The Asiabits Podcast

Ep. 12: He Left Apple to Fix China's Biggest Problem for Americans

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"I don't think that Shenzhen's manufacturing ecosystem will be replaced in the next decade. I don't think it's possible." - Joshua Woodard, The Sparrows

Josh grew up on the south side of Chicago, studied mechanical engineering at MIT, completed a Schwarzman Scholarship at Tsinghua, and spent four years at Apple managing iPhone and Mac camera production in Shenzhen. In April 2025 he quit to start The Sparrows, a manufacturing consultancy helping Western companies navigate China's supply chain.

In this episode:

  • Growing up on the south side of Chicago with a "black tiger mom"
  • Googling "best engineering school" at 12 and ending up at MIT
  • Schwarzman Scholars at Tsinghua: understanding Chinese history and business
  • 4 years at Apple China: Foxconn factories, iPhone cameras, millions of units
  • Leaving Apple and getting validated by the Gates Foundation
  • Business culture: stamps vs. signatures, relationships vs. lawsuits
  • Why Shenzhen's manufacturing won't be replaced in 10 years
  • America's 500,000 unfilled manufacturing jobs
  • "We're too fat to assemble iPhones"

About Joshua:
Joshua Woodard is Co-Founder of The Sparrows, a Shenzhen-based manufacturing consultancy. MIT mechanical engineering, Schwarzman Scholar (Tsinghua), ex-Apple Camera R&D. From the south side of Chicago.

Connect:
thesparrows.co

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SPEAKER_02

I don't think that Shenzhen's manufacturing ecosystem will be replaced in the next decade. I don't think it's gonna happen. I don't think it's possible. You know, we're too fat to assemble iPhones. That's not gonna happen. An issue that would have taken you a week to solve in America, you solve in a day here, because all the important players can be brought into the room, all the experts are here. There have been somewhere between 300 and 500,000 job vacancies in America in this manufacturing ecosystem. 300 to 500,000 that are just there already that we haven't been able to fill. And you want to bring more manufacturing jobs here. Who's gonna do it? You just made America one of the most hostile places in the world for immigrant labor. Americans don't want to do this job. Americans don't want to even cut their own grass. Who's gonna do this? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

They are smart minds, and everybody's like deep into hardware and hot and tech here in Shenzhen, which is also obvious. Like most of the reason why they come here is because it's so convenient to get to like all these manufacturers and suppliers you have in like a few distance um reach, right?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, no place like Shenzhen.

SPEAKER_00

Exactly. That's why one of our guests also told us if you want to build hardware, if you want to build your product, you have to come here, right? But that's also like one of the questions we get asked the most is how do I start? I mean, it's obvious when I came here, it's it's it still has some barriers, China. It's it's still close system ecosystem somehow, and it's always the question of how do I find reliable partners, right? How do I know I can trust this business? Yeah, um yeah, we we've helped so many startups already and um people to source products, but it's still hard to navigate, right?

SPEAKER_04

It is. I mean, we have so many people coming to us asking the same questions all the time. How do I find business partners? How do we do the contracts with them? How do we do the payments? And um, that's why we are very happy that we partnered up with World First, right, the sponsor of today's episodes, and they have this great system that solves a big, big problem payment. So Word First is originally a London startup, and uh they got acquired in 2019 by End Financial, which um is the mother of Alipay. We all know Alipay, right? So and they have this system now where they have 1.5 million businesses who are already inside the system, and if you do business with and in China, they help you to resolve a lot of your problems. So they have real-time payment, no hidden fees, and you can do it inside the ecosystem. So it is safe, it is reliable, and it's fast. So, um, if we have uh people watching this and they want to do business in and with China, we think World First is a really great choice, and we are very happy that they partnered up with us. So we put the link in the description if you're interested in doing safe, reliable business in China uh without any hidden fees. Word first is your choice number one, and you will find all the information in the description. Josh.

SPEAKER_02

Hey, we met you at a very Chinese time of your life, or yes, uh eight years into a very Chinese time of my life. How's it going?

SPEAKER_04

Good, good. So, what do you say to this trend that everyone is talking about China right now?

SPEAKER_02

We're like one or two years into this, right? Yeah, I think this really started like post-COVID era, like speed coming to China last year, like the TikTok refugees, like Xiao Hong Shu, like Xiahong. It's it seems like a continuation of that momentum. So, but it's weird, right? Because the American government is a in a very anti-Chinese time of their lives, but the American people are like, Oh yeah, I drink hot water now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's interesting. It is, it is interesting. Interesting to watch. Yeah, what do you guys think?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, I for me it's it's crazy because I've been living in China for 10 years, have been doing social media before, and I got a lot of hate just because I did videos about food or travel in China. It's like people hated China or people who talked about China just for no reason. Yeah, so this is very interesting for me to see the narrative change.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, when we came to China, it wasn't cool. No, it was not.

SPEAKER_00

I was just I was just jumping on that trend basically. No, and I wasn't a lot a lot of people reaching out to us uh in investment banking, also they're look seeking for buyers from China, and there was basically no access. And that was also the time when I feel realized okay, there's basically a trend. Like I yeah, hopped on that Xia Hong Shu trend as well. Yeah, yeah. And that's when when TikTok was banned for like 48 hours or 24 hours or stuff. Yeah, and then basically something changed and clicks in the mind of uh a lot of people when it comes to like okay, how do we see China? Yeah, um, and that's what also like one of the times when I like I have to be here on the ground and see what's actually really going on because you don't have any clue uh outside China what's happening here.

SPEAKER_02

The Xiao Hong Shu thing I think was especially um powerful because people from the states and people from China were talking to each other with no filter. Like there was no filter geopolitics or like American media, Chinese media was just like I eat rice. Americans like I like to eat hamburgers and they're sending each other pictures. I'm like, yeah, I don't know if that's ever happened before another social media platform, right? IG, you need a VPN if you're in China to get on there to do that. TikTok, there's like China version, mainland China version, and there's the rest of the world version. So every other platform is siloed in terms of like how these communicates communities can interact with each other. So yeah, the Xiao Hong Shu thing was just like they're colliding, there's no one stopping this. It was cool.

SPEAKER_04

And it actually is uh like a kind of a miracle that we are sitting here in Shenzhen right now because I suppose we grew up in the German countryside. You grew up on the south side of Chicago. Yeah. So how was that? Tell us about your your upbringing.

