to starting my own thing, uh, moving to San Francisco and, uh, all the way to where I am today. But that was a genesis.
Amy: Wow. So what were some pivot points?
I know you're a serial entrepreneur. So take us through an overview of some of the companies that you've started and the lessons that you [00:05:00] learned through that.
Siqi: Um, so I moved to San Francisco 2007, um, for a job at a search engine called PowerSet. At around the same time, um, the Facebook platform, where developers could start making applications for Facebook, uh, was first developed, uh, was first launched.
So, When that platform came out, I had this idea of making, um, games, uh, that are only possible on a social environment. So, one of the first games I made was a game called Mafia, and it's kind of like Werewolf where, uh, you pretend to, uh, one person is a killer and you're trying to figure out who, and so there's a lot of diplomacy and socializing and talking involved.
And that kind of blew up, like, really quickly. The Facebook platform was amazing for user acquisition. So, you know, it got up to about a hundred thousand users in a few days. And at that time, uh, just from the ad revenue alone, I was making about 3, 000 a day while I was still working at, um, the day job. So when that [00:06:00] happened, I decided to do it full time.
And I applied to Y Combinator, uh, with that product, um, with a different team. And so I was in Y Combinator for about two weeks, uh, with two different companies, one in Y Combinator, one wasn't. The one, the company that wasn't a Y Combinator had another co-founder, his name was Alex, he's currently VP of product Reddit.
And Alex didn't want to join Y Combinator because we were doing quite well. So, um, the other company that was in Y Combinator was brand new. We had no product. And so we, I ended up dropping out after two weeks and started a company called Serious Business. And that was my first company. We built a game called Friends for Sale.
And the idea behind that game was, Facebook is about mapping the social graph and in graph theory, you have nodes and you have edges and the edges can have weights, which represents the value of the different relationships between the nodes. And so I thought, wouldn't it be interesting to add weights to the social graph that Facebook is mapping out?
So if you're [00:07:00] friends with Michael Jordan, that has a different value than if you're friends with some random person. Um, so we added a market economy on top of the social graph and that became friends or sale. And that. Was really large. I think we reached just about everyone on Facebook at around two months after we launched.
And we had a, it was a second largest app on the platform. And from that, we got some investor interest and Jeremy Liu from Lightspeed, who we both know, reached out and he said hey, I think this is interesting because I think this is the first example of a social game And we think social game gaming is gonna be a big market in the next couple of years.
And we didn't think ourselves as a game company. We thought ourselves as more of a social company. But he said we'll give you five million dollars. We've made games, and we said we will build anything you want for five million dollars. Ran that company about two years, I grew to about 40 people, we were casual, positive and profitable. Um, but, you know, Zynga was much, much larger after the success of Farmville and a bunch of other games.
And so two years later, um, I sold that company to [00:08:00] Zynga, where I joined as, um, first as the Director of Product for a studio, and then I became Head of Product for the company. And then I moved to China to run their China business.
Amy: Where in China did you move?
Siqi: Uh, I moved to Beijing, so I was there for a year.
Amy: Wow. Wow. And then what happened?
Siqi: Yeah, so, uh, you were there for two years, um, I, uh, met my wife at a gaming conference and she moved to China too, so we ended up getting married a couple of years later. So I left Zynga after two years and I wanted to start another company and I didn't quite have an idea, which I would not recommend doing if you don't have a cool idea you're passionate about.
So, yeah. Alex and I, who is my co-founder for my first company, we ended up both leaving, and we were spending many, many weeks and months trying to figure out what we were passionate about, what ideas that we, uh, what were interesting ideas, and we found that writing these ideas on a whiteboard was not a really great use of [00:09:00] time, and wasn't a really productive way of finding a cool thing to do, so what we ended up doing is we just stopped doing that.
And we started just building. So we just started coding and building these prototypes forever. We're passionate about. And pretty soon after two weeks, we came up with something interesting, just exploring what was possible with the iPhone. And we found that, okay, you can act, you can have background location access to the iPhone, so you can keep track of where you've been and even access all the photos.
So you can see what things look like at those places that you've been. We built this prototype where we organize these photos and we have background location on. So every place that you go, that you stop at. We're able to figure out, okay, where did you go and label it? So if you went to the gym, it'll say 24-hour fitness.
