Last night Grace and I had dinner at Ultraviolet again – the restaurant that I called ‘an incredible food experience’ and ‘a restaurant that people may travel to Shanghai for, just to try it out’ on this blog after our first visit. It’s extremely hard to get seats and to get them I had to make a reservation exactly 3 months in advance on Ultraviolet’s website. Sometimes a few seats open up at a later time, but the best way is to just check the website regularly and grab seats once a new day is added to the schedule. There are only 10 seats per night at Ultraviolet so you have to be quick once you see available places.

In the Ultraviolet kitchen with Paul Pairet

I won’t describe the whole Ultraviolet experience again, you can read that in the post I wrote last June, but I can tell you that the experience the second time is at least as good as the first time. Because you know where you will go and what will happen you can actually focus more on the food itself, which was again out-of-this-world. Too bad China does not have Michelin stars yet, but if they ever will this will likely be the first 3-star one in mainland China. The first time the experience was sometimes almost overwhelming, meaning that all your senses are so hard at work looking at the video projections, listening to the audio, smelling the fragrances and looking at the wait staff performing, that you focus less on just the food.

Last time we were part of table #7 and last night’s table number was 133. The guests were a very different group than during our first visit. The first time people were there more for professional purposes than too purely relax, therefore it was relatively quiet and people did not talk much during the meal. Last night, however, the group was more of a mixed bunch (among others a VC, a doctor, expats working for multinationals, a student and an American tourist who had read about Ultraviolet in the New York Times and had flown in to try it out. Some had actually read my blog post about Ultraviolet!). We had a lot of fun and were frequently laughing during the dinner, it felt a lot less formal than in June this year.

The 22-course course menu was the same as half a year ago (menu UV A), but we knew that in advance and it did not matter. I was actually looking forward to eating some of the special dishes again, because there is no other place on this planet where you can get them. Fabien and Greg both told me that there will be a new menu (UV B) from late February onwards, they are working hard on that right now. After the second menu is in place they will change from UV A to UV B in weekly or bi-weekly intervals. Eventually there will also a menu UV C and UV D, but I assume that will be at least another 1-2 years from now.

Talking about Ultraviolet’s  future plans with Greg Robinson, Ultraviolet’s Head of Research

The staff knew that we were returning guests (it does not happen very often yet, partly because of the difficulty to get seats and partly because of the price) and we were personally welcomed back, which is always a nice gesture. During the gummi bear run (hard to explain…) I was even asked to join the staff to run around the table!

Gummi Bear run at Ultraviolet

What I had not expected is that the staff was still having as much fun as they did 6 months ago. They are not acting but you can see that they truly love their jobs. It must be great to give interesting guests every night the best meal they have ever had in a setting that nobody can really imagine in advance. Ultraviolet is here to stay and we’ll be back as well, thanks to all the staff for another unforgettable evening!

‘Cleaning the dishes’ after another fantastic meal at Ultraviolet

On Weibo I saw the infographic below, posted 2 weeks ago on the Socially Aware Blog. There are a couple of interesting statistics on there, but 2 of them really blew me away.

The first one is a comparison between Facebook and Google+. The average American visitor spends 6.75 hours per month on Facebook, which seems reasonable to me. But if you look at Google+, there the time spent is only 3 minutes! Google+ may have a lot of users, but most are users by default because of their Google profile and never seem to use it.

The other one is about how much time Americans spend on online video sites. YouTube is the winner with 3 hours per month (a lot less than I had expected), but number 2 is… Tudou! U.S. customers spend an average of 2.5 hours on Tudou per month, the same time as on Hulu.

Of course this is only the average time that people who visit Tudou (in the US obviously a much small number than YouTube visitors) spend on the site, but it’s still a lot of time considering the fact that Tudou is hosted in China and is therefore relatively slow. And of course now I’m wondering how Tudou ended up on this list at all…

Over the past years I looked at Sonos audio equipment a few times, but I always assumed their wireless hifi systems would not work well in China. Because of that I never bought their audio players and amplifiers. But this summer a friend of mine at Sonos gave me some of their equipment and I realized Sonos actually works very well, even behind the Great Firewall.

In case you don’t know what Sonos is, it’s an audio equipment brand that lets you stream music wireless to different speakers in your house. For example, I can now listen to Spotify in all rooms where I installed Sonos audio speakers. Or I can listen in one room to an online radio station and in another to music that sits on a hard disk on one of my computers. Sonos streams it all wirelessly to the different locations in your house. If you want to have the same music in all rooms that’s easy as well, with one click your whole house has the same music everywhere.

You can control all your music through an app on your iPhone, iPad, Android or computer – or if you prefer an extra remote control you can buy a separate Sonos controller. The interface is very easy to use, even Scott (almost 5 years old) can already find his favorite song (currently Psy’s Gangnam Style) on Spotify and play it on the system in our living room.

I liked the Sonos gadgets so much that I bought a couple of more speakers for my house and even got some as presents for my family. In a way Sonos reminds me of Apple: the products look great, are very easy to install (basically plug-and-play) and even more easy to use.

