From Engineering Leadership to Stay-at-Home Dad to CTO: Ran Chen's Unconventional Journey

00:22 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yes.

00:30 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yes.

00:36 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah, uh, I think that's a very, very good question where, uh, especially nowadays when we talk about AI, I saw a lot of new graduates, right? So it's, I think this is a very hard time for everyone to find a job

00:49 陈然 · Ran Chen：for new graduates.

00:50 陈然 · Ran Chen：Then a lot of changes in their careers. So I, I graduated from Carnegie Mellon in 2014. I think that at that time it was a golden age for people who work in the tech, right?

01:01 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah. So every company is hiring. So for most people, you have to make choices where you want to go to big companies like Amazon, uh, Google, Apple, Meta, or you go to middle or smaller startups.

01:14 陈然 · Ran Chen：And then at that time, I don't think the, the, the smaller startups are as sexy as like nowadays when we talk about AI things, right? So you, you need to have a lot of thoughts about why you want to go to startups. So for me, I-I've been always been a startup guy. I like building things from scratch.

01:30 陈然 · Ran Chen：So, uh, first company I work, uh, at Trulia,

01:34 陈然 · Ran Chen：which wa-uh, it was a, is a public company, but it's, it's middle and smaller size.

01:40 陈然 · Ran Chen：So I didn't went to larger companies like, like Apple, for example. I do have offers for them, but the reason I went there is because I want to be a smaller company. I learn things, and then I want to go to another startup.

01:53 陈然 · Ran Chen：So that's how I choose to go to Trulia, right? So then after I work in Trulia for a few years, I went to a startup called TubiTV.

02:01 陈然 · Ran Chen：So back to the question, the leadership things. I think the, the, the easiest way when you want to promote fast is just to go to a company that will grow fast.

02:11 陈然 · Ran Chen：So if your company have a lot of people, X,100X in a very short period of time, of course the people there get promoted fast. And of course you, you need to have some skills, like you want, you care about the business, you care about the, the team,

02:25 陈然 · Ran Chen：you contribute a lot to the team, you have strong technical, but of course the thing is I think people don't realize is how fast the company grows, actually.

02:34 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah.

02:38 陈然 · Ran Chen：Sort of.

02:40 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah, like, I think at that time, nobody really knows what

02:43 陈然 · Ran Chen：the data scientist. So for me, even though my title was a data scientist at Trulia,

02:48 陈然 · Ran Chen：but the real role is more like a applied machine learning scientist, if we talk about like how we talk about today.

02:55 陈然 · Ran Chen：Then when I went to Tubi, uh, my initial title was even, I-I like data engineer or something. But my work is essentially the same. It's like machine learning, applied machine learning, right? So own the, uh, machine learning algorithm, like recommendation algorithm. So that has been what I've done, what I've been doing for last 10,10 to 12 years, just like title changes.

03:21 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah, that's, and also, to be honest, that's always the thing I want to work on, is how do I apply machine learning in different industry.

03:29 陈然 · Ran Chen：So, so that's the, the thing like-

03:31 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah, the real estate. Yeah, TV entertainment now is like help the medical device, med tech, life science, regulation stuff. But the essential, the, the core thing is always like, how can I apply machine learning to solve the real world problem?

03:46 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah. And now people don't talk about machine learning anymore, people talk about AI.

03:50 陈然 · Ran Chen：Essentially, yeah, we're talking about the same thing, yeah.

03:52 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah.

03:57 陈然 · Ran Chen：Exactly, yeah.

04:07 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yes.

04:11 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah.

04:16 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah.

04:22 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah, I mean, I always love building. I always, I love being hands-on. So, so that's why I really love, uh, startup

04:29 陈然 · Ran Chen：because I always have the path or the option to own things end to end,

04:33 陈然 · Ran Chen：to build the things the way I want. So that-that's how I get most of my enjoyment, like building things.

04:41 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah, I'm building things, yeah.

04:54 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah.

05:02 陈然 · Ran Chen：Uh, that's a very good point. I-I think you come from a PM

05:05 陈然 · Ran Chen：background, right? So I always work, uh, with a lot of great PMs in my career. But one thing I want to mention is, uh, I think in the machine learning side, especially I work on a lot of on the recommendation algorithm side.

05:18 陈然 · Ran Chen：Um, PM's role is kind of different compared to, let's say, like front end and back ends.

05:26 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yes.

05:29 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah.

05:29 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah, because, uh, for example, I know when I think about product manager, right, so, or, or project manager or whatever, the man, this kind of role.

