Flying back to Beijing on Air China

After 4 months of living in Vancouver we planned to spend part of our summer holiday in China. To be honest, I was not looking forward to go back. The weather in July is fantastic in British Columbia and there are still so many things that I wanted to see or do close to our new home. But my wife and kids really wanted to see their family and I also wanted to catch up with some friends and set up some business meetings, so I decided to join them.

Beijing Olympic Forest Park and its 10 km running track on a hot summer day without pollution

We arrived in Beijing a week ago and the weather was almost as good as in Vancouver: temperatures in the lower 30s Celsius and a clear blue sky. When we had drinks with friends in a Houhai courtyard one night we could even see the stars – quite unusual in the middle of Beijing. Of course the weather did not stay long like this and when I opened the curtains in our apartment on the 3rd day Scott immediately asked me why it was so polluted outside.

Houhai area in Beijing

But interestingly I did not mind the pollution that much anymore. While we were living in Shanghai I hated it, especially because I could not run outside and the kids often could not play in the outdoor playground at school. I guess the big difference is that I knew this will be only for a few days (or weeks) before we would be back in a country that does not need to measure its air pollution. I even went for a long run in the smog when it was a bit less severe (just over the 150 level, which is merely ‘unhealthy’), something I never did in Shanghai.

Generally I liked Beijing a lot better during the past week than I had imagined. The traffic jams were as bad as always, or maybe even worse. But we had arranged a car with driver and  had enough time, so it did not matter too much and I managed to read 2 books in the back seat while crawling through the city. Traffic is a lot worse than in Shanghai, I could never drive here myself anymore. In Vancouver I love driving, most days I open the top of my convertible while driving to and from the office, even when it’s cold. But driving a cabriolet in Beijing would be a waste of money, or at least extremely unhealthy.

There are so many cars in Beijing that people park in the middle of the street

One night we did not have our car and had to take a taxi from dinner at the North 4th Ring Road to drinks with friends at Centro. It was raining and impossible to find a cab, the few that were available refused to take rides. Very different from when I lived her in the early 2000s, I suppose the taxi fares are still way too low so there is no incentive to take passengers on a rainy night. Luckily a friend passed by and drove us to the bar. For me it would be hard to imagine living in Beijing without a car and driver, maybe I should give public transportation a try?

4D movie at the China Science & Technology Museum

Grace mainly spent time with her family and with the kids, taking them to (indoor) playgrounds, swimming pools, the Olympic Park (when the weather was still nice) and to lunches with her friends. I mainly spent time at home during the day, studying for my Canadian boating license (I passed the exam last night!), doing a Spanish course to brush up on my skills (I did not speak or study Spanish in almost 20 years), and to read a book on Canadian corporate tax law (which sounds more boring than it really is).

Beijing still has a lot of great Japanese restaurants

At night we met up with lots of friends, who either live in Beijing or were here on business trips. Among others we had dinner with a group of former Mercedes-Benz colleagues, some of whom I had not seen since 2002. We went to Gary’s new house one night and I visited Gary’s new company (which among others has its own cinema, so next time I’ll bring the kids so they can watch cartoons there!). We also had some business meetings and of course had a couple of 4-hands massages at Dragonfly (they should open a branch in Vancouver, I think they will do very well there).

To my surprise I enjoyed the first week a lot more than I had imagined, a change of scenery every few months is good. I realize that I still like Beijing very much, despite all its downsides. I could not live here anymore, but it’s a place I need to come back to at least once a year. The place still has the vibe that Shanghai also has, but that Vancouver is missing.

I am having a great time at CrossPacific Capital (XPCP), learning a lot and seeing many interesting deals. So many that it may be more efficient to get some assistance. Therefore I am now looking to hire an additional personal assistant / executive assistant for our office in downtown Vancouver (we have one EA already at this moment). 