SPEAKER_02

Well, I grew up to a very loving family, so my upbringing wasn't as hard as it could have been, but it still was in um a part of Chicago people would probably avoid if they were to travel to the city. But yeah, you know, I mean, I think the thing that kept me from because uh in that type of neighborhood, a lot of what you see is like people end up, you know, joining gangs or violence or drugs or many things that people can do that are unproductive. My mom was a tiger mom, a black tiger mom. So she kept me in school, she stayed on top of me, didn't allow me to have sleepovers with my friends and like go to my friends' houses, maybe learn violin. She did she made me do a lot of stuff. So I think because of all the stuff she made me do, I uh she kind of put me on this track, on this track uh going towards engineering. Like I remember there are a lot of summers she would make me take like video game design classes in Northwestern or math classes at U Chicago. Like I'm like 10 or 11 years old, but she just wanted to ensure that I'm like you know being exposed to like what is possible. Uh so then by the time I was 12, um I remember my English teacher uh in middle school gave us the assignment of like create a brochure or like a college that you want to go to in the future, right? But I'm 12, like we don't go to college in America until you're 18. So I'm like, I don't I don't know anything about college, but what I did know is that I liked engineering, right? We like played Vlego Robotics back then. I loved those competitions. I knew I liked math and science. Math was always easy in school, and I'm like, okay, so if I like all these things, like maybe I'll just go to an engineering school. So then I just Google like what's the best engineering school, and then it said MIT. And then I'm like, okay, I'm gonna make my brochure about MIT and I'm gonna try to go there. So that was 12 years old, stops out of Chicago. Uh and then I think from there, it gave me kind of a direction to work towards, right? Like MIT is an absurd dream, right? I didn't understand that at the time, but I understand now it's like absurd. You just go. Um but even if I didn't make it, like I probably would have been fine, right? Like you shoot for the star and then you just end up at like Harvard or something. So yeah, yeah, that's good, really good foundation. Yeah, it was the hood, but I had a good foundation.

SPEAKER_04

Thanks to your tiger mom.

SPEAKER_02

Thanks to my tiger mom.

SPEAKER_04

And when was the first time that you found out oh the US is not the center of un of the universe? There are also other continents like Asia.

SPEAKER_02

A few things had to happen for me to get here. I think the first thing that had to happen was not believing that America was the best country in the world growing up. Like just knowing that like what America says is this. What my experience is it's very far from that. You know, there's all of this room for improvement that hasn't happened for a long time. So I think that happened when I was a lot younger, just seeing how my family interacted with the cops, with you know, other communities, just saying, you know, feeling like a second-class citizen in a country that we grew up in are very much from. Uh so that was a realization from a young age. And then and then uh when in high school, uh, we all went on this trip. Um I went to this magnet school in Chicago called Whitney Young. Um it's where Michelle Obama went. Uh it's her high school. So it's very well known. It's the best high school in Chicago. I would say. Uh but yeah, we went on this uh trip during our second or third year of high school to um to Europe. Just like a bunch of students traveling together, leaving a country for the first time. So we went to Barcelona, Madrid, and then Paris. And I think that was my first time really like being in Europe, like seeing something uh outside of like the American context. Um, I remember there was in Paris specifically, we went into this shop. Right. I'm just like, okay, I'm in Paris, so I should eat cheese and like eat baguettes, like French people, right? Yeah, the croissant, like do all French stuff. So I go in this like a grocery store. Um, so I'm picking up the croissant, I got my baguette. Like I go up to check out, and then this guy at the checkout, he looks at me, he's like says something in French. I'm like, I'm sorry, I don't, I don't understand. Then he's like, you Americans come to our country, you don't even speak our language. And and why do you call yourselves American anyway? You're from United States, you're United States people, and I'm just like, I I just wanted to buy bread, you know. So I think from that, it was a few things that uh became important to me. Number one, uh, if I ever do leave the states, I will be learning the language of wherever I go. Like, I don't like that guy in Paris. I'm like, I don't want to go back to Paris ever again. But you know, I don't also, I also don't want to be the American who only speaks one language, right? I don't want to have it that comfortable. As I I think that's I see a lot of my fellow countrymen do that. It's like there's so much more to the world. So yeah, I would say it's from those two things, right? Like kind of like seeing the bad sides of America and then like being yelled at by this French guy. I'm just like, okay. There has to be this change. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So then um I I started trying to learn Mandarin in high school, actually, but by the time I got to college, um, took it a lot more seriously.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. But how did you come up with like the decision? Okay, Mandarin is the is the language that I wanted to want to learn. Very pragmatic.

SPEAKER_02

So yeah, we have to all pick a language in high school. So at 14 years old, I was we had Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, French, maybe some other European languages there. Um but also during this time, um it was still Obama era. Um so US China relationships are still very positive. Um and then there were like increasing like investments and like buyouts and MA's coming from the China side and like acquiring American companies. Um and I think at that time my favorite movie was Inception, and then this Chinese holding company bought a significant significant portion of uh the company that produced Inception. So for me, I'm just like, whoa, the world is changing. The Chinese people own the company that made my favorite movie. Like, I gotta know what's going on. Uh, so that's why it was just kind of like a very practical move. Now I'm here. This actually wasn't in the plan, but it's cool. What was the plan? I thought, you know, so I studied mechanical engineering and basically minored in Mandarin at MIT. And I thought I would come to China. You know, I did the Swords and program at Qinghua University for a year, and then I thought I'd stay for two years, two to three years, like get some real on-the-ground experience, you know, work in the factories, work on my like technical Mandarin, and like I can bring it back to the States, move back to California, like somebody's gonna pay me a lot of money for all these things I learned. That's what was supposed to happen. I was supposed to leave in like 2021, and it's now 2026. So uh yeah, a lot has happened.

SPEAKER_04

So what was uh when was the first time you came to China?

SPEAKER_02

The first time I came to China was actually not 2018, but I think 2016. Um like January and February. I went with one of the professors, a theater professor from MIT, Professor Concisen. Uh she's like she was in China in the 80s, like um putting on some of the earliest uh theater productions of China's oldest um kind of theater and uh movie stars. Uh so she has all of these connections. Um so at that time we went to Shanghai Xi Jiu Shean, uh uh the Shanghai Theater Academy in Jing'an, and I was like learning Jingju, Beijing opera for two weeks and just doing all the all the motions and like just seeing like you know, it was shocking back then because I'm like seeing like the Jingan temple, which is like this beautiful, like Buddhist thing in the middle of like sprawling like tech, you know, infrastructure, malls, like 20-story buildings, and it's just like what in the world is going on? Like I, you know, in in our in the old worlds, right, in Europe and in America, right? Like cities tend to have a very consistent infrastructure, a language around how they're built, right? Most of Chicago, most of your European cities where you're from are built around the same time. So there's not not that shock of old temple next to huge 20-story mall. You don't see that in in America. So I was just like, wow, okay, this this is crazy. There's something going on here. And then when you get on the trains in Shanghai and it's just like it makes New York look small. It was overwhelming. Um, and then the the micropayments, and you know, it goes on and on. But I think that was the that was the shock, you know. That's kind of where I think the world is now of China. That was where I was in 2016. It's just saying, like, what is going on? This is so futuristic, this is crazy. Like, how does any of this happen? How is this working?