05:39 陈然 · Ran Chen：Product manager, yeah, it's different. So one of the most important thing is to find out the, the user story, right? What, what, what does really

05:47 陈然 · Ran Chen：what really user want, and then work with, uh, engineering leadership to translate that into something that people can implement. So that's the most important role. And then, like, in the machine learning side, especially, for example, recommendation algorithm, like ranking algorithm, it's hard.

06:08 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah, right? So, like, um, there are a few things that's hard. First of all is like, uh, what's the real user story here? Like, if you look at the home screen of the, let's say, Tubi or Netflix or all these recommendation

06:21 陈然 · Ran Chen：based, uh, like streaming service, nothing change. It's the same ranking

06:26 陈然 · Ran Chen：kind of thing, and

06:27 陈然 · Ran Chen：right? So it's really hard to say what's the real user stories here.

06:33 陈然 · Ran Chen：And then that's the first thing. The second thing is, uh, for example, there's like new user experience, there's like returning user experience, right? There's like diversity, there's discovery.

06:42 陈然 · Ran Chen：There's still a lot of things.

06:43 陈然 · Ran Chen：But it's not as, uh, like explicit as like a simple user journey,

06:50 陈然 · Ran Chen：but very data-driven way of describe things.

06:53 陈然 · Ran Chen：So, like, a lot of very good product people I work with, they-they are more native to using data to describe the user behavior,

07:02 陈然 · Ran Chen：and describe what they really want.

07:05 陈然 · Ran Chen：Instead of just saying, for example, we want diversity.

07:13 陈然 · Ran Chen：So what defines diversity, right? Why do does that matters? Like, why do you say this one have good diversity, that one doesn't? And why, for example, diversity of the algorithm, diversity of the recommendation will truly contribute to our core business? All these things need to be answered by data. Otherwise, and then even with that defined,

07:33 陈然 · Ran Chen：how can we measure the improvement? How can we improve the algorithm to, to make that happen?

07:39 陈然 · Ran Chen：It's also very hard, to be honest.

07:41 陈然 · Ran Chen：So, so I, I think that's kind of the thing observed in my day-to-day work with the PM, where, um, I love working with PMs, but then if the PM doesn't truly come from a data kind of background.

07:55 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah, yeah, it's hard, it's hard. Even for the PM, it's hard because when, when, when PM comes in, it's hard for him or her to describe what they really want. So that's why I think in the machine learning side, we need PMs who are, are more technical, more data-driven,

08:11 陈然 · Ran Chen：also have some sense of how does the machine learning works as well.

08:16 陈然 · Ran Chen：So it's not like front and back end.

08:18 陈然 · Ran Chen：You know you're going to implement that.

08:20 陈然 · Ran Chen：And then they're gonna be implemented.

08:32 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah.

08:33 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yes.

08:40 陈然 · Ran Chen：Exactly.

08:44 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah.

08:44 陈然 · Ran Chen：And also the, I think this comes to two sides as well, where from my team, like when I manage the machine learning team, most of our engineers care more about products, user experience as well.

08:57 陈然 · Ran Chen：Right, so in this relationship with the PM, like

09:00 陈然 · Ran Chen：we both of us need to speak others' language to build a deeper relationship, right? Like, for example, at Tubi, most of our engineering team do a lot of user journey analysis,

09:11 陈然 · Ran Chen：AB test results analysis.

09:14 陈然 · Ran Chen：Because they they want to have a deeper understanding of what does the u-user really do. For example, if we're releasing a new recommendation algorithm change, so how does user behavior really changes, right?

09:25 陈然 · Ran Chen：So this should not be just be answered by the PMs, but also need to be understood by the engineers. So I, I think this kind of a more overlap

09:33 陈然 · Ran Chen：in a way

09:34 陈然 · Ran Chen：from the machine learning point of view for PM and engineer side compared to just, you know, uh,

09:42 陈然 · Ran Chen：Exactly.

09:43 陈然 · Ran Chen：So, so that's why I see like in our team, all the, all the teams I work on, the relationship between engineers and PMs are much more deeper because we have to talk a lot on daily basis. And, you know, in some, in some engineering team, right, so the, the PMs can write tickets.

10:00 陈然 · Ran Chen：Then they know things gonna be implemented in this way

10:03 陈然 · Ran Chen：because they're gonna be designers helping them to draw things, and then they know this gonna happen in this way. But in the machine learning side, in the recommendation side, it's hard.

10:13 陈然 · Ran Chen：So it's a lot of kind of discussion

10:15 陈然 · Ran Chen：to, to make sure we're truly aligned.

10:17 陈然 · Ran Chen：There's no such a UX thing there.

10:23 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's

10:26 陈然 · Ran Chen：kind of my feeling, yeah.

10:33 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah.

10:38 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah.

10:47 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah.

10:49 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yes.

10:52 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah, that's a very good point. So to give everyone more background, this year is 2025, right?

