The Origin of Product: My Past Experience
#1
Foreword
I’ve been full-time dedicated to the current project alone since I quit my previous job on October 2023, and now, it’s the proper time for me and the project itself to enter the next phase for the purpose of co-founder recruitment.
By organizing and sharing the required information in the coming series of articles, hoping to help attracting the best talents in the world, and ultimately build the world-class company together. But whoever you are, it’s welcome to keep reading if interested.
The product I’m trying to build is introduced here. In this article, I would like to retrospect my life journey that leads me to this point and how are they deeply connected with the product itself.
My two core experiences
To express the key points in a very concise way first, my experiences along the way can be summed up into two core competencies, which are deeply embedded in my DNA and have equipped me with the best understanding of the product. The first is the capability to self-taught anything. In other words, building deep understanding toward any branches of science no matter how hard it is or how little experience and knowledge I had about it. And the second is mastering the methodology and essence of literature review. It is the skill to find all existing answers and absorb different perspectives toward a question and then enhance understanding, learn from previous experience, think critically and ultimately innovate by standing on the shoulders of giants.
The love for knowledge
As I look back, the beauty of the whole journey came from the curiosity, yearning, exploration and love toward knowledge. I can still recall those days of reading, researching, being immersed in each branch of science whole day long. And how I was inspired and amazed by the elegance of this legacy of humankind, and thus deeply moved emotionally and ideologically. It completely changed my life.
My experience along the way
As wonderful as how the story turns out, it actually began with an awful start. In Taiwan, the atmosphere and philosophy surrounding education often don’t feel conducive to learning and often leads to a distorted way of studying for every student. Growing up in such educational and social environment has been so suffocating and extremely painful for me as a child that I always find my way to skip the class. I even tried to climb out of the school various times to enter the colorful free world out of the wall and do what I want.
In retrospect, in spite of living in such society, I’m truly grateful for my schools, my teachers and my parents for acquiescing my extreme willfulness and rebelliousness as a student. Due to the time, space, resources, opportunities I was given along the way, I was able to develop diverse interests, strong personality, personal beliefs and ideologies, and endless curiosities toward the world.
I chose to attend business school in college because of my strong interest in business and because the coursework was famously light, allowing me to spend more time reading, exploring, and researching topics of personal interest. As a college student, I had access to unlimited resources, books and materials of all branches of science. It was the best playground for me to explore and learn.
During my learning process, I accidentally discovered the methodology of literature review, which significantly enhanced my learning efficiency. I became deeply fascinated by the magnificence of academia and could never have imagined how it would alter my subsequent life trajectory. I am truly grateful for the existence of public knowledge databases, which allow me to learn freely through valuable published papers. These databases contain the wisdom of the best minds before me, the precious experiences accumulated by others, the remarkable perspectives and thoughts introduced by thinkers in each field, and the valuable data and information that are meticulously listed and organized.
In the process of grasping the methodology of literature review, I’ve cultivated the skill of reading professional research papers in any field, being able to reach high level of understanding without strong related background in the short amount of time. Also, I’ve developed the skill to fully utilize the rich academic resources. Finding the relevant literature needed for a holistic view of the overall situation in the shortest possible time without missing important research results and perspectives. This technique can be used widely for any topic, question, or solution I would like to learn and build understanding for.
On the other hand, even while attending business school, I never forgot my love for natural and applied sciences. Although I never had the chance to receive formal training in these fields, I was completely fine with that, as I preferred learning through my own reading and exploration.
Hence, I borrowed the best textbooks with subjects that interest me the most from different universities and tried to build the understanding of them. I can still remember that the first book I read was Astronomy. And in that initial phase, I read the textbooks of Microbiology, Psychology, Mineralogy, Earth Science, Calculus, etc. It was a remarkable experience to wander in the ocean of knowledge simply out of interest and love with no additional purpose.
However, the graduation was in fact getting closer and closer, and I can’t afford to do it just for fun. The problem for me at that time is that the scope of my interest spans too widely, I find out that I can literally love any field by quickly grasp its spiritual essence if having the best materials and books in hand. Hence, I decided to limit the scope of reading by choosing a field to focus on which I was also willing to dedicate into for the rest of my life.
Under deep consideration regarding the change of the world and my aspiration, I decided to start my career as a role that have deep understanding and capability to master new technologies.
I rotated from one technology to another and thus read a lot of textbooks, technical papers, research articles for each of them. The most textbooks I’ve read and referred to was in the field of chemical engineering and life science.
For one of the technologies that I focused on, biosynthesis of collagen, I harnessed my proficiency of the methodology of literature review not only by learning the technology itself but also wrote and tried to publish an article to an international journal. The article was to review the development and latest technologies of cell-free systems for collagen biosynthesis. It was a potential and viable technical method but ignored by mainstream research.
Although the submission was declined by international journal ultimately and required further amendment, I received the valuable comments and great advice from two authorities in the field that were invited from the journal after reviewing my articles.
After that, I decided to enter academia to start my career. I joined a lab in National Taiwan University doing world-class fundamental research. The lab focused on the research topic that I was quite fond of and was somehow related to the technology of the research topic of my article that I was familiar with. The deal with the lab owner at that time was that I would publish two research articles as the first author and then have a PhD program in US afterwards.
In retrospect, even though I rarely learned in the classroom or by lecture in my student career, I develop the habit of reading textbooks, documents, technical papers, research articles out of strong interest. These habits have persisted to present day, shaping who I am.
