What's really happening at the frontiers of tech?
Where are the hidden gems, the overhyped flops, and the genuinely transformative breakthroughs, and how do we navigate Silicon Valley?
Photo by Rachel Wu
Deep diver, exploring frontiers, building tomorrow
I am Rachel Wu. I currently spend my time experimenting with and ruminating about disruptive technology.
I’ve launched global AI products at Google. Before that, I founded two companies, taught myself how to code at 11, and received my B.S. in Computer Science from Columbia and am an MBA candidate at Stanford.
Find me on twitter @missrachelww, or join my mailing list. If you want to chat, leave me a message in the contact form.
A Little Bit of Silicon Valley Magic
Origins
Imagine escaping Communist China, landing halfway around the world in Silicon Valley, only to be greeted by a 6.9 earthquake. That was my parents' introduction to America.
Shortly after my sister and I emerged, the DotCom crash wiped out my family’s savings. With two young children now on government aid, a crushing mortgage, widespread tech layoffs and no safety net, my father did what any reasonable person would do: he went to the basement and started building software.
That bootstrapped company became the crucible of my childhood. Forget family dinners; we had stand-ups reviewing customer feature requests. Every missed sale felt like a personal failure, every refund request a tragedy. It was a masterclass in the surreal, precarious reality of Silicon Valley – a pressure chamber where the constant need to reinvent is fueled by the ever-present threat of falling behind. Meanwhile, the behemoths of Google and Meta boomed just beyond the fence. They soared. We scrambled. I had to learn to fly.
Learning the Language of Machines
My flight training began early. Thanks to my big sister, a coding whiz who created Java games for fun, plus Sebastian Thrun's legendary "Building a Search Engine in Python" Udacity class, I learned to code at 11. Instead of games, I liked to create applications that helped people learn. I built physics simulations in javascript, a matrix transformation calculator (which became my AP Calculus teacher's official classroom tool), and a peer learning platform.
By 15, when I wasn’t providing tech phone support for my family’s company, I freelanced as a web developer. My clients ranged from Singapore impact funds to teachers with side hustles. Key lesson: every tech advance creates learning gaps that must be bridged.
Processing Natural Language
While bug-hunting in our company's code, I was drawn to the human side of B2B software. It was through my mother, the co-founder responsible for everything non-code (sales, partnerships, revenue, taxes), that I saw language's power and peril. Customer calls were brutal. My mother's accent often drew dismissive, offensive remarks. Language unites us as Sapiens puts it, but it also divides us.
My own language journey was difficult. In second grade, my teachers wanted to place me in special education for my inability to speak in public. My mother's fierce advocacy saved me.
These dual experiences drew me to natural language processing. It’s why I chose intelligent systems at Columbia, and why that introductory AI class felt less like a lecture and more like a divine revelation. Throughout college, I built NLP and AI applications for freelance work, internships, and personal projects - often implementing the latest research such as Facebook’s Word2Vec (precursor to Transformer-era LLMs).
Let’s fast forward: I gave a machine learning talk that led to getting recruited by Google, launched AI globally to help Google’s 5B users when they got stuck, and an MBA at Stanford in the making, I’m now immersed in generative AI at Google Cloud. I like exploring the future of work, the neuroscience behind learning, and the potential of "cyborg philosophy" which aims to use tech to overcome our human limits. I've also weathered my own personal storms from severe burnout, COVID depression, quarter life crisis, near financial ruin (my own fault this time), and learned a thing or two about navigating a large, complex organization.
So read on (if I haven’t lost you yet)! Let’s navigate these times of rapid technological change together.
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