11:01 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah, after COVID. So there are multiple factors. Uh, first of all is, uh, of course I went to Tubi at 2017.

11:09 陈然 · Ran Chen：So I-

11:10 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah, I-I was the first ML-ML engineer there. I built the whole machine learning from-team from scratch. Algorithms, a lot-uh, data, data science, a lot of things there from scratch, right? So, and then Tubi was acquired by Fox Corporation. So it has been a long time for me to work in that company. So I, I do want to take a break.

11:27 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah, that's the first thing. And also, I have 2 babies, right? So one is, uh, a girl and a boy, and I do want to spend more time with them as well. And also we decide to take care of the babies, uh, just by ourselves.

11:41 陈然 · Ran Chen：No family support, no nanny, yeah, just by ourselves. Yeah, we, we do want to spend more time with them until they can go to, like, daycare, for example.

11:48 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah, so, and then, uh, another very important factor is, uh, I, I think being full t-full-time dad is cool, and that's not something people talk a lot.

11:58 陈然 · Ran Chen：Uh, but still, I think that's very important.

12:00 陈然 · Ran Chen：Like, uh, I really want to support my wife's career as well. So, uh, my wife is, uh, she's a CPA in the Big 4 accounting firm. So if you know this industry, you know there's gonna be a, uh, their jobs are generally ver-uh, crazily busy.

12:15 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah, crazy hours, busy seasons. And also she have a very big dream, so she also taking a part-time J-

12:22 陈然 · Ran Chen：JD. Yeah, so she want to pass the bar.

12:24 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yes.

12:26 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah.

12:28 陈然 · Ran Chen：Want to, uh, pass the California bar. Yeah, so if you don't know, California bar is one of the most difficult bar to pass. And also she is a Chinese as me, so English is not her native language.

12:38 陈然 · Ran Chen：Uh, taking part-time JD is also extremely challenging because also-

12:43 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah.

12:46 陈然 · Ran Chen：And then prepare for the final exams very hard. So for me, I really want to support her dream as well. Uh, for me, I feel I'm lucky enough to join a, a startup.

12:55 陈然 · Ran Chen：I feel like, uh, I've done a lot to, uh, to get my dream

12:59 陈然 · Ran Chen：come true in a way.

13:00 陈然 · Ran Chen：So I do want to support her, uh, a lot. So I think this kind of thing, the reasons. So I, I stay home for around 2 years so that, uh,2 of the babies can, the younger ones can go to a daycare as well.

13:14 陈然 · Ran Chen：So then, yeah, I think it's a good time for, yeah, for us.

13:27 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yes.

13:41 陈然 · Ran Chen：So, yeah, um, I like the way how you describe it,'cause, um,'cause whenever I think about it, I think it's funny because, like, uh, for example, i-if a woman, right,

13:50 陈然 · Ran Chen：take a career break,

13:51 陈然 · Ran Chen：people won't say you take a career break, and then what about your future career? Like, people take that for granted for somehow, right? So, but essentially, like, we're all equal, right? So, uh, for me, I don't think that's a issue, like, that's like happened just to one of us. So then I think I'm pretty lucky in my career, then why-why not that can-cannot be me, right? So,

14:13 陈然 · Ran Chen：that's basically how I think about it. I think definitely want to talk about this story because I want

14:19 陈然 · Ran Chen：encourage more people, to more men to think about, like, being a full-time dad as well, right? So it's, uh, it's about, like, just the family, and we all have the choice to do the things.

14:31 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah.

14:33 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah, exactly.

14:34 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yes.

14:37 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yes.

14:40 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yes.

14:42 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yes.

14:48 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yes.

14:51 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yes.

14:54 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah.

14:55 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah.

14:57 陈然 · Ran Chen：So, um, so first of all, uh, what-what we do at Pure Global, right? We are like a AI-based consulting firm. Uh, so we help the medical device companies or health tech companies

15:11 陈然 · Ran Chen：who already get their registration done in their local countries. For example, if you have like a Apple Watch,

15:18 陈然 · Ran Chen：you already registered in the United States,

15:21 陈然 · Ran Chen：you are doing pretty well in your business.

15:23 陈然 · Ran Chen：But then you want to go to Brazil, you're going to go to, uh, South Korea,

15:26 陈然 · Ran Chen：you want to go to, uh, Asia, UAE, right? Uh, you have to find a local company to help you go through all this registration process.

15:34 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah, and then you have to have a local company to hold your registration.

15:39 陈然 · Ran Chen：Right.

15:40 陈然 · Ran Chen：So that's kind of the regulations here. So you have to work with the-most of the companies need to work with a consulting firm instead of doing by their own. Uh, unless you are super rich. You can, you can have like 20 different offices, uh, all around the world, then you can do this, right? So, uh, in last few years, we already opened our own company, our own local base in around like 20 different places, places, so we can help the customers to hold their license to do the registration.

