YouSaid · the spoken record

William Wang

lines on the record: 54
first: 2025-04-14
most recent: 2025-04-14
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Thinking about I was a really unlucky when I lost my first millions of dollars on my first business. It was very unlucky when I had a great idea and connected TV, smart TV, but I was way ahead of time. So I think my definition of luckies is always worry more about other people surrounding you than yourself I think the Lux doesn't drop out of sky. You can't stay at home and be lucky. But Lux is given to you by people around you. And sometimes you never know who's going to help you. I wasn't lucky enough because I didn't hire good enough back 20, 30 years ago. But now I surrounded myself very, very critical, very smart business people, a lot smarter than me. I'm lucky. Because”
2025-04-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vizio: William Wang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which is what I want. I describes that to a lot of people, I have a daughter, right? It's like someday you're going to walk down the aisle for her with her. I marry her to somebody else. I mean, it's sad as it's not your girl anymore, right? It's actually great because that's the outcome you want. You want her to continue her own legacy. You want her to sell her home family. You want her to create her own chasing after her dream. So I couldn't find a better punner. Walmart to do that because it reached 90% of Americans”
2025-04-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vizio: William Wang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's bitter and sweet, right? As an entrepreneur, I don't think it's my intention to ever stop solving a more problem for this industry. I love attacking making TV better. So when they came to us and they wanted us to consider this deal, it was a tough decision for me. But if I look at what's best for the company, potentially this is big, right? This is a lot bigger. I build from this is way beyond my entrepreneurship. Way beyond, right? We'll build a platform that, you know, last year we did over $700 million in media Does not sound out of my garage anymore. This is an enterprise. I think one of the happiest moments in my life to a lot of people. It's like 10 years ago when I walked into visio, I failed visually is bigger than me.”
2025-04-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vizio: William Wang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, actually, and we got Hulu, YouTube, and Netflix. Those is not 100% of volume. People respect that, right? So people say, What is the streaming? Had the first Wi Fi TV, and we'll have the TV was a little keyboard, so you can browse the web. And back then, when Tina was Yahoo, they built the first operating system for TV for us.”
2025-04-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vizio: William Wang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I went back to my roots, I say. We gotta have a recurring revenue. I said, How do we do that? We gotta get TV connected to the internet again. I think instead of making money once on TV sales, the customer same customer will probably come back seven years later to replace their TV. I say, why don't we just make money every time people turn around the TV? How do we do that? And I started investing into that TV in 2009. We started shipping. First internet TV on a digital TV in 20”
2025-04-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vizio: William Wang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Lot of competition, right? But we invest heavily into the company. I think that kind of set us apart, right? I say this time around, I'm not going to be money's not the only thing, right? I want to make this an enterprise. So we invest in the brand, we invest in the people. And around 2008, 2009, I think, God, my competitor on Hardware getting stronger and stronger. Later, I gotta add more val”
2025-04-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vizio: William Wang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Around the same time, there's a lot of people try to compete in space. A lot of new brands came in. It was a brand called Olivia. Some of my suppliers even had their own brand, so I say, okay, we better be really efficient, be really smart, better have better product, or better have a better management team. That means I can't manage every scene by myself by technology anymore. I want a great team of people. So I start to hire who understand finance better than me. So I start to spend a lot of time putting together a great team.”
2025-04-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vizio: William Wang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Break even, and so Costco Clear was a winner, and also, right, we look at inventory control like a hawk versus big company like Sonya and Panasana. And for them to make a decision, the salesperson got to talk to their US corporate, US corporate got to talk to their Japanese counterpart. Japanese counterpart got to go up. It was like 25. I don't know how many tiers are reporting. We had one tier. So if he believes it's the right thing to do, we'll do it right away. So about efficiency. We have a few people and they have a lot of people.”
2025-04-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vizio: William Wang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A legacy. I think their legacy relationship, their legacy business model, right? I mean, I picked a partner like Costco. I mean, all they need nine persons to break even. You got Circa City require, what, 25% to break even.”
