E93 – The Impulso Podcast – Life after Rocket Internet: conversation with Blake Larson & Alex Le (3/3)

In the third and final part of our conversation with Blake Larson and Alexander Le, the three ex-rocket alumni turned founders reflect on life after Rocket Internet, the challenges they faced during international expansion, and the lessons learned from managing teams across different cultural backgrounds.

Tune in as they discuss their strategies for balancing work-life demands, and how they’ve chosen their own paths in both business and life. The discussion goes beyond business, exploring cultural differences, leadership approaches, and the challenges of scaling operations across borders.

The final part of this series explores:

• Challenges of managing teams across different countries and cultures;
• “Coconut vs Peach” theory;
• Establishing company values across borders;
• Balancing ambition with reality, while staying true to personal and company values.

Also available on Spotify and Apple Podcast.

Featured materials:
E92: Impact of Rocket Internet in fragmented markets: conversation with Blake Larson & Alex Le (2/3), The Impulso Podcast

[AI-generated transcript]

Jianggan: [00:00:00] The following is the last part of a weekend conversation I had with Blake Larson and AlexanderLe,two close friends with whom we built some of the earliest rocket internet companies in Southeast Asia. Our path diverged quite a bit since the rocket internet. So Blake Larson laid the foundation.

The international expansion of Lala move from zero to multiple countries and very sophisticated operations and Alexander and he pursued multiple entrepreneurship journeys. In the third part, we talked about cultural differences in business management, expansion, challenges that lessons learned, as well as personal growth and reflections in entrepreneurship. So we actually spent a lot of time over the last 10 years talking to each other, reflecting about the choices we’ve met and the lessons we have learned.

I hope this discussion will be useful to you. This is episode 93 of the Impossible Podcast by Momentum Works.

Jianggan: Let me take the conversation back a little bit towards the people aspect. I mean, you are Vietcube, right?

I guess sort of a second generation Vietnamese. 

Alex: American born Vietnamese. 

Jianggan: A second generation Vietnamese migrants, you know, America or America 

Alex: or whatever. It depends what you want to call it. I was taught that I’m a first gen because my parents were immigrants. Some people call me second gender. 

Jianggan: Anyway.

 Basically you were partially into Vietnam and you are American starting in Spain and partially in Hong Kong. And then eventually you went back to the U S. To try to replicate some of the business that we do in Asia. So I’m originally from China in Singapore and had a bit of experience everywhere.

You’ve been here, what, 25 years, 20 years. I came here [00:48:00] 24 years ago and I moved away five times, collectively spent like four years outside Singapore, but eventually I’m back to Singapore. But I just want to take your perspective on how do you think about, I mean, all these differences in managing people, dealing with people.

In the early days, we need to continue the course in Vietnam. Rocket had to hire someone to speak English, right? 

Alex: It’s well, I mean, I think, well, the one thing featured up to many, maybe Western audience will not know is that you can get away with speaking English in any country, Southeast Asia, you can live in a bubble if you really needed to.

Right. So there’s always this base has been educated abroad, a similar value set as consumers in media. Right. So, but like early days, it’s very hard to compare because there was nothing. Everything was literally, we had to build from scratch, like the first like e commerce delivery, For a company that is CS for commerce, you know, regional retouching, like these things just don’t Conceptions don’t exist.

Jianggan: Did you feel a bit of cultural shock dealing with the Vietnamese? Even though you speak Vietnamese 

Alex: [00:49:00] I don’t think so because there was enough for people who you could hire like yourself Where then you I mean it always starts at the you know, the co founder level 

Blake: and 

Alex: that really to me that really shaped the split between Zalora and Lazada in terms of culture like crazy angry european culture versus like more like people like You I don’t want to get killed who can connect with the locals better.

And maybe, maybe we needed one or the other because it’s clearly one did better than the other. So I don’t know. Also because of the macro, the circumstance. I’m sorry. The food panel was very German centric for, you know, even like today, it’s like very led by Berlin, the Koreans lost the battle. 

