Bay McLaughlin

From Silicon Valley to China

Categories: Asia, Business, China, Digital, Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Strategy, Technology, Trends

Bay McLaughlin, called BetaBay because of his passion for testing new technologies and always trying to improve himself, is a leader in the world of startups and has built his career by helping startup ideas come to life.

During college, Bay started working for Apple, where he rose and joined their global campus advisory board. After completing his masters degree, he moved to San Francisco and joined a startup that failed, helped build another startup that exited, and then went back to Apple to build their global Small to Medium business division. During his second time at Apple, Bay helped grow a small division to a 2,000 person team running at a $1B USD run rate. His team at Apple still ranks #1 in the world for SMB sales and has grossed more than $300M USD while maintaining the highest customer loyalty in the division.

Bay’s has holdings in 30+ companies in 14 countries across various verticals: healthtech, agritech, drone tech, software as a service, food and beverage, and more.

Hailing from ‘The Valley’ for nearly 10 years and now with nearly 4 years experience in Asia, Bay is one of the few people than can speak to the old economy and the new economy, the online world and the offline world, and the East and the West.

Living In Beta, A Competitive Mindset For Leaders

Living In Beta has been Bay‘s mantra since 2012 when he left a high paying job at Apple in Silicon Valley to pursue early-stage investing, turnarounds, and building businesses overseas in Asia. This mindset has become a movement and is used by hundreds of leaders, thousands of entrepreneurs and can be harnessed to help you recognize the limitations of your control and focus on the processes that will help you improve your capabilities to lead and adapt adversity every day. Turn challenges into opportunities and start creating behaviors that will leave you in a position to capitalize on opportunities more readily and improve your leadership capabilities day by day.

Optionality Trumps Everything! Lessons Learned From Investing In 70 Early Stage Companies

The speed of technological change has outpaced our capacity to comprehend the changes for the first time in history. We are all the proverbial frog, boiling in the pot of water… one degree at a time until it’s too late. Bay McLaughlin has invested in 70 early stage startups across 22 countries and has recognized the power of optionality and flexibility above all else. In this talk, he will share stories where the completely unrelated events came together to create very valuable outcomes, strategies he has learned that are counterintuitive and challenge conventional wisdom, and will leave you with a new perspective on how you define your organization’s goals, orient your teams, and see opportunity around every corner.

How To Start Working With China – ‘Why China Matters NOW! You’re Already Behind… You Just Don’t Know It Yet
This talk is for Western audiences and helps shake them into realizing that you have to deal with the East, especially China. It provides 3 stories, plus a bonus story if there’s time, to explain strategies that work as a foreigner to do business in China the right way. Highly motivational and thought provoking for most audiences.

Health Tech – ‘The Future of Health is NOT Your Doctor’s Responsibility, It’s Yours!
This talk is a high energy, statistics driven, impossible to deny presentation about the current state of healthcare and health technology. You can live happier and healthier lives today and the system isn’t going to do it for you. Packed with examples that hit home with almost everyone in the audience and common sense tips you can take home and start implementing immediately.

IoT – What In the World Is IoT and Why Should You Care
This is a talk to help people understand what the future is going to look like and their role in it. It’s a futurist talk that helps provide a framework through which the audience can think about innovation and new ideas.

Manufacturing – ‘How To Source, Build & Ship Products From China
This is a DEEP dive into how to make products in China. Usually for audiences that need to know how to approach product development and manufacturing only. It can be 1.5 hours up to 3 hours depending on how deep the audience wants to go.

How to Finance Your Hardware Company
‘Building A Hardware Company Is Like A Boxing Match’ This presentation is also specific to people who want to get into the physical product world. It explains the myths, the common mistakes, and gives the audience a handful of useful tips and tricks to creatively finance and build the hardware business of their dreams.

Silicon Valley/ Apple
Bay has lived in Silicon Valley / San Francisco for nearly 10 years and worked at Apple for 6 years. He could speak to this at any point with ease. He could also compare and contrast the Chinese way of building startups and the West / Valley point of view.

Bay McLaughlin

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