Transcriber: TED Translators admin Reviewer: Reiko Bovee
Hi, how’s everyone?
I’m nervous and shaking.
Is it because of me or is it cold here?
Are you cold? No?
This is not cold.
That is cold.
It’s the Great Wall in snow.
I was there for five years.
I was not on the Great Wall for five years,
I was in Beijing for five years,
developing games and IT software.
And during the time as a software developer,
you got to drink a lot of coffee.
And the problem was
there was not a lot of interesting coffee shops in Beijing,
so I ended up ordering coffees
on line, off the Internet,
and I started roasting it myself.
The more I roast coffee,
the more I learn about coffee.
But not just the taste itself,
also the business, the profitability,
and I realized the entire value chains
from farmers to consumers
are just very very interesting.
So I decided to drop IT
and start something new about coffee.
I didn’t get tired of IT,
I got sick of Beijing a little bit.
Of course after staying there for five years,
so I went back to Hong Kong.
I’m from Hong Kong,
and I visited a lot of coffee shops in Hong Kong
talking to owners.
I came to Taiwan and did the same thing.
Then I immediately fell in love with
the coffee culture here in Taiwan.
You can walk into a café in Taiwan
with a laptop and you sit down,
and put your laptop on your desk
and try to work and start working.
Then, a cat will come and sit on your laptop,
and maybe just sleep on it, right?
Isn’t it cute?
You are never going to see something like that in Hong Kong.
Because you just cannot have pets in restaurants.
That is not the reason why I started my business here,
not because of those cats.
I started it here because of the fact
that people really love coffee here.
People care about coffee,
there are a lot of coffee fanatics are here in Taiwan.
And there is a niche market you can tap into,
if you do it right.
So with that in mind,
I started to have some visions
of what my business should be.
I want to build a coffee brand,
and technically selling coffee
to two groups of consumers.
One, you have a normal consumer
that drinks coffee everyday.
Then you have coffee fanatics,
coffee geeks.
For the normal consumers it’s easy.
You just make something good, make it convenient,
cheap, affordable and then sell it to them.
It’s all about marketing and branding.
Or maybe just like Toby observed it,
you have a girl, a coffee girl,
waving coffee then you can sell it to them.
But for the coffee geeks,
the geeks are harder.
But the good thing about that
is that geeks care so much about coffee
that they will listen to whatever you got to say.
So that would become a very powerful tool
if you can try to get to them.
So with that in mind,
I went back to Hong Kong
and then I started pulling things out
in the garage and putting things together.
I started doing all this geeky,
engineering, tinkering stuff.
I think that’s the reason why I don't have a girlfriend.
(Laughter)
Then I built this.
That is a computer controlled coffee roaster.
It’s a prototype.
It looks really ugly, by the way,
but it roasts coffee from this
to this.
All fully automatically.
(Applause)
Yeah, that’s it. Thank you.
So, automation is key.
Automation means consistency.
Without automation, you cannot scale.
And nobody can achieve automation
without spending a lot of money
on industrial equipment.
So, this is where that IT concept comes into play.
In a traditional IT system,
if you have a problem, you scale it out.
You break it down into small pieces.
You give it out smaller and cheaper servers.
And this is what makes Google,
and this is what makes Facebook.
Yet, another common practice in IT
is you crowd-source a problem.
You set a goal,
you set a format for information exchange,
then you let your audience participate
in finding solutions.
Now, that is a idea of Wikipedia.
It’s basically what it is about.
It’s a platform.
So now I have a question about coffee.
I mean, what is the best blend
for coffees for American people?
What is the best for Japanese?
What tastes are the best for northern Taiwanese?
I don’t think there should be a single person or a single brand
that can come out and answer that question.
Because we simply don’t know.
But if there is a platform,
then I’m sure there will be interesting results.
So instead of pushing products,
pushing tastes to my consumers,
what I’m trying to do
is I’m building a platform
on which coffee fans around the world
could participate in defining the product
and share with each other.
It is really a fair thing to do
because I’m just one company,
I mean I don’t have the best tongue.
I have a good tongue,
but I surely don’t have an access to all the great coffees out there.
So why not just sell them the hardware,
I’m still trying to make a living.
Why not just sell them the hardware?
The roasting machines, the coffee machines,
which all automatic consistent and affordable.
And they are all connected to the community
and let them customize the product.
Taiwan is a perfect place to start this project,
because there is a maturing coffee culture here,
and all these different kinds of models in this sector.
I mean from the traders to city cafés
to professional coffee houses
to take away coffees.
If you drop something here,
you can go West or you can East.
Plus the fact that 85 Degree Café,
85℃ just went IPO last month,
and that gives investors a lot of room
to imagine what could happen
if you make it a successful case in Taiwan.
So, this is why I am here.
I hope you enjoy my little story
about my transition
from IT industry to coffee.
Some call it interesting,
some call it stupid.
But whatever you call it,
try the coffee, the coffee is in your pocket,
and you know, I cannot tell you how good it is
because I’m not supposed to advertise here.
But it is really good.
(Laughter)
Thank you.
(Applause)