Thread by @lillianmli

1) Question I get asked semi-frequently is how I do research / get up to speed on a new topic.

My skills were honed from 2.5 years of management consulting and ~5 years of VC. It's been invaluable since landing in China and starting to learn about Chinese tech

Let's talk how:

2) My process is the follow:
- Start off with tree trunk knowledge / primers
- Have key questions you are asking
- Background mental models / similar examples
- The art of finding additional info
- Talk to people and then talk some more

3) I think it was Wait but why who first framed that learning is about getting a good grasp of the basic shape (aka the tree trunk) before going into the details (the leaves).
This is why I start every search looking for primers on the subject in both English and Chinese.

4) These are often initiating reports or chunky videos.
You do yourself many favours by setting advance search functions for 'time published' and 'video length' as well knowing when to google with 'ppt' in the search bar.

5) Spend time absorbing the tree trunk knowledge with a few key questions.
The most important of which is 'how does this business or industry make money?'.
This seems a ludicrously simple question until you try to answer it.

6) Don't get lost in the details at this point in the journey. If you don't understand everything, that is ok.
Retain the keywords that comes up in the document for further digging.
The most important thing is to retain the shape of the business and how it makes money.

6) Many things are simpler than they appear, especially in tech and especially once we're just interested in how it makes money.
Certain business models repeat themselves over time and geo, having a mental model of how marketplaces, DTC and SaaS work is crucial for quick uptake

7) The first two exercises are about narrowing down as quickly as possible to a simple framework or hypothesis you're now working to fine-tune for the rest of the research journey.
Details come in later but I find beginners often obsess about them, not knowing all is ok.

8) Now you have a model in your mind and the task is to test your assumptions to see how much it holds weight.
You've probably got 80% of the work done here. The 20% will take more work though.
Start googling the keywords you've picked up to understand them properly.

9) The art of finding information is a lifelong lesson. Not just googling but going multi-media. Look for podcasts, reviews on websites, forums, prospectus meant for the business' customers.
The guiding question should still be focused in a bid to extend your model

10) Additional drivers that's useful to consider at this point are
- Market - how big? What are the key drivers
- Competition - how competitive is the market? Why? What moat is there?
- Product - product demo> reading about product
- Customers - what are they saying?

11) Last point which doesn't get enough coverage is qualitative research aka talking to people who know what they are talking about. This is also obviously the hardest part but there's also a set of skills to it as well.

12) I find for opaque markets like startups or China, talking plays a large part. It's a double-edged sword as its easy to over-index on personal experience, and it's sometimes unclear how believable the person is.

13) The rule of consulting which played out in VC due diligence was after 5 conversations, there's a convergence in agreement over issues. There are often diminishing returns after that.

14) So that's how I do it - read primers, zone in on a simple model based on some priors, dig deeper from keywords and then refine from talking to folks.
This is a very generalised example though.

15) If you're interested in a walkthrough with how I did with one of my pieces, like the thread / follow me and I'll be back with a breakdown soon.