Raymond Hou (Raymond) has a recurring behavioral pattern: when an existing system cannot meet his needs, he tends to build an entirely new project from scratch to fill the gap, rather than join or wait for an existing option. This pattern took shape intensively during his six years at National Cheng Kung University (roughly 2013 to 2018), then continued into his self-employed period after leaving work and founding the “Raymond Thirty” brand. In a reflection at age thirty, Raymond summarized this series of behaviors as “I’ve always been used to wearing many hats by myself.”
Conditions That Trigger the Pattern
Raymond usually begins a project with the same judgment: “What’s available isn’t enough, so I’ll make something myself.” After arriving at NCKU, he found that the university timetable was as packed as high school and offered far less freedom than he expected, so he looked for things to do between classes. He says his motivation at the time was “if no one is doing it, I’ll give it a try.” Nearly all the projects had a “never been done before” quality: there was no existing model to follow, and he had to handle everything from planning, marketing, and fundraising to recruiting people, from zero to one.
Another source of energy compounded this pattern. Raymond then believed that his background and resources were weaker than those of his peers. The only way to feel grounded and turn passivity into initiative was to keep taking action and accumulating work. Launching projects was therefore both a response to external problems and a way to build a sense of personal control.
Four Representative Projects
Four projects from his time at NCKU provide the main evidence for this pattern:
- N Power Workshop: In 2015, a classmate asked Raymond to share presentation skills. He borrowed a classroom and held the first workshop. After seeing a demand caused by the lack of learning resources in southern Taiwan, he connected self-directed learners and organized a series of workshops. From late 2015 through June 2016, the team held fifteen courses on different topics. At the time, it was unusual in Taiwan to have workshops where students were the presenters. Raymond described the state as “a full-time worker, part-time student.”1
- Tainan City Wanderer: At age eighteen, Raymond was inspired by independent travel in India. After returning to Tainan, he wanted local university students to leave campus and get to know the city, so he brought the “City Wanderer” challenge to Tainan and organized its first edition.2
- iGEM NCKU: A supervising professor saw Raymond’s ability to rally people and make proposals to businesses, and asked him to build an interdisciplinary team from scratch, seek sponsorship from the university and companies, and lead the team to MIT in the United States for the international Genetically Engineered Machine competition.
- The Taiwan–US Student Conference and Co-Creation Era: Raymond organized the “Taiwan–US Student Conference” and initiated “Co-Creation Era,” a large startup gathering in southern Taiwan that attracted more than thirty startup teams.3
These projects shared several features: the initiator also did the work; the projects required cross-functional integration (marketing, fundraising, recruitment, and product design all fell on one person); and each began from nothing.
The Cycle and Its Costs
The pattern was not without side effects. Raymond observed a vicious cycle during his school and employment years: he launched projects without having corresponding control, often fell into burnout and low moods, then used “launching another new project” to fill his sense of powerlessness, repeating the cycle. In other words, launching projects was both his solution and an outlet for anxiety.
iGEM was the clearest example of the cost. In retrospect, Raymond listed it as his “most regretted choice” in college. He initially wanted only to test whether academic research suited him. About a year after the team formed, he felt the direction was wrong, but stayed because “since I started it, I should accompany everyone to the end.” He invested two years of time and energy without material compensation and had to use fragments of spare time to lecture and freelance for a living. He summarized the experience as “not knowing when to cut losses” and drew a lesson about opportunity cost: “When I choose to do this, I lose another capability, goal, and resource that might be more suitable for my future development.”
The N Power Workshop internship program exposed another kind of cost. In summer 2016, Raymond selected ten interns from eighty-eight applicants. The team doubled in size, but problems with delegation and participation in remote collaboration caused major schedule delays and a pause in external partnerships. In retrospect, he chose to pivot from “building a product” to “people,” speaking with each intern and identifying three problems: too much delegation, a lack of hierarchy, and declining participation in remote work. This failure became early material for his later methods for running remote teams and Super Individuals.
How the Pattern Changed
Raymond says this cycle gradually loosened after he became self-employed. After leaving employment and building a brand and membership community with Yuzu (Song Zhiyou), the two of them decided the work goals and schedule, and external uncontrollable factors decreased substantially. Launching a project was no longer a way to fill powerlessness; it returned to being an active choice made because “I want to do it.” Raymond attributes the change to a sense of ease that appears when “the desire for control is less than the ability to control.” He still wore many hats and still built new things from zero to one, but the motivation shifted from anxiety to freedom. The early habit of carrying an entire project alone eventually became a foundational source of experience for his “Super Individual” working methods.
Sources
Footnotes
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Raymond Hou, “N Power Workshop Summer Internship Recruitment,” public Facebook post, 2016-05-27. View original ↩
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Raymond Hou, “City Wanderer Choreography Day (Licheng × City Wanderer),” public Facebook photo post, 2014-05-26. View original ↩
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Raymond Hou, “Leadership Lecture: Reflections on Zhuang Zhichao’s IOH Talk,” public Facebook note, 2015-05-27. View original ↩