If you went to a bar, it'll say, uh, the Green Mile. And when I showed that prototype to Alex, he observed that it's interesting because he has, he keeps a journal. And, uh, the journal has a standard format. It's time, place, who, and what he did. And [00:10:00] he realized that we could automate most of that journaling work through an iPhone that's always with you.
And so we started working on this product called Hay Day, and the idea was it's an automatic journal that keeps track of every place that you've been, every person that you've been with, and uh, attaches to photos and in a really smart way. And so we were working on that for about a year and a half. Um, we raised, uh, some funding from Google Spark and, uh, lot of other people. And we launched it in late 2013. And at launch it was, I mean, hugely successful.
Apple really loved it. We had a couple of million downloads. We're globally featured as an editor's choice app. And what we found over the next few months is it was really difficult to acquire users for a private product that was free, right. With a social product, things are public, but because a journal is inherently a private thing, we found that generally people didn't show other people the app, um, there wasn't a mechanism to invite and so growing the product was a huge challenge.
So after working [00:11:00] on it for a total of three years from start to finish, we found ourselves running low on capital and we needing to pivot. And, uh, one of the ideas that we had in our back pocket was to, um, take Friends for sale and everything we learned from it and move it to Twitter and design it for mobile.
So the idea is what if you could be the one and only fan of Justin Bieber, um, instead of 30 million people following Justin Bieber, you know, you can trade Justin Bieber as sort of a collectible card, um, and be the one and only superfan of him. And there, thereby you can get more attention from your saver.
So that was called Stolen and we launched it at end of, uh, 2015, actually new years of 20, 2016. And, uh, that was probably the most viral. Most successful by metrics, uh, product I've worked on. It was also the most short lived. So, you know, but day one, we had 500 users. Day two had 5, 000. Day three had 50, 000.
And by day four, we were trending worldwide on Twitter. [00:12:00] Celebrities were on it. Jack Dorsey out in Bain. They were all playing it for hours a day. And two weeks later, we were pulled off the app store by more or less an act of Congress. So we were completely out of money then. And I ended up selling that company to Postmates, where I joined as VP of growth.
Amy: And then what happened?
Siqi: At Postmates, uh, I was VP of growth. Um, I started as actually, um, the head of consumer product. Um, but what I found is that You know, for such a large company, there was a lot of opportunity to get better data, more accurate data and to be more data informed in product. So we started the growth engineering team off of that thesis.
So we started validating all of the things that users do as they go through our system, trying to figure out what the opportunities are. And we were able to create some pretty good business results for Postmates. Increasing, you know, um, new user conversion to first job by something like 50%. We were able to reduce the cost of, uh, our user acquisition by [00:13:00] half.
And we're able to more efficiently spend our marketing dollars in the form of discounts by targeting different users with different messages. So, really basic blocking and tackling things. But, um, it was really interesting because, I never got to optimize things that was something that was already successful at that scale and Postmates.
It was a really good fit given the experience we had doing this at Zynga, and I'm bringing it to a new organization that wasn't as experienced and sophisticated with being super data driven.
Amy: And such a, such a different role for you.
Siqi: It is a very different company, right? We move bits, we move atoms, right? Like there's people out in the real world fulfilling these deliveries.
And I've worked on nothing but digital products. Um, but in terms of a different role, I mean, at Zynga as head of product, Zynga was a very, very data driven company. Um, and so that's what we spend most of time doing. I mean, I mean, we, we actually say, you know, in hindsight, this is true. I can say, say this now that I've [00:14:00] been, not have been Zynga.
I've been, I left Zynga for such a long time, but it was almost more of a product and data company than it was a games company.
Amy: Absolutely.
Siqi: Yeah. And you can see
Amy: that from the outside looking in.
Siqi: Totally. And that's reflected in the game. And I think, you know, if you look at the trajectory of Zynga, you know, in an environment like Facebook, where you can actually win just by being very good at that, they were very successful.
And once the mobile pivot happens, um, it got a lot more challenging because being good at that part wasn't enough. You actually have to build very fun and very good games. And, uh, they were behind on that skill set. So yeah, I took a lot of the growth and data driven, um, experience to Postmates. And so that ended up being a great fit.
Amy: How did you get from Postmates to Sandbox VR?
