I really like a movie called "Only Yesterday" by Miyazaki Hayao, the master of Japanese comics. This heartwarming animation, which contrasts childhood clips with reality, tells the story of Taeko, a 27-year-old single office worker in Tokyo who is doing a job that he doesn’t like that much but doesn’t hate either. One day, he asks his boss for a 10-day long vacation and wants to go. I stayed in Yamagata Prefecture, the hometown of my eldest brother-in-law before, and once again experienced the rural life I had longed for since I was a child. The film shows the journey of leaving the city and returning to the countryside where she lived in her childhood, which is very touching, especially the scene where the heroine arrives in the countryside when the sky is gray and they join in picking red flowers together.

In 2005, Steve Jobs mentioned in his speech at Stanford University that many inadvertent experiences in life will connect at some point. His experience of accidentally discovering font aesthetics in college and his subsequent pursuit of font aesthetics when he founded Apple are proof of this. Because I was deeply impressed by the scenes in "Only Yesterday" about a journey away from the city and back to a small countryside, so I decided to drive back to the countryside in a car to find some inspiration on the night I left the company. After a few days of rest, I started working on developing PassLock full-time. Yes, on November 3, 2023, I quit my job.

My car is driving on the highway and there are very few passing vehicles. I listened to the song and drove alone on the highway late at night, thinking about a lot of questions. There are questions about the individual and there are questions about the world.

Since the covid-19 pandemic, the world seems to be changing dramatically at a speed that is visible to the naked eye. U.S. troops left Afghanistan and the Taliban immediately took control of the country. The war between Russia and Ukraine has divided this seemingly peaceful world into two torn camps. The war is not over yet, and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has once again been ignited, specifically the conflict between Israel and Hamas.

No matter how complex the world becomes, providing valuable products to users will always remain the same. The concept of product first is an important value for Steve Jobs to lead Apple to glory again, and it is also an important reason why Elon Musk and his products are popular all over the world. Marketing is sometimes a scam. It is difficult for a product with excellent quality to be eliminated in the market, but the premise is that the users of the product spread the good product. Because sometimes not doing marketing means that no one knows about your product. Elon once criticized companies that spend a lot of money on marketing and ignore product research and development. But don’t forget the fact that Elon Musk has 160 million fans on social media. Each of his tweets is an advertisement. Elon = Tesla = SpaceX = Starlink. This formula seems to be more and more correct.

Although I admire Elon Musk very much and agree with his statement that "instead of spending money on marketing, it is better to invest money in product development." But the development of many good products is still inseparable from marketing. Marketing does not necessarily mean spending money on advertising. I hope that we can spontaneously spread good products, good values and other information. Wouldn’t the world be a better place if the market was not dominated by inferior products?