SPEAKER_00

I think that's where the world is now. Yeah, yeah. A lot of people that come here for the first time, they experience the exact same thing, but then like they go back and see, okay, yeah, it's it's a whole nother another world, but there's only a lot of like less less people that actually stay here and decide, okay, yeah, this is so this is so overwhelming what is happening here. I want to be part of that. Yeah. So how was was the beginning when you finished like the Beijing Oprah stuff?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, that was the beginning. That was kind of that eyes wide open moment. Because yeah, you you like read things like the New York Times, like liberal in the States, you read the New York Times probably. The way they talk about China is like they focus on the worst elements of it, which I we shouldn't get into right now. You know, it's it's always better to come and make your own opinions, these people themselves, and like uh, you know, from those relationships get an understanding of what this country is and what happens here. So, yeah, that experience with the Beijing opera ended in 2016 or 2017. Graduated from MIT in 2018, then came straight to China for the uh Tinghua Source and Scholars Program in Beijing. One year program. Yeah, so that was from 2018 to 2019. Living in Beijing, living in um uh Urauko, you know, Qinghua and uh Beijing University are right next to each other. They consider themselves like Qinghua is like the MIT and then Bei Da Beijing University is like the Harvard, so they're like in competition.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, yeah. Qinghua is one of the most famous or one of the top elite universities in China, and the Schwarzmann program is also very, very high-class program. A lot of people uh want to get in, but they just take a few every year, like a hundred or something. I'm saying like a couple of thousand people apply, right? So um, and and then you you have this strong network. We all know like Qinghua people, they stick together, like they they love each other the most. They just marry Qinghua people. That's what I heard. Um, so what uh in this year, when you are at the Chinese elite university, what do they teach you about how China works? Or what did you learn, or what was one thing that you said, okay, this is something that I took from there?

SPEAKER_02

I would say that the biggest thing I took from the program was just have a limited understanding of contemporary Chinese history, which I think is an important context as we're moving through the society, right? Like if we look at China over the last 120 years, basically in the early 1900s, there was like a boxer rebellion uh where like these countryside people were rebelling against Western influences, and then the Western armies from all the Western countries sit sent their armies in, killed a lot of people uh and then sued China for like millions of dollars, but then they oversued China. So then instead of giving the money back to China, they just created these scholarship programs. So a lot of the first Chinese scholars at MIT and Yale and Harvard came in in this time uh through these scholarship programs because the West massacred uh a lot of people. So then that's where we start to get like some of the earliest um moments of information and knowledge transfer about engineering concepts from places like MIT to places like Qinghua, which I think was established in 1911. So that's this is all happening in that time, right? The fall of the Qing dynasty is like 1911, I think, uh around that time. And then, you know, from there, like there's like the the warring era, you know, the I think the CCP starts in 1919, you know, but then you know, you've got uh Zhang Kai-shek, uh, who's kind of trying to create this nationalist party, all of this is happening at the same time, like the bubbling of China, like the lack of stability, the the famines and the wars, and then there's like a civil war, and then a world war breaks out on top of it, Japan invades, like a lot of stuff happens. Then we get to 1949, where now there's a new line of history, right? So when we look like from the West, we look at the way China behaves and we're like, that's so uh strict, that's so oppressive. Uh, there's no sense of privacy. But if you look at the last 100 years and how many times and how many people have died, you know, fighting for, you know, their version of what China should look like, fighting for their version of a stable country, you start to understand that, like, oh yeah, actually, maybe we should have uh cameras on every corner in a city of 20 million people, because things have happened here in the last 100 years that they don't want to happen again. Um, so from a historical perspective, you can understand why like the leadership would place such such a high standard on just observation, monitoring, and control of its citizens. Uh, as compared to the West, where like our last, at least America, our last major major conflict was uh that ended in 1865. That was the Civil War. Um, we haven't had an official major conflict since then within our own country. Um, so the priorities are different, right? So it's perspectives like that that when I see like an 8K camera in Shenzhen on the city streets that can like zoom into your car and zoom into the passenger backseat, or like during COVID, when somebody like somebody called my driver because I didn't have my mask on. I was like chilling in the backseat. I thought no one cared. Somebody called my driver and my driver told me to put my mask on. And I'm like, I'm not sure if there's a camera in the car somebody was looking at, or was it the 8k camera outside? Somebody saw me and they dealt with it. Uh without the understanding of history, right? I feel like, oh, this is repressive, this is terrible. Yeah. But with an understanding of history, it's like this is how they keep their society falling apart, you know, because it's it's it's been reinvented so many times in its history. Yeah. So that's what I got from Qinghua. No, but it's super interesting.

SPEAKER_00

Like most of the people that like whenever I go back to like Germany, they're all asking me, like, why would you go to China? Are you afraid? They're like doing whatever with your data, with your personal identity and stuff like that. I mean, I'm here not to commit any crime or whatever. I'm like here, I just want yeah, I just want to live. And if this is the cost that I have to pay for having a very safe life here, I'm more than willing to pay that.

SPEAKER_02

And I I can't speak to Germany, but I can definitely speak to the states. Like, our data is sold. Like, so it's a matter of do I want the American corporations to have my data or uh a Chinese government to have my data? I'd rather no one have my data, but this is the world we live in.

SPEAKER_00

So you kind of pick your poison, you know. It is. Um, as soon as you click the confirm button, whatever device you're using, and I mean, of course they're using your data. What a sure. What are you thinking about? Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Another thing about China is it's so big, it's so diverse. So wherever you go, a totally different lifestyle, totally different city. So you moved from Beijing to Shenzhen. Yeah. Why did you make this decision?

SPEAKER_02

Uh, I was looking at a lot of different job opportunities at that time. That was 2019. I think Swordsman Scholars program finished in June of that year. And I was looking at some things in Shanghai. There's like a LiDAR, like autonomous driving tech company in Shanghai. There's the Apple Watch team in Shanghai. There's Harman. Yeah, those guys. Um, they were based in Shenzhen. I really wanted to work for them. They they make the JBL speakers, the BNO speakers. Like company's dope, but they I did like seven interviews and they rejected me. Very angry.

SPEAKER_04

Uh and then they will regret when they see this podcast. I hope they regret it.

SPEAKER_02

I hope they deeply regret. Um and then there was a small design company, and that's where I ended up going. I didn't I love Shanghai. Shanghai is a lot of fun, but number one, the ecosystem I think is more focused on business operations, capital moving back and forth, maybe automobile, it's not as focused on consumer electronics. So for the things I was trying to do, engine felt like a better place. The other problem about Shanghai is that you can go there and never learn Mandarin. I think one of my goals uh from my early 20s was was to like just embrace myself in an environment where I'd be forced to learn. Um was even after, you know, three years of college study at MIT and then one year at Qinghua doing basically classes every week, it was still like extremely difficult to communicate with taxi drivers, like terrified to pick up the phone. Like, please don't call me. Like, I'm just I know this feeling. I know this feeling. Do not call me. Um, so I I just wanted that foundation, right? Um, Shanghai would have been too comfortable. I know that. So Xinjiang was just kind of like it's a it's a migrant city, right? I don't need to speak Cantonese. You know, I go there, everybody's moving from all over the place, everybody's here to make money, to hustle, uh, to build their lives. Uh, and everyone speaks Mandarin. So that seemed like a good fit. Yeah. Well, that's why I picked Shenzhen, um, ended up at a small design firm for the first year and a half, where I was basically working as a mechanical engineer and project manager. So kind of mechanical engineering side, helping to design like the enclosures, um, the internal architecture and design, like enclosure design for a product. So, which is to say, like a smartwatch, for example, like my role would be like building this, uh, building the smartwatch, then you're on the metal enclosure, and then maybe like the ceramic um outer face, uh building that on the 3D software on a computer first, uh, then uh dictating, okay, the PCB goes here, the battery goes here. Uh, this is where the pogo pin goes. Uh, this is how much clearance there has to be, like, between the pogo, like the internal PCB pogo pin to the external pogo pin that's like delivering the power. And then, you know, it's a lot of coordination back and forth between like the PCB designer uh who's gonna be, you know, you have to give them their tolerances or like this is your this is the area, this is how much room you have to design a PCB, work within that. So that was fun. So one had is like mechanical engineering, then the other had is like project management. So it's like, okay, these clients have like a three-month timeline. They would like us to basically do a sprint and get two prototypes out of this within that time. So then what needs to happen within those three months? Uh, right. So we break it down by teams like the firmware, electrical, mechanical engineering teams, like maybe there's a supply chain manager who's like doing component sourcing, batteries, and stuff like that. All these teams have their objectives that we have to get to, have to accomplish to get to one prototype working. And we do that like three or four times, and then maybe we get to something that we can actually sell, you know. So that was the first year and a half in Shenzhen. It's just working on a really wide range of products for for foreign clients. From, you know, there's a French product, it was like a huge like multi-point touch screen. So it's like like imagine like digital monopoly or like a PlayStation in like the form factor of a board game. Yeah. So you can like put pieces on it, it's sensing where the pieces are. That was fun. Uh, we did a VR commercial VR product where it's like a VR headset that you hold on your hand. We did smart rings, smart watches, electronic chopsticks. It was uh there was, I think, a YouTube influencer who wanted, I guess he like made his own chopsticks and then went to Japan and like the chopsticks have a time of flight sensor. Basically, like uh so when you uh this it's like there's a handle and then there's chopsticks and like they're attached to two big gears. So once that time of flight sensor gets within a certain distance, the uh these chopsticks automatically close and then pick that thing up.

