David Ying – Why Dot-Com Start-ups Failed (And What You Can Learn from Them)

David Ying is a Senior Consultant at the Systex Corporation in Taipei since 2012. David Ying holds a bachelor degree in Economics from National Taiwan University, along with an MBA degree, and an Executive MBA degree in Business Administration.   In 1982, David started his career as a banking officer at Continental Illinois National Bank (CINB) located in Taipei City, where he was promoted to loan officer. He has more than 35 years of experience working for a dozen companies, including 5 years at International Investment Trust Company Ltd in Taiwan, 4 years at Dow Jones Telerate and the last 20 years at Systex Corporation.  In this episode, David Ying shares his big dreams during the DotCom era leading to a painful start-up venture that brought his years' worth of salary into the bubble.    “Investment pretty much at that time [dotcom era] is driven by your behavior and driven by the environment. Lots of people around you say, ‘Yeah, I make a lot of money because I invest in the internet’. ” -David Ying     What do you want to hear from the My Worst Investment Ever Podcast? Tell us here! Resources:  My Worst Investment Ever Book   myworstinvestmentever.com    Topics Covered:  00:56 – David Ying’s professional background  02:09 – David as a risk-averse investor 03:01 – The circumstances that lead to David’s Dot.Com investment 05:01 – What persuade him to venture into internet business during the Dotcom era 06:09 – The type of start-up cosmetics business that he ventured in dreaming it to be as big as Amazon and Yahoo 08:33 – How big of an investment was it relative to the money he had 09:11 – Andrew summarizes the critical learning point from David’s experience  10:37 – Jack Ma’s experience when he visited Taiwan for venture funding  Main Takeaways: Lesson 1: People easily fall for the fear-of-missing-out. When you hear your friends and everybody talking about their winners and you are thinking that you are missing out, and you try to belong to the fad and invest your way to what they are doing. Lesson 2: The Dot-Com start-up period was the time of BIG DREAMS, BIG FADS. As you get older you recognize big dreams, big fads period is much better when you are younger. Lesson 3: Not all people will become a superstar like Jack Ma and Joseph Tsai. You can also check out Andrew’s books How to Start Building Your Wealth Investing in the Stock Market My Worst Investment Ever