Life - Cup of Zhou

August 27, 2026August 26, 2026

Knife Shopping

A friend of mine was in the market for a new chef knife. The first one his wife wanted to cherish and asked me for thoughts, which gave me my little stage time to nerd out. And I thought… hell, might as well share my thoughts here as well.

So, a couple things to consider when you’re choosing a knife. For now, I’m going to exclude most of my commentary on how to take care of knives (i.e. wash, knife cloth, sharpening on whetstones, etc.).

How do you cut? Up/down or rolling motions?
What will you cut most of the time?
How often will you use the knife? Daily? Or for special occasions?
How important is knife control to you? Do you like letting gravity “do the work”?

Given your answers to the above questions, it’s easier to then figure out if German or Japanese steel is better for you, the heat treatment/HRC, full tang or hidden tang, and so on.

So let’s take this one by one.

If you cut up and down, Eastern/Japanese knife shapes may serve you better as they have straighter edges. Western/German knives have more curvature along the knife’s edge, which is useful if you cut in a rowing motion.

In general, full tang (meaning the metal of the blade extends all the way to the back of the handle) means you’re controlling the knife more. Whereas hidden tang (the metal of the blade extends partway through the handle) is more front-weighted, and more popular among chefs who “let the knife do the work.”

If you’re cutting veggies and fruits or in general softer material, knives with higher HRC (Rockwell Hardness C-scale) where higher means the metal is cooled faster, are better. And in general, allows for thinner knives and more precise cuts. Think sushi knives. Personally, I think an HRC of 58 is good enough for regular use. But some prefer 59+. The upside is that they retain their edge longer. The downside is they chip more easily then lower HRC numbers (cooled more slowly when making the knife). Lower HRC knives are better for cutting bones and hard material. They tend to dent (softer metal) rather than chip. Think meat cleavers.

If you’re using a knife regularly, say at least 3-4 times per week, I’d recommend going stainless steel (which is what most people prefer anyway) instead of carbon steel. The latter rusts easily (or patinas easily, the layer of rust that develops on the outside of low alloy high carbon knives). Also easier to upkeep with repeated washes. Do dry with a cloth instead of letting them air dry though. Knife oil helps, but is not mandatory on stainless steel knives. For presentation or special occasion purposes, aka to show off, a lot of people prefer the looks of high carbon steel knives.

In general, you can get a great starter knife for $80-200. Up to $500 if you want to splurge. But anything north of that is really the premium you’re willing to pay for each artisan.

Photo by Takafumi Yamashita on Unsplash

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The views expressed on this blogpost are for informational purposes only. None of the views expressed herein constitute legal, investment, business, or tax advice. Any allusions or references to funds or companies are for illustrative purposes only, and should not be relied upon as investment recommendations. Consult a professional investment advisor prior to making any investment decisions.

August 14, 2026August 14, 2026

What is your play style?

On a quarterly alchemy session with my buddy Matt (yes, we have a quarterly-ish ideation/philosophical debate session), he asked me, “If you were a video game character, with both pre-set stats as well as the stat points you’ve accumulated through experience to date, what’s your play style? How would you best utilize your stats and skill trees towards your goals?” Furthermore, how might someone else with the exact same stats play your character differently?

First off, I like video games. I had a gamer in me in my past. Probably still, if I were given the chance to restart. But alas, a dangerous trade for me. So do note the bias in the intellectual resonance I had with the question.

Secondly, the underlying assumption in this line of questioning is that while the distribution of stat points vary per person, there exist others who would have the same set of stats as you do and the same skill trees. The same builds. But just because you have the same builds does not mean you have to have the same play style.

Thirdly, that last question is probably most interesting. How might someone else with the exact same stats play your character differently? How might someone else reach a different conclusion to “min-max” your play style? Or potentially more critically, how are you not leveraging certain skill trees to maximize your odds of “beating the game”? Skill trees that are underutilized or have been set aside to collect dust so far. Skills you earned as a child. Or in college. Or in your first job that you failed to keep putting the pedal to the metal.

To take the gaming analogy further, every time there’s a new update, your character build has to evolve with the associated nerfs and buffs to certain skill trees. In other words, with each new world order, are your past skills more or less relevant? As such, you need to change your build every world “update.” Be it the internet to the cloud/SaaS era to the AGI era and so on. Given the pace of technology and culture, there will be several “updates” to the world within your lifetime. And no one wants to play a character with an obsolete build.

