🚀 Founder @ The Sparrows Group | 🌏 Asia manufacturing expert ✈️🔧 | 📱 ex-Apple | 🎓 MIT MechE | 🟪 Schwarzman @ Tsinghua University
Shenzhen, China
Joined April 2025
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- Following124
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If I meet another founder who says “we moving at lightning speed and want to start production, immediately”
I will jump into Shenzhen bay with a data server tied to my ankles, expeditiously 😒
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I’ve been in Shenzhen for 7 years, working at Apple and small startups — but this is easily the coolest office space I’ve had ever had 😆
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Coffee making robots working next to drone delivery stations
The kind of stuff folks wrote about in scifi books is now just a casual Thursday in Shenzhen 😂 - craaaaaaaaazy
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8 years ago I was a schwarzman scholar, sitting in this hall + listening to legends divulge china knowledge accrued over decades
Last week, I got to return to the same hall and share my 7 years in shenzhen - teaching folks how to build hardware from zero to one
Just grateful!
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last year, I asked a bar if i could borrow their space once a month; started this event with only 15 attendees-
a year later, tech in the tropics has 60+ monthly attendees ; standing room only! founders from all over the world coming for brews and convos!
feeling grateful atm 😂
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Work-life balance has been COOKED the last 4 months.
• replaced a co-founder, hired 2 staff
• led Saudis thru factories on Christmas
• drove 8 hours to CES after Frontier killed my flight
• back to China for 3 QC inspections
• rush ordered AI product PCBs
All before CNY.
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Recently, I gave a keynote, and a student came up after like:
“Hey, I know you from Red Note! You made a video about an engineering book — I bought it and now I’m building products.”
Bro then asked me to sign the book I didn’t even write 😭
Keep creating. Someone’s watching.
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🧠 Tech in the Tropics #8: Unlocking the Mind
Can wearable tech tune your brain for better sleep & wellness? 😴
Next week, I’m hosting Emma Zhang, CEO of Vibe Science, to talk about Synthia — a wearable blending neuroscience, AI & design 🔥
DM to RSVP
#Neurotech #AIHardware
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We keep funding AI to “optimize” production, but the real bottleneck is human: no one remembers how to build anymore.
MIT’s FReD Lab wants to fix that — by teaching the next gen process control, computer vision, and statistical process control — pro level skills here!! 🏭
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In the 90s, reporters went on TV asking if [@] was pronounced “at” or “about” 🤣
Feels just like today with AI — everyone asking what it is + how to use it.
We all should keep up with the new tools — don’t want Gen Alpha laughing at us in 2040 😮💨
youtube.com/watch?v=UlJku_CS…
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🤖 Being back in the Chi feels like walking through my personal museum — found some relics from my MIT MechE days, including my 2.007 robot… basically a duct-taped mess of aluminum plates, servos & PCBs 😂
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Could China’s new K visa make Shenzhen the launchpad for the next wave of global startups, while the US keeps pushing talent away? 🤔
IDK… but I’m bullish on it 🤣
✈️ First came the visa-free transit scheme — a few days in China if you’re en route to a 3rd country.
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🌏 Living abroad will change you…
And you may not realize how much—until you are nearly booted from a downtown LA AT&T store 😂
May 2023 was my first time back after 3.5 years in 🇨🇳.
Landed, reunited with the bros… and was weirdly happy to see pickup trucks lol
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🎶 “Do you think about me now and then… I’m coming home again!”
That old Kanye track been looping in my head the whole Hong Kong ➡️ Chicago flight 😮💨
Complicated legacy, I know — but he did write the soundtrack to my Chi-town adolescence… and the nostalgia hits hard.
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🎭 One of my fav sayings in Chinese goes:
“外行看热闹，内行看门道”
Roughly: “The untrained eye enjoys the show. The expert analyzes the mechanics.”
Whether it’s theater or hardware manufacturing, I’ve seen that truth firsthand… (🧵1/6)
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If you ever spot me in the Shenzhen wild — at a factory or in the markets — chances are my outfit will raise a few eyebrows 😜
Here’s the thing: Shenzhen, despite all its futuristic hardware chops, is basically a 20+ million person sauna.
Sweltering. Humid. Relentless.
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🐎 Recently visited one of the largest copper manufacturers in the world
And somehow ended up at a horse-riding stable for grade schoolers?? 😭
Here’s what happened on our trip to Hailiang Group — a $30B Chinese copper giant with way more up its sleeve than you’d expect… (🧵1/8)
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“China is one of the most capitalist, consumerist places on Earth.”
I said that—on record—and @BusinessInsider published it verbatim 😂💀
High-school me was the kid reading BI to decode the world. Present-day me just woke up to a profile in the very same place 😳 (🧵1/4)
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📍Shenzhen > Silicon Valley?
Maybe not today… but give it 10 years.
Why I’m building in China’s south—and why more global founders may follow 👇🏾
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