What does that mean? The person I am looking for will help to efficiently manage the day-to-day operations and  bookkeeping of our venture capital firm. You will work directly with me, but management of staff, accounting, and support of management or other staff is also required. You may also work with some of the start-ups that we incubate in our office.

Position Requirements

• Three to five years in administrative support in a corporate or start-up environment, with two years support at the executive level.
• Experience in an investment banking or VC/PE environment a plus.
• Minimum of a Business Admin degree from a recognized University (SFU, UBC or equivalent educational institution in Canada or abroad).
• MBA a plus
• Fluency and proficiency in the English language, with a preference for a candidate who also speaks another language (esp. Chinese would be a big plus considering our activities in China)
• Certification in accounting and bookkeeping
• Overseas experience a plus
• Ability to respect at all times the confidential nature of the work and information in the Executive’s office
• Ability to be available 24/7.  Max 1 hr response time to calls, sms and email during working hours, 24 hrs response time during non working hours
• Communication: Excellent oral and written communication skills.
• Needs Assessment: Anticipate, understand, and respond to the needs of members and other clients to meet or exceed their expectations.
• Teamwork: Work cooperatively and effectively with others to set goals, resolve problems, and make decisions to enhance organizational effectiveness; ability to undertake self-directed tasks when necessary.
• Organization: Excellent time management skills; attention to detail; the capacity to prioritize by assessing situations to determine urgency; ability to develop a work schedule, set goals, create / implement actions plans and monitor progress towards goals; and ability to make clear, timely decisions.

If you are interested in this position or have any questions, you can get in touch with me at marc@xpcp.ca. If you decide to apply for the job send us your resume and a short motivation. Please also indicate your expected salary level. 

For a couple of weeks I have been looking at Bitcoins. First more out of curiosity, but over the last couple of days more from an investment point of view. It’s fascinating that someone managed to come up with the idea for this new currency and that he (or she? Nobody knows who was behind the original Bitcoin idea) made it into a globally accepted means of payment.

Globally is relative of course, but in most countries of the world there are at least some merchants accepting bitcoins. Not a lot though: today there are just 12 companies accepting bitcoins in Vancouver for example. But I believe this will change, and therefore I see a huge opportunity.  Because hardly anybody uses bitcoins the demand is relatively low compared to supply. The supply side will certainly go up a lot over the next years (more people will buy or build bitcoin miners), but because it will get harder to mine every day (that’s part of how bitcoins work) I expect that demand will go up a lot more.

As an economist I see a big opportunity here: if supply is constrained and demand will go up it means that bitcoins may easily be worth 10, 100 or even 1000 times as much as their current value. Don’t underestimate what can happen it bitcoins would really become a global currency: in 2010 someone bought a pizza for 10,000 bitcoins, just 3 years later those bitcoins are worth USD 1 million. I hope the pizza maker kept them in his bitcoin account!

Of course there are a lot of risks. Maybe the theory behind bitcoins has a critical flaw that nobody thought about. Possible, but more and more unlikely as time goes by. A bigger risk, however, is that governments will ban bitcoins. This is something that is actually quite likely in the US or the EU, although a global ban will be impossible because bitcoins are anonymous. But if it happens my theory about demand outstripping supply might not work, because the general public won’t use them.

The currency seems to be a lot more stable than just a few weeks ago, so this looks like a good time to take a position. Either I’ll lose my complete investment or I’ll make a mega-return. No risk no fun, just like in my daily life as a venture capitalist!

The Grouse Grind, a steep 2.9 km trail up Grouse Mountain with a 850 meter altitude increase, has become my favorite trail in Vancouver. Not because it is such a beautiful trail – there are some nice views but generally the trail is so steep that you only see the steps or rocks ahead of you. There are much nicer trails out there, but they are not as much fun or as convenient to reach from downtown Vancouver as the Grouse Grind.

