Vizio: William Wang

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/d84042303b63c20b


So he started taxing on the runway pretty rapidly.
'Cause I think he wanna beat the uh typhoon.
So I was on a plane, I was setting a number I think twenty two.
I request a C there was nobody was next to me, so I was
Watching people magazine.
Yeah, we hit
Uh the Lethouse B.
Hundred sixty five mile per hour.
And uh
My portion of the plane was up in the air.
And uh then here's uh
Noise like somebody knocking on the door.
Say.
What what the heck is that?
I'll be see.
Something really bad happened.
Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements.
They built.
I'm Gai Raz and on the show today. How William Wong Lost First Business.
Almost lost his life.
And then
built one of the best selling television brands in the country.
Vizio.
There are a number of ways to break into a crowded market.
One of them is through branding.
You differentiate by creating a culture around the product, kinda like how Liquid Death managed to break into the$300 billion bottled water category. Another way is to just price your product so comparatively low.
That consumers notice.
So for example, Harry's Razors, which were designed to compete against more expensive brands like Gillette.
And this is the playbook that William Wong used, not once, but twice.
The first time was in the 1990s when he built a company that made cheap
high-quality computer monitors. Even though big players like IBM dominated the category,
William managed to undercut their price and build a pretty significant business.
That is, until the bottom fell out.
and the company went broke.
But that didn't stop him from try again.
The next time was with flat screen TVs.
In the early two thousands, a flat screen TV would set you back
thirteen to fifteen thousand dollars.
But William believed that
With the right efficiencies, he could build a flat-screen TV and sell it for under$3,000.
His brand was called Visio and within just a few years he built it into a massive business that now sells smart TVs, sound bars, and targeted ads on its own platform. In 2024, Visio was acquired by Walmart for$2.3 billion.
And if all of that weren't enough of a story,
As you will hear, when William was already reeling from debt incurred when his first business failed,
He experienced something even more catastrophic.
A plane crash?
In the year two thousand
He survived a horrific accident during a typhoon, which killed scores of his fellow passengers.
He flew safely home a few days later.
And then started a company that would become Visio.
William Wong was born in the early 1960s in Taiwan.
When he was 14, his family settled in Southern California, where adjusting to American life was hard.
For starters.
William barely spoke any English.
It's hard, I don't know friend, right? And uh
Don't know anybody's tough.

Yeah, I wanna try out uh
Sports.
I had no idea how to do it.
And uh of course
I failed.
You know.
Just just difficult.
Were there a lot of Chinese kids?
Around.
When you were.
No, I have seventy Akin to a a hunting the beach.
And uh
Little upscale neighborhood.
Now very upscale, but back in seventy eight was uh I think middle class. But but
You grow up.
um you know talk complete outsider.
Um, but I imagine that your parents had high expectations for you because they made a big sacrifice.
To come to the United States and to start over.
Is that fair to say that they expected a lot?
Out of you?
Well, uh having a good
Yeah.
Chinese parents.
Of course they they want me to
go get a PhD or something. So yeah. That was always the expectation. So
Yeah.
In high school? Because the disconnect
You know, for a couple of years my GPA was
It's okay, you know.
My mass is pretty good. Of course my English was poor and uh
I think my GPA in high school was like three point
Three.
Mm-hmm.
But that's the respectable?
Respectable. Respectable, yeah. So
My GPA wasn't good enough, or U CLA wasn't good enough or Stanford, Berkeley
Uh somehow I did
I got into US E.
And uh my mom
she highly recommended to become an engineer because, you know
The high pay jobs are engineers and uh like thirty thousand dollar a year.
So I got into electrical engineer.
Uh a USC.
Which is uh kinda
My my personal favorite, uh one of the uh I like art.
I wanna be a I wanna be a architect.
But
Sorry.
I think uh I don't know any better to uh just follow my mom's uh guidance and advice. Yeah. Yes. So
And by the way, I mean t today
A three point three, you would not get into USC, right? Much harder to get into U.S. getting a USC at four point three months. No, it's very hard. It's a completely change, but it but but a wise d decision you made,'cause you've got a USC degree, which is a very prestigious degree.
And from what I understand
Out of college
You get a job.
Working for
a company that made computer monitors, I guess. You were
It was like a sales job.
Is that right?
Yeah, uh no, technical support. Answering phone. Technical support, okay.
It's a Taiwanese company.
Let's call.
Atom.
It's the biggest consumer electronic company in Taiwan.
Yeah, Doctor, I remember.
Yeah, they're they they they're they're famous for rice cookers.
Mm-hmm.
Didn't they have a commercial? Didn't they have that commercial on TV? Yeah. Yeah.
So I was hire as the first technical support slash customer service.
Because uh first of all, I was born in Taiwan so I know their culture. I speak their language.
So
They hired a hire me.
Pretty cheap.
I mean it wasn't thirty thousand dollar yeah, it was
My salary was one thousand seven hundred and fifty bucks a month.
And uh
Uh my pa say, hey, you pretty good at uh
Telling the story of why the computer monitor should be better, or why's our monitor better. Why don't you try sales.
So I say, Okay, I'll give it a shot.
So you're you're really focused um on it now in sales, selling baton
Computer monitors.
But I guess around four years into it, you're you're twenty five, twenty six, maybe twenty seven, I don't know.
Um
You get frustrated there and you decide to leave.
And start your own.
monitor company. Wha tell me the story about that. What what what was what was going on?
Yeah, there were multiple reasons. Um
I was twenty six years, so
And uh
I was so tell us.
Yeah.
Every Saturday
Well they have this management class.
Only the senior manager can
I say, how come I was invited? I wanna I wanna know more.
So I went to my boss say, Can I go can I do that?
He said, No, no, you're too young.
already got promoted on like nobody to direct uh sales marketing at that time. I say
Okay, but you guys know nothing about this business. So I I know better than all of you. I should be the nice in line to be a V P
And then my boss's boss say, Mm.
No.
You need more time.
And uh when my previous VP left.
Yeah, I saw
Definitely not the nice in line.
And he went to do something else on his own.
All of suddenly he dropped somebody else.
To replace him.
who know nothing about computer monitor
Um
I think I just think he's
It was a it was a wim. Okay. A wimp. And uh
I say I can't walk for this guy. At the same time
I really uh fell in love with the computer monitor industry.
And I know this industry
Very well. I know the problem was the industry. At that time the computer monitor
The spec on the mountain to
Was fully controlled by ABM.
Right, based on their specs. Because IBM dominated the PC market. Yeah, exactly.
Or or IBM clones, yeah.
Yeah, everything's called IBN compilable.
Compatible, yes. They use the T V interlacing technology to do computer monitor.
I look at it as a
You gonna this is not good for a consumer. The resolution is too low.
You're gonna kill people's eyes.