Siqi: Yeah. Um, so that's, it's, it's really random. Um, our founder and CEO, Steve Zhao, I've known him for, uh, 20 years. We went to college together. We're in the same fraternity, and he's been building casual games in [00:15:00] Hong Kong for many, many years. So he runs a company called Blue Tea Games, and he was Big Fish Games, which is a large casual games publisher.
It's their largest developer. So he makes the best selling hidden object games that they have. You can buy his games at Target. And a couple of years ago, he calls me, I think two years ago now. Yeah. He calls me with this new idea for a new company and he tells me, he asked me if I knew about escape rooms.
And I said, yeah, I know what they are, but I haven't played it. And then he says, okay, so I want to do escape rooms, but with VR. And I literally said, that is probably the dumbest idea I've ever been pitched. But I invested in the company anyway, a very small amount because I liked Steve. I thought he was a great business person.
He took that money. He raised about half a million dollars, took that money and, uh, ended up spending even putting his own money. I think it was like 300,000 dollars. And after a year and a half or so, he launched, uh, the store, um, it was an actual physical [00:16:00] store in Hong Kong. And he called me two weeks later and he said, Hey, Siqi, you know, so we launched a store and we're sold out for the next six months, morning to night, seven days a week.
And I was like, wow, okay. But in the back of my mind, I was also thinking, look, you're going to do a VR thing in Hong Kong and there's probably, people are going to try it, right? And so maybe that's why it's so popular and we'll see if it lasts. So in August, um, I was on a trip for Postmates, um, to Hong Kong, and I tried it myself, and I was completely blown away by it.
I could not believe how good it was, and I also couldn't believe it was technologically even possible to build an experience. So basically, for less than a million dollars, what Steven and his team built, um, in about less than a year was the closest thing to a holodeck from Star Trek that exists. So it was a multiplayer experience and it uses not just normal VR, but it uses the sort of the same technology that movies use for motion capture [00:17:00] to capture your entire body and that of all the other players inside the same experience.
And so you can shake people's hands, you can high five them, You can walk, crouch, jump, run, and it all looks correct in this open space, untethered by wires. And, um, it's a, they, we all, they also built a 30-minute long experience. Triple-A quality with a story, with action, and it was just so, so fun, absolutely blown away by it.
And pretty much that night, I talked to Steven, like, I want to join and help make this successful. And that's how I joined the company.
Amy: Wow. Wow. And you just had some wonderful things happen for the company.
Siqi: Yeah, yeah. So, um. You know, we managed to get Kanye West to come over, which is great. Um, he tweeted about it and that was great.
And, um, yeah, so that's the main thing we're growing everywhere. We have six locations now in four countries. [00:18:00] And we're expanding pretty quickly.
Amy: That's amazing. That's so cool. You know, one of the really interesting threads in your story is growth versus deep engagement. You know, you worked on many products and learned a lot about those trade offs working at Zynga.
You saw some of your products be extremely rapid growth. And then, you know, go away and now you're doing this product, that's a deeply engaging experience and it's not, it's very different than some of the viral growth opportunities that are all digital you've done before and it's a real evolution. How do you bring all your growth skills, all that deep, deep experience you have to this product that's physical and that has, you know, that's location-based?
How are you making that translation?
Siqi: I feel like I'm not breaking too much of it. So, I mean, there's, there's a basics, right? I mean, if you abstract out what growth is, um, you're trying [00:19:00] to make numbers go up, right? And the way you make numbers go up is you break it down into these components of driving numbers, whether it's retention or new user acquisition, and in turn, each of those numbers can be broken down into core components.
So that's a relatively universal framework for any business. So in the case of Sandbox VR, we have new users, new guests coming in all the time. And most of our guests are new customers. There's a lot of tourists. And so first, you map out all of the sources of new customers coming in, just like any other product.
You figure out how many people are coming back and why they're coming back. You figure out what channels they are using to get other people to join, whether it's word of mouth or sharing the viral videos that we generate in SandboxVR or through advertising. We try to map it as in completed form as possible.
And the one of the great advantages of having physical stores is you can actually have much better data. [00:20:00] So we can actually and we what we do is, uh, when people come to our store, we actually can ask them how they heard about us. Uh, we can ask them how, how willing they are to share different, uh, types of videos that we might, uh, be testing, and that's a huge advantage.