SPEAKER_04

Um good for Lawai, huh? Yeah, good good for law, so cannot use it.

SPEAKER_02

I suppose or they can just learn how to use chopsticks. For children, right?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, cute things that you put at the end of the chopsticks for children when they when they learn. Yes.

SPEAKER_02

So it was the Q project. Uh yeah, and that was that was the first.

SPEAKER_04

And then then you joined Apple, right? So yeah, we all know that Apple wouldn't exist or Apple wouldn't be as successful as they are now without China, yeah, without the supply chain in China. So I guess for a lot of foreigners, number one, it's uh goal to work for a big corporate like Apple or Google, one of these uh huge uh corporates, and then working for them in China seems to be like uh jackpot. So a lot of people would think that's a great thing. So, how did the the process go? You we we you told about like it's very hard to get in into Apple, right?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I think that was nine interviews.

SPEAKER_04

Nine interviews, it's crazy. I cannot imagine that. Like I haven't been in corporate for 20 years now, but how are they getting so crazy? Like, how do people even do it? Like going through then you're at interview number eight, and then you spend like um at least like a week on on preparation, a week of your lifetime, and then I said, Oh no, sorry, we're not sorry. So why why it's getting out of hand?

SPEAKER_00

No engineering is also the case in investment banking. You sit there for five hours straight doing an interview and then you come back for the next round, or maybe not.

SPEAKER_04

Crazy.

SPEAKER_02

But I will say the the good thing about Apple. Um, and I I think it's something they do across um you know, across their different companies around the world, it's that they the culture fit is important for them, right? So there are nine interviews and it is exhausting, but it's basically you like talking to all your pot your future potential teammates and then just getting an understanding of like, are you fitting in? Like, what's the vibe? Can we work together? Can we like do we have the same vision on how we want to build something? It's uh it's uh yeah, I think the earlier interviews are like, you know, do you have potential? Do you have the capacity? Like, do you like are you technically capable of doing this role? And then the latter ones are like, do we hate you? But like once you get through all of these nine, then you know, I feel like Apple, it's very hard to get fired from because they it's a company that focuses on developing its talent, at least what I've seen in Apple China. I don't want I don't know what they do in California, but in Apple China, they focus on developing your talent. Uh, which is to say, right, like maybe you didn't have a as good of a performance as you wanted to have in one year. Like you work with your management, you guys come up with a plan, work with your team, come up with a plan and then to improve. Um, right. I think the people that I've heard get fired from Apple, like are like trying to like resell things that like they got with a company discount or like selling company secrets, like doing crazy shit. Like, unless you're doing crazy shit, people don't really get fired. So it's I I like that part about the company culture, like it's it's big on growth and development and like driving towards a common goal, um, which is surprising and good. So you were there working there for three years, four years. Oh, okay. Yeah, from 2021 to 2025.

SPEAKER_04

And why did you decide decide to leave?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I mean, so the job itself, I was working as a um project manager, um, kind of overseeing the production of uh iPhone and Mac cameras um and like the Shenzhen ecosystem. So on a daily basis, I would go to uh factories in Dongguan or in Longhua or Longan and like meet with these project teams, and then we get together and we do quick scenes on like what our projection production targets are for a given day or a week or a month. Um so we're kind of our role was like getting the factories from like the RD phase of where we're trying to figure out if these cameras can work in a future model or not, getting them already all the way down to MP phase where it's like, okay, now we're making millions of them. Now the factory has to run at full capacity. So yeah, as a project manager, like we're basically just on-the-ground firefighters, right? So if there's like any issue with regards to this factory production run, so human resource, uh design file related, process related. So that could be maybe it's like there's like a machine that dispenses glue on a production floor, and like that glue dispensing, like it's not following the right pattern, and that's like affecting the ceiling of the camera, right? And then it has all these trickle-down impacts uh on the actual reliability of the entire product, right? Maybe it's a process related thing, or maybe it's just an even deeper technical issue. Uh, maybe it's a supply chain issue because like the product was supposed to, this upstream component was supposed to arrive yesterday, but now it's arriving a day from now. Who do I yell at? Right, like so these are like these all fall to us as like the engineering project managers. So uh it was a lot of fun. It was a really fun job. Uh, met a lot of great people. Why did I leave? I wanted more, and I felt like things at Apple were moving slow. I felt like the things at Apple and particularly Apple China move slower than even in California. Really? Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Um this is like very interesting to hear because normally things move much more speed.

SPEAKER_02

Well, I think it's the corporate effect, right? Where it's like if you work for a large corporation, the further you are from the centers of power, like where that um the leadership, where the C-suite sits, the further you are from where they sit, um, the slower you can progress. Sure. Right. Because it's harder. A lot of corporate work is like uh there's doing your job, and then there's making it look like you did your job, right? There's your responsibilities to ensure your your job function is done, and then there's visibility. So like everyone can see you doing it and they acknowledge like you're important, we're gonna give you more stuff, right? There, there's a lot to that game. And if you're like on the other side of the world, away from Tim Cook, how how do you create that visibility for yourself? So I just felt like at Apple China, like um, it just moved really slow, you know. And like I if I maybe if I was like Chinese or like if I was more local and my family was here, and like maybe there'd be a compelling case for staying there for 10 or 20 years, but I'm a foreigner from the south side of Chicago, in Chen Gen working at Apple. I'm not staying here forever. You know, there's there's gotta be there's gotta be another way to play this to make you know a bigger impact to do something else interesting.

SPEAKER_00

So all these connections you made that uh the factories you you were yelling at is are now companies that you were working with, or like no, absolutely not.

