Alvin Foo
@alvinfoo • 163,698 subscribers
Venture Partner | ex-Google | Decoding AI • Motivational stories on innovation & resilience • Tesla/SpaceX insights 🚀
Shorts
Videos
An accidental slip became the brightest moment of the show. What made it special wasn’t the mistake, it was the response. Teammates immediately stepped in to support one another, turning an awkward moment into a powerful reminder of what teamwork looks like. The best teams aren’t the ones that never fall. They’re the ones that always lift each other up.
Alvin Foo462,055 views • 2 months ago
Mohammed Qahtani, the winner of the Toastmasters World Championship of Public Speaking, brilliant speech! 👍
Alvin Foo2,700,944 views • 2 years ago
This high school teacher in Alabama is describing a dynamic that’s already in plain view. Wealthy kids are prohibited from playing with tablets and don’t get smartphones until 15-16. Low-income households, on the other hand rely on these devices as babysitting aids. The result is apparent by kindergarten. Teacher after teacher has told me, “We can tell which kids have their own iPads from how distracted and anxious they are.”
Alvin Foo333,066 views • 4 months ago
In Guangdong, China, a 12-year-old girl helped her mother communicate with a foreign client about pricing for an international trade order. The client repeatedly asked for a lower price, saying the deal would not go through otherwise. The girl stayed calm and reasoned with the client confidently, eventually helping close the deal. What a smart and capable young girl!
Alvin Foo293,410 views • 4 months ago
Elon Musk Drops Truth Bomb: China’s Army of Brilliant, Relentless Talent Is Far More Powerful Than Most Outsiders Realize Elon Musk, speaking candidly in a recent interview, cut through the noise: “I want to emphasize the sheer number of smart, talented people in China who work very hard… I think most people outside of China don’t understand the power of China. It really is something special.” Musk is right. China produces a massive volume of rigorously trained STEM talent, hundreds of thousands of engineers and scientists annually, combined with an unmatched cultural drive for disciplined execution. This shows up in lightning-fast infrastructure builds, EV manufacturing dominance, high-speed rail scale, and surging research output. The deeper lesson is universal and inspiring: when raw population-scale intelligence meets relentless hard work and focused systems, it generates extraordinary capability. This isn’t zero-sum. It’s a reminder that human potential, properly harnessed, reshapes the world. Nations and individuals serious about the 21st century should study these strengths without illusion or sentimentality. Underestimating this reality is a strategic mistake. Progress demands clear-eyed recognition of what actually works.
Alvin Foo126,766 views • 3 months ago
Huawei Built a European Palace for 35,000 Researchers, Then Spent $28 Billion on R&D in a Single Year I walked into what looked like a European palace. Marble floors. Crystal chandeliers. Gilded railings. Classical statues. Vaulted ceilings that belong in a ministry building in Vienna or Paris. Then the giant screen lit up with the Huawei logo. This is not a government building. This is Huawei’s Shanghai research campus. A self-contained research city with lakes, landscaped grounds, modern laboratory blocks, elevated walkways, and its own internal light-rail system. Designed for 35,000 researchers. Current density is already extreme: roughly 80% hold a master’s degree or higher. About 10% are PhDs. Throw a stone and you hit advanced technical talent. In 2025, Huawei generated CNY 880.9 billion in revenue. It spent CNY 192.3 billion on R&D, 21.8% of total revenue, roughly US$27.9 billion. That single-year R&D outlay exceeds the entire GDP of multiple countries with larger populations. Total employees: ~213,000. R&D headcount: 114,000 (53.7% of the workforce). Most companies and most nations still treat research as a residual. Huawei treats it as the core operating expense. The result is not just beautiful architecture. It is sustained technological capacity under pressure. This is the case study that matters. Resource allocation at this intensity, sustained for more than a decade, produces outcomes that incremental budgets and short-term political cycles cannot match. Have you visited a corporate campus that genuinely changed how you think about what’s possible? Video produced and edited by Arianne, my beloved daughter 😍
Alvin Foo51,213 views • 1 month ago
China didn’t win the EV race. It ended it. 2010: USA and Japan were ahead. China was noise. 2015: China takes the lead. 2021: 3.2 million. 2022: 6.2 million. 2023: 8.9 million. 2024: 10.6 million. 2025: 13.3 million. The rest of the top 10 combined still can’t touch it. USA: 1.53M. Germany: 860k. Everyone else is fighting for third place. This isn’t consumer preference. It’s industrial policy executed at scale, with cost curves Western OEMs cannot match. The architecture of the global auto industry is already decided.
Alvin Foo52,141 views • 1 month ago