I can’t take credit for this since I haven’t read the book yet, but when I was telling another friend about the above, she used the phrase “the leash of your past” inspired by a chapter in Björn Natthiko Lindeblad’s I May Be Wrong. Which I think is quite apt to this analogy.

After all, your past self won’t thank you for staying the same, but your future self would wish you changed sooner.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

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August 7, 2026August 6, 2026

“Be strong enough to be gentle”

Three conversations happened recently.

One, an LP told me that he pit two fund managers against each other by asking their shared portfolio founder, “If you could only choose one, who would you keep as an LP?” Then went on to relay that answer back to both of the respective managers.

The manager who lost the vote shrugged and didn’t feel the need to really engage in the ragebait. The one who won the vote ended up making some remarks along the lines of “I don’t see why anyone would ever want to work with [insert other GP’s name].”

Two, similarly, I met a GP for the first time last week who pitched me a strategy he thought was unique. To which I responded with, “What are your thoughts on [insert VC firms with similar theses]?” He replied with a whole list of reasons of “why X, Y, and Z should never be in business in the first place.”

Three, I caught up with another Fund I GP earlier this week. Second conversation, who pitched me a strategy he thought no one else was doing. I asked the same question, listing some competitors with the same strategy, stage, and focus. He said he’d never heard of them, then asked me to repeat those names. He Googled each. Scrolled through their portfolio and website and LinkedIns. Then started his response with, “I guess I’m not as unique as I thought I was. Here’s what I think they’re doing right…”

All three conversations carry notes of similarity. Each either directly or indirectly ending with one of two paths. In the first one with the LP, do I agree with his method of execution? Not really. But nevertheless, he received the answer he was seeking.

Yet in all three, I can’t help but be reminded of something Peter Cullen (who’s best known for being the voice of Optimus Prime from Transformers) said.

It’s not immediately apparent on the relevance. But he says, as the inspiration for how he voiced Optimus Prime, “Be strong enough to be gentle.”

True strength and mastery has no need for infighting. No need to demean others. No need to push others down only so that they will look better by comparison. Most Midas investors I know are not bragging about the fact they’re on the Midas List, at least I haven’t heard Vinod or Marc brag about it. They’re on the Midas List because they can pick great companies. It’s not that being on the Midas List allows them to pick great companies.

Those that are the best of their craft, across industries, and that I’ve been lucky enough to be in their presence are both gentle and generous with their learnings. What’s proprietary is the execution not the idea. And by being generous and gentle, you end up commanding a lot more respect and admiration. If you’re truly stronger than others, you know how to control your strength. And only use it, when necessary. Most situations do not demand the necessity.

You need not prove your strength to a flower. Neither a butterfly. You need not prove your strength to a baby. To a feather. The inability to control one’s strength for the situation required can only exist in the absence of maturity. And the absence of mastery.

Photo by Reign Abarintos on Unsplash

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July 31, 2026July 30, 2026

The Wrong Question for the Ambitious

I was chatting with a friend over the weekend who made me look stupid.

We were catching up after a while and we were talking about career paths and opportunities, and I had shared that I was offered to join a few large institutions late last year and earlier this year. Both of which I eventually turned down. And that one of the canonizing questions I had in the back of my head among 2-3 others was: When I leave, could I say I was successful because of the institution or in spite of the institution?

And for the first time, after sharing that set of questions with a few friends when I was in the process of making a decision, someone called me out. “That’s a bad question. That’s a horrible question.”

He goes on, “The question presumes that you are either joining a has-been or never-was institution OR that you couldn’t do anything meaningful while you were there. Given the names you’ve told me, the former is most likely not true. Instead, the framing of the question should be:

“What can you do at this institution that no one else with that job title has done?

“Something you actually wrote about before. On top of that, what can you do at this institution that no other institution would allow you to do? And how can you leverage the hell out of that? Why would you even join an institution where you can’t even leverage their success to date? That would make you look dumb for joining a bad institution when you have the opportunity to join a great one.”

Photo by Timothy Barlin on Unsplash

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July 3, 2026July 2, 2026

GP EQ

A conversation with an LP reminded me of this recently. Can we trust a GP’s word that they’re a good picker if they can’t assess how likely an LP is to commit?

I’ve had multiple conversations with GPs where they tell me XXX and YYY are excited to come in the fund, and they just need more time to close their fundraise or for their process. Then the same XXX and YYY LPs ghost these GPs for months on end. For me, that’s enough for me to question their level of commitment, but not having been in those conversations firsthand, I can’t speak to the actual incentives. Sometimes, I actually know XXX and YYY LPs well enough to pick up the phone and dial them right away and ask them what’s up. Which I do. Only to hear from them and they say they had passed already.