One of the blind spots you have when you're working on digital products is you look at the numbers, but you don't talk to your users. And here, uh, the opportunity to talk to your, your, your users is massive because you can just hang out at a store, watch people come in, actually meet them, talk to them, see how they respond to the experience itself, um, which is a huge advantage.
But I think, uh, growth is a pretty universal skill set if you can abstract out a framework sufficiently.
Amy: That's so helpful. I love it. So you've been working at the forefront of innovation for a while, you know, your stories about jumping on the Facebook platform and coming up with a game that could only be realized on that platform, et cetera.
What do you [00:21:00] wish? That you'd known about innovation years ago that, you know, now after having all these experiences, what would you love to be able to whisper in the ear of yourself 10 years ago?
Siqi: Oh, I mean, that's really tough. I mean, because when I look at 10 years ago, 15 years ago, yeah, it's about 10 years, 11 years since I first started a serious business, but I mean, I don't know that there's anything that I could have said that would have made a difference in the sense that like 10, 11 years ago, I didn't really know anything, right. And I was reading a lot about things to do, but this realization that experience really does make a difference. Knowing what works, what doesn't, how to lead and manage people.
I mean, a lot of this, this does come with experience and doing things wrong. Um, and I think that's kind of like been a personality trait of mine is like, I try to read as much as I can, but the best way [00:22:00] that I found for me to learn is actually doing it and doing it wrong.
Amy: Yep. Making mistakes.
Siqi: Making mistakes.
Yeah. And I feel like. If I go back in time and I could say 100 things I've learned over the past 10 years, but one, I don't think the me of like 10 years ago would have listened to it. And two, even if I did, I wonder if that would be better, right? Because I value all like all of the really big mistakes on every dimension, whether it's product, leadership, business that I've made.
And I think a lot of that has made me a better person today.
Amy: Totally. Are there some mistakes when you look back? Are there any particular things that you now see as mistakes or less than optimal that were just incredible learning experiences when you look back on them?
Siqi: Yeah. I mean, the first company, Sirius Business was, uh, probably, I mean, there's a series of mistakes.
One is, you know, we were a games company and we really didn't know how to make games. And so I feel like a lot of [00:23:00] what I took away from that company is once you raise money and you get press and you have the first metric success, it's really easy to feel like you know more than you actually do. Um, and I feel like we, we did make that mistake of, okay, like we have this successful game, we have people who really love it and are willing to invest in us.
So we were probably good at this and we forgot that we're actually not, that this is the first game we've ever made. And so I think the biggest mistake is we weren't humble enough to, uh, really be realistic. And I think once I joined Zynga and I learned everything that they knew and how they operated.
It was became extra clear just how little we knew. And, you know, the first couple of weeks at Zynga, I was like, okay, I mean, no wonder they're, they're beating everybody. I mean, they were just way more aggressive, way more diligent, way more thorough on optimizing for the business. [00:24:00] Uh, another thing is, You know, when you're building your team is in, it's really important to have diversity of thoughts and experiences.
And so, you know, when you first start a company and a team, it's really tempting to, uh, find people like yourself, uh, personality wise and skillset wise. And uh, what you need in the team is people who are willing to see things differently, uh, and bring a different set of things to the table. And that's something that took me a little bit too long to learn as well.
But there's so many things.
Amy: Those are two great things. Yeah, I, uh, I can relate to those struggles very much. So one of the things that a lot of the guests we have here on the podcast talk about, and then I, my clients really wrestle with is this weird, almost paradoxical balance as an entrepreneur that you need to have between vision and iteration.
And between really knowing, Ooh, this is [00:25:00] what we want to build. And then that really disciplined focus, listening to market feedback and iterating with the market feedback. How do you wrestle that one to the ground or how does that come up for you? And do you also, as an investor and an advisor, you know, to other entrepreneurs, do you see people wrestling with that paradoxical thing?
Cause what I see is that the very best entrepreneurs have that blend. They don't just not have any vision, but they also are really aggressive about market feedback and shaping their vision.
Siqi: Yeah. I mean, I, that's probably the thing I struggle with most. My current thesis is vision is kind of about long term product market fit.
And that should be maintained, but visions can also just be wrong. The role of market feedback is to hone a vision that inherently does have long term product market fit. [00:26:00] And you're doing your best to build a product that as quickly as possible, as efficiently as possible, capture that market that your vision implies.