16:07 陈然 · Ran Chen：We help a lot of companies from China, from, uh, Europe, USA, uh,'cause these are like major manufacturer companies for medical device, right?

16:16 陈然 · Ran Chen：So, and then, uh, my role as a CTO is really to develop the AI native solutions. So this goes back to what I really want to do. I really want to make AI applied machine learning, basically. So apply AI into different domains. I think this is a very good domain.

16:32 陈然 · Ran Chen：Um, essentially, so this comes two parts. One is what we deliver to the clients, uh, how can we make more efficiency,

16:40 陈然 · Ran Chen：uh, with the AI tools. Second is within the company itself, how can we transform from a traditional consulting company, just like every consulting company?

16:51 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah, like cause consulting company, this kind of format has been running for like hundreds of years, right? So there's always ways of doing consulting company.

16:59 陈然 · Ran Chen：And then there's always issues running consulting company. For example, it's hard to scale

17:03 陈然 · Ran Chen：the business, right? How can we transform the this kind of company into a more AI native company where, uh,

17:11 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah, we can make the company and the business more scalable.

17:15 陈然 · Ran Chen：Without, you know, by building all these AI tools and also changing the company structures.

17:20 陈然 · Ran Chen：We were talking about, right, how to do sales, how to do a lot of things here.

17:25 陈然 · Ran Chen：So I'm leading all these efforts

17:27 陈然 · Ran Chen：to help the clients and help the company as well as a CTO. So I think this kind of aligns what I always want to do

17:34 陈然 · Ran Chen：and all the skills I have. And then since I've been joining this company, we already see a lot of changes

17:39 陈然 · Ran Chen：in the company. Yeah. So, uh, um.

17:43 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah, yeah, yeah. So a lot of changes, a lot of changes. So we are kind of a pioneer here in both, like, helping the clients, also making a company transforming as well. Yeah.

18:00 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah.

18:10 陈然 · Ran Chen：Mhm.

18:20 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah.

18:23 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah, uh, that's a very good point. So for me, why was, I think spending time with baby costs a lot of energy, but still, you still have a lot of time.

18:35 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah. So you, you have a lot of smaller time here and there.

18:41 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah, but you don't have a huge amount of time, like 2 hours,3 hours. No, you probably have like 10 minutes,20 minutes, you can do some all your own things. So I've tried to do a lot of very random things,

18:51 陈然 · Ran Chen：uh, during this period.

18:53 陈然 · Ran Chen：So I learned a lot. For example, because of AI, right, so I can, uh, I do a lot of side hustles. I try to get a lot of professional license, a very different business.

19:04 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah, so I-I-to be honest, I try a lot. Like, I try to search to get license. Uh, I probably search like more than 50 different side hustles.

19:14 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah. And then, uh, I-I-I end-end up spending more time on, like, uh, personal finance domain.

19:20 陈然 · Ran Chen：So I get my, uh, tax professional license, insurance license, insurance agent license, uh, security license, financial advisor license, so I can do-provide the whole financial planning end to end for

19:34 陈然 · Ran Chen：Uh, and that solves a lot of my own questions, and also I do see a lot of clients as well in this da-in this domain.

19:41 陈然 · Ran Chen：So that's kind of a major thing. And then one nice thing about this domain is I get a lot of professional training on how to do the sales.

19:51 陈然 · Ran Chen：So, because I come from a technical side, right? So the whole sales training really bring me to the next level

19:57 陈然 · Ran Chen：of, uh, of my career, yeah.

20:01 陈然 · Ran Chen：Exactly, yeah.

20:04 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah.

20:11 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah, in person, online, but the most important thing is it's-it's really outside my comfort zone.

20:17 陈然 · Ran Chen：I learned a lot being a salesperson. I get a lot of training. So even now, when I join the new company, I-I-I'm very confident to do the sales by myself as well, to talk to clients, which was something I didn't understand. I didn't

20:30 陈然 · Ran Chen：know how to do that in my previous company.

20:32 陈然 · Ran Chen：But now I can do that. Uh, so I think that's very important, and I-I-I see now that, uh, with the help of AI, a lot of things are changing,

20:42 陈然 · Ran Chen：especially the technical side, like Cursor, all these AI tools can do so much things, and that, that means each individual of us need to push the boundary,

20:52 陈然 · Ran Chen：do much more outside of our comfort zone.

20:55 陈然 · Ran Chen：I think that's very important.

21:15 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah.

21:16 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yes.

21:18 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yes.

21:20 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah.

21:25 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah.

21:31 陈然 · Ran Chen：Business owner role.