Now I don’t know what actually goes on between those two parties. What’s said and what’s not said. There are many LPs out there who give very soft “no’s.” In hopes to not offend, they imply it’s a “no.” There are also LPs who explicitly say it’s a “yes” ONLY IF ZZZ happens. Given the current market, most of the time, ZZZ doesn’t happen, which becomes an easy out for the LP. The LP’s felt like they’ve delivered the “no.” The GP is still hanging onto the hope the LP likes them enough to break the rule. And then, there are many GPs who have selective hearing loss.

Nevertheless, there are multiple instances of this. And it’s not my job to point fingers to any party other than elucidate that this exists in our world.

That said, even if an LP doesn’t explicitly say “no”, there should be enough breadcrumbs to point to whether someone is a pass. Probably harder to know if they’re a “yes.” But there’s definitely writing on the walls if it’s a pass. And it’s almost always better to assume an LP is an out than an in if there’s hesitation.

The outstanding question for someone like me or any of my friends who I’ve had this conversation with is… is this indicative of a GP’s EQ when talking to founders? Is this GP more prone to rewriting history and facts? Is there a massive perception bias here and is the GP living through rose-tinted lens?

Richard Feynman has this great line. “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.”

And I’ve also had this conversation with another GPs a few weeks back, and I said, “You’re either lying to me or you’re lying to yourself. One is worse than the other. But neither gives me a reason to back you.”

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash

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June 17, 2026June 16, 2026

Casting Shadows

“When small men begin to cast big shadows, it means the sun is about to set.” — Lin Yutang

It’s been 10 years since I first stepped into venture. Yet still, while I know more, have met more people, and have experienced more, and when I look back, I pity the knowledge and experience I had a decade prior… yet despite all that, I know I have still so much work to do.

This essay was born from many conversations over the years, but especially so, in the past few months, where I’ve witnessed conversation after conversation that follows the theme of:

“Have you met X?”

“I have.”

“What do you think of X?”

“X feels far smarter online than X is in reality. After meeting X, where I anticipated so much, I was only let down.”

Never meet your heroes, they say.

In venture, we live in a world where the average VC brags more about “being a part of the journey” or “excited to support” a founder they backed than actually doing the work. It’s no wonder that 70% of VCs add no value (though 15% more add “negative value”). But it is far easier to say the part, look the part, than do the part. With SpaceX and OpenAI’s IPO today, Anthropic’s tomorrow, and Databricks, Anduril, who knows what, the day after, we will find many more VCs congratulating themselves, raising larger vehicles, and casting larger shadows.

In an unreleased interview with a GP I really admire, she told me an anecdote of a founder she knows well. “All of my early stage investors made out like bandits with my huge exit, and I never got a thank you. All I saw was them talk about how they discovered me and how they had such a big role to play in my success. But no one said, thank you for returning my fund 10 times over. And here’s a token of appreciation, whatever the appreciation is.” Which echoes the growing sentiment in the ecosystem.

And here’s my own self-reflection.

I hope that I cast no greater of a shadow than my beliefs, thoughts, and remarks would allow. And I hope still that I have the humility to cast a smaller shadow than I would ever be allowed to.

People measure shadows by the potential and impact someone may have. I have a friend who turned 30 recently. And when we sat down to chat, he told me that people were no longer telling him that he has potential. And one of his greatest fears is that people only see the person he is today for who he is today, and no longer the person he will be tomorrow. That pressure, more than anything, meant he was no longer “young.” I don’t think anyone ever loses their potential as a function of age. I have friends double my age, still learning every day, faster and more studious than people half of theirs. To me, that is still potential.

And here I hope that the shadow I’m capable of casting is underestimated than overestimated. But at least to myself, I hope I never underestimate myself.

“After I’m dead, I would much rather have men ask why I have no monument than why I have one.” — Cato

Photo by Pete Walls on Unsplash

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June 11, 2026June 11, 2026

Intro Policy Pt 2

I wrote this piece last year on how I’ve evolved my thinking on intros. And while not my most popular post by a long margin, it is something I do forward to others who ask for intros.

Now, despite that, people still ask for intros. And so at the risk of sounding like an a-hole, I’m going to say something that may offend a lot of people who know me.