SPEAKER_02

Um no, uh those companies are like Foxconn. And yeah, I can't, yeah. We we're the the the the the clients at work with now are not at the scale where we are talking to Foxconn yet. Um but I will say though, that's been the really cool thing about working at Apple, and then even the design job I had before that is like over the last seven years, I've been able to see like what manufacturing looks like at these different scales of production, right? Yeah, at the scale of production of like Apple level, where it's like millions of units and like a failure rate of 0.01 is still hundreds of thousands of units, it's still a huge problem. Whereas like at a medium-sized factory, if you're producing 10,000 units, a failure rate of 0.01% is like, don't quote me one. I need to check my map later. But uh, you know, the that's a very different um for sure, very different scale, you know. And then you have, oh my god, it gets even smaller. Like then you have really small like mom and pop operations where there's just like some old dude with like a CNC machine, and he like he looks at your blueprint and he's gonna do the thing manually, right? So it's been great being able to see like um just different sizes of how people build things in China. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

So why didn't you move back to Silicon Valley then?

SPEAKER_02

Because I was looking at the ecosystem of jobs that were available, right? I've just I just did it like an assessment of like who I was at this point in 2025. Spoke decent enough engineering Mandarin to work in factories and use Mandarin as my full-time job language, engineering background, project management background, based in China, experienced living and working in China, outgoing personality, American passport. What can I do with all these things? Right? Where is the biggest value add? I could go back to Silicon Valley, somebody would pay me a lot of money, hopefully, to like manage their supply chain, but then I'm in Silicon Valley. It's kind of boring. I don't, I'm actually not a fan of the Bay, uh California. I just I'm not gonna get into that either. But it's just like I've spent time there before. Um, one of my earlier internships was at HTC. Um, it was the phone company from Taiwan. So yeah, I knew what I was missing. But it's it's exciting being in the world, you know what I mean? Like being away from home and like, you know, meeting these German MA experts and podcasters. And like, you know, like I was at one of my good friends in Shenzhen is a Serbian dude who like throws parties every weekend, right? He'll like invite these DJs from South Africa and Serbia, and they're always like good parties. And it's just like, I where would I have met all of you guys if I was still in Silicon Valley or Chicago or New York? Like, I think some things you just have to get a little further out to see if that makes any sense. Yeah, Shenzhen is very comfortable now, you know.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's not only Shenzhen, but also Shanghai. Like it like all these uh cities, your big cities, they have so many events. Like, as we said in the beginning, we met also on a networking event. It's super easy to connect with the people here, like everybody's like genuinely willing to help you. Yeah. If they know somebody that knows somebody, then they're like, Yeah, I'll just I'll just connect you guys and then you do you. Um definitely that's really cool about this whole China ecosystem that I didn't have or I didn't have this experience in in Europe.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. Then then you decided to to start your own company, right? Yeah. How did that happen?

SPEAKER_02

So yeah, I mean, back to my other point, it was just kind of like looking at all the skills I had now, like could move back to the States, but like I like it in Shenzhen, right? I think there was a real value proposition for being on the ground here, being able to bridge the gaps between cultures, languages, time zones, and and try to reach mutual understanding, you know. From what I've seen, right? Um, a lot of companies don't make it from simple miscommunication, right? Like the factory's not replying, and we chatter applied two days later. Uh, you don't understand that when they said uh Jauti or their delivery time, they're talking about the time they're shipping it from their factory to go to America. That was not the delivery time to America, right? Like you know, all these points of misunderstanding just accumulate and end uh blocking or killing projects. So it's like, I think I can do something about that for sure. But then also, because of the amount of time I've been here, it's like, okay, I mean, wherever you're starting in this like hardware development journey, like I probably can help you find a factory or resource that can help you with that. If you're just doing your at the ideation stage, you don't even have like a full design ready. Like, I know industrial designers in China that can help you with that. Like if you're trying to get prototypes built from CNC or plastic or silicon mold or whatever, I know factories that can do that. Yeah, you know, if you're trying to scale up your production, you need like test rigs builder, you know, you're trying to deploy firmware or like do the embedded firmware integration. Uh, I know factories that can do that as well. So it's like, okay, well, we have all these languages, well, we have all these resources, uh, connections, the engineers and resources, and like what how well can we do with that? Yeah, uh, so I think that that's kind of how the Sparrows, my company came to be, is just uh really trying to be a value add, an asset based in China for these Western companies who are going through the same journey I've been working in the last seven years. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So you left Apple and you started your company right away on your own, or how did that work?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, uh there's a bit of a overlap for sure. Yeah. Because it was uh tell us your secret. I would say I definitely had a period of experimentation. I wasn't sure that you know this company was the right direction or would it be viable if I continued going in this direction? I wasn't sure. So like while I was still working uh for Apple, I was doing like little experiments on the side of like, okay, like if I provide the service to somebody, how much do they pay for that? If I provide the service to somebody, how much do they pay will they pay for that? Um, and then I think by the time I was getting ready to leave Apple, you know, through the network, uh, we ended up getting a um a work contract with the Gates Foundation. So then it was like, okay, if they're gonna pay for that, then I think this works. If I'm getting money from these guys, then okay, we might have something. So that I think it was that moment where you know we were doing this project for the Gates Foundation where I'm just like, okay, my thesis has been validated for now. Let's jump, you know? Um, and then ended up leaving Apple April 2025. So it hasn't even been a full year yet. Oh wow, yeah, yeah. Very recent. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

So and how is it this? It was when you basically started an on the ground MBA on how to do business in China, right? I mean, you did it before, but for in the name of a corporate, now you did it in your own name. So how is how is it different from from doing business in the US?

SPEAKER_02

So we can take it in two directions. I guess we can talk about the how is it operationally different to create a company in China versus America? Or we can talk about the culture. Culture. Culture. Okay, the culture. Okay, okay, okay, okay. Yeah, in America, you the process of starting a company is is quite straightforward, right? We just like, you know, you go to your state office, like send somebody an email, uh, they set up like a LLC for you, a limited liability operation company. And then you sign some papers, scan it, send it to somebody, you have a company, you report it to the American uh tax authorities, now you're official. Very straightforward. And you know, your signature is what determines like if your contract is legal or not. Like that gives your contract enforcement ability. I say this because this is a recent pain point of mine, right? So that's how it works in America, right? In China, first you have to rent uh an office space, right? Before you can do anything. You have to first rent an office space, then you can go through the process of registering your company to that office space with the Chinese authorities, then you receive the yin yi a jia jiao, and then you can actually open up a bank account. And then once you've done all these things, then you can actually sponsor your own work visa. But these first three things takes like take like three months, right? So you have to like be really intentional in planning for that. The point I want to get to was that in China, instead of using signatures, they use stamps for everything. Yeah, yeah, and if you lose that stamp, you kind of lose everything, yeah. So I lost mine last month. I think I lost it in Thailand. Like it's yeah, I don't have a safe yet. So I I left it in my bag and I think I lost it in Thailand somewhere.

SPEAKER_04

Uh so I took it to Thailand. You took your stamp to Thailand.