2025-04-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vizio: William Wang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was so like a hotcake. And the government was happy because more people are buying digital TV. And Kaoso is really happy because all of a sudden there's somebody in the consumer electronics space. I started grow my business.”
2025-04-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vizio: William Wang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And merchandising for them is a service for members with the same mentality. I say I don't need to make a lot of money. I'm pretty small, but I can put together this great screen for you at $2,500. So we did a deal.”
2025-04-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vizio: William Wang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, because people like Sony and Panasonic, and they don't want to deal with Costco. They give Costco the leftovers because they want to protect their existing dealership with Cirque City and Bas Buy. So I want to Costco and say, you know, you guys are so aggressive in cost. And biggest frustrations that you cannot get good brand product for you. What did you carry us? Let me prove to you that we can work together and disrupt the whole TV market. And they're very efficient because at that time they're break evens is around 9.5%. And they don't want to make money on merchandising anyway. They just want to make money on membership fee, right?”
2025-04-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vizio: William Wang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I tried to license the brand fund and they don't want to license me. And I say, okay, what do I do? So I came up with my own brand called Zio and I wouldn't do the supplier, tried to get them to build TV for me.”
2025-04-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vizio: William Wang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“2004 GB was under a lot of pressure because her PC price went down even further. They had pressure to shut down the country store because I think each store at a time is calcium like one million dollar a year to run. So for final store, that's $500 million. So they had to shut down the store. But when you shut down the store, nobody buy TV, they want to see it. So they end up shutting down the store once they shut down the store, they say we're gonna get out of TV business.”
2025-04-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vizio: William Wang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Founded Right Factory in Taiwan that can build a lot cheaper than at the time the labor costs in Japan. And the component is all the same. At the same time, we're vertically deintegrated and used that efficiency and we passive saving to the consumer. So the gateway say, let's do the same thing we've done before. You have your own retail store. You don't need a lot of margin. You go direct.”
2025-04-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vizio: William Wang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Vertically in a complete birdie inquired so they build it, it's already a little bit more expensive than it should and they sell it to Sony US and another layer of margin, right? So Sony US has big organizations and they do Sony marketing and which is adding additional overhead and Sony will probably sell it to a distributor. Distributor will add more margin. The distributor will sell to Circuit City at a time. The Circuit City will market plasma screen as they're ultra high end for ultra rich Uber wealthy people, the billionaire in Beverly Hill and they were like white glove service and they were mocked out like 40 points”
2025-04-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vizio: William Wang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The same thing I have been doing all my life, right? Simplify the supply chain and control costs. The supply chain at that time for Sony Apanasonic is Sony will build a TV in Japan, which is very expensive. They will build everything, right? They'll build even their own plasma screen. They were vertically inexplicable.”
2025-04-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vizio: William Wang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My origin of business was Sony V TVs, but I had no funding. And KB said, help us get into the Gateway brand. I said, okay, we do gateway brand instead. So I changed my business plan. I say, I'll do it because you're paying me. So from 2002, 2003, and 2004, the very beginning of Visio, VEN later became Visio. We were making money from Gateway. So I went to Asia, set out a factory for them. I went to Korea to get the component for them. I went to the chip manufacturer to procure chair for them”
2025-04-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vizio: William Wang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. So they were suffering because they lost 50% of margin to support the stores. They went to the consume lights on the store. They want to know what else to put in the store. And so I went to them and said, can you invest in me? And so they turn around and say, how about this? Why don't you help us get into this place? Under the gateway brand so we can settle at the Gateway Country stores. So later on they say, okay, in that case, we'll pay you 2% of all the revenue you help us generate on TV. And on top of that, we pay you $20,000 a month. So here I say, okay, I saw the video as a consultant. And my own money started from my second mortgage, my house, $400,000 to fund my business. I hired a few people who've been with me for a long time. And we started the business.”
