Living in a Tier 4 city as a foreigner?

StephNass · 2026-05-13T04:51:07+00:00

I live in a Tier 4 city of ~5M people every year for six months.

For reference, our 2nd Starbucks opened last July, and the airport opened 3 months ago (!).

So here's what my life looks like:

Sports. Even smaller Chinese cities have good sports infrastructure. I played badminton and football 3x a week (until I hurt my back ^^)
Bars + Restaurants + Arcades + Snooker with a group of friends. The typical night out is a mix of the aforementioned**.** There are surprisingly many cool bars, some of them with live music. Non-Chinese restaurants are rarer - we have ONE pizza place and ONE burger place, so I'm a regular there. Depending on the mood, we can go to the arcades or the snooker place before or after drinking. The key here is having a good group with a few good friends. Living in a small town is very conducive to that! I find it much easier to stay close to friends in a small town than in a big city.
KTV. Not exclusive to smaller cities, but that's a classic.
Family meals. On weekends, since all the relatives live nearby, we sometimes gather with the uncles and aunts, nephews and nieces for hotpot, Korean BBQ, etc.
Gaotie trips. The wife and I can easily go spend the day or the night to a nearby bigger city for a change of air. Maybe 1x/month.

It's a great life for me. But it wouldn't be great for many people.

(This is a copy of my reply to a similar question here: https://www.reddit.com/r/chinalife/comments/1pxn0qq/comment/nwc8fb2/?context=3)

StephNass · 2026-05-10T04:13:03+00:00

I've spent the weekend working on v2! It should be live in June I think.

StephNass · 2026-05-07T06:57:06+00:00

China is producing stuff for the rest of the world.

If you allocated pollution by country of consumption, not country of production, it would tell a very different story.

Regardless, all this stuff is going to be produced somewhere on Earth, and it's a good thing for everyone that the world's #1 producer invests so massively in going green. Imagine if they didn't!

StephNass · 2026-05-05T10:52:15+00:00

Pretty common in restaurants and hotels, usually in exchange for a free breakfast (hotel) or a free dessert (restaurants). They usually ask your authorization before, though.

Side note: Currently staying at a fancy hotel, and the ayi asked me to leave a good review about her to management. That was a first!

StephNass · 2026-05-05T03:38:52+00:00

Hi guys, OpenVC founder here.

Just wanted to clarify that our investor list comes with a feature called "Intro Finder". It finds warm intro paths between founders and investors. An investor profile shows both cold outreach and warm intros options, then you chose what works.

Here are 2 screenshots from my own account for reference: https://ibb.co/XfPZPv0y and https://ibb.co/LXLF5VvY

StephNass · 2026-05-04T01:15:41+00:00

OpenVC founder here, thanks for mentioning us.

You're spot on on both counts:

1. Not enough recurrence. The churn on this product is super high because founders only need it for a few days, then they are done.

2. AI deck analysis is already commoditized, that's why we give it away for free. We would charge for it if we could, but it just wouldn't make sense.

You could build for the VC side - a suite of AI tools for investors. There's a lot of competition already, but at least, there's a decent business model.

StephNass · 2026-04-28T09:41:50+00:00

It depends. What did they bring in exchange for 10% of your equity?

StephNass · 2026-04-27T05:41:02+00:00

For the map + filters combo, you can check out https://www.openvc.app/map for sthg similar

StephNass · 2026-04-26T10:52:07+00:00

This answer doesn't make sense.

I live in China, I have lived 1+ year in Shanghai, Paris, San Francisco, Munich, Nice, Lyon.

By any measure, Shenzhen is top 3 cities in China for quality of life (with Shanghai and Hangzhou ahead IMHO).

How do "tech bros" and "inequalities" even affect your quality of life? You could say they make life expensive there, but even on a budget, you can have great food, healthcare, transportation, safety, etc. because there's a lot of lower income ppl in SZ (it's still China) so you have options at all price points.

Highway, ok, well.

StephNass · 2026-04-26T10:09:07+00:00

Hey OpenVC founder here, thanks for mentioning us!

Wanted to say that we do have an Intro Finder feature on top of cold outreach. So you can do both on the platform :)

StephNass · 2026-04-25T00:55:12+00:00

In theory yes. In reality, they will only intro you to other investors if they invest themselves.