21:33 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah, I would call it business owner. Yeah, uh, that's also something I didn't quite understand.

21:39 陈然 · Ran Chen：When I worked just as an employee.

21:41 陈然 · Ran Chen：I didn't quite understand what does it mean by truly the business, the feeling of business owner, and how do you provide service to other people? How do you make money from other people?

21:53 陈然 · Ran Chen：Right? That's very important.

21:54 陈然 · Ran Chen：That's very hard, actually.

21:56 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah, right? So, uh,

21:58 陈然 · Ran Chen：'cause, like, if you never do this role, you will feel bad asking people to pay you

22:04 陈然 · Ran Chen：to do something, right? You feel like that's a bargain, that's a negotiation.

22:08 陈然 · Ran Chen：But then if you do a lot of sales, you will realize that's the process of adding value, right?

22:14 陈然 · Ran Chen：So you will figure out what's the value you are providing, how do you figure out the best spot for value adding, right? So the-your whole mindset shifts, and then you know you are helping.

22:24 陈然 · Ran Chen：You're not selling, you're helping them. And so with all these mindset shifts kind of helps me to move to the next role as well, where, to be honest, like-

22:34 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah, exactly. And also, to be honest, when I talk to different companies, they are ve-the most thing they, they, they are most impressive is like, yes, they are looking for a technical leader, but then they doesn't like the technical leader who only care about technical.

22:52 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah, you have to

22:55 陈然 · Ran Chen：You, you have to have strong business sense.

22:57 陈然 · Ran Chen：You know how does business work. You know how you, uh, you, you, you, you can contribute to the business side as well, not just the technical side.

23:07 陈然 · Ran Chen：Right? So that's kind of the requirement for a higher va-higher role. Yeah, so that's kind of thing I, I observe and I start to realize, which I, I didn't quite understand when I was in my previous company.

23:29 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yes.

23:34 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah.

23:35 陈然 · Ran Chen：And then that gives you the proactive way of thinking how to solve the problem, right? Uh, the growth, the the growth mindset comes with together as well because you're a business owner now.

23:46 陈然 · Ran Chen：And if you're just employee, right, so the the the the employee mindset is really hard because

23:51 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah. Like the my manager tell me to do this, tell me to do that, right? So you put your position is like the opposite of the business or opposite of the employee where you see them, like, doing something bad to you, and then you just want to get paid because that's a compensation for you because

24:09 陈然 · Ran Chen：you get hurt in your day-to-day work. I mean, yeah, and at the end of the day that that hurts your long-term career as well, to be honest, right? So, um, so I think this whole business owner mindset is very important for anyone who want to make their career move forward.

24:25 陈然 · Ran Chen：And also, I-I think for me now as a company, uh, leader as well, where I want to build more ways to that the people in the company feel like they are the owner of the business as well.

24:37 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah.

24:37 陈然 · Ran Chen：Then it-it come back to the, uh, organization, it come back to the, uh, compensation incentives,

24:43 陈然 · Ran Chen：compensation structures, right? How can we make people the truly the-the owner of the business?

24:50 陈然 · Ran Chen：These are very important.

24:53 陈然 · Ran Chen：That's a big culture shift, and why that's more important today is because, because of AI.

24:59 陈然 · Ran Chen：The AI are giving us the exponential growth of your ability to do things. Now, if I just give you a fixed pay, you don't want to grow.

25:12 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah, right? But if you are feeling, uh, you are the truly owner of the business, if you can make exponentially growth of the money compensation because you are using the better tools, then you have the incentive to grow.

25:26 陈然 · Ran Chen：So I think as a business leader, that's very important to think about.

25:30 陈然 · Ran Chen：How can we change the compensation structure to encourage people to do the things that can grow together as the AI grow? So that's very important, uh, for us, for everyone to to think about that because that's truly the power of AI.

25:44 陈然 · Ran Chen：Where it's it's give us, give everyone the opportunity to grow exponentially.

25:50 陈然 · Ran Chen：So if the ability, the contribution grows exponentially,

25:55 陈然 · Ran Chen：the compensation, the money also

25:56 陈然 · Ran Chen：should grow

25:57 陈然 · Ran Chen：exponentially as well.

26:01 陈然 · Ran Chen：Exactly.

26:13 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yes, uh, in the later stage, you have the client base, you have the expected... Yeah.

26:18 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yes,

26:19 陈然 · Ran Chen：Exactly. So, so that's why I think that's very important, um, like, we all need to have the right mindset.

26:26 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah, that's what I aim for.

26:27 陈然 · Ran Chen：So that's kind of the most important thing I learned during my full-time dad stage.