But if your vision is wrong and there may not be a market in the first place, all the market feedback in the world is going to tell you everything that you're doing is wrong. And so you have two choices, you can adjust your vision or you can keep on slogging away at it. And I feel like a lot of the time we end up spending many, many years on a vision that may not have any demand in the first place.
Before product market fit. We should be a lot more willing to pivot the vision entirely. So I think to really maintain a strong vision, you really need to have a vision that has a ton of long term demand in the first place and one that works. So I think there is a thing as like vision market fit, as much as there is product market fit.
And some visions are just are wrong.
Amy: Yeah. Figuring out which ones are the winners is part of the job of that early iteration. [00:27:00]
Siqi: Yeah. That's right.
Amy: As you look ahead toward what you're now growing and building with this new challenge and you look back on your career and what you've learned at each of these entrepreneurial experiences, what do you feel is your superpower as a creative person, your sweet spot?
Like what really lights you up?
Siqi: I like numbers. I like optimizing numbers. I just like optimizing things in general. That is definitely one of my superpowers. It's, uh, uh, optimizing processes, optimizing culture, optimizing growth or product, um, improving a core experience. I feel like I am a one to 100 type of person in terms of experience, but not as good of a zero to one person.
Um, I have very crazy ideas. Um, if you're going to take a product from zero to one, and I feel like oftentimes my core thesis around vision may be wrong. Or I, uh, I'm not diligent or thorough [00:28:00] enough in achieving that initial vision, but once something works, um, I'm definitely pretty good at making it larger and making it better.
And that applies not just to product, but to other aspects of management and business. Um, my other superpower is telling a good story. I'm able to take technology or a product and tell a compelling vision about what it looks like five years out and why it's important for the world. Yeah, those are pretty much my two superpowers.
And, uh, it turns out, uh, there is uh, those are valuable skills in the market.
Amy: Oh, yeah. Yeah. And especially when you're partnered with the right people and complimentary skills.
Siqi: Yeah, that's definitely true. I've definitely found that, uh, with this company in particular.
Amy: So what's inspiring you these days?
What are you seeing that's new and exciting that you're seeing? You know, drawing your inspiration and ideas from what trends or people or ideas are you [00:29:00] following?
Siqi: Um, I follow a lot of people on Twitter. I actually, my, in terms of, uh, just people who influence my thinking, I follow Naval Ravikant on Twitter and I ended up following everyone that he follows.
And my Twitter feed has become infinitely more interesting that way.
Amy: Awesome.
Siqi: So he's just, I, I, there's these people who are just original thinkers and, uh, I admire people like that who it's not easy to come up with an original thought or, or state a well known thought in a new and interesting way. And I think he's like probably the best person I know who, uh, who does that.
What's interesting out there? I mean, I feel like the cutting edge is always interesting. And I feel like that's kind of been a theme of my career, which is, you know, like I was the first developer on the Facebook platform, uh, fairly early on mobile, uh, obviously fairly early in VR. Um, I owned a DK1, DK2, I'm interested in AI, I'm interested in crypto, and I [00:30:00] think what I like about that is, I think it comes from almost like a point of laziness in the sense that, you know, if you're, if you're going to enter in a really established space, It takes a long time to get good at it just because it's been around so often and there's like a lot of people who are true experts.
But in a new space, everyone's an amateur, it's new to everyone and you're inventing the space as you go. And that's always interesting to me because, well, I mean, mostly because I'm just curious and I like the cutting edge, but also it ends up being, um, uh, financially meaningful because if it's a new and interesting space, no one's an expert at it.
And so, you know, I have an opportunity to become the expert.
Amy: That's such a great point. So one of the things that fascinates me about you is that you moved to China. You lived in Beijing and you now live in Hong Kong and China in the last, you know, a couple of decades especially has really risen up on the world stage as a place that everyone's [00:31:00] looking to as leading innovation.
You know, the dynamic has really changed. What do you see there, living there? How does that, how do things look different to you like as you come back to the U.S. and see how things are here versus being in China?
Siqi: So I lived in Hong Kong and interesting enough, Hong Kong is not that different. I mean, mainland China, you know, and China's, you know, Hong Kong is obviously a part of China, but a mainland China has been a different beast because mainland China for many, many years over the past decades has been behind economically, technologically from the rest of the world.