Just because you make an intro between someone and me doesn’t mean I will automatically make an intro for you.

Few things to clarify:

1/ First off, I’m genuinely grateful for all intros. Whether it’s to someone you’ve known for a long time, or someone you just met yesterday, or someone you deeply respect, I’m honored that someone else is thinking of me when the intros are made. I will never take that for granted.

2/ I get the “you scratch my back, I scratch yours” mentality. But:

Not all intros are created equal. Not all relationships are created equal. Introing me to someone you met yesterday does not give you the equivalent political capital for me to intro you to someone who, whether I know them well or not, is someone most people seek to meet. Just because a friend made an intro between a stranger they met at the bar last night doesn’t mean they’re allowed to ask an intro to your sister to date her. Obviously, I’m exaggerating a bit, but I wanted to drive the point home.
People are not commodities. I don’t trade people like I trade my stocks. I will naturally make an intro if I know both parties are looking for each other, or at least topics, skillsets, or experiences that the other party has.
If you make a great intro, I will of course:
(a) Report back to you and thank you for the intro.
(b) Find other ways to thank you beyond words.

The whole reason I’m writing this post in the first place is that a few bad eggs recently spoiled the entire carton. I had a few exchanges recently where certain individuals felt justified to ask for, and hell, take it a step further and demand, intros to certain reputable individuals I know because they made “that intro for you last year.” Which I admittedly felt it wasn’t worth continuing the conversation with the person they made an intro to within 15 minutes of our chat.

Most of you are not the above character. I get it. But I also felt the need to get the above off my chest and use it as a future artifact when the situation arises again.

Thanks for reading my ramble. Truly.

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April 24, 2026April 23, 2026

Permanence

When I first started journaling again after years of not doing so (If you’re reading this, thank you, Professor Kellogg), I did so with pen and paper. Mostly due to an exercise Professor Kellogg had us do by finding comfort in the mistakes you make along the way. That that too is art. Is expression. Is personality. Most of my classmates eventually regressed back to pencil for notetaking or digital devices, but it is a practice that has stuck with me even till today.

When I first started dating my now girlfriend, she noticed me writing in ink. Every so often, I’d mess up and just strike through the words that were misplaced in my notes. She’d ask me why I didn’t write with a pencil. To which, I told her what Professor Kellogg told me and that over time, it became a habit. It made me write more intentionally. Also, I will note that ink looks better on paper than graphite does. At least when it comes to writing. High contrast, you know.

I grew up at the tail end of the Kodak and camera roll. I remember a time when every picture had to be taken with intention. With purpose. The framing had to be right. The lighting had to be perfect. The eyes had to stay open on flash. We now live in a world where digitial hoarding has become really, really easy. Google’s got me good, making m pay more and more as I somehow never delete emails anymore, only archiving them. One of my good friends has over 35,000 photos on her iCloud, and hasn’t deleted a single one since the first one was taken. Still a crazy number to me.

At the same time, the ephemera of the internet makes things easy to forget. Easy to erase. Public and private mistakes are erased as if there’s no digital footprint in the first place. Nearly every messaging platform allows you to delete a DM you send. I say “nearly” since I haven’t tried every single one out there. But it’s most likely, all. Snap was born on the idea of erasure, something many other platforms have inherited. Any post, tweet, or website can be erased. Many assume that you write in pencil, but forget even after rubber absorbs the graphite into its folds, the indelible imprint still exists. Watch any spy moie where they smear more graphite over an erased string of words to reveal the negative spacing of the letters that were, if you don’t believe me.

So, for those who share their voice in whatever capacity on the digital world, never forget the echo. The web archives exist. “This message has been deleted” exists. Local downloads exist. Witnesses exist. Screenshots exist. Granola exists.

As our civilization gets closer to a world that never forgets, what more can we do?

What less should we do?

Just a gentle reminder that we all write with pen on paper.

Photo by Nicolas Thomas on Unsplash

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March 5, 2026June 18, 2026

Three Outcomes

Recently, I spent some time with friends where we ended up talking about career growth. One of whom was at a standstill of which opportunities to pursue if at all. But another of whom offered advice through a pair of interesting lens. One I felt interesting enough to reshare.

When you pursue a new opportunity, especially one where you have strong agency and potential autonomy to influence business outcomes, there are three possible outcomes during the duration of your role.

Success
Failure
And not succeeding

Do note that failure and not succeeding are not the same thing. Failure is when you aim for something and it ends in a negative outcome. Not succeeding is after doing all you that you do, the outcome is still, give or take, the status quo. You haven’t moved the needle for the better or the worse.