Jianggan: In the politics, which we can talk about, 

Alex: but like, at least from my perspective, I, it was always very smooth.

I never felt a jarring disconnect culturally. I felt there was enough in between worldness where you get the best of both where you could manage, I could manage blue collar workers because I could speak Vietnamese, but I also can deal with the higher ups and then building a talent layer, 

Jianggan: challenging to deal with the government.[00:50:00] 

Alex: I mean, I’ve had limited experience with that. I mean, like, you get your rates, but then the key thing for rocket early days, you need to pick a very strong local partner. Like, in Vietnam, I remember sitting in the office with Ali and all the other guys who were about to hire, like, okay, we interviewed 2 or 3 guys.

I was like, who do you like? We all had to pick and vote and then clearly hear his answer. We want to see what you think. So, but then I think we all picked the right local partner for Vietnam. It made, like, closing easy. It made Opening new ventures easy, and I have heard so many disaster stories from like Indonesia, Philippines, whatever, just like people disappearing with huge chunks of money and directors disappearing, right?

 Structurally it was not a problem with regulators if you have a very good. Especially early days the right person to handle it these days. It’s handled differently with too much money You’ve got higher governance team, but you need very specialized people We’re way well connected and that requires a lot of money and specialty Or you have to pick like very good partners already checked then you kind of work through that kind of model.

And so The it never yeah, I don’t know. I don’t have a problem. Do you have a [00:51:00] problem like 

Blake: Well culture shock for sure Right different from chicago. Yeah, like I mean I’ve been all over the world and traveled a bit but like I’m still an American who doesn’t speak Kanto and I’m still an American who doesn’t speak.

Um, But like, yeah, for sure. Like Hong Kong is a very unique market in and of itself. However, like you English, like for the most part, like you get around, like, you know, I used to be in British colony. So like, there’s definitely some advantages, like in the sense, like I can navigate that way. Managing the team wasn’t as hard for me because I’d already managed and worked with people from all over the world.

So, I mean, I had to learn a lot of new stuff, but it wasn’t uncomfortable to have to learn new things. And like in some ways, like being novel. To the team. And then in the market, like, what’s to my advantage. So I like, we go out to like onboard drivers, like at the gas stations. Cause Hong Kong, like right before they have two shifts for their taxis they would line up at the petrol stations right before they would hand over to the next guy.

And there’d be lines of [00:52:00] like hundreds of taxis at the petrol stations. And then, Oh, they’re not happy, not happy. And it’s, you know, it’s the middle of summer in Hong Kong. It’s so humid, you know, it’s like 38 to 40 degrees. And I’d watch my team, we’d, you know, set up our banners and try to onboard the drivers and like the drivers, they’re so grumpy, wouldn’t roll down the window.

But then when they saw the, like, the white guy knocking, they’re like, what the hell is this guy? And so like, what is this guy doing here? And they’d roll it down a little so at least I could get like the flyer in the window. Where I just like watched my local team really struggle with it. It’s a little bit of advantage to being novel.

Jianggan: Just a side note lives of drivers in China now are better because they are driving electric vehicles. And a key advantage of electric vehicles is that you can stay idle while still keeping the air conditioning 

Blake: on. And in Hong Kong they use liquefied petroleum. Yeah. And so it’s not even like Diesel or gasoline or petrol.

So it’s like anyway, yeah. And [00:53:00] they had those like forever, the old Toyota crowns that are probably, you know, around for like 1990, so very, very unique dynamic there 

Jianggan: then from Hong Kong to the rest of Asia, then back to the U S yes. 

Blake: I think early on at Lavamove, I would like really. Didn’t know how to navigate all the different cultures, not in the sense I was uncomfortable, but it’s like, how do you manage?