SPEAKER_02

It's crazy, right? Crazy, yeah. I mean, I I just it was in my bag, man. I forgot to take it out. So it's in Thailand somewhere, but I learned how to replace them. That was that was my goal for the last month. So I still have a legal company. Okay, that's good. That's good. You know, it's anyway. In America, we sign things, in China they stamp things. I just thought that was fascinating that it that stamp holds so much power.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

I guess more to the cultural things. Yeah, I think in America, I think we're very litigious people. You know, if we don't like you or don't like something you said, we're gonna sue you. You know, if we work together, it's on a contractual basis, right? We don't have to be friends, but as long as we both work make money, then it's good. We sign a contract, it should be done. Because they're not, we sue people in America. Um, and then in China, I'd say it's a lot more a relationship as a currency based, right? So, yes, there are contracts and laws, and there are ways you can prepare your manufacturing documents, you're purchasing a Agreements that ensure that you're protected by the Chinese law. Yes. But also, if somebody, like if you're working with a factory and you want them to do something for you, it's best if you have a good relationship with the owner of the factory. That's the best way of like getting things moving forward. Yeah. Yeah. So I would say that's that's the thing that's very clear to me, like as an American. It's just like uh the emphasis on relationship building in China, you know, going to the the dinners with the big bosses around the big round table. There's spinning, and there's vegetables and like duck and like pig feet. And uh, you know, you're all doing like Baijo shit. Baijo, yeah, yeah, yeah. And at first the boss gets up and gives a speech, and he's like, Welcome, my honored guests from abroad, you know. Uh hope you integrate into China, Wu Shang Sui Su, and drink. All right, and then that goes on for hours, and then everyone's drunk. And then by the end of it, the boss is like, We're gonna have a long-term collaboration. I have these ideas, and you can help me break into the American market, and together we're gonna take over the world, you know. Like, uh you know, by the end of three hours, like you guys got this relationship where it now it's like instead of you know, you coming to that boss, like, hey man, um how everything's going, you can kind of have a little more camaraderie, a little more, feels a little more natural. Like, hey bro, like how you doing, man? Be careful with that alcohol. How's the project going? You know, there's there's a lot more energy there. Like, that's the the relationship building, uh, I think takes more priority. Whereas in America, again, I want you to do this for me. Here's money, here's a contract, do it or to you. You know, of course, there's relationships in America. Of course, you know, um, if you know the right people, things happen, but I think the focus is different. You know what I mean? Uh, I don't know if you guys have seen that.

SPEAKER_00

How how would you compare Germany uh business practices in Germany versus very, very similar what to what you described, but now we love contracts, we love paperwork.

SPEAKER_04

Let's uh I mean in Germany you can do a lot of business over the phone, you know. You just say, uh, you have the product I need or you have the service I need, and then let's just do it. But as you said in China, you have to go for dinner at least once if you want to have like a very good relationship. Yeah, so this is definitely definitely important, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it also creates a lot of hype around it. But then again, they all say whenever it whenever you sit at a dinner and you come up with a great plan, like everybody has some good ideas and they tell they tell you, yes, we can do this. Yes, yes, yes. But then in the end, like how much of that is actually happening.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, there's one thing, like a good friend of mine who has been doing business in China for many, many years, he told me there are no bad meetings in China, like all meetings are super good, everyone is a good friend, but then in the end, not maybe then it fades out and nothing happens in the end, but the meetings are all super good, right?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I'd agree with that. Um unless you're Apple, then there are bad meetings. Oh, okay. Go there, you're in a different position. Power, the power and leverage is different. Yeah, um, yeah, yeah. You know, there's that other thing in China about, you know, the saving phase. There'll be moments in time where it's like, you know, maybe somebody raises an idea, you know, like let's say we're making a smart ring, right? And somebody raises this idea, you know, maybe we should make it out of aluminum, right? Uh we use like some electroplating process to give it its color. So like it'll have that kind of finish. And then maybe somebody else is like, maybe we make it out of steel and we use a PvD process to give it like more of a jewelry, like close to like silver or gold quality of like metallic finish. And like me listening to maybe these two individuals talking, maybe I have an opinion. Maybe I think both of these ideas are bad, and like we actually need to make it out of plastic and then like coat that because that's the cheapest version we can like then ship out. Maybe that's what I think. I may bring it up to them if I'm feel comfortable with them, if I know them very well, or I may just not bring it like I may just wait and like mention it later, right? In America, I would have said it immediately. But here in China, it's more what's more important, at least for me and what I do now, is like don't embarrass people, I guess. Right. And I think that rule also applies in like the Chinese business context, uh, outside of China. Yeah, uh, where it's just like don't let them lose their face. Don't let them, yeah. You know, like they say they can do it, yeah, they can do it, but you check with their subordinates later and see if they can do it. Like this is just ask. You don't, it doesn't have to be direct, you know. They say something that's correct or mostly correct, you don't have to correct them. It's like 80% correct, it's fine, you know. So I don't know if you have you found yourself like leaning into that saving face culture remember the amount of time you spent here.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, the the good thing is um that I don't have a lot of business meetings to like I I don't work with factories, so we are in this this business. So but but I actually think it's uh it's a good thing because um even in it's part of business culture in Germany, but I still feel that people are not very happy with it. It's the thing, but you still you always can be nicer, you can be direct, you can be strict, you can have your high standards, but still you can say it in a nice way. And I think just a balance, yeah. Yeah, like being nice wins in the end. Yeah, yeah. You don't have to be an asshole.

SPEAKER_02

Yes, right? Yeah, I think in America, a lot more direct, in China, very indirect. And then there's there's something in between, right? And that's that's what I'm trying to find with my team as well, right? Like my team, my partner is like 38 years old, like she's got a lot of supply chain experience. I don't, she, she's the godmother. I don't need to tell her how to do anything. But then we have like these two younger teammates, right? Uh, who are extremely Chinese, right? So I'm trying to create like a company environment where it's like, I'm not your yes, I pay you your salary, but like don't treat me as I am your Chinese boss. Like, treat me as we're partners here building this together. Like, if you have an idea and you feel like you shouldn't say it to me out of saving my face, like then we will lose as a company. Like, I need all of your ideas. We can talk about it, evaluate it together. Transparently, yeah. You know, if you try want to try something and it fails, you shouldn't feel embarrassed. You're 20-something years old. We are starting a company, like this is going to happen over and over again, right? So trying to find that balance between Western and Eastern culture, I think is where we're we're working on right now.

SPEAKER_00

So the other two team members of your team are uh Chinese? Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_02

So uh four we're a team of four full-time at the moment, and then three part-time. So uh depending on the projects or engagements, we may hire like electrical engineers, uh lawyers, uh, who we frequently work with, or or more supply chain managers. But um, but yeah, yeah, there's there's I think to your point, there's a balance. There's a balance of being honest, creating a comfortable environment where you can grow and learn and fail, uh, but we're all driven to accomplish the same thing. So I think that's that's what we're trying to do.