And the best thing (at least for me) is that Sonos works great in China. I was worried about this as the Great Firewall normally leads to a very bad reception of foreign Internet radio stations, but generally this is no problem with Sonos (there have been a few exceptions, especially during the the time of the 18th Party Congress when all Internet traffic was severely reduced).

Sonos comes pre-installed with 1000s of radio stations, but in China all foreign ones are blocked by default. However, there is a simple way around that because you can manually add the streaming URL of each radio station that you want to listen to. It took me just a few minutes to set this up for my favorite stations. After that you click on the radio station and it starts playing right away.

If you are interested to buy yourself a Christmas present, the best (and currently only?) way to get Sonos in China is to go to MediaMarkt. They should have all the equipment on stock. Just don’t go during your lunch break like I did once: when I was there MediaMarkt only had one employee that knew anything about Sonos and he was on his lunch break as well…

And in case you are wondering, even though Sonos gave me some equipment half a year ago they never asked me to blog about it. I just love their products!

A couple of weeks ago I came across a great article by Y Combinator’s Paul Graham about how to get start-up ideas (thanks for the link Raghu). Today I was in the playground while my daughter Elaine was playing and I was looking at the articles that I saved in Pocket over the past weeks. Then I saw this one again. I decided to re-read it and while doing that I felt it was so good that I should probably post the main points, combined with my own experiences, on my blog.

Paul Graham has seen thousands of start-ups over the years, and as a serial entrepreneur and programmer himself he has a lot of personal experience with founding and growing businesses. He writes about it on his personal site, it’s a great resource if you’re interested in entrepreneurship. His latest essay is titled ‘How to Get Start-up Ideas’ and gives IMHO a very good overview of how to find the next big thing, or at the very least how to avoid working on the wrong ideas. The post that he wrote is quite long, so take your time to read it. One reason why I saved it in Pocket is because it was too long to read during the daytime, so I saved it to read it during my daily commute (or in the playground!).

The best way to find a good start-up is to look for problems, preferbly your own problems. Good ideas have generally 3 things in common: founders want or need this function/app/product, they can build it themselves, and few others realize it’s worth doing. The second one is especially important for me when I invest in start-ups. I hardly ever put money in a company that has to outsource its programming. If you are not a programmer and don’t have a technical co-founder, make sure you learn to code yourself. Basic programming skills only take about 3 months to learn, it’s probably one of the best investments you’ll ever make if you want to run a start-up.

Don’t sit down and think of start-up ideas. Not only will you not get a lot of ideas, but the ones that you’ll get are probably the wrong ones. You can either build something that a large group of people want a little bit, or something that a small group of people want a lot. If that’s the case go for the latter. That’s how Facebook, Apple and Microsoft all got started (see the article for more details).

You’ll get the best ideas when you are on the edge of a fast-moving field. Focus on the field that you know a lot about, if you then get an idea that seems right, the chance that it will work is relatively high. Take your time, even if it will take you a year to get to the edge of a field it may be a good investment.

Live in the future (look at how the world should be in 3-5 years from now) and focus on what is missing. Or even better, focus on what seems interesting to do. If you do that chances of success are biggest.

When I was in university I once had a discussion with a friend over a some beers, in which I said something like “I think all the big things have been invented already, it will be hard to come up with something completely new if you want to set up your own business”. This was around 1993, the moment when the Internet had just been invented! My mind was totally closed for what was happening and the implications it would have. I mainly looked at existing things (trading, physical production of goods etc.) and could not think big yet. I really believe this takes time to learn. Therefore don’t sit down and expect the good ideas to come to you.

Give yourself time to find an idea. Open your mind for things that are missing, but don’t consider right away whether it would be a good start-up idea or whether it could turn into a big company (you’ll throw away a lot of good ideas or focus on the bad ones). It took me years to look at the world in a way that I constantly see opportunities. I now have new ideas literally almost every day. Most won’t work, but that’s not the point. You just need to look at the world in a different way, and that works best if you are on the leading edge of a field (in my case right now a combination of consumer Internet, mobile apps and China).

The best ideas come when you know a lot about 2 different fields. Paul Graham advises programmers not to take an internship at a software company, but to for example work at a biotech company. From my experience that’s indeed how the best ideas are formed.

People in one industry (TV, fashion, etc.) know mainly about their own business field, but don’t see what’s happening in other areas. Having an open mind because you come from a different industry helps you to see what’s missing and fill the gaps. Be prepared for the experts to tell you that it won’t work because ‘you don’t understand the industry’. If you believe in your idea getting this kind of criticism is actually a good thing, because it lowers the risk that others from the industry will do something similar.

Not that you should be afraid of competition. Start-ups are normally not killed off by competitors, so don’t give your competition too much credit. Just make sure you do something different (or better) than they do. In my opinion most business fields are not a winner-takes-it-all market, so even if there is a lot of competition you should still go ahead if you feel that you can do things better. Think about Google that entered the saturated search market in the late 90s, they had a secret weapon and beat all of them.