Right. Yeah. Because I say like, of course they’re all different. Yeah. Of course they’re all different. And I was like, all right. At first, probably try to cater a little bit to, you know, like that our Philippine was like super, super fun. You know, Singapore team was a little bit more quiet and like, you know, all the typical stereotypes come up for a reason Southeast Asia.

Right. And so like you try to like, Manage your team under like with those differences, but then like that actually, as you do more and more countries, it gets exhausting because it’s like, you can’t make a derivation of everything you do and how you communicate [00:54:00] and efficient, right? And so what we still did fairly early on, and I think it worked really well and actually stress this, the founders that want to expand is like.

All right, let’s stop focusing on what’s different, because we all know it’s different. Like, of course we’re different. Of course our Brazilians are different than our Chinese, which are different. Our Mexicans and Indonesians. Okay, okay. Don’t need to talk about anymore, but what’s the same? And so we really talked about, like what we were trying to accomplish and our values.

Right? And we have the exact same 4 values from like, day 1 of the company, which I 

Alex: think where that come from. 

Blake: That’s just the management team. Xing had it, and then we like talked through them and we picked values that were consistent with the business that we were in. So 

Alex: it’s probably quite rare for that to 

Blake: happen.

I think it is quite rare to be honest. But our thought process was like we always use the example of like, if it wasn’t the value of airlines to be safety, you wouldn’t fly on that. So, what were the ones that were important for our business? And like, execution is 1 of them, right? So that was 1 of our values.

I won’t go through all of them. But we. It’s hired for that. So like our whole [00:55:00] interview process, every question they wouldn’t say, like, what, show me an example of this value, but embedded in every single question was 1 of our 4 values. And so we would interview for this. And then when we’d hire people after 3 months, I mean, depending on a certain level, we would do, like, not not a probation, but like, just like a presentation, like, what have you learned?

And like we would in that presentation, they were. It’s expected to show how they’ve demonstrated its values and then performance reviews always embedded the values within the performance review. And so what this did is the values became that common language. And so when you go to communicate the cross marks that are obviously are different, you now have a common set of understanding.

And then those values became the language. And so like imagine like going back to the U. S. right. Yeah. Translate that. Yes. I’m like, everybody’s like in his middle of COVID right. And they’re like, Americans and like the Chinese is not a secret that like not best friends. Right.

Like at a, at a, like a, a media level. Right. And like at the end of the day, we’re all [00:56:00] people, people. Right. I was like, I don’t know. I was like, do you want to join a Chinese company? Blah, blah, blah. And I was like, well, I’m American. I’ve been there since the beginning. 

Alex: Yes. 

Blake: And I was like, of course, it’s different.

Right. But what I can tell you is that it’s not as important as these things. And this is why they’re important. And so, like, it’s still it helped. 

Alex: Yeah. 

Blake: And I think, like, we made it and we’re very transparent about it before you hire anybody, but. Like, it still didn’t mean it was easy, like, right? That’s the thing.

It’s like we create this common language, but like, as a leader, like, it’s still exhausting to kind of do that. You do a lot of mental translation and then you use those as your tools to then, after you’ve done the translation in your head of the differences to communicate. It works. Sometimes it doesn’t work.

Sometimes I would say definitely the US was the hardest, but I think there’s the macro again, COVID at that time, like yeah, there’s a lot of social things in the US that changed properly. That changed a lot. Like, and I hadn’t lived there in 10 [00:57:00] years too, so I like, I’d obviously gravitated east in like how I do things.

Yeah. And like I kind of fell in the middle and I saw Yeah. I mean, I told you guys that story earlier. Yeah. And like that was like mind blowing to me that like I was too easy on people in Asia. And way too hard on them in the U S and I was like, well, I’m doing it the same guys. And so even knowing all of this and being self aware is still like, there’s still gaps that as a leader, you really have to navigate.