2025-04-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vizio: William Wang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, government wants to do that desperately. Their mandate was like 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2000. They keep on pushing back. Right. Because the Sony and Panasonic of the world and the retailer of the world don't care. They're making so much money on NLO TV. Why should they give away? Digital TV, right? They look at digital TV as something belongs to rich people. So knowing the cost of the components, I say, I think I can build this TV and sell it for like $3,000. So I was running it around asking for money to fund my new project. And I went to the Consumer Electronic Show to talk to my friends at Gateway. Say, how about investing me? I want to do TV. And I think Gaveway had like 500 country stores, retail stores.”
2025-04-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vizio: William Wang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so But high definition TV wasn't affordable back then. $15,000, $20,000. There's a problem. The problem this government wants to push digital and digital TV are not affordable.”
2025-04-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vizio: William Wang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it's tough. I mean, I don't have a sweaty pump. I had a pretty sweaty pump that flay. Whole flight, and uh, but that's all right. I know, I just want to get back. I don't care.”
2025-04-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vizio: William Wang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Though I really want to come back home One thing I really want to do during the fight, I mean, after the plane, as something I really, really want to do at that time, I really want to be close to my family. And that mattered to me the most versus. Know anything else, yeah. You got money, success, a lot of problems to solve, technology. But does it really matter? Yeah, I think the most important thing is... I kind of differentiate love and passion, I guess. Went to a single prayer online next day. I said, Get me out of here. I want to go back Scary for me.”
2025-04-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vizio: William Wang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's really hard to describe because I'm always a I'm super moptimistic always. I read, I didn't really look back that much, honestly. It's kind of unfortunate. It is unfortunate, but... Didn't want to think too much on that. I never really dig into my own mind what really happened, what did it really change me? How did it really change me? Because I don't think it's going to help me anyway. So I say, just keep on looking forward. What else can you do? What other problem can you solve? So I really focus on that instead. Yeah, did it really change me? I don't, you know, I'm still the same person.”
2025-04-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vizio: William Wang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I'm buck on my seat bail. The plane was still moving. Buck on my seat bail, I say I'm going to get out of here. I need a I went to the first one on the right. I tried to open that door while the plane was still moving. I couldn't open that. Obviously, because the pressure of the plane is still fully engaged. And now I went to the door on the left. When I went from the door on the right to the door on the left. The plane The last few seconds, I had no memory. Know what happened, and next scene I knew was the door popped open and the ring hit my face. Exploded open. And along with the Escape The fire. The smoke rushing out of plane. Push me. I got ejected on the plane.”
2025-04-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vizio: William Wang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No oxygen first thing once to my mind was I'm dead. Immediately was seen half a second. Thought, oh wow, you know, I miss all my family My mom, my dad, my wife, my daughter, sisters, my brother, everybody. Nice thing flashed my mind was oh, okay, I had no more headache. And no more stress. I'm kind of relieved because at the time my blood pressure was 160 over 130 constantly because I was under a lot of stress, obviously because I was in debt. That was what went through my mind in like two seconds.”
2025-04-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vizio: William Wang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Taken up, and you know. You hear everybody You know, the playing obviously came down, and I was in the front of the plane came down. So I lift my feet up, I lift my hand up. That was my crash position. And the moment right after I looked on my feet, my Fire came on Anis me. Red orange Him on an Esmi. Apparently Sahelon a jiff you exploded and the plane was toying to two pieces right where the fuselage was and the fire came underneath me and once it hit the wall I thought okay this is it I'm gonna get burned But a fire disappeared right away. I think the fire burned up all the oxygen in the pseudo explosion. It sucked all the oxygen away from the plane.”
2025-04-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vizio: William Wang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, things going over. So it's a little bit over 50. I think 50, yeah. I think the 747-400 can still take out on a headwind, like 60 miles per hour. Obviously, he doesn't want to beat Typhoon. Was on a plane. I was setting numbers, I think, 22. I request a seizure. Nobody was next to me. So I was watching people magazine. And we hit, what? The liftoff speed, 165 mph. And my portion of the plane was up in the air. And then I heard this noise like somebody knocking on the door. Say, what the heck is that? Then immediately I start lean to the left. Obviously. Sounds really bad happened. The last tires of the plane hit the construction equipment and the concrete barricade. They were doing construction works.”