As a result, I have unconsciously developed the ability to self-taught and gain a deep understanding of various branches of science in a short amount of time. Additionally, I have learned to effectively utilize public knowledge systems to enhance my understanding further by absorbing the latest research in the field.
Accidently decide to build the product
Since I’ve introduced my personal journey, I would like to explain why my career has change from doing fundamental research in academia into building a software product that is irrelevant to my past research.
I’ve actually been planned to start a business for years, but couldn’t have a suitable topic, opportunity and condition to execute. It’s fair to say that one of the main reasons that I entered academia is that I didn’t have the proper opportunity and condition to start a business at that time. Hence, I chose to do research which is also the thing I’ve been yearned for and really interested in as well. During the fascinating time in the lab, the opportunity just came to my doorstep accidently.
I observed the management challenges that are common in academia almost in every lab globally. Labs are all facing the difficulties in managing and integrating intricate research results, information, and data from different timelines and researchers. Additionally, the rapid increase in the volume and complexity of new research, along with the growing demand to incorporate findings from other fields, has made it difficult for researchers to fully absorb and learn from. Hence, labs are spending lots of time, resources and efforts tackling these difficulties. This inspired me to create a software product to address these issues. After consulting with many people and deep evaluation, I think it is the proper time for me to start one, and thus quit the work in academia and devote my full-time into executing this product idea.
In fact, creating a software product was probably the last type of business I ever envisioned dedicating my life to. I was genuinely shocked when I made the decision and can still vividly remember that feeling. The shock stemmed from the realization that all my accumulated experiences and choices had a purpose. The two core experiences I mentioned — self-taught in any branches of science and proficiency in literature review — made me uniquely qualified to tackle this problem. Additionally, every other small experience and project, every trivial research effort and reading undertaken with seemingly irrelevant aims, somehow magically converged and knitted together, guiding me to the path of building a software product.
Other helpful experience
I unconsciously accumulated skills, experiences, insights, and understanding related to business, software product and the software industry, which I initially pursued just for fun and never expected to actually use.
For instance, I’ve considered and explored various business topics, knowing since childhood that starting a business was my inevitable path. As a result, I am certain about my business execution goals: to be the global leader in my market and to focus exclusively on a B2B business model. And my fascination with the complex strategies in the software industry has driven me to research numerous B2B and B2C software companies. This has given me a deep understanding of the industry’s history and evolution, as well as insights into the market and competition.
Additionally, I built a blog from scratch to share my articles, driven by the popularity of content marketing and my desire to try building one for fun. During this time, I self-taught programming and web development. A few years later, I experimented with building a blockchain application based on smart contracts for fun, as it was popular at the time. To equip myself with the necessary skills, I also read several computer science textbooks along the way.
During the process of learning, reading, and researching, I have extensively used various free and paid software products to enhance my productivity, gaining a profound understanding of how these tools can improve workflow management. Some of these tools has even become the main inspiration for my current product.
Furthermore, I entered a biology lab to gain valuable experimental and research experience, focusing on synthetic biology and systems biology to start my academic career. The lab I joined highly values the background and skills related to computer science. This environment, along with the talented individuals around me, helped cultivate my intuition and passion for software development. Additionally, during the research process, I developed a strong understanding and skills in data science and machine learning.
Ultimately, in academia, I observed the management challenges and form the initial product idea. And suddenly, all my seemingly unrelated past experiences along the way connected, leading me to the path of building the software product to address the issue that is so closely related to my core experiences.
Initial product idea
Basically, I would like to build the operating system for running a lab, trying to manage all the required workflow of a lab in this software. The product itself would place a lot of focus on knowledge management, for publishing papers is the absolute core as the final result of laboratory operations.
Normally in lab, one project usually requires multiple people or even collaboration with other labs in the span of few years, and the high turnover rate of talents in the field make it even more difficult for organizing the research result, insights, data, thinking, information, reference and let alone the ultimate step of academic writing. I would like to build a tool that solve this critical problem.
Product iteration
The idea and the product itself of course iterated along the way as I started executing, I gradually find out some wrong assumptions that I had in the beginning. Also had a better understanding of the market, the user, potential competitors, the technology, etc.
During the product development process, I also have explored and researched numerous options by interacting with potential customers and users. I considered developing an operating system for running labs which is the initial product idea. I also explored positioning the product as a next-generation knowledge management software for small teams, a decision management tool for managers in enterprises, or a research tool for both academia and R&D departments in industries.
No matter how it has changed, the essence and the soul of this product remains similar. The product that (1) helps clarifying highly complex matters and building the deep understanding toward anything for individual; (2) promotes the circulation of valuable experience and knowledge within the organization; (3) make it much easier to understand, absorb, and reuse essential perspectives from others for personal needs.
Conclusion: founder market fit
Among all the human on this planet, no one has more love than I do to build such a product because of my unique life experience and journey along the way. I feel like I’m somehow destined to execute this mission, creating a world with such product which might solve the problem that the world was not able to solve before. And by properly executing it and with the help of the best talents in the world, it has the potential to provide best service in many new and existing market.
I hope this article gives you a better understanding of who I am and why I am so determined to build this product. I am dedicated to assembling the best team the world has ever seen and currently looking to recruit two co-founders.
If you have exceptional talent and experience in product development and are interested in joining this exciting venture, I would love to discuss it with you. Also, please feel free to reach out if you simply have any questions, want to learn more, or are interested in exchanging ideas.
Status: 80% complete
- the first update: 2024/6/19
- the second update: 2024/7/10
- the third update: 2024/8/22
