Siqi Chen
How to find vision/market fit
I first met Siqi Chen at a Lightspeed CEO dinner hosted by Jeremy Liew. We bonded over our mutual love of product design and fascination with customer engagement. Ever since, I’ve followed Siqi’s career from Zynga product lead to fast-pivoting startup CEO to VR executive. I love how Siqi’s ideas about vision and leadership keep evolving. This is a guy who’s always learning. Listen in and learn how this globally-minded entrepreneur is applying his hard-won innovation lessons to carving out a new category of location-based entertainment.
About this episode
I just love hanging out with Siqi Chen – his infectious energy, sharp mind and karaoke super-powers make our meetups a real pleasure. Siqi has a fascinating history in the world of startups. Listen in on our wide-ranging conversation and discover:
- what happened when Siqi moved to Silicon Valley and discovered the unrestrained virality of Facebook circa 2007 (3:57)
- how a market economy added to Facebook’s social graph exploded their numbers and led to investment and a sale to Zynga (5:40)
- why Siqi learned that a big launch and viral growth don’t always lead to success (10:02)
- how Siqi decided that a “dumb idea” for VR escape rooms could become his next big hit and great passion (14:07)
- how Siqi thinks about growth and product development (17:21)
- why reading books is great – but there’s no substitute for being wrong, in action (21:03)
- how Siqi thinks about “vision/market fit” and the time to pivot (24:55)
- how optimizing an experience and telling a good story fuels Siqi’s leadership (26:41)
- how surveillance in China is evolving – for better and worse (31:08)
- what’s coming up for Siqi’s new company, Sandbox VR (32:47)