At a smaller company, failure is oftentimes business closure. Not succeeding is either a small outcome or the evolution of a fast-growing startup to a lifestyle business with no noticeable impact on the industry. For an ambitious individual, being forgettable is arguably worse than failing. And naturally worse than succeeding. To be forgettable means it takes an extra 2-3 years to rebuild the reputational capital up before you have the trust to pursue your next ambitious outcome.

At a larger organization, failure is actually pretty hard. It could be the closure of a department, a re-organization, and very rarely, a negative inflection point for the business. More often than not, it’s not succeeding, which is just maintaining the status quo. Naturally, success is good regardless of organization size.

Failures are seen more charitably at smaller organizations. Larger organizations magnify the echo chamber and press. But in both worlds, they’re seen as your mark on the world. Evidence that you’ve tried. Not succeeding, on the other hand, is often worse at large organizations. Why? Because your career stalls. The more ambitious you are, the worse your career stalling will impact your career. The longer you stall, the harder it is to earn back the momentum. So unfortunately, the worst outcome an ambitious individual can get is not succeeding at a large organization. Death by a thousand cuts.

And the unfortunate truth is that large organizations have a lot of inertia. “Strategy tax” in the words of Bret Taylor. Or as a very senior allocator who recently left their large organization told me: “Some of these layers (at institutions) are there to sap the courage out of your investment decisions.” And you can easily delete the word “investment” out of that sentence.

If you fail or not succeed (not bad, not good), the liability of it not working is put on you the larger the organization. So you take on the tax, burden, career stall if the bad outcomes happen. If you fail at a smaller institution, no one blames you because you took a risk and tried your best and things didn’t work out, they blame the institution.

Photo by Happy Lee on Unsplash

6/18/2026 Edit: Not succeeding is to be forgettable.

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February 20, 2026February 19, 2026

Are you going to start an advisory?

October last year, I was having dinner with an aspiring GP who, for whatever reason, thought I should do more advisory work. A comment made after I shared that I do very little advisory work. So she asked why.

And I said something to the effect of: My goal in life is to spend time with the most curious, the most ambitious, and the highest performing individuals. In the early days, when advisory is opportunistic and assuming you don’t need the capital, you can choose to work with some incredible people. Over time, as you build a sustainable business, and as this becomes your primary source of income, to pay the bills, you may end up working with folks that you may not have chosen to work if you had the choice. You end of building a fantasy portfolio of, in my case, GPs, that you’ve allocated your time to. The one resource you can never get back. And because I’m someone who likes optimizing different parts of my life, I may very well fall victim to my own optimization of being an advisor. I would rather not see myself inevitably choosing those circumstances. What scares me is not the work but the person I will end up becoming.

Just earlier this week, I had another conversation around the same topic with a GP I deeply respect and have chosen to work with. So I thought it seems to be time I share this publicly.

Many of my contemporaries have built robust businesses for themselves being advisors to GPs and LPs. And I think it’s a beautiful thing. The world needs more great advisors. We always seemed to be starved of them. The world needs more people who are willing to pay it forward. To share their lived experiences with those who have yet to live. But I don’t think I could ever do what they do.

To me, this blog and my podcast are what I need as outlets to help the world. Two things that will always stay free. Although for my podcast, many a time I have resisted the temptation to create a paid product to keep the podcast’s lights on. I hope good and useful knowledge continues to stay that way. Free. Through that, the frameworks and lessons I’ve come across and/or use.

But the reason I don’t think I could ever do what some of my advisor friends do is because I think a lot about optimization. And in the theme of optimization, I will take more opportunities than I would like. But I’m also really bad at breaking up. And so to not put myself in that situation, it is better to not begin.

Have I advised folks? Yes. Will I continue to? Probably. Opportunistically. Will I still say no to most advisory opportunities even if there is money to be made? Yes.

Does that mean I build an advisory practice? No.

If you’ve been a long-time reader of this blog, you’ll know I’m a deeply flawed individual. I don’t claim to be perfect. And I’m definitely not a profit maximalist. Although I do wonder what kind of person my alter ego would be. But there are a specific set of choices that I believe I can make so that I live my most fulfilling life. And one of those choices is choosing the people I get to spend time with. So if I were to do any advisory, it’d only be with people I deeply respect AND can learn something from them as much as they from me.

Photo by Thea on Unsplash

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