This year, I got to do something a lot of people dream about: travel through the US, Europe, India and China. And I want to tell you about that experience.
US: San Francisco
Let’s start with the US.
As you probably know, I’m really into startups and building stuff, so I basically spent close to six months this year in San Francisco. And it really is how people described it to me.
The city is really cool, especially downtown. The Financial District is full of impressive buildings, and you walk past offices of companies you’ve spent years seeing on YouTube or in TV shows.
The nature is incredible too. You have Fort Mason Park and the Presidio, which are great for running or just going for a walk when you need to think. And if you take a car across the Golden Gate Bridge and drive a little outside the city, you get ocean views, huge trees and some incredible scenery. I even remember seeing a coyote.
But the magic of this place is actually the people.
It feels like everyone is a founder and everyone is building something. When you meet someone, the first thing they ask is, “What are you building?” And then they’ll probably show you their product.
And that’s fucking different from any other city I’ve been to.
Everyone is also a bit weird. In Europe, I’m used to people being more similar in how they think and behave. Here, everyone is weird in their own way: how they dress, how they think, even the tools they use. And if you’re open to it, that can be really cool and a lot of fun.
When you first arrive, the easiest way to meet people is through events and meetups. You can find them on Luma, and I’ve been seeing more on Partiful too. Apply to random events and show up without knowing anyone. It can open a lot of doors, and you’ll meet some potentially interesting people.
You’ll get a bunch of new LinkedIn connections, different perspectives and probably quite a few free dinners. Which isn’t bad either.
But after that initial stretch of going to every event, you need to focus on what you actually want to build. Sit down and work on it. Once you have something you’re excited about, going back to events can be a good way to find customers, if your customers are part of that crowd.
Another crazy thing is how close you can get to people who seem completely unreachable from anywhere else. Once you know a few people, you can be one or two introductions away from Sam Altman or Dario Amodei. You might even see them walking down the street.
That’s the magic of this place. The people.
Now for the downsides. I’ll try to be quick and honest.
There are a lot of homeless people, and you see people high on fentanyl in the street. That doesn’t automatically mean they’re dangerous, but seeing people in that state can be unsettling, especially if you’re not used to it.
In some areas, you’ll see large groups of people crowded together on the street. Parts of the Tenderloin, parts of the Mission, especially around the 16th Street Mission BART station. It can be a lot to take in.
And the city is fucking expensive.
The other day, I paid $8 for a small matcha latte. Gas was around $5.50 a gallon. And renting an apartment, or even just a room, is incredibly costly.
If it’s your first time coming here and you can afford it, I’d stay in SoMa. For going to events, grabbing coffee with people and getting to meetings around the city, it’s a convenient place to be.
Overall, SF is an incredible city. It shows you what’s possible, and it shows you two opposite ends of society in the same place.
India: Delhi and Bangalore
I spent a month in India, from mid-August to mid-September. Two weeks in Delhi, then the rest in Bangalore.
First of all, Delhi is enormous. There’s traffic everywhere, the air is polluted, and there’s so much dust.
But the thing that surprised me the most was seeing cows standing in the middle of the road while all the cars waited for them to move.
Cows everywhere.
The nightlife is actually pretty good if you know where to go. Luckily, I have some Indian friends who took me out with them.
And the food is incredibly spicy. But really spicy.
There were a lot of vegetarian options in the places I went to. I didn’t come across much pork, and chicken was usually the easiest meat option to find. I’d recommend butter chicken, naan and paneer. But ask for something on the sweeter, milder side if you’re not good with spice.
Bangalore, for me, was way better than Delhi.
I made a lot of friends there, and the people I met were much more into tech. HSR Layout and Koramangala are the places to be if you’re into startups. It feels like all the founders are there. You also have Entrepreneur First and South Park Commons.
At one of those events, I met Srinivas Narayanan, the former CTO of B2B Applications at OpenAI.
The guy was really straightforward. He talked about growing up in Chennai, starting a startup, eventually ending up at Meta and becoming a VP of Engineering, and what things were like at OpenAI when he joined.
It was great to hear all of that from him.
But back to Bangalore.
For tech, it’s definitely the place I’d choose in India. There are founders, investors and a startup ecosystem that you can feel growing around you.
Doing business there, though, felt very different from dealing with Americans or Europeans.
I was organising events, so I had to get people involved and work with quite a few local contacts. One thing I noticed was how many questions people asked. They wanted to understand every little detail, which could get a bit tiring when I was on the sales side.
Then sometimes I’d think, “Okay, we’ve agreed. This is done.”