26:33 陈然 · Ran Chen：Uh, business owner, where I, I didn't, I didn't quite understand it or quite-I-I kind of sort of have those feelings because,

26:40 陈然 · Ran Chen：you know, in the companies, every company ha-gonna have a company value.

26:46 陈然 · Ran Chen：Be a owner. But like most people doesn't care, most doesn't see it in that way. Yeah, you have to learn it in, I don't know, like everyone learn it in different ways.

27:02 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah, so, uh...

27:09 陈然 · Ran Chen：Uh, a few things people didn't realize, or I didn't realize. So first of all is, what what does it mean by having a truly global company? I have each day, I I probably have meetings

27:20 陈然 · Ran Chen：with people, yeah, morning to night,

27:23 陈然 · Ran Chen：and also people from, for example, Europe,

27:25 陈然 · Ran Chen：like Netherlands, German, from South Asia,

27:29 陈然 · Ran Chen：like Thailand, Singapore,

27:31 陈然 · Ran Chen：from-from Brazil. People all speak English, but speak different English. It's really funny when you talk to different people. Then they have their own nature of way of thinking,

27:41 陈然 · Ran Chen：nature of way of, like, talking.

27:43 陈然 · Ran Chen：Uh, different style of working. So it's-it's very interesting. You work with very, very different people, but truly global. And then, um, and then I also spent, being even being a CTO, I also spent a lot of time, uh, to do the partnership, to do the sales by myself.

28:02 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yes, uh, because I want to, we want to promote the culture of own things end to end.

28:07 陈然 · Ran Chen：Anyone can own things end to end. So that means I can, I should own things end to end as well.

28:12 陈然 · Ran Chen：From finding the leads, talking to clients to sign a deal, and, uh, coordinating the projects to really deliver the projects. Firsthand experience. Also, that helps me to decide what kind of tools I need to build, because without those experience, I-I have to heavily rely on someone else.

28:32 陈然 · Ran Chen：And I think that path, uh, has been proven not that effective.

28:38 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah.

28:39 陈然 · Ran Chen：Because there's like information gap.

28:41 陈然 · Ran Chen：Secondhand information gap, right? So for me, after I talk to all these clients, manage all these projects, the tools I built are really the tools that truly solve the problem. And one last thing I, I, I, I realized that it turns out that if I have all the knowledge of doing things end to end, it turns out we don't have to build very complicated engineer solutions.

29:09 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah, so that's a very interesting part people didn't realize, where you have a team saying, you guys gonna focus on, uh, find, help the, uh, people solve the problem, build the solutions to help them. Actually, this team, their incentive is to build a complicated solution.

29:29 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah, right? There are a lot of reasons, right? So because, for example, people need to justify what they are doing, right? So they want to propose some more complicated things. They want to grow-get promoted. They want to, uh, uh, build, have a larger team.

29:42 陈然 · Ran Chen：All these reasons, right? Things get more, uh, complicated. But for me, I come from different angle. I want to build the tools to solve my own problem. And then I talk to clients on a daily basis,

29:54 陈然 · Ran Chen：right? And it turns out all these tools I built for myself from the company, easy, simple to use.

30:00 陈然 · Ran Chen：Solve the real problem. Then an-another e-real nice thing is because of AI. All these tools are much easier to build now. So because of AI, so AI really solve a lot of things. One is it enabled me to talk to the clients. In the previous, it's hard, but now we can. And then because I talk to the clients, and then because I know what to build, then AI helps me to build things faster.

30:27 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah, so that I-I think we're really in a stage where never, we never seen this before, where

30:34 陈然 · Ran Chen：we can build things much faster

30:36 陈然 · Ran Chen：because of AI, and because of AI let us to know what to build.

30:40 陈然 · Ran Chen：Because we can talk to the customer.

30:45 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah, so I think that that's the change I never seen before. That, that really changed a lot of things.

30:58 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah.

31:01 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yes.

31:03 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yes, exactly.

31:07 陈然 · Ran Chen：Exactly. I think that's the most important part of the change of the organization, where it used to be there are a lot of middle layers, where the core of these layers is just to, to forward message.

31:20 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah.

31:21 陈然 · Ran Chen：What he said, what she said, what you should do.

31:23 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah, nowadays it's gone. It's all gone, right? There just be owner and people who implement that. All these middle layers can be used, we can use AI to somehow to, to make it. Yeah.

31:41 陈然 · Ran Chen：Oh, really?

31:42 陈然 · Ran Chen：Nice.

31:49 陈然 · Ran Chen：I, I think, uh, most of my clothes are like a company branded.

31:53 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah. Free, free, yeah, free t-shirts from all these years, so.

31:58 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah, yeah, exactly. Uh, that's like most engineer.

32:02 陈然 · Ran Chen：clothing style.

32:05 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah.

32:08 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah.

