Kristen Wang

AI for Fintech | Hardware startup co-founder (exit) | Tsinghua | Cal
My first principle in writing and posting: Don’t let vanity snuck into your writing.

[Kristen Wang @Krisdy_]

Heading to TomorrowX Summit 2026 in Austin, Nov 17-18. Two days with the CEOs, investors, and operators moving TMT. @TomorrowXSummit #tomorrowXsummit I'm an ex-founder of an optics startup, now building an agentic OS that automates growth for financial apps and banks. I'm interested in Agentic Internet (app, infra, everything), hardware, semiconductor. Let's connect!

[Kristen Wang @Krisdy_]

@ky__zo hardware 101

[Kristen Wang @Krisdy_]

I'd rather call this table Halliganism-Dorsey mode. The last 4 are the most interesting ones to me. Focused - no, sounds like criticism. I think it means small/circular teams take on many bets in parallel, more ambitious. I’m really looking forward to seeing how this table gets updated and evolves by the end of the year.

[Brian Halligan @bhalligan]

I got a chance to interview Jack Dorsey for the Long Strange Trip pod about his new article (in comments) on how to build a modern ai native company in 2026.

I took some of his ideas and mixed them with some observations about the hyper scaling ai native CEOs I work with every day. This is a first draft. Thoughts? If this is landing, I can flesh it out more.

[Kristen Wang @Krisdy_]

@ASychov Tim Cook is in Beijing, my folks say he comes to Tsinghua for Advisory Committee Annual Meeting. lol @tim_cook

[Kristen Wang @Krisdy_]

@ASychov Hope I was there!! Let me know your schedule, happy to coordinate some friends who know the industry

[Kristen Wang @Krisdy_]

@Techweek_ Haha yes. Tell me he doesn’t look good in the visor.😎

[Kristen Wang @Krisdy_]

Excited to be back for SF @Techweek_ 🌉 If you are building in the fintech space, you already know the drill: skyrocketing CAC, paying the steep "Meta-Google tax," and still ending up with low-intent users. On Oct 6th, we are hosting a dedicated session to tackle this exact problem: Hard Truths: Why Fintech Growth Fails? Slash Your CAC with AI-Powered Growth Engine. Welcome to join us and sign up here 👉 https://t.co/LWzutB0wLt Location: @frontiertower

[Kristen Wang @Krisdy_]

Watched it again, incredibly insightful! (Is this really the kind of sharing we get for free? @FoundersPodcast ) Thanks for sharing your @travisk sharp view on "anti-competitive" - my first time knowing business in the US is acting in a similar way with what we have in China. China operates under a dual-track system, which has created a dual market in the economy. For private companies, going public is therefore akin to obtaining a scarce "license" - it gives their property rights greater protection, and the gap between the two markets creates a valuation premium. Still, the US private market has more mature and diverse exit mechanisms. My views are shallow, but this is absolutely my podcast of the year!

[David Senra @davidsenra]

My conversation with @travisk, founder of Atoms and Uber.

0:00 Building Atoms & the Meta Problem of Management
3:51 The Appeal of Impossible Problems: Starting Over in China
12:19 Uber vs. Didi: Copycats, Hypergrowth & China's Rules
21:02 How Network Effects Become an Efficiency Fortress
31:48 Capitalism vs. the Taxi Cartel
44:05 The China War Goes Global & the Entrepreneur's Capacity for Pain
54:04 Life After Uber: Lawfare, Media Narratives & Reputation
58:21 What Founders Get Wrong About Venture Capital
1:08:35 The Fundraising Playbook: QED Storytelling & a Five-Room Auction
1:18:38 The Uber Coup, Radical Accountability & Outgrowing Fear
1:26:42 Why Specialized Robots Beat Humanoids at Industrial Scale
1:31:30 Finding Your Sport: Food, Mining & the Physical AI Stack
1:40:14 How to Build Many Companies Inside One Company
1:46:33 Entropy, Civilization & the Meaning of Progress

Includes paid partnerships.

[Kristen Wang @Krisdy_]

The deeper value is the feedback you receive before cutting tooling. Those decisions compound into your unit economics. It’s what to source there, what to prototype there, where to assemble, and who you trust to surface problems early. #Uber's China history is so valuable.

[Kristen Wang @Krisdy_]

This episode sharpened something I’ve been noticing as more SF/global hardware startups rush to #Shenzhen: SZ advantage has moved from inexpensive execution to supply-chain intelligence, iteration speed, and relationship capital. The one week prototype is only the visible part.

[David Senra @FoundersPodcast]

I have listened to every podcast Travis has ever done. This is Travis like you haven’t heard him before. Calm and methodical, breaking down, in detail, his company building philosophy and sharing his singular experiences from decades as an elite entrepreneur.

[Kristen Wang @Krisdy_]

Me in the crowd! Thank you @lucy_guo , so good! San Francisco, here was the shining disco!

[Lucy Guo @lucy_guo]

thank u all for making me the happiest person on this planet ❤️‍🔥 san francisco still has its disco

[Kristen Wang @Krisdy_]

@Scobleizer haha must be @ASychov huge fan I know

[Konstantine Buhler @Konstantine]

Should you chase hype or ignore it? The tech industry has been debating this for decades. So at @Sequoia, we dug into 20 years of hype data.

This summer, I worked with Sequoia intern @ochonaut to measure hype over the past 2 decades. The chart below ranks the most hyped topics on Hacker News for every year since 2007. Under each year sits the most valuable company founded that year.

Here are a few observations:
1/ The top company founded in a given year is rarely related to the hype of that period. Airbnb was founded in 2008, when the top topic was Google. Uber arrived in 2009, while the conversation revolved around low-level programming. Anthropic came in 2021, while the internet was consumed by crypto. Chasing hype rarely leads to enduring outcomes. The top companies of recent years have yet to be decided.

2/ New trends announce themselves five to six years early. LLMs first cracked the top 15 in 2016 and took until 2022 to hit #1. AI coding entered at #12 in 2021 and tops the list in 2026. Crypto entered in 2011 before 2017 and 2021 peaks. “New” trends don’t appear out of nowhere, and internet subcommunities are often the first to know where the puck is headed.

3/ Long-term “hype” is a durable signal. The “Musk-Verse” has been a top 15 topic for every one of the past 14 years. Sustained attention on the internet is rare and tends to mark something real.

Next up, we want to run the same analysis with sources like X and LinkedIn. If that's of interest, give us some encouragement and we'll share the results.

[Kristen Wang @Krisdy_]

@ASychov Happy birthday! Have a great one!

[Kristen Wang @Krisdy_]

@naval Looking forward to it!

[Kristen Wang @Krisdy_]

@abhishekm1636 @sequoia Love the tote bag

[Kristen Wang @Krisdy_]

Any founder in AI coming to #Berkeley #Agentic #AI #Summit this weekend? Happy to meetup! If anyone in fintech and growth, coffee on me☕️. We’re building a self-evolving AI growth decision engine to help fintechs discover and execute acquisition strategies with maximum ROI.

[Kristen Wang @Krisdy_]

French math is built into their language, kids have to do math just to count. Still struggling with it as my second foreign language. 🇫🇷

[Emmanuel Macron @EmmanuelMacron]

Félicitations à Hong Wang, lauréate de la Médaille Fields !

Formée à l’École polytechnique, chercheuse à l’Institut des hautes études scientifiques, de Paris-Saclay, elle incarne l’excellence de notre recherche et de notre formation. Fierté.

Choose France for science!