Twenty Years Ago

I lived here from 2001 to 2013 — teaching English, writing guidebooks, finding a niche in tech, and helping Renren.com through its IPO. Twelve years where I was a fish in water every day.

Then San Francisco. Overnight, a nobody. That lasted years.

Singapore gave back the work. Bali gave back the kids. Chiang Mai gave peace.

None of them gave back the fire.

Two weeks ago I went to Dhaka, and the fire came back.

I was a fish in water again for the first time in a decade. Beijing in 2001, exactly: the city was moving, everyone wanted to meet each other, no one had built it yet.

But while Dhaka was a new city to me, I wasn't a new man to it. The last four years I was at Accelerating Asia, teaching and mentoring 60 founders across the region — and a quarter of the portfolio is in Dhaka. The best startups in Bangladesh, growing like mad through every headwind, including this year's interim government. They were my students. I invested in ten of them myself. When I landed two weeks ago, I couldn't find a free moment. Everyone wanted breakfast, or five minutes squeezed between lunch and the next meeting — every hour packed with new and exciting and interesting and successful people.

So ABM Obaidullah and I threw a party, and everyone came. Tanveer Ali — the country's biggest angel investor. Kimiwa Saddat — Bangladesh's youngest, most forward-thinking bank MD — sat for a fireside chat. All the founders pitched. It wasn't about me. It was about them.

Saddat laid out the government's fund: 4% working capital loans for startups, in a country running 12-15% inflation. Negative real interest rates for entrepreneurs. That is the kind of policy that builds an economy.

And the country itself has turned a corner. A new government, sixty days in, with a real mandate. It's said the PM can't sleep at night — too many problems, and he wants to fix them all. He's pushing in every direction. Finally, a government that cares. My friends in Dhaka have never been more optimistic.

I've turned a corner now too. I have always been a militant atheist. Returning home to Thailand from my trip to Bangladesh I had a conversion to faith. Not Muslim or Jewish, but something closer to Buddhism, but not quite that either. Anyway, I crossed the river now and I have faith.

Two days back in Beijing now and the city has moved without me. New ring roads. A second airport with its own expressways. High-speed stations at every cardinal direction where I remember one.

Twelve years gone and the map has been redrawn.

But it's not one Beijing. It's two — polished luxury EVs gliding past holes in the wall. Both real. Both on the same block.

“The future is already here, just not evenly distributed.”

Beijing is the future. The Auto Show opens in 4 hours but I've already seen what's coming — electric garbage trucks on green plates, VR driving schools in a box, heavy commercial EVs in every category, and supply chains that exist nowhere else on earth. I do wonder about the robots...

Bangladesh is where China stood twenty years ago — and the parallel goes deeper than the cars. Same demographic curve. Same urbanization. Same hunger. A few hundred EVs in the country. Twelve charging stations. A diesel fleet whose costs just went to the moon thanks to the Hormuz crisis.

To put rubber on the road you need rubber. And steel. And lithium. And batteries. And motors. And a supply chain that can deliver them at scale.

That part of the future only exists here — in China.

What I bring is the other half — the American in me.

I started my career in Beijing teaching English. Twenty-five years later, full circle: four years learning AI, six months teaching it.

Thinking with AI is also the future. Not just for engineers.

But the real American superpower isn't language or technology. It's bringing different cultures into the same room — and building something none of them could build alone.

United we stand. Divided we fall. One of my many new mantras that came with my faith.

China brings the atoms. America brings the bridge. Bangladesh is where we put them together, of course with a little help from AI.

And here's the why: I met my little nephew this trip. I love him. I love my children. I love all children. And our children deserve a future.

The world is one degree hotter than the day I first landed in Beijing 20 years ago. In ten years, another degree. Ten years after that, maybe three.

What does Beijing feel like ten degrees hotter? Thailand? Bangladesh?

How do our children live?

That's the real reason. The rest is just how.

ABM Obaidullah and I are starting Zeph to bring the future from China to Bangladesh (and beyond) — and to pull the country forward twenty years in three.

We wrote a letter to the new PM proposing a national standard for electric charging. We have a tender in for 100 EV buses. We're looking at 4% fleet financing. Government, founders, capital, import rail — all falling into place. Read the full proposal at zeph.energy.

What's missing: the right China-side partners.

Old friends — you know the OEMs, the supply chains, the policy people. Who should we meet? Who wants in?

Beijing is my second home. Twenty years on, this time we make it count.

From here forward I'll be back often — Beijing this week, a day in Guangzhou, many trips ahead.

For my children, and for yours.