32:10 陈然 · Ran Chen：Exactly.

32:12 陈然 · Ran Chen：And also in San-in the San Francisco Bay Area, the-the culture never changed, so

32:16 陈然 · Ran Chen：it's the same set of clothes, basically.

32:23 陈然 · Ran Chen：So I'm from San Francisco, yeah. Um, yeah, that's the reason, that's the reason. Because in San Francisco, yeah, it's cold, actually. But Stitch Fix is good, so everyone use their service. I used to be a customer when I was, uh, I just graduated. Well, I don't have a family, so.

32:50 陈然 · Ran Chen：Mm.

32:53 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah.

33:01 陈然 · Ran Chen：That's a very good question. Almost everyone asked me that question,

33:04 陈然 · Ran Chen：especially people who work in the big tech

33:06 陈然 · Ran Chen：and who decided not to or doesn't want to move upstairs. So

33:12 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah, don't want to play a game

33:13 陈然 · Ran Chen：because they know how the game works, right? So

33:15 陈然 · Ran Chen：it's a-it's a-it's a very different game. It's like a Hunger Game or something. Yeah.

33:20 陈然 · Ran Chen：So, uh, I would say this way,

33:23 陈然 · Ran Chen：uh, side business is a complete different thing compared to you having a job.

33:30 陈然 · Ran Chen：Right? So when people ask me that question, a lot of time, I feel like they just want to find another job.

33:39 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah.

33:40 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah, that's another job. So there are different ways to think about. For example, they want more, more definite answers, like more like a answers to an exam. They want a standard answer saying, hey, yeah, you just do this and that, you are going to find a job, do this, and then I can pay you a few thousand dollars per month.

33:59 陈然 · Ran Chen：Right? But that's not actually how side hustles works. So it's really, it's a very different mindset. You have to find your own side hustles, basically.

34:15 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah.

34:16 陈然 · Ran Chen：I can share with you my side stories,

34:19 陈然 · Ran Chen：how I get here, but I don't think anyone Gonna

34:23 陈然 · Ran Chen：Exactly. Even though you know my story, it can inspire you, but end of day, it come back to the thing where there is always exploration phase. And you-

34:36 陈然 · Ran Chen：This is how I do things. I do things in a very crazy way. Uh, for example, if I want to do side hustles, I'm going to watch all the YouTube videos about hi-side hustle. I'm probably going to watch like 50 to 100 different YouTube videos.

34:50 陈然 · Ran Chen：Until

34:51 陈然 · Ran Chen：I exhausted all the possible side hustles.

34:54 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah, I get a huge list.

34:56 陈然 · Ran Chen：And then I do search, research on that, and then I, I think about what I want to do and do the exploration one by one. So...

35:08 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah.

35:09 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah, so I, when-whenever I do things, I do things like, uh, exhaust every possible way. So that's how I do things, right? So for side hustles, it's, it's, it's impossible for you, for example, you work in a high-tech company, it's impossible for you to find a side hustle that can make similar money.

35:26 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah.

35:28 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah, right. So, right, so you-you should be aware, like, what are the real things you are looking for, right?

35:33 陈然 · Ran Chen：Make you feel happy, or you want to talk to more people, or you want to accumulate clients for long run, right?

35:40 陈然 · Ran Chen：Probably you cannot make enough money now, but you can make very good money after 5 or 10 years, right? So all these things you have to think about it while you are doing exploration. And then if you have a long list of the things you can try, there are gonna be some of them gonna match your

35:56 陈然 · Ran Chen：So that's why, so this comes to two most more things. What do you really want?

36:01 陈然 · Ran Chen：And what are all the possible solutions there?

36:03 陈然 · Ran Chen：Right? You have to do a match in the end.

36:06 陈然 · Ran Chen：Right? So whatever data point we are contributing, right, just a small portion of the possible solutions, right, uh, contribute to that list. But still, you have to build your own list and your understanding of your own self.

36:24 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yes.

36:29 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yes. Yeah. So, for example, I, I saw people are doing side hustles like, uh, like, uh, most common ones for every Chinese people I know, their first idea is being a real estate

36:42 陈然 · Ran Chen：exactly. So that's good, but if you really start doing that, you realize, uh, that gonna be harder than you think and very competitive. And then, um, and then people, I saw people are doing like, uh, a lot of planning, for example, wedding planning.

36:56 陈然 · Ran Chen：Uh, uh, event planning, this kind of, yeah, and then some, like, photographers, and of course, like, some, like, career coaching thing, uh, that's very popular as well. Life coach, career coach. Yeah, so these are all very good things. So I think about them as well, but for me, I decide to not do any of them.

37:14 陈然 · Ran Chen：So because I feel, for me, I can tell you what I think about it, right? So-

37:21 陈然 · Ran Chen：So, yeah. So when I doing all these explorations, I start to form my own standards.