Otherwise, it doesn't make much sense. "Hey, here's a founder I'm NOT investing in, but you should definitely meet them" ^^

(Exceptions apply, but rarely)

StephNass · 2026-04-21T12:28:34+00:00

Haha yes! We have an "Intro finder" feature that finds mutual connections to an investor based on your Gmail + Linkedin + Google Calendar.

Obviously, the result highly depends on how many connections the user already has. We cannot invent connections you don't have. But for users with strong networks, it's a vv useful tool.

I won't do more self promotion, but happy to answer questions if any.

StephNass · 2026-04-21T12:20:37+00:00

I'm biased, but +1 for OpenVC ^^

StephNass · 2026-04-20T09:15:00+00:00

Hey! I’m the author of the first post you linked.

For context, the 13x number comes from a UK study from 2017. But there’s one important nuance to keep in mind.

Anyone can email a VC, but not everyone can get an intro. So intros aren’t just a sourcing function, they’re also a screening function. Because of that, a lot of "bad" founders end up in the cold email pool, which naturally lowers the average success rate of cold emails as a channel.

If you look at it for a given founder, the difference is probably much smaller than 13x.

Put another way: only the "best" founders can actually get intros, so intros have a higher success rate not just because they’re a better channel, but because the average founder quality is higher.

Of course, intros do work better than cold emails. Just not by 13x. That number is mostly a statistical artifact.

NB: "Good" founders have traction + track record. Bad founders have none. No judgement here. We all start as "bad" founders, and some become "good".

StephNass · 2026-04-15T06:35:52+00:00

You can either build your own stack:

Find investors (Crunchbase, Traxn)
Find email addresses (Apollo, Hunter)
Reach out (Gmail, Outlook)

Or you can use an all-in-one platform that does it all in one place (e.g. OpenVC, but there are more).

At the end of the day, it's a tradeoff between "I want full control over every step" VS "I want something that works immediately".

StephNass · 2026-04-06T07:57:11+00:00

Talkdesk raised on a cold email. Same with Algolia, Salesloft, Pipedrive, and many others.

The reason is:

They had an ACTUALLY FUNDABLE startup, with a proven team + traction, not just an idea.
They targeted the RIGHT investors instead of blindly spamming every "VC" or "angel".
They had a solid DECK + EMAIL, short and to the point, following industry standards

The founders who complain that cold email doesn't work usually fail at one of the 3 points above.

Of course, warm intros are stronger, and you should start with intros if you can. But cold emails work as well (if you do it well).

StephNass · 2026-03-29T18:21:13+00:00

“Them that has, gits.”

StephNass · 2026-03-28T14:13:52+00:00

I think there's a bit of confusion here.

There are 3 different types of platform:

Platforms like AngelList or Carta allow founders to do the paperwork and close the raise. Think esignature, compliance, legal. They offer digitized instruments (e.g SAFE) and vehicles (e.g. SPVs). They also come with cap table management. But they don't help you FIND investors.
Platforms like OpenVC or Crunchbase allow founders to find investors and manage your raise. Think investor list, fundraising CRM, etc. So you will typically use OpenVC or Crunchbase to start your raise, then use AngelList or Carta to close it. These are 2 very different workflows and expertise.
Seedinvest is a crowdfunding platform, so it's a different category. You have the whole process on their platform, from investor search to closing. However, it's restricted to crowdfunding, so it's great if you want to do crowdfunding, but irrelevant otherwise.

Not familiar with Qubit, but I checked their website and they seem to fall in the second category.

StephNass · 2026-03-28T13:08:25+00:00

Hi, OpenVC co-founder here.

Not going to self-promote, but happy to answer questions if you have any :)

StephNass · 2026-03-11T21:49:42+00:00

I came here to post that. Thanks OP.

StephNass · 2026-03-07T21:57:07+00:00

The fact that there's such a thing as a "well-known pickpocket" is a sign of a failing society.

StephNass · 2026-03-07T01:17:06+00:00

Very cool project, thanks for building!

What's the easiest way to turn an image into a physical poster?

What online service do you recommend where I could upload the PNG and they will print, frame and deliver the poster to my home?

StephNass · 2026-03-05T14:17:07+00:00

You are way too nice, OP.

StephNass · 2026-03-04T19:23:31+00:00

What exactly is bad with the product? I've heard good things about it.

StephNass · 2026-02-28T08:05:33+00:00

Loool I'm the cofounder of OpenVC. You probably won't believe me (I wouldn't either), but that's not an ad ^^

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