Paul Graham’s essay has a lot more advice, including what to do if your start-up is not doing the right thing and you need a new idea quickly. Whether you are a wannabe entrepreneur or already very experienced, take 30 minutes to read his thoughts and experiences. And then take another 30 minutes to think about your own business or the field you are an expert in and try to figure out how it might (or should) look like a few years from now. Happy entrepreneuring!

I can’t believe it’s already December, the past couple of months have flown by. Scott was happy to see on the calendar that it’s December, because his birthday is later this month and he can now count how many nights he will still have to sleep until his 5th birthday.

And because it’s December it’s also time to decorate our Christmas tree. We decided not to use the same tree that we had for the past 2 years but buy a new one. We normally plant our tree in the garden after Christmas, but because this tree fell over during a typhoon in August it doesn’t really stand straight anymore. So we bought another tree, not a typical Christmas tree but this one we liked it a lot.

This morning we decorated it with the help of the kids, and now the house starts to have a real Christmas atmosphere!

Scott has been riding a bicycle with side wheels for almost 2 years, so now it was time to teach him to ride on a normal bicycle. Last weekend I removed the side wheels of his bicycle and I went out for a ride with him. At first Scott plainly refused, he just walked next to his bike. I finally convinced him to try it out, by promising to hold him the whole time so he would not fall.

It took about 15 minutes before he understood how to get some sort of equilibrium while riding, so he would not fall continuously. After 30 minutes he managed to ride a few meters without me holding him, but it was not a big success.

So today we gave it another try, and this time it went without a problem! Right away he got the hang of it (see video below or here on Tudou) and rode away from me as fast as he could. A few minutes later he even started riding over the speed bumps on the roads in our compound – without falling! He is very proud that he can now ride himself and I am a proud father!

At the same time Elaine also ditched her small tricycle and moved onto a bicycle with side wheels. I taught her how to ride last weekend and she picked it up very fast. She now tries to follow Scott and I try to make sure that none of them stays too far behind or falls down. An impossible task of course, but a lot of fun! See her video below where Scott almost crashes into her in the end. If the embedded video doesn’t work you can see it here on Tudou.

I just came across a German-language article on Daimler’s new “Life Balance” rules and I was surprised at some of the rights that Daimler employees will get. The one that most shocked me was that from next year on employees can opt to automatically delete all emails that they receive during their holiday! Yes, delete. Not just an auto-responder that they are on holiday and will answer after they are back, but a message that the message has been deleted and the name of someone who replaces the employee during their vacation.

Don’t get me wrong, when you are an employee you don’t have to work 24/7 and vacation should be a real vacation. I guess if you don’t want to check your email during your holiday that should be okay if you are not an entrepreneur or work for a start-up. But automatically deleting messages goes way too far. Suppose you are a customer sending an email to Daimler and you get a reply that your email has been deleted and that you should contact someone else… Ridiculous.

The problem is that once one company starts doing this, employees at other companies may also want these privileges. Maybe a huge multinational can survive with this kind of rules, but there is no way a start-up could ever implement this.

If I look back at the 7 years that I worked at Daimler I never worked much during my holidays, that was just not the company culture. The work basically stopped for 1, 2 or even 3 weeks and when you came back you had to work on a backlog of emails and especially (at that time) big piles of snail mail and memos. It felt good to work hard on that for a few days, knowing that you did not miss anything. I can’t imagine coming back from a holiday and seeing an empty inbox, it would scare me not knowing what had happened while I was not there.

Next to that, a lot of work that I did was not something that someone could just take over. You had to know the background of ongoing discussions and you would need to have access to all my past emails and files to figure those out. It’s not like you just replace someone working on a production line for a few weeks.

I guess it’s good that I am not a manager at Daimler anymore, it would literally freak me out if people working for me would delete their mails during a holiday. Of course it would be a quick way to figure out which employees are the least motivated or could easily be replaced, but I guess as a manager you would know that already anyway (and try firing someone in Germany, it’s almost impossible!).

Volkswagen went even further than this last year, for some of their employees Blackberry email stops working at 6:15 PM and only turns on again at 7 AM the next morning. I wonder if this actually works, it would probably cause me more stress knowing that I could not check or answer my email.

I just started reading Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, and the world that she describes in her book reminds me a bit of what’s happening with employee rights in Germany. Maybe my attitude toward work and employee rights has changed too much after 13 years in China? Is this the new normal in Europe or do Europeans also see this as a step too far?

One week from today the Shanghai Marathon will take place and this year the organization discovered that they can send out mass SMS to non-Chinese participants. A few weeks ago it already started by out of the blue telling me that I had to pick up my start number at a certain location. That message probably should have been sent next week but they broadcast it too early.

A few more messages followed and now the organization started to send out ‘tips’. They are so hilarious that I wanted to share them with you. Maybe Chinese runners appreciate this, but I can’t take a marathon organization serious that reminds me of things like ‘marathon strengthens physique and pleasures body and mind’…

Or this one from last night asking me to ‘make a self assessment’ because ‘caring life is everyone’s responsibility:

Interesting is that all messages so far came from different phone numbers, so you can’t even block their spam SMS. I hope the organization of the race will be more professional than these messages and better than the mess they created so far.