37:30 陈然 · Ran Chen：Framework. So my framework is simple, right? So first of all, it should be regulated.

37:39 陈然 · Ran Chen：No, not blood money, but just, for example, uh, photographers.

37:43 陈然 · Ran Chen：There's no regulation for that.

37:45 陈然 · Ran Chen：So when you say there's no regulation, regulation will filter out a lot of competitors.

37:53 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah.

37:55 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah.

37:56 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah.

37:57 陈然 · Ran Chen：And getting license actually in United States is extremely easy.

38:01 陈然 · Ran Chen：But people will never think about they have to get a license. They probably don't, yeah, don't want to do that. So that gonna filter out a lot of competitors. Uh, so it's regulated, and then, um, I care more about long-term thing.

38:16 陈然 · Ran Chen：Long-term thing because, uh, a lot of some jobs you can make, uh, quick and short-term money,

38:21 陈然 · Ran Chen：but you are not really building long-term relationships

38:24 陈然 · Ran Chen：with the clients. Some of the thing-and-and then I-I think the selling parts

38:30 陈然 · Ran Chen：uh, is important because you have to talk to the people. A lot of people doesn't want to do the selling part. They want to build something. For example, they can do, uh, building, uh, a game.

38:41 陈然 · Ran Chen：Right? Right? So then that-that doesn't require you to talk to people. So the reason I think talking to people is important, especially in the Bay Area, because, uh, people doesn't want to do that.

38:51 陈然 · Ran Chen：So that give me some competing advantage.

38:58 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah, I want to do.

39:01 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah, because uh, I-I-I found that uh, it's interesting where, because you have the-the whole tech world is-is a huge, like a lot of people are very similar to each other, right?

39:12 陈然 · Ran Chen：We want to build things, we doesn't want to talk about things, right? So that just means if you do something that's opposite to this, you get some kind of competing advantage.

39:21 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah, because, uh, you-you-you don't have a lot of competitors here.

39:25 陈然 · Ran Chen：So,

39:26 陈然 · Ran Chen：Uh, so that's why I-I get all these license, and I found actually it's easy to do the business where, um, if you find the right position, you will notice that you don't have a lot of competitors. If, for example, as a-a-a personal finance domain, the harder part is it's hard for you to grow the business

39:44 陈然 · Ran Chen：because for a lot of financial related thing, you cannot do the marketing publicly. So a lot of clients come from referrals. So it's really hard to grow the business, but you can stay here.

39:54 陈然 · Ran Chen：And then after, like, for example,5 or 10 years, you build enough client base or partnerships, they are going to refer you a lot of business. So that's why I think it's a good long-term business,

40:04 陈然 · Ran Chen：long-term side hustle, but it's really hard to make a short-term money.

40:17 陈然 · Ran Chen：I-

40:20 陈然 · Ran Chen：Um, so here's the thing. For, for this kind of consulting or professional service thing, everything goes down to your pipeline.

40:30 陈然 · Ran Chen：Right?

40:30 陈然 · Ran Chen：And then top of pipeline is how many people you talk to. So if you talk to enough people, you make enough money. So

40:38 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah, so it's like a funnel thing, right? So if you talk to 100 people per year, you get this amount of money.

40:45 陈然 · Ran Chen：You talk to 500 people per year, you get even more amount of money. So, so it's all going back to this funnel thing.

40:52 陈然 · Ran Chen：And then, uh, if you're really good at that,

40:54 陈然 · Ran Chen：you have a higher conversion rate, then your funnel, the bottom line is, is larger, right? But still, your, your top funnel is most important thing.

41:05 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah.

41:07 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yes.

41:10 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah, yeah. Shorter top funnel. Nowadays, I don't have enough time. I don't talk to people aggressively. Yeah. So I don't have bottom funnel, but I got some referrals here and there.

41:19 陈然 · Ran Chen：So.

41:23 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah.

41:25 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah.

41:27 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah.

41:28 陈然 · Ran Chen：Yeah. So, yeah, the number one rule for side hustle is just do 1,000 different things until you find the right one.

41:35 陈然 · Ran Chen：So it's very different from doing a job, because doing a job, you

41:42 陈然 · Ran Chen：in that way where there-there is an answer to find a job.

41:45 陈然 · Ran Chen：But then there's no answer to find a side hustle.

41:49 陈然 · Ran Chen：You have to try it to know.

41:54 陈然 · Ran Chen：Exactly. You can hear a lot of stories, you can watch a lot of videos, but end of day, you have to try it by yourself and to see does that work for you or not.

42:06 陈然 · Ran Chen：Thank you for having me today. Thanks, everyone.