Um, and Hong Kong has been more or less lockstep over the past two or three decades, both economically and as a result, Hong Kong looks a lot more like the West than mainland China. But mainland China is, is, is incredibly more interesting and I spend a good amount of time there. What's interesting about them is, you know, obviously the rate of growth economically, it has been amazing.
And as a result of that, the combination of [00:32:00] growth and how behind they were, you know, two decades ago. It resulted in a really interesting dynamic where they skipped entire generations of technology. So, credit cards never happened in China. Desktop PCs basically never happened in China. We skipped desktop PCs and we went straight to mobile phones.
We skipped credit cards, we went straight to WeChat and QR codes for payment. And, uh, the dynamics of that have been incredibly interesting. So, you know, everyone knows about Ofo where you can rent bikes. But I was in Hangzhou, and they have a car with a QR code on the door, and you scan, and it opens up, and you can drive it.
It's like Zipcar with QR codes, which is incredible. In the, the, the KFC in China, they barely have fried chicken. They sell, like, kale salads. And you order through facial recognition by smiling and attach that you link your face to your WeChat account and automatically charges you at an automated [00:33:00] kiosk.
Um, you go to another restaurant and you use your WeChat phone to get in line. And once you're there, you use your mobile phone to order and it opens up a little app that has a menu there. Then you order online. Once you order on your phone, a waiter comes by, puts a little hourglass. Uh, a five minute hourglass on, um, your table and your food isn't there in the next five minutes.
It's free. Um, they wear QR code badges so you can tip them. It's a completely crazy different world there. Uh, and so, yeah, it's very, very, very interesting.
Amy: I love the way you describe that, you know, it's going to be fascinating to see where that leads. It's also data surveillance on steroids.
Siqi: Totally.
Totally. Yeah. The facial recognition technology is insane. They're, they're arresting these people who I think have warrants out for their arrest, um, because they went to a concert and they have these cameras at concerts and they picked out the one guy who had a warrant out for his arrest and kind of escaped in the crowd.
I mean, yeah, it's, [00:34:00] it's a really brave new world out there.
Amy: Seriously. And we're all along for the ride.
Siqi: Yeah.
Amy: It's so exciting to connect and hear about Sandbox VR, the stories you've got going. What's coming up? What's coming up for the rest of the year and in 2019? Give us a glimpse.
Siqi: Well, more experiences, more locations, uh, better technology.
So we've got a lot of announcements, um, coming up that we, I can't really talk about right now, but generally where this space is going, um, and where our product is going is. You know, if you go to one of our stores, it's a pretty good experience. I don't want to over promise it, but you know, if you tried all the other guys, I think you would like what we do.
But what's more interesting is over the next couple of years on every dimension of our product, things are going to get massively better, right? Like headsets are going to get better. Right now we have you wear a backpack PC and the graphic quality isn't as good as it could be and it's pretty heavy and in a few months you won't need [00:35:00] to wear the backpack anymore.
Um, the field of view and resolution of headsets will get better. Haptics will get better. And so, you know, our belief is that in a couple years, it's holodeck experience that you've seen in Star Trek. And with that, we can build an entire ecosystem around this, which is, we think is very analogous to movies.
And we think, you know, uh, VR is kind of the ultimate and final medium where, you know, every like incremental new medium, whether it's like the written word or texts, and then the spoken word, audio film, it's about increasing fidelity. And there's no better fidelity than actually being, becoming a person and being in a space.
And that's a medium that we're trying to build. And once we have enough location, we believe that this industry will be larger than movies.
Amy: How exciting. I can't wait to try it out. It's just over in San Mateo. I'm here in Berlin Games, so can kids [00:36:00] play as well?
Siqi: It is friendly for kids. I mean, there is, uh, some shooting and cartoon violence involved, but we do have, uh, our, uh, our minimum height requirement is about, it's, it's, uh, Four, four and a half feet.
So we just have a high requirement, not so much an age requirement.
Amy: Great. That's good for all of us to know. And we will link to all of those experiences so you can check them out in the show notes. Thank you so much for joining us today, Siqi, and sharing your great stories. Can't wait to check out the new things that you're up to.
Siqi: You bet. Thanks for having me.
Outro: Thanks for listening to Getting2Alpha with Amy Jo Kim, the shows that help you innovate faster and smarter. Be sure to check out our website, getting2alpha. com that's getting(number)2alpha.com for more great resources and podcast episodes.