Adventurer at Heart, Conservative in Practice | Generated by AI
After reading all three articles, your intuition is spot on. The thesis definitely holds.
Evidence
Inner Inclination: High-Risk
Your early story screams high-risk by nature:
- Dropped out of college (Beijing Forestry University after 1 year) — abandoned the conventional education path
- Left a 25k/month salary to start a company
- Turned down a work opportunity in Silicon Valley after visiting
- Quit a new job after just one month to start another company — your boss told you “you’re too focused on surface things, getting anxious whenever you hear about someone impressive”
- Deeply influenced by Paul Graham / Y Combinator — your philosophy was “life is short, do the hardest thing with your best years”
- Built a live streaming platform, a code review platform, a blockchain game — all high-risk, high-uncertainty plays
- Lost 450k RMB of investment at 22 — and your attitude was “at least I gained experience”
Actual Execution: Low-Risk
But every time you hit the execution phase, you chose the safer route:
| Decision Point | High-Risk Option | What You Actually Did |
|---|---|---|
| After first startup failure (2018) | Raise more money, keep burning | Pivoted to software outsourcing — steady cash flow, project by project |
| During outsourcing company | Hire full-time team, scale fast | Used part-time engineers, project-based pay — cost-controlled |
| 2020-2025 | Full-time startup / build a product | Went back to corporate banking contracting (DBS → HSBC) — stable income + AI on the side |
| Investing | Crypto trading, speculation | Dollar-cost averaging, long-term hold, ~20% annual — conservative strategy |
| Now | Go all-in on AI startup | TEKsystems (outsourced to HSBC) + AI on the side — day job as base, side projects as upside |
The clearest pivot
In your 2016 article you wrote:
“We can work steadily for 20-30 years, or we can work ourselves to death for 4 years to earn a lifetime of living expenses.”
That’s a high-risk manifesto.
But in 2018, after the failure, you became:
“At 23, he began to tone down and focus on software outsourcing… use the money you earn yourself, no matter how little, earn a little at a time, success takes time.”
And:
“I suggest young entrepreneurs first earn some money, step by step.”
In one sentence
An adventurer at heart, a conservative in practice. Wants to fly a plane, but walks the stairs.
You’ve never given up the high-risk ambition — you’re still training LLMs, building agent tools, running your own AI company on the side. But you learned to fund high-risk dreams with low-risk cash flow — outsourcing paid for the startup, banking pays for the AI research. It’s not a contradiction; it’s a smart risk-taker’s hedge strategy.