I’d message them again a couple of days later, and they’d disappear.
Quite a few people I dealt with didn’t follow through on what they’d said. That happened with business contacts and even a few friends. It was frustrating.
The consumer market also felt very different.
India has a huge population, but a lot of people have very little money. Price matters a lot. And even among people who could afford to spend more, I kept noticing a preference for the cheapest option.
That makes selling something there really interesting, but also tough.
What seems more promising to me is using technology to make something much cheaper than it is today. Making legal or medical help more affordable, for example, for people who otherwise couldn’t pay for it.
There’s a lot of room to build things that people actually need, if you can make the price work.
Also, I liked the food in Bangalore much more than in Delhi.
And try a tuk-tuk if you go there. I started loving them.
Overall, Bangalore was my favourite place in India, especially for tech. But as a foreigner, I can’t see myself living there.
China: Shenzhen
After India, I flew from Bangalore to Shenzhen.
And as soon as I landed, I realised how difficult it was going to be to get by in English.
At the airport, people had these little translation devices. You speak into them, and they translate what you’re saying in real time. Pretty cool.
Still, it took me about an hour to install the app, figure out how to book a car, find the pickup point and work out which licence plate I was looking for.
But once I was in the car, the service was phenomenal. Electric cars, everything working properly, straight to my hotel in Futian.
You also need to get WeChat set up. I needed someone in China to help verify my account. Once you’re in, you use it for everything: paying, ordering at restaurants, chatting with people.
Everything happens there.
The city is huge, clean and full of skyscrapers. Thinking about how much they’ve built in just a few decades is incredible.
At night, you can go to Talent Park and watch the buildings light up together. The lights move across the skyline in these coordinated patterns. There were drone shows on Friday and Saturday nights too.
So fucking cool.
Food-wise, you can find pretty much anything. Pasta, pizza, noodles. You can eat for $3, or spend $20–25 if you want somewhere nicer.
And if you’re willing to pay, the quality of the services is incredible.
The gym I went to had all these new black Technogym machines, towels ready when you arrived, a huge indoor pool with around six lanes, really nice changing rooms and spacious, brand-new showers.
I didn’t see a single speck of dust in that gym.
I spent most of my time going around the malls, eating, working from different Starbucks and going to the gym. These malls are basically little cities, with five or six floors.
The people I met were really kind. They could see I was a foreigner, and they tried to help me even when we couldn’t understand each other.
I also found the way people dressed interesting. I saw women in colourful outfits, wearing sun sleeves and different kinds of face masks, often carrying umbrellas to stay out of the sun.
Some wore very pale makeup too. Being pale seemed to be part of the beauty standard. It made me smile because it was so different from what I was used to.
In general, what struck me was how well the city worked.
A place with millions of people, and getting around, paying for things and using everyday services felt surprisingly easy once I’d figured out the apps. People were considerate, and the places I spent time in were clean and well looked after.
On the business side, I visited quite a few factories.
They were really welcoming. They’d start with a presentation, take you around the factory, show you the machines and the products they made, then ask about your product.
How does it work? Who is it for? Do you think people will buy it?
They seemed genuinely interested in understanding what you were trying to build.
And their sales approach was so calm. Compared with some of the American salespeople I’d dealt with, there was much less pushing. They showed you what they could do. If you were interested, great. If not, that was fine too.
I fucking loved that.
For hardware, the place is incredible.
You can find practically any component you need. The supply chain moves fast, the machinery is impressive, and the quality of what I saw was really good. Getting things made felt so much faster than what I was used to.
And I almost forgot the work ethic.
Pretty much everyone I met was working nine or ten hours a day, at least six days a week. Work was clearly a huge part of their lives.
If you go, visit the SEG electronics market. But also walk around the smaller shops nearby, especially the less touristy ones.
Go to a club and play dice. Go hiking too. A lot of the people I met loved hiking.
The two main problems for me were the language and the internet.
Very few of the people I dealt with spoke English, so even simple things could take a while.
And because of the Great Firewall, a lot of the websites and services I normally use were blocked. Even with a VPN, things were often slow. I also went through more than 250 GB of data in a few weeks.
That part was annoying.
But overall, China surprised me so much. The people, the transport, the services, the hardware.
What stayed with me was how seriously people seemed to take their work. Whether they were showing me around a factory or cleaning a floor, they cared about doing the job properly. And when enough people do that, a city starts to work really well.
A lot of the stereotypes I’d heard about China just didn’t match what I saw.
I’m starting to think about moving there.