The Big Words

Sometimes it feels overwhelming in the tech world. Either you are an entrepreneur or an investor. You are thrown with the big words such as “big-data-bitcoin-enabled-virtual-reality-wearable.” It’s confusing.. but believe me, I’ve seen worse.

People like to ask venture investors what the technology mega-trends are. I , for one, like to talk about what I observed sometimes. It’s a fun exercise (and a big ego-booster if you can get one or two right). But the truth is, few has crystal balls and most of us pretend that we do.

In fact, I expect it’s the entrepreneurs who have the glance of the future and I hope when I meet one, I am in the position to be *very* open minded. And when that happens, one thing I can be certain is that she won’t be throwing big words at me, nor any of the person that she tries to recruit. Instead, she tells a unique story — what she has seen, what she is seeing. And why it’s so important for her to address that problem, now! In plain English/Chinese.

I was on a panel the other day and once again, we were asked about the mega trends. My point was, the “trends” are frames. They are words that we *have* to use to describe a concept, to communicate a rough idea. The same way how we use the word “rock” to tell a object. That’s all.

Entrepreneurs shouldn’t spend too much time on squeezing themselves into these buzzwords. So if your pitch line is still “we are the big data machine learning solution for online-to-offline eCommerce companies”**, I would carefully suggest you to think again ☺

** pitch line is fictional