Alex: I mean, it also depends on the business model, because like I’ve been helping Sabrina launch her snacks to the U S and it’s at a very high distribution level. And it’s extremely efficient. It’s like the language of what you do business here. On a partnership level, it’s the amount of face and talking around and dining and whining and just all those things.

But it’s always straight to the point goal. Okay. What do we need to do the goal? Okay. Next, like, let’s keep doing that. And then you can, you could scale 

Blake: very easily. Yeah. So can I ask you a question on that? Because I remember going to the U S and like trying to bring on like third party vendors for different things that we did in business.

And like, I would get on the call [00:58:00] with like the head of sales of the company, let’s say our insurance broker. Right. And they’d try to spend the first like 10 minutes talking to me about American football. And I’m like, interesting. They’re like, Oh, I saw that you went to Iowa. And I was like, yeah, that’s 20 years ago.

Like, I’ve got 20 minutes. I want this. I want this. I want this. Like, that was more the Asian part of me of like, Let’s get to the point. Like, I don’t need these pleasantries. I don’t need, like, you don’t need to be my best friend. I need you to, here’s what I’m willing to spend. Here’s what I need. Can we do it?

Alex: It might be industry specific. Yes. Or also the medium, because there’s a lot of the business transactions that we’re doing are happening at expos. Yes. So like everyone’s there for a purpose. The lists are sold, the experts in America just. They’re crazy.

They’re too passive. Everyone cuts out their map and who they want to hit. And so I think maybe that’s why also, but apparently like speaking of something on follow ups. Yes, it’s way more direct, maybe because at the level, they, their transaction, they were like, the expo cleared a layer and maybe some rapport is not as much needed.

Maybe in a different industry or context, they like to [00:59:00] do American small talk, which is very, which is very annoying. Right? Like, 

Blake: yeah, I think once you get them past that small talk, then it is much more direct. Somebody gave me some good advice once that like there’s two types of cultures. Like, again, there’s obviously one.

Have you heard of like the coconut and the peach theory? So there’s two types of cultures. There’s the coconut and there’s the peach. The coconut is like really, as you know, very, very hard on the outside, but super, super soft on the inside, right? And so that would be more like like maybe like Chinese, right?

Like it takes a long, long time to get in, develop the relationship. But once you have the trust, it’s like for life.

Jianggan: Like the Japanese would do, but

Blake: More, let’s say more East, maybe not Chinese, like, but like in contrast, the peach would be like the Americans, which is like the small talk. Yeah. The Germans are a good coconut. Maybe that’s it. Right. I don’t know. Yeah. Maybe the Germans is a better example than the Chinese.

Right. But like there’s cultures that really, like it takes a long time to get in, but once you’re in, they really like You’re like family, they’ll treat you, they’ll trust you no matter what. Right. So, or there’s like the peach, which is like the Americans for like all fuzzy and soft on the outside.

And [01:00:00] like, you go to a restaurant, they all want to pretend like they’re your best friend, but like hit of a peach is very, very hard. So like that’s all surface level. And so it’s so hard to actually be in forever with an American because it’s a bit softer and kind of transient. Does that make sense? Like, 

Alex: yeah, that makes sense.

Blake: At least what is it? Yeah, anyway. So I don’t know what I was going with that. I just think it was like an interesting way for me to like, use that full screen. Like, at least the start, 

Alex: you’re like, oh, you’re a peach or a coconut. Yeah, yeah, 

Blake: because then that’s how I adjust my approach. Yeah, right. Actually.

Correct. 

Jianggan: And obviously, like all frameworks, there’s a starting point for you to easily sort of find an anchor and a bonus anchor. Then you make adjustments. You don’t stick to the framework, but the framework gives you an easy way to say, let’s start from somewhere. 

Blake: And everything’s a continuum, right?

Like I always like to say it’s black, it’s white, but like the truth is like, it’s everything’s a continuum, but at least you do have those anchor points to have a filter of how to think about. 