I did my first Grind in early May and since then I hiked it 6 times (once without the official Grouse Grind Timer, and the last 5 times with one, so everybody can see my results online). I don’t use the word run for the Grouse Grind, because it’s almost impossible to run it because it’s so steep. I often go after work, it’s just a short detour on my way home, and their is enough parking space at the bottom of the trail.

I bought an annual ticket for Grouse Mountain, so each time I go up I can take the cable car back down to my car. That’s a major selling point for the Grouse Grind compared to other trails, especially because running down is bad for your knees and I prefer just going up.

Another advantage is the Grouse Grind timer that I mentioned earlier. Most of the regulars have a chip card that you can scan at the bottom and at the top, so your results are displayed on a TV screen and they are all available online. It’s great to compare your results to others, or to the average of the different age groups.

Last Friday I did the Grouse Grind two times in a row, which was actually a bit too much. My legs were killing me on the second climb up and I was not sure if I would be able to make it. But of course I did reach the top (although I did stop several times), but  not in a great time. The first climb I managed in 48:28 minutes, but the second one took me 16 minutes longer.

It’s quite busy on the Grouse Grind, especially on weekends, so I try to avoid peak times. When you go relatively fast you have to pass a lot of people on the steep trail, which is not always easy. I wish I could do it early in the morning, but it’s my task to get Scott dressed, fed and to school by 8 AM, so that won’t work. I realize more and more what a luxury it was that we had 2 nannies in China!

I actually like passing a few people on the way up, it’s a good incentive to push myself even more. I guess I am just too competitive. When I did the Grouse Grind 2 times in a row I was annoyed that people managed to pass me on my second climb up, especially when I had to stop several times.

The Grouse Grind is such a great work-out because it only takes less than an hour, but you have to give everything you have during that time. You can’t even stop and go back half way, because there are no side trails and it’s not allowed to hike down (although some people still do this). But there is a comfortable cable car back to the bottom of the mountain!

All these things together make the Grouse Grind quite addictive and I now need to do it at least once a week. And I am not the only one, there are people who climb Grouse Mountain 2-3 times per day almost every day! One guy did the Grouse Grind 97 times this year already, even though the season only started less than a month ago (so that’s over 3 climbs per day on average). I am very happy to have this great trail so close to my house!

PAUL PAIRET’S EGGS from Limelight Studio on Vimeo.

Two of my favorite restaurants in Shanghai are both run by chef Paul Pairet: Ultraviolet and Mr. & Mrs. Bund. I am very impressed by his cooking style and how he presents his food, and I hope one day he’ll set up a restaurant in Vancouver (unlikely, I know).

So when I saw a video on Shanghaiist on how he fries an egg – one of the few kitchen activities that I can pull off as well – I wanted to watch it. And indeed he makes an art of it. Things like not toasting a piece of bread in a toaster, but using fire to burn it. Not using butter but frying lard before adding the eggs. You probably get what I mean. The video inspires me to be a it more creative while frying eggs for the family on Saturday morning. And it also inspires me to have dinner at either Ultraviolet or Mr. & Mrs. Bund during my next trip to Shanghai!

Today Mary Meeker once again presented her latest views on the State of the Internet. I love her slide decks, they are very inspirational and always give me lots of new ideas – not necessarily anymore for companies to found, but at least for companies to fund.

One interesting thing about today’s presentation is that she talks a lot about China and compares the Internet usage there with that in the rest of the world. If you don’t have time to go through the whole presentation, here are some of the notes that I took while reading it during my lunch break today.

-China now has 564 million Internet users, almost twice as many as the #2 country, the USA with 244 million users. This gap will only widen, because the yearly growth in the US is just 3% against 10% in China. So far in China only 42% of the population is online (US: 78%) meaning that the Internet still has a lot of room to grow.

– Surprisingly, the country where most people share ‘everything’ or ‘most things’ online is… Saudi Arabia (60%). The rest of the top 5 are all Asian countries (#5 Turkey is actually Eurasian), followed by China at #6. In China 33% of the Internet users share almost everything online, something you can clearly see if you compare Weibo or WeChat usage to the usage of Twitter in the US. In the US the percentage is 15%, far below the world average of 24%.