2025-04-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vizio: William Wang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Fair swarming that night. So by the time I got to the airport, Singapore Airlines' terminal is kind of creepy. There's nobody around. Most people are not in the airport because I think most people in Taipei don't want to take the flight because of the typhoon. They don't even think the plane's going to take off or not. I asked Singapore if he were taken off, I'm going to be on a plane. I need to go back. So I was the last person on the plane.”
2025-04-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vizio: William Wang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Customs. Yeah, so she's like four years old, three years old. So I say, okay, and let's do that. And by the time I finish my meeting at five o'clock, I came out of the office, saw the ring. I don't know what's going on in Taipei, the weather. I didn't pay attention, but Taiphoon hit.”
2025-04-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vizio: William Wang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, yeah, I just build it. I say, hey, TV should be connected to the internet. I actually had a whole design lab. We lay out a board. Find our software company in Boston to do Linux-based software for us. I found the chip supplier. I put a CPU in the TV and connected to internet. And when you turn on that TV, first page was apps. We didn't call apps back then with color widgets. Way before iPhone, the TV worked great, but the problem was the internet connectivity was rather slow, so it takes five minutes to warm up the TV because it's a modern need to connect. And again, that was 98. Last all That's part of the”
2025-04-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vizio: William Wang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, for free to pay him off because I want to pay that off. Again, I know a lot of suppliers, and they know I didn't do anything wrong. I didn't take the money or anything, and they still trust me. They just know that. During that time, there was a major transition, and it was just poor management on my behalf. So they allowed me to give me some time to use my talent to make some money for them to pay on my debts.”
2025-04-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vizio: William Wang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was making, I became like, for example, I know what's a new product. So instead of going through me, I say, you pay me two person conversion. I use that two-person commission to pay you.”
2025-04-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vizio: William Wang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I could, but I don't mean that's not my motivation, right? I believe I want to do better for them. You know, we looked at bankruptcy, but I just don't want to do”
2025-04-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vizio: William Wang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Lost, yeah, including myself. Putting another more money so the shareholder values appear. And it was tough. So under the rest, we had to start with each supplier. I tried to fund 98.99 until 2001. I did nothing but something depths. So I tried to make money, paid them, make money. So three years, I didn't do anything but paying suppliers.”
2025-04-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vizio: William Wang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, well, I learned the hard way because it's, I mean, I was 30 years old. I don't know what management means. And I don't know how to manage my finance, right? Because I thought money would come easily, but money didn't come. Learned Harway, pay my tuition.”
2025-04-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vizio: William Wang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Way before the time when internet was still going through modem and I sunk a lot of money in there so I was I wasn't good enough to make it to the next level. The management team was still challenged by me, by the dumbness of an entrepreneur like me.”
2025-04-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vizio: William Wang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Also, I was into too many sectors of the business. I was in the service business, service computer monitor. I had an engineer lab designing smart TV in 98.”
2025-04-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vizio: William Wang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. It's a combination of problems, right? The market got so much bigger, so efficiency became a key ingredient for success. And the competitors are coming like crazy. We're still focused too much on technology. And they were focused on efficiency. So their cost is more competitive. So I was the only supplier for them. And they want to diversify also. you know, gateways start to buy from other people. And because we grew so fast, we couldn't control our quality. But most importantly, I literally all grew myself in management capability. Still, a kid who thinks technology would dominate everything I wasn't a great manager. I don't have enough. My manager and team is not showing now because I didn't hire good enough.”
2025-04-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vizio: William Wang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, in the very beginning We're just making it better. My customer made it cheaper, like Gateway. And I just, I keep on, again, in the early 90s, the technology shifts so fast. We'll have 14 computer screen, 15 inch computer screen, 17 inch computer screen. This all happened three or four years. We'll have 60 hertz, we'll have 70 hertz. So my engineer background, I keep on pushing the technology envelope. So, in the first four years, when it grows so, so fast, I just focus on technology advancement. And I found a factory to do it. That was a key. I mean, we're building everything offshore. So Taiwan is pretty efficient back then.”