Jianggan: The part of you mentioned about China’s businesses, I think over the last 20 years, things have evolved a lot.

I mean, the traditional way of doing business is a lot, a lot of. Trust based like all these Asian cultures, but [01:01:00] now with all this competition, all this, like, you know, excessive focus. Yeah. Tell me about it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Excessive focus on efficiency. I think things have become a bit different. I was at the point, I mean, some companies are very straight forward to the point.

 I was involved in the discussion. I will not name which company, but But between the board of European company, as well as the co founders of a very large Chinese tech company. So, as we sat down, the conversation went this way, the co founder of the Chinese company was saying that, oh remember co founder and board level.

So, I should have prepared a company introduction, but since you know what we do, we know what you do, let’s get to the business.

Blake: so much. Said it with a smile. She 

Jianggan: said it with a smile. Smile. I 

Alex: kinda like that. Yeah. 

Jianggan: Discussion became very interesting because you really, I think was sitting in a context saying that, Hey, let’s not guess around what each others are. Yeah. Let’s try to focus on how we can work 

Blake: together.

Mm. And did you feel like there was honesty in that dialogue even after prefacing it? As we’re going to be honest a lot. Yeah. Okay. From both sides, 

Jianggan: which is good. Which I think setting the context is [01:02:00] interesting because even you display honesty from this side, the other side might not perceive this way.

Yeah. 

Blake: So I mean, it’s like, it’s like the chess game, right? Gamesmanship. 

Jianggan: On this side, they laid out all their numbers and actually back check the numbers, like the same evening with some people who might. know, the source is these guys, be very honest with you, they’re not bluffing on their stuff.

Alex: I have a question for you. So when you were launching Lala move in us, did you compare or think about comparing like against the Uber experience? Cause Uber was very, like you said, you have trouble, maybe Translating the culture there was some resistance in the team with the hard working elements, but like Travis Connick was able to kind of overcome that inertia, do you think?

Blake: Like, 

Alex: cause that was a 

Blake: very hardcore culture, right? So it’s like overcome the inertia of what? 

Alex: Like, of like, like maybe, yeah, maybe you’re like, cause there’s a macro of COVID, but like building a culture of hard work and like, just no nonsense and just execution oriented. Right. Cause clearly you can do it.

Blake: But yeah, I found it like, you know, what was really, really hard about that is I tried to instill that and actually I, when I interviewed everybody, [01:03:00] I was explaining that like, you’re going to work harder, you’re probably going to get paid less. You can, you’re not, you’re going to get paid less. You can go find jobs where you’re going to get more.

It’s a better way to frame that. But I promise you’re going to learn. And I promise that like, if you stick around long enough, you will be just amazed at what we’re able to accomplish because I just been through that. And like, That was total honest belief but at the same time, I felt like I didn’t really like, buy into it entirely.

You know what I mean? I pushed hard. I think that’s what it was. It’s like, it’s one thing, Americans are like known for selling. Yeah. Right. So maybe like, even though I was being honest, they really felt I was selling, but then like when my follow through of like, I show up at office at seven and I leave at 10 because like, I know what it takes to build it from zero.

We have no brand. We have no nothing. We have limited resources, even though the company’s raised a lot. We still like pretend like we have nothing and we got nothing actually until we proved ourselves. And I think that was a lot for a lot of the employees to digest that like. [01:04:00] Wow. It can really be that way.

And then I would keep pushing. Yeah. And pushing and pushing. Yeah. And so yeah, it was like a really, really hard transition, especially with Covid and like all of their peers were working from home and like, we were in tech, but it wasn’t like sexy tech. Yeah. It’s like hard. Go put a sticker on a van, a sticker.

I got a college degree, like 10,000 stickers. Not like calls for work. Right. And so it’s like I think maybe in retrospect, like I didn’t do enough job adjusting to the culture of like really explaining the why, because I thought maybe like me explaining it once or twice was enough to build the belief.

