Interconnected

Topics: LinkedIn• Social Network• Compliance Cost•

Why LinkedIn (Mostly) Left China?

LinkedIn’s announcement to (mostly) exit China created a lot of headlines this past week. Why did LinkedIn leave? The one sentence answer: it's a media company. In a market like China, where the media environment is tightly controlled, all advertisement-funded social networks are

Topics: e-CNY• Blockchain• Digital Currency•

e-CNY: Technology

In Part I of our multi-part series on e-CNY, China’s digital currency, we presented an overview of the key players that are driving this project. One of those key players is the Digital Currency Research Institute, a dedicated R&D lab housed

Topics: e-CNY• Blockchain• Digital Currency•

e-CNY: The Players

China’s tech crack down has truly reached mainstream in the US; even the Daily Show is talking about it. With mainstream attention comes mainstream-level noise, confusion, and missing the forest for the tree. The biggest “forest” that people might miss is China’s

Topics: Ideology• Decoupling• Demographics•

Ideology, Demographics, Decoupling: Tomorrow’s News; 明日要闻 (September 2021)

Hello Interconnected Readers: Ideology, demographics, decoupling -- these are the three driving forces behind everything that’s been happening in China, as identified by Kevin Rudd. Thus, they are the common thread of this September 2021 issue of “Tomorrow’s News”, featuring the following

Topics: Hashicorp• Cloud Industry• Open Source•

HashiCorp: Past, Present, Future

Today’s post is a guest contribution from Shawn Xu (no relations). Shawn is one of the early engineers at Ascend.io, got his Masters in Human Computer Interaction at Carnegie Mellon, and writes an informative WeChat public account on SaaS called 硅谷成长攻略. He

Topics: Semiconductor• TSMC• Morris Chang•

Morris Chang's Last Speech

Today’s post is the translation of a speech Morris Chang delivered on the history and future of TSMC and the semiconductor industry at large in April. Chang is the founder and two-time CEO of TSMC, now 90-years-old and retired. The audience of the

Topics: ByteDance• Entrepreneurship• TikTok•

Zhang Yiming’s Last Speech

We rarely do translations on Interconnected, because this newsletter is focused on original work and thinking. Today’s post is an exception -- an English translation of a Zhang Yiming speech delivered at the ByteDance company annual all-hands meeting in March 2021, and his

Topics: 5G• Data Regulation• 996•

Data, 5G and Office Romance: Tomorrow’s News; 明日要闻 (August 2021)

Hello Interconnected Readers: Fresh off a two-weekend break, I’m excited to publish another issue of our new monthly product launched last month. It is now called “Tomorrow’s News”, not the original name “Articles That *Will* Matter”, because it is a better match

Topics: Big Data• Databricks• Cloud Industry•

What Does Databricks Do?

Today’s post is a guest contribution from Shawn Xu (no relations). Shawn is one of the early engineers at Ascend.io, got his Masters in Human Computer Interaction at Carnegie Mellon, and writes an informative WeChat public account on SaaS called 硅谷成长攻略. (The

Topics: Agora• Regulation• Developer•

Revisiting Agora ($API)

Agora (ticker: $API) is a public company I’ve been following for a long time. Back in January, I wrote “What Does Agora Do?” to explain its core technology, founding story, and API-based business model. The post went minorly viral, because Agora powers Clubhouse

Topics: Regulation• Huawei• IPO•

Chinese Government Turf Battle: Tomorrow's News; 明日要闻 (July 2021)

Hello Interconnected Readers: Today, I’m reconceptualizing a section of Interconnected. It used to be a weekly news summary of six stories from both English language and Chinese language sources. Now, it’s a new monthly product called, "Tomorrow's News". It will be published

Topics: Southeast Asia• SPAC• IPO•

SPAC-ing the Southeast Asia Story

The market frenzy around SPACs may have subsided somewhat, their effects on tech companies are far from over. In fact, their focus has simply shifted away from the US to other regions. Where? Apparently, Southeast Asia. I’ve been bullish on Southeast Asia as

Topics: Cloud Industry• ByteDance•

Is “ByteDance Cloud” A Good Idea?