2025-04-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vizio: William Wang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“2000 back then it's called because we're the same age And I used to go visit them a lot, and we think alike. We say better technology, low price. Better technology, lower price. And they were able to make PC cheaper by selling direct because they were mail older. They weren't e-commerce. There was no e-commerce back then, but they were mail older. So they bypass everybody by making the computer so much cheaper. So they became one of my biggest customers and whatever I made, they soak.”
2025-04-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vizio: William Wang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Cheaper, you can't get enough monitor, you can't get enough memory chips, and the technology was growing at such a rapid speed. You went on the hard drive, went from 10 make to 20 make to 50 to just. Nonstar innovation in the 90s for personal computer. And this whole industry was on fire.”
2025-04-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vizio: William Wang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, absolutely. That was the crazy time in this industry. I mean, back then, if you can't build cam monitor, you would sell them out.”
2025-04-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vizio: William Wang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. So the opportunity I presented, they say, God, we want to do that, right? So they're very entrepreneurial in spirit. And they say, if you do this, I give you $150,000 He gave me $150,000. So I went to my dad and I put together $50,000, some of them from my dad and son of them from my own saving after four years of working. Then I told my boss and my bosses, I'm leaving. The funny part was my boss is the boss, the chairman of the company of Dow Tong US. He said, oh, we like you. I think you definitely worthwhile to investing. So he gave me $150,000. So, you know, 20 some years old, I found $350,000. And I just started the business. Don't understand balance sheet. Don't understand income statement. Never run a company in my life.”
2025-04-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vizio: William Wang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I got pretty lucky because I know all the factories Wanted us a player who built a Daton, which I know very well. They're hungry like me, and they're pretty much a similar age. And he raised a lot of money to do their own computer monitor manufacturing.”
2025-04-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vizio: William Wang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's no lag. Yeah, exactly. Just, I couldn't take it. I say there's a golden opportunity to build something a little better. You can easily turn into 60 hertz. Not hard, you just spend a little bit more money, so I went all the way out to the chairman of the company, Datong. He told me, who's your customer? I said, we'll build it. Customer will come. Say, no, we're IBM. Everybody else. Now, our customer. We don't want to build it, so he shut me down. That's one of the main reasons again I left. I say I'm gonna build myself. If IBM want to build this, my company will build that.”
2025-04-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vizio: William Wang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They use the TV interlacing technology to do computer monitor. I look at it as I say, this is not good for a consumer. The resolution is too low. Are you going to kill people's eyes? And I look at it as it's flickering, right? It's refreshing at 30 Hz, meaning 30 times a second.”
2025-04-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vizio: William Wang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I say, I can't work with this guy at the same time I really fell in love for the computer monitoring industry, and I know this industry very well. I know the problem with the industry. At that time, the computer monitor Spec on the mountain was fully controlled by IBM.”
2025-04-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vizio: William Wang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, there were multiple reasons. I was 26 or so. And I was so jealous every Saturday when they had this management class, only the senior manager. I say, how come I was invited? I want to know more. So I went to my boss saying, can I do that? He said, No, no, you're too young. I already got promoted like nobody to director of sales marketing at that time. I say, okay, but you guys know nothing about this business. So I know better than all of you. I should be the nicest in line to be a VP. And my boss is boss saying, no, you need more time. And when my previous VP left and I saw definitely on the next in line. And he went to do something else on his own. All of a sudden he dropped somebody else. Replace him Who know nothing about computer monitor? And I just think it was a wimp. A wimp.”
2025-04-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vizio: William Wang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Have a commercial on TV. I remember that commercial. Amazing. Yeah, we grew up with the commercial. So I was hair as the first technical support slash customer service because first of all I was born in Taiwan so I know their culture. I speak their language so they hired me pretty cheap. I mean it wasn't $30,000 a year. My salary was $1,750 a month. And my boss said, hey, you're pretty good at telling the story of why the computer monitor should be better or why is our monitor better? Why don't you try sales? So I say, okay, I'll give it a shot.”
2025-04-14 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Vizio: William Wang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT