Jesse Zhang

But of course, everyone knows it is competitive because if there is market, then everyone's trying to build it.

It's quite easy to start a company these days.

You can raise funding really easily.

And so when you go out there, you have to,

at a certain point, have a pretty deep understanding of what your competitive advantages are.

And one of those could be the culture.

And if you build a good culture, that's pretty hard to replicate.

It also lasts quite a long time.

And to your point, if you have a culture where everyone is really geared towards succeeding and working hard and having some level of intensity, it can go a long way.

So I think to your point of a lot of companies adopting similar mindsets, I do think

From my observation, this generation of company building has attracted almost like my demographic of person, where it's just like people that grew up in fairly competitive environments, academics or whatever.

And a lot of these founders have done well.

Did a lot of math contests and coding contests growing up.

A lot of the people around my age are doing startups now and people are doing quite well.

And I think there is some element of if you really embrace this hardcore lifestyle or environment growing up,

then yeah, I think it lends itself pretty well to the current situation because there's a lot of parallels.

It's kind of like a interesting experience, I would say.

Like, I think when you look back now that we're all grown up, it is kind of like a pretty intense way to grow up.

But I look back on my childhood with very fond memories.

You get a really nice community, a lot of people that are doing the same thing.