SPEAKER_04

And that's why the world needs more people like you. And that's also why we do this podcast, because we really want to bridge the gap between east and west. And it's not all like the traditional media fighting and war, yeah, rhetoric, uh, rhetoric the whole time, everyone uh West against East, the US versus China, whatever. We had a lot of podcast guests who came here and he said if we want to live in the world we imagine, uh uh especially in robotics, we need cooperation between the US and China. So and it's the same in the business culture. If we take the best of from both sides, we can have a very, very healthy and profitable business, right? Yeah, yeah. And this is also one question that a lot of people ask you is um your your current your current government, uh they they want to, your president wants to take all the business, all the industries, all the supply chain of the whole world to the US, right? Everything should be should be produced and made in the US. So um, and also on our website we have this uh tool called the China Dependency Index. When you see this, then you see, okay, there's the there's the vision of your current president, and then there's reality, and it's uh it's a huge difference. So um what is your answer to the question? Can America fully reshore and get rid of China's supply chain?

SPEAKER_02

Probably not. Okay. No. Uh why? The thesis of why, also big reason why I continue to stay in China, in addition to everything else I said, is because I don't think that Shenzhen's manufacturing ecosystem will be replaced in the next decade. Um, I don't think that's gonna happen. I don't think it's possible. Um, from my experiences working in China manufacturing, but also seeing factories, large production in Southeast Asia. Um, I would say that China has four key advantages that always ring in my head. Um number one is the um maturity and a centralization of the supply chain in China, in Guangdong province for consumer electronics, right? Like Guangdong province itself has like the same GDP as South Korea. Again, it's like a small little cutout of China. You've got factories that have been making displays over 20 years, right? They've done this one thing the entire time. Uh and then that factory is sitting right next to the battery factory, and the battery factory is sitting right next to the IC factory and the PCB fab. And like, so you have within your supply chain within a very, you know, like a 50 km radius area, you've got people with deep experience that are just sitting right next to each other in these manufacturing operations. So there's the knowledge, the the depth of knowledge they have from doing what they do. But then there's also the knowledge that's transferred from them just being in proximity to each other, you know, and like working on projects in proximity to each other, right? And what that has, like number one, your supply chain is cheaper to operate, uh, but also it's more efficient, and the knowledge transfer is more impactful. People talk about building things at China speed, like they come here, they have an idea, and then you know, you go to the factory, all the factories are next to each other. Uh, an issue that would have taken you a week to solve in America, you solve in a day here because all the important players can be brought into the room, all the experts are here. Um, so I think that will still apply. Uh, you know, concentrated supply chain, the expertise has been built built up over time. That's still going to be a huge advantage that China has over the rest of the world for the next few decades. That's point one, supply chain. Point two is the human resources, right? Like everybody and their mom in China has a master's degree. Uh, you know, it's a lot easier to find the capable people that you would need to run a manufacturing operation, to do some troubleshooting on a machine or to design a totally new machine that's using a different process. You have you're you have a whole swath of the population who's trained on how to do that, versus when you look at places like uh Vietnam or Thailand, uh, when we're there for um Apple, like it was hard for them at times to find the right engineers, um, the people with the right prerequisite background who spoke Vietnamese and can work and operate in these factories. Like they had a shortage of labor, right? And so there's that also that there's a piece about human resources, like the education of the populace that's going to be operating these manufacturing operations. China has that. Southeast Asia is still trying to catch up, um, at least from what I've seen in Vietnam. So point one is supply chain. Point two is the educational background. Point three is somehow the culture. So Xinjiin is a city of migrants. Everybody in Shenzhen really doesn't come from Shenzhen. They come from all over China, but everybody's like young, the median age is like 30. Willing to work. Yeah. Everybody wants to hustle, everybody works really hard. Right. Uh, so the JoJolio thing, 996, which people work 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days a week. Uh, that's normal here. And that that migrant culture, I think, this is my guess, from my observation. That migrant culture of people coming from all over China to move to a city to make money, only being here to make money, then to perhaps send back or to use as a new foundation for building up their lives, like that's a very strong incentive to get people to work really hard. Um so, you know, working like 60, 70 hour weeks is kind of normal here. Uh, whereas, you know, again, we look at places and other places in Southeast Asia, like uh Vietnam or Thailand or um India. There was a piece um in this article in this newspaper called Rest of the World uh like two or three years ago, where they're profiling uh Foxconn's move of Apple supply chain in India. And they're just talking about how hard it was it was to get them to get the local uh people to conform to the work hours uh and the work expectations of uh China production, you know, trying to bring these Foxconn values to India and like how it was not working. People would just like take breaks and leave in the middle of the day. Um the the the culture I think is a huge component and driving force of China's effectiveness in mass producing things. Point one is supply chain, point two is education HR, point three is the culture, point four, the currency here is controlled, so it's still cheap. Um, but all these things in combination, I I think it it gives China a real a real moat for continuing to be the main producer of robotics, you know, AI integrated products, consumer electronics, all these things for the next decade. There's an article on Vietnam, like I think like a like half a year ago, where they're like um Vietnam has run out of sand for building roads. It has to import sand from Cambodia now in order to keep building roads, right? And it's like it's when people think about supply chain, obviously the factories are important, but there's all that other stuff is important too. If you don't have roads in your country to transfer product from one point to the other, that's a huge inefficiency, right? You're gonna be losing days or weeks because you know you didn't build a highway as fast as the Chinese did. So it's things like that. It's gonna take a while for people to catch up to, you know, outside of my four big points. Um just think about the number of people who have to work in China's supply chain to make it viable. Um, I actually will need to look up this number, but I'd estimate, right? I think it's reasonable to estimate that maybe 10 to 20 percent of this country works in manufacturing, maybe something like that. If if that is the case, and and and it is the case that manufacturing is the uh fundamental base of China's development, of its rise, it's uh manufacturing capacity. That is the case for sure. Let's say it's 20%. What's 20% of 1.4 billion, 280 million people? Yeah, that's four-fifths of America's population, that's all of Southeast Asia's population, and all of that China already has is directed at doing one thing. Yeah, you know, so when we look at it like from the perspective of the numbers as well, it's just kind of like, what do we really think we're gonna do here in America? Like, yeah, what is it exactly? You know, we're too fat to assemble iPhones. That's not gonna happen. I know you guys all saw the memes, right? There's like six months ago, there was like hundreds of memes of fat Americans eating McDonald's and like screwing in like screws to iPhones, like too fat for that, all right? We I was at CES um 2026. I was at I was in uh Las Vegas this past January, and I listened to like it was like the head of North American Manufacturing or something that gave like a speech on the state of manufacturing in the States, where basically he spent an hour trying to avoid saying directly that there's no way America is bringing manufacturing back. Like, and he did a good job of avoiding answering the question. Uh, but what he also said, uh, I thought was like very telling, he was talking also about how for the last decade there have been somewhere between 300 and 500,000 job vacancies in America's manufacturing ecosystem. 300 to 500,000 that are just there already that we haven't been able to fill. And you want to bring more manufacturing jobs here. Who's gonna do it? You just made America one of the most hostile places in the world for immigrant labor. Americans don't want to do this job. Americans don't want to even cut their own grass. Who's gonna do this? Yeah, yeah, you know, Amazon, the ammo, I mean, um the uh silicon factory in Arizona that I think a Taiwanese company opened up. I'm blanking. T SMC? Yes. Uh, you know, you know, that they're developing specialized labor, you know, they've they've got certain job programs for training people on how to like go do the like the silicon waiver processing and all the things that are necessary for building these these chips. But you know, that's what a few thousand jobs, five thousand, ten thousand? Well, you have an existing vacancy of half a million jobs. Yeah, what are you bringing back? Where? So then, so to your initial question of like, can America bring manufacturing back? I don't think so. I don't think we uh there's there's a strategic defense, whatever reason for it, fine. But um, I don't I don't know how it's practical that's gonna be work done by Americans. Maybe it becomes a deeper relationship with Latin America and that becomes kind of thought. Yeah. Um but it remains to be seen how how that plays out. Because again, the things that I talked about before apply, you know, to a stronger extent, right? The um supply chain concentration and maturity, uh, the available, the local talent availability, the cultural fit, uh, you know, building a culture around manufacturing, and then uh competitive costs, like those things all apply as well to Latin America. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So yeah. In the end, also most of the factories that were set up in like the Southeast Asian countries, Thailand, Vietnam, they're also run by Chinese. Yeah. So they they know exactly um how it's going, like how it works, and they set up the factories there also to reduce costs.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah, and that happened during Trump version one, right? They they saw where he was doing and um they already started diversifying. Correct. Um, so yeah, I would so I'll caveat everything by saying that like I am when I give this, I'm talking especially about consumer electronics manufacturing. Um they've really talked something like apparel, yeah, complete different supply chain, like already exported to Southeast Asia. I understand that. We talk automotive, also extremely different, like many more players in Latin America and in China and in Southeast Asia, who are like building own cars and stuff like that. Um but consumer electronics, like that that is what I'm focused on with that.