And I didn’t do enough actually selling 

Alex: You tell me it’s your experience. Yeah, maybe it’s because of the macro, there was a political element and there was also a COVID macro element, but like, if you were able to continue, say, say these were not, 

Blake: you 

Alex: know, like a black swan too. 

Blake: Yeah. 

Alex: If you went gone through a few more iterations, maybe you could have gone to like that Uber kind of level.

Maybe it’s just needed to cycle through it. 

Blake: Yeah. And, and honestly, I think part of the problem was that [01:05:00] We, and this, this is my job, right? Like it’s not that I failed, but like I took every learning that we’d done successfully across all these other markets and like playbook. And one of our values was don’t recreate the wheel, right?

And like, just cause you’re smart, don’t do something different. Like prove the thing that we’ve done doesn’t work before you do something new. I stuck to the playbook. Stuck to it, stuck to it, stuck to it. And like, what, what do like young hungry people love? Growth. And when it doesn’t, like, And because we’re B2B more than like B2C, so you can’t just put money on a problem and like, And so like, when it doesn’t light like, Yeah.

Fast, fast, they’re like, Wait a minute. He said all these things and it’s not coming true. And then they, you know, you get those things in your head of like, well, my, my friends are kind of at home and DoorDash is doing really well. And like, you know, it’s COVID and, and like, I mean, I don’t want to overly speculate, but fair enough that they like start to doubt.

Right. Then you have like, well, he said these things, it’s not happening. And so like, it made it really, really A challenging environment, both from my side, but I mean, [01:06:00] retrospectively, I probably could have been a bit more patient with their questioning, you know, but I knew that if we kept hacking at it and you show them, we would show them because I knew there was amount of effort and not quitting that would get us there.

Even if we didn’t get it right at the beginning, but again, their pure models were Uber, DoorDash, like these things, these consumer businesses. 

Alex: So anyway, Was it a cultural nuance that you could have adjusted slightly on a cultural side that would have smoothed this short term? I think 

Blake: probably cultural a bit, but probably just better situational awareness of the macro things.

I could have done a lot better. I I just didn’t believe in failure. But I also not living in the U. S. for a long time. I didn’t want context to be an excuse for anybody, but I could have still acknowledged the context. That’s fair. I didn’t. It shouldn’t be an excuse, but I could have done a better job.

Acknowledging it might have substantially the challenges that we were against us. And then [01:07:00] that would have probably brought us closer together instead of me pushing hard and then easier 

Alex: to swallow. 

Blake: Yes. Yeah. So anyway, like, that’s that’s the. The reflection I have. So 

Jianggan: it’s not hard science there. It’s just the issue was like figuring out what’s the right way to do.

I mean making the mistakes, even though you are very experienced in doing something and learn, learning from mistakes, reflecting from this and keep yourself open and carry on with life. 

Blake: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I beat myself up about it for a long time, but like it, it took, yeah, because it’s I’m not there to make like people not like their job, like I’m not, I’m there to do something amazing with these people.

So when you start to see this divide, and then like, obviously there’s macro things with DD getting D listed at that time, and like that, that’s what caused the U S business basically shut down, like, that’s directly indirectly. The hardest thing for me in my career is like, when I laid off the whole U S team and staff in 1 day.

Because I said, like, I know, like, this [01:08:00] situation is really messy right now with COVID when I hired them. I know that, like, there’s this Asian company you’ve never heard of. You say he’s big over there, can you trust it? I don’t, you know, they don’t want to trust it. They don’t have any data points to trust it.

But when you, I’d sit there and say, you know, all of that, you can trust me. Yeah. And so go back to the same people to put the trust in me. Yeah. And then to fire them and let them all go. That was easily like the worst day of my professional career. It’s 

Alex: tough. Yeah. 

Blake: It’s a tough 

Alex: one. So, I guess, in your mind, it was like a failure in some way.