When I first started writing Interconnected a little over a year ago, two of my favorite analyses that I wrote were why Facebook and Dropbox don’t offer their own cloud platforms. Given their scale and expertise in infrastructure operations, building a cloud seems

Topics: Meta• Geopolitics•

So What Is The American Dream?

Every July 4th, America’s Independence Day, always puts me in a reflective mood. I’ve sworn the oath to protect the US constitution three times in my life -- once to become a naturalized citizen, once to work at the Commerce Department, once

Topics: Developer• Open Source• For Founders•

Surfing the Wave of Developer Relations: Part 2

Today’s post is a guest contribution from Kevin Chen. He was the first Developer Advocate at the now-unicorn open source company Kong and currently works at smallstep, an early stage open source startup. In Part I of this two-part series, I discussed the

Topics: Low Code No Code• Developer• VC•

Low Code No Code, Part II: How to Ride This Wave

Today’s post is a guest contribution from Shawn Xu (no relations). Shawn is one of the early engineers at Ascend.io, got his Masters in Human Computer Interaction at Carnegie Mellon, and writes an informative WeChat public account on SaaS called 硅谷成长攻略. (The

Topics: Industrial Planning• Semiconductor•

Can the US “Out China” China?

The passage of the US Innovation and Competition Act by the US Senate last week generated a lot of media attention. It’s a unique piece of news in that it’s newsworthy both as a “process story” and a “substance story.” By process,

Topics: Developer• Open Source• For Founders•

Surfing the Wave of Developer Relations: Part I

Today’s post is a guest contribution from Kevin Chen. He was the first Developer Advocate at the now-unicorn open source company Kong and currently works at smallstep, an early stage open source startup. (The audio version of a similar discussion between me and

Topics: Low Code No Code• Developer• Guest Post•

Low Code No Code, Part I: Use Cases and Landscape

Today’s post is a guest contribution from Shawn Xu (no relations). Shawn is one of the early engineers at Ascend.io, got his Masters in Human Computer Interaction at Carnegie Mellon, and writes an informative WeChat public account on SaaS called 硅谷成长攻略. (The

Topics: Announcement• ByteDance• Developer•

The New Interconnected; Zhang Yiming's Resignation

This Interconnected post may be the most “disconnected” yet, but I will do my best to connect everything anyway. First of all, I want to share that I started a new role as the senior director for International Expansion strategy at GitHub earlier this

Topics: Alibaba• Cloud Industry• Open Source•

May 16, 2021: AliCloud, JEDI, HarmonyOS, Hillhouse Capital, Tencent Cloud

Hello Interconnected Readers: I have not written a bilingual news source summary and commentary in a while -- my apologies. Interconnected, as a newsletter and product, will be going through some changes, which we will announce later this week. I’m also going through

Topics: TSMC• Semiconductor•

Morris Chang, Global Semiconductor Competition, Make “Making Stuff” Cool

(The audio version of this post can be found on the Interconnected YouTube channel): Morris Chang, the founder and two-time CEO of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (TSMC), gave an hour-long speech to a room of Taiwanese government and business leaders a couple of

Topics: For Founders• Developer• Open Source•

Distributed Engineering Management Best Practices with Justin Cormack

On April 6, I hosted the 3rd session of a monthly Company Building webinar series for founders and operators of developer-focused and/or commercial open source startups. The goal of this series is to share tactical knowledge -- the nitty gritty know-hows that can

Topics: Meta• Alibaba• LATAM•

Two Week Break; No New Post

Dear Interconnected Subscribers and Readers: We are going on a two-week break (first break since starting this newsletter more than a year ago), because I am working on a few personal and professional transitions, moving to a different city (Seattle), and planning some new

Topics: LATAM• Mexico• Developer•

Engineering Talent Distribution: Mexico and LATAM

I recently published a post on the US-Asia-Latin America (LATAM) tech nexus I witnessed during my visit to Mexico earlier this year. (The piece was first published on TechCrunch the week before.) (The audio version of this post can be found on the Interconnected

Subscribe to Interconnected