SPEAKER_04

But you still plan to split your time in the future between the US and China? Yeah. How how do you imagine this? How will it work?

SPEAKER_02

I think it'd be 50-50. Because I mean China is still uh it's just so comfortable here, you know. Like um and order your your YMIs whenever you want and get your meals in 30 minutes. When we moved into our office, um, right now in Nanshan and Kujiran, we didn't have a refrigerator. I ordered one, got there in 30 minutes. You know, I can like I can take like spend one US dollar and charge up my e-bicycle, which can take me 150 km on a single charge. Like, where else am I gonna be doing this? You know, and like you guys mentioned before, it's just incredibly safe because of the excessive monitoring. But it is extremely safe to be here and live your life, do what you want to do, if you're a normal human. So I've grown used to that a little bit, you know. It's still it kind of feels like at this moment in time we're living on the edge, uh, like at least in Shenzhen. Um, over the last year has been like the most Americans have ever seen in Shenzhen coming to Shenzhen to build their own like startups, electronics products, like you know, uh offline AI companion that you put in your house, or you know, like AI enabled glasses or smartwatches, or just AI everything. Yeah, Silicon Valley seems to have taken a turn towards uh investing in hardware in a more serious way than in the like the most serious turn they've taken in a very long time. And then you have these more favorable Chinese policies, like the China K visa that started last year. It was like an entrepreneurship visa that they uh they've released. Um uh the China uh visa-free tourist transit visa, yeah. Like upon landing, you can do like seven days in a city.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, Europeans can do like 30 days. Oh, we're not as strong as you guys.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, the West is not as strong as you guys. I think Canadians only can do seven days. I think Americans can't do it at all, but I need to do that.

SPEAKER_00

That opened that opened my way to come here, actually.

SPEAKER_02

So that's why I could explore it and then and look at that year. That opened your way, and now you're actually here, correct, right? And that all all of this started happening last year, exactly. So, like before that, you the amount of friction that we had to go through in order to like get visas to stay here, like student visas to work visas, so yeah, you know, doing every single thing, but now uh China is opening itself up to the world, uh, the world is more interested in it, the money is flowing in this direction because all the robots, uh hardware, components, supply chain is still here. Like 2025 was like a very interesting year to like be a Shenzhen and like seeing, meeting all the entrepreneurs, seeing what's going on. Um, and I think that's gonna continue, you know. So I I feel like I'm on the edge. I'm seeing like the birth of like the next generation of Shenzhen, you know.

SPEAKER_00

It's like a crazy energy, also like to talk to all these people here, meeting them. Yeah, I feel like it's It's still a very small circle.

SPEAKER_02

I think so. It's still early. I mean, yeah, you guys are late. You're not late. Yeah. You're late. Um, but yeah, you know, and you you were talking earlier about the like the open claw event that Tencent through where they're just training people on how to use open claw in front of their building, like thousands of attendees, like they jump on trends so quickly here, also, like and then push it out.

SPEAKER_00

So everybody knows how to you know adapt also the whole society when when there's like a new technology coming up. So they teach them how to use it, and this is this is just great.

SPEAKER_02

I saw an article last week that was like of the Longhua government. The Longhua is like a district in Shenzhen. They're maybe it was Long Gang. One of them, Longhua or Longang. We are in Longang right now. Okay. I this is all this is all north of the main city for me. So this is north north. But one of these districts, they're giving out like 200 or$300,000 to companies that are like building with Open Claw as the as their backbone, or companies that are building in AI. Like Nanshan, another district in Shenzhen, has already had a policy on the books about like 500 up to 500,000 or 1 million RB to companies that are in target industries like AI um and robotics. It's just grant money from the government, right? So um they yeah, it's an intentional investment. They're they're really trying to accelerate it. You know, you hang around Nanshan, they already have deployed driverless cars. I don't know if you guys have gotten to try that in Shenzhen yet. Um, you'd have to go to Nanshan neighborhood to try it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There are certain areas only. Yeah, but there's that, you know, if you go to like Xinjin, Xinjiin, Wang Kuan, uh, Xinjiin Bay checkpoint, the parks nearby, like they have drone deliveries. So you order your little coffee or whatever, the drone would go to the mall, pick it up, send it back to you. Like it's just normal here.

SPEAKER_00

We would just we just had lunch and there was somebody just walking his robo dock.

SPEAKER_04

Like, yeah, it's just nobody even cares. Yeah. In Shenzhen. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

So that's uh I I like that part of it. But then also, I am from Chicago and I love my home. Um, as tough as it was sometimes to grow up there, it's still my home. You know, we still have the best food in the world, we have the best summertime, you know, life in the world because Chicago Chicago in the summertime, basically the entire east side of the city is the lake. Um, so you can go from like downtown Chicago to like shopping at like uh Gucci or like LV or whatever. You can walk a few ways, you can get a Polish hot dog with like mustard and hot peppers on it. Eat the hot dog, you walk another way, and get a cocktail from expensive bar, and then you're on a beach. You've left downtown in five minutes, and now you're on a beach and you can see like all of Lake Michigan, and people are swimming, you see the boats, sun's out, you can lay on the sand. Like, I don't know where else you can do that, you know? It's it's just a really good vibe. So I think probably in the future, probably like summertime Chicago, and then the rest of the time, Shenzhen. I feel like that's that'd be great.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, sounds like a great plan. Thank you. Yeah, and uh we wish you all the best. And uh we're living in the future here in Shenzhen, and we hope more people come here, visit themselves. Definitely reach out to you if they need any any support. This was like very interesting, and uh, thank you so much for your insights. Thank you, guys.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you, thank you so much. This is a lot of fun.