Blake: Ah, it definitely wasn’t the story I wrote when I moved to the US. Right. Right. But like, there’s so much lesson in that. I’m not resentful, bitter, anything. I said, like, I was lost for a bit. Yeah. But I think retrospectively, that’s where you find growth of the right part of things. And 

Jianggan: so, yeah, that’s also something that I’m dealing with lots and lots of entrepreneurs from [01:09:00] China who will perceive it as being very successful, very successful, but I mean, circumstances have changed quite a lot these few days.

And obviously, I mean, Whatever they do, the competition in China is fierce and the growth is not there compared to what they would experience 10 years ago, or even just 5 years ago before COVID. And they have to, many of them have to expand their business outside to find growth. But that’s like another sort of separate entrepreneur.

Alex: Journey. 

Jianggan: And it’s different from the first one because you’re dealing with the market you’re not familiar with, and you have this cable which you have spent so many years perfecting and now you are in a position where you inevitably constantly thought about your playbook constantly thought about, I mean, what I’ve done was that pure luck.

Yeah. 

Blake: Yeah. Yeah. But 

Jianggan: but 

Blake: yeah, I think if you have like belief, like there’s always that like imposter syndrome, right. Even, even after success, you have imposter syndrome, right? Like I’ve kind of been out of the game a bit and I look at all these entrepreneurs. I’m like, How could I do that again? But then like, we look back at our track [01:10:00] record, like not just me, but like us, and it’s like, we’ve been okay till now.

Like, why should I be doubting the future? Doesn’t mean it’s going to be smooth. Like, we always forget. Like, that’s true. Think of like, all of the times that you’ve actually failed to an unrecoverable moment in your life. 

Jianggan: Yeah. 

Blake: Yeah. Anybody is a human, right? Not just tech entrepreneurs, but just like, and there’s almost none of these.

So like, why do we have such self doubt, right? And so like that is something that gives me like continual courage to like, want to grow in different ways and to not have that imposter syndrome. And then like. Sorry pontificating here a bit, but like, also to realize that this is just one big fucking game.

Yeah. And so, and like in a good way, not like a cynical way, but like once you realize, and yeah, and it’s like, all right, What game do you want to play? So your whole life, you’re probably groomed in some way or influenced because you don’t have enough reference points, enough experience. But like once that’s the one thing about getting older a little bit, it’s like, wait a minute, this is a game.

I’ll pick the game I want to play and then shape that game. [01:11:00] And I don’t think I realized like. Like out of MBA, all this, like I did all the things supposed to go to rocket, be an entrepreneur, but like, it’s only through the reflection. It’s like, ah, I get to choose the game. I want to play. 

Jianggan: And I 

Blake: think we people forget this 

Jianggan: and enjoy 

Blake: that process.

Jianggan: Yes. Along 

Blake: the way. 

Jianggan: Yes. Cool. I think we’ll be talking for a long time. I think Josh was getting nervous about the camera battery and all the, and I think his hard disk as well. You have come full circle and it’s been a very good discussion. It’s been 10 years. It’s good to see. So, like, Blake is usually based in St.

Petersburg, St. Petersburg, 

Blake: Florida, Florida, 

Jianggan: not Russia, but clients from Russia. We’ll talk about that next time. And Alex is usually based in Malaysia. So now we’re in Singapore. So yes. Yeah. And we should get some food. Yeah. All right. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Joshua, for having us in. Appreciate it.

Jianggan: I hope you enjoyed the last part of the conversation I had with Blake and Alexander. We are still grinding. We are still building things after 10 years since we 1st, 11 years after we 1st started building software, rocket internet companies in Southeast Asia. And of course, there are a lot more reflections.

And anecdotes that we have, and we have been communicating with each other regularly. So I do hope that this is useful for you in your own journey and to reach out to us. If you want to have a discussion or if you have some personal experiences to share, I will see you in the next episode of the Impulso Podcast by Momentum Works.

Bye bye.