Where are you going next?
Today I was at the passport office trying to get my passport renewed because I ran out of pages. Taking my passport, the officer glanced down at the worn-out cover. Noticing there are only a few specks of gold left where the Royal Coat of Arms and the words “Canada Passport” were once intricately printed, he exclaimed, “This was a well-loved passport.”
And it was.
Over the 6 years, I had the passport, I have traveled to over 40 countries.
As the world starts opening up after 2020, I’m starting to get the same question at the end of every coffee chat, dinner party, and friendly catch-up: Where are you going next?
The underlying question here is: How do you decide where to go when you can go wherever, whenever?
My answer is that it depends. It depends on why you are traveling in the first place. For me, I travel to experience life as if I lived somewhere else and to find inspiration for the way I live and build businesses.
My reason for traveling came unexpectedly.
I started my nomadic journey when I quit my job, left San Francisco, and booked a one-way flight to New Zealand.
The original intention was to check off a bucketlist travel experience, to get a campervan and spend a year driving around the island, perhaps stopping for a few months to work on a winery or dairy farm. I have always romanticized the Hakuna Matata of freedom, having a new backyard to wake up to each day, and sipping wine at sunset with the trunk door open overlooking the mountains.
But after 3 months of living, sleeping, cooking, and washing dishes in a 2003 Mitsubishi van the size of a double bed and only using the bathroom in public park toilets, I was ready to live somewhere with enough space to stand and a working shower.
So my plans changed. I decided to head to China from New Zealand to visit my grandparents for some home-cooked meals.
In China, I caught up with friends and family, one of whom was a VC at Baidu Ventures. He moved from Canada because he was fascinated by the Chinese market and its investment opportunities. He was most excited about the growth in the Mom & Baby and Waste Management sectors as China is pushing incentives for larger families and sustainability. Social factors and government policy are major innovation drivers.
Weeks after this conversation, the municipality of Shanghai pushed out a mandate requiring all waste to be sorted into garbage, recycling, and compost or get fined heavily. Within a week of the policy announcement, dozens of products and services popped up from image recognition apps that helped you sort garbage to a helper that can take out your trash for you at the required time. The speed at which solutions were launched was astounding. What took startups in China days to launch would have taken at least a few months in Silicon Valley.
With that single conversation and staying in one place for long enough to have personal experiences, I was able to uncover observations I would have otherwise overlooked and insights underneath the surface, invisible to tourists.
This opened the floodgates for questions. How do Chinese startups move so fast? What else is there that I’m not seeing? What can I learn from different places in the world? It became like a game to see what hidden treasures of knowledge I can find.
I spent the next 3 months in China connecting with an extended network on Linkedin, joining online communities, touring factories, and striking up conversations with anyone from a co-working deskmate to the lady painting my toenails.
I also lived life exactly how a 20-something-year-old young Chinese woman would. I went to raves where everyone wore costumes from the Han Dynasty, binged on popular shows like X-Sisters, where female celebrities over 30 compete to form a girl group, and ordered discounted groceries through the neighborhood Wechat group run by the overly enthusiastic auntie that knows everyone’s gossip.
In turn, I learned about the Han culture revival amongst Chinese youth, the changes in values as the generation that was born after China opened up to globalization ages past 30, and how people shop and live differently across China’s tiered cities based on economic prosperity.
By directly living the life others lived, I faced the same pros and cons locals faced. Experiences like waiting in line at public hospitals as crowded as a rush-hour subway car in a city of 25 million people and watching the highly automated delivery pick packing systems in a grocery store magically fly over my head as I shopped both helped me recognize the problems that still need solving locally and what existing solutions can be taken to fill opportunity gaps in other markets.
Unearthing these business insights became my reason for traveling.
As I explored more, I started asking questions like “How can I spot opportunities before others?” and “Where do the top Chinese investors and entrepreneurs see the greatest opportunity?”
These questions led me to seek answers beyond China.
I went to Japan: My uncle told me if I wanted to see China’s future, I should go to Japan. With a quickly aging population, we can learn from Japan as it solves problems that many other countries will soon need to solve too
I went to Israel and Palestine: At a dinner in Shenzhen for founders, I met a man who led the Chinese delegation to Tel Aviv’s tech conference. Tel Aviv serves as the research hub for many of China and the world’s tech companies. He offered me a ticket and so I went to Israel to understand how a tiny country designed itself to be a top startup hub
I went to Kenya: A college friend’s firm was leading infrastructure investment for China’s Belt and Road Initiative. I wanted to see Kenya go through this development and the changes Chinese money brought
I went to Vietnam: As China’s standard of living increases, many global companies are now sourcing manufacturing services from Vietnam. What opportunities are there to help Vietnam become the next factory of the world?
The journey continues because in Japan I met Indian entrepreneurs bringing in mobile payment technology. They told me I had to check out Mumbai and New Delhi. In Nairobi, I met the CMO of Jumia who spoke highly of his home market in West Africa and Ghana.
Everywhere I go, I ask questions like “Why is this trend/company/opportunity happening here?”, “What makes you bullish on this market when you can go anywhere else in the world?” and “What’s unique about this place that we can take inspiration on?”
While getting to these answers, I meet people who say “Oh, you find this interesting? You have to see what’s going on over there!”
So where am I going next?
I travel to places because I know a local who can show me local flavors or I have a question that makes my heart race so fast that I have to get to the bottom of it.
I’m heading to Madrid because a friend just finished his MBA and has interviewed with dozens of startups.
Casablanca, Morocco is on my list because I befriended a Moroccan woman in a 4-hour line to taste omakase at the Tokyo fish market and I know nothing about the Moroccan market
I’ll be spending time in Lisbon because it is now the largest digital nomad hub and I know a few people passing through. What about Lisbon makes it so attractive to nomads and in a world with ever more remote workers, how can other cities attract remote workers?
Then based on the serendipity of what I learn, the people I meet, and the new questions I have about the world, I book my next plane ticket.