– Mary Meeker makes a mistake by saying that the top 8 of biggest Global Internet Properties are all US companies. The data they use (based on Comscore) suggest that #9 (Tencent) and #10 (Baidu) both have less than 300 million unique monthly visitors. This is far below their real user numbers, the Comscore figures for China are always way too low. It should have been clear from some of her other charts that her figures are too low, for example WeChat (a Tencent app that was launched 18 months ago) already has 400 million users. WeChat is just one of many of Tencent’s services. Later she mentions Sina Weibo with 530 million users, which did not even make it in the top 10. Not a big deal, but in my opinion Chinese companies should be ranked much higher in the Global Internet Properties list.

– Her observation that the mobile Internet in China is now bigger than the PC Internet is a good one. Globally mobile Internet traffic is only 15% of total Internet traffic, so the rest of the world has a lot of catching up to do. China shows us what kind of mobile Internet services might appear in the Western world, for example a taxi app where you can push to talk to the driver or where you can bid higher to make sure you get the taxi if it’s busy. Unfortunately the taxi apps example is not a good one because they may be restricted soon, but it shows how innovative China is.

– In China time spent on the Internet is higher than time spent on TV: 33% of media time is spent online vs. 29% while watching TV.

– Alibaba (China e-commerce) is now bigger than Ebay and Amazon combined in terms of gross merchandise value.

It’s a good sign that Mary Meeker emphasizes what’s happening in China. When I talk to Internet people in Vancouver I am surprised that many still don’t realize about how big and innovative the Chinese Internet really is.

There is a lot more in the presentation (most not related to China) that I won’t talk about here, but that you should check out if you want to understand where the world is headed. I want to end with one example about Google Glass. Wearable technology is something I believe in but that is getting a lot of criticism. Mary Meeker simply observes that the average smartphone user reaches for his/her mobile phone 150 times per day, this could be hands-free with Google Glass-like technologies. I am looking forward to the future!

After almost 3 months in Canada it was time to rename my blog. I got a couple of emails and comments from people who found my blog through Google or in aggregators, and did not understand why most topics are suddenly about Canada instead of China. Well, to end the confusion I changed the name of this blog from Shanghaied Weblog to Vancouvered Weblog. Not very original, but until I find a better name it should suffice. I also changed the text of the side box, so it’s clear that I don’t live in China anymore. 

Because the honeymoon phase of living in Vancouver is almost over (the first 100 days of our stay here end on June 9), it’s probably also time for a post about the pros and cons of living and working here versus being in China. Hint: I love working and living in Vancouver, but I do miss Shanghai and its exciting but challenging business environment. I may join the board of a Chinese Internet company in a few weeks, so I will be back more often in the second half of the year.

One of the great things about living in Vancouver is that we are so close to nature and marine wildlife. Over the past weeks I have seen quite some seals on the small beach close to our house, and last week I even saw an orca (killer whale) while sitting on our terrace in the late afternoon.

A few days ago I heard that an elephant seal had chosen Ambleside beach for its yearly moulting process, meaning that it sheds its fur and skin there during a one-month period. So when we were doing our Sunday afternoon shopping in Ambleside today, we decided to go for a walk on the beach to look at the seal.

The area around the mammal is closed off from the public, because it can be quite dangerous if you come too close. The municipality put up signs saying that an elephant seal can bite and is more dangerous than the usual seals we see in Vancouver’s waters. But you could still come quite close to the seal, even though it was a bit hard to recognize because its color is similar to the color of the sand.

Seeing this animal on the beach was totally worth the small detour, even though Elaine preferred the playground across the road from the seal. In case you would like to see it, the elephant seal is on the beach next to the hockey fields, just west of 13th Street in West Vancouver.