I I look at it as it's flickering, right?
It's refreshing that
Thirty Hurst.
Meaning three times a second.
And and just to just to for for simplicity reasons here, this is the frequency, right, that powers
the the cycles right here. Um and so sixty hertz would mean a better quality monitor, essentially in in in short, you know. Sixty hertz meaning just
For every second
Each screen refresh sixty times.
I couldn't take it.
I say
There's a golden opportunity to build something a little better. You can easily turn it into a sixty hertz.
It's not hard. You just spend a little bit more my more money.
So I went all the way out to the chairman of the company, Tatum.
He told me.
Who's your customer? I say
Customer will come.
Mm.
Say no, we're IBM.
Everybody else.
It's not our customer.
We don't want to build it.
So he shot me down.
Yeah.
So that's one of the main reason again.
I left, I say I'm gonna build it myself. If I be I wanna build this
My company will build that.
This is a classic story, you know, the young Upstart has an idea, they bring it to the boss
The boss says no and the upstart gets frustrated.
And they leave.
And that's basically what happened, right?
And you said, All right, I'm gonna try to figure this out myself. This is nineteen ninety.
What is that? I mean, first of all
How did you even get the money to start a computer monitoring? Monitor. I mean, I guess you had experience now, you knew where the factories were.
in Taiwan. You knew uh kinda had an understanding of how they were manufactured, but you still needed money and in nineteen ninety,
You know.
To raise the money wasn't easy. H had who did you go to?
At a time.
Uh, Taton was also buying from other suppliers.
Yeah.
So
I got pretty lucky because I I know all the factories.
Yeah.
One of the supplier will be over that on which
I know very well.
They're hungry like
Like me.
And
Oh pretty much a similar age.
And uh
They he raised a lot of money to do their own
computer monitor manufacturing.
Mm.
So wait, so this person
Uh, you're talking about this person uh you pitched your idea to, he he was like a a supplier or or a factory owner in China?
Yeah.
So
The opportunity I presented.
They say.
I won wanna do that.
Right? So they're very entrepreneurial in spirit and uh they say uh oh yeah if you
If you do this
I gave you hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
Right. So you gave me a hundred fifty thousand dollars, so I went to my dad and I put together fifty thousand dollars.
Some of them for my dad and some of them from uh from my own savings after four years of working.
Then
After I so I told my boss and my bosses I'm leaving.
The funny part was uh
My boss is the boss, the chairman of the company of Dautong US.
You say
Oh, well yeah, we we like you.
You mean I think you're definitely worthwhile.
uh to invest in. So he gave me hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
Well.
So
You know, I I've you know, t twenty some years old.
I found three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
And uh
Guys who started the business. Don't want us on balance sheet. Don't want us on income statement.
Never run a company in my life.
Wow. All right. So you start so you start your business.
Uh huh.

competing monitors, better monitors. It's called you call it Mag Innovation, I think.
Yes. And
This is uh I mean, it's a kind of a fortuitous time'cause nineteen ninety, I mean
This is r people think of the eighties as a time when
the P C boom really happened, but it was really the nineties when so many more people
Right.
personal computers into their homes, in part because the internet was coming
And
Windows made it easier to use PCs. Before in the in the eighties it was DOS, you know, and and so now in the nineties
Or without
a lot of skills could figure out how to use a Windows PC
meaning lots of people needed monitors.
So if, you know, there was one standard, which was the the IBM specs,
And you could improve on it.
You could stand out, I guess, right?
Yes.
Absolutely. There was the
Crazy time in this industry.
I mean
Back then.
If you can't build
Can monitor?
You will sell them all.
And we can't be selling out.
Oh god, this the PC personal computer was in great, man.
Yeah.
And they're getting cheaper and you know, so right. I mean all things. Cheaper and cheaper. You can't get in that monitor, you can't get in that memory chips.
And the the technology was
Going that is such a rap as
Uh Speed.
You won't find the hard drive won't find
Ten make to twenty make to fifty to
You know, just yeah.
non start innovation from in the nineties for a personal computer and uh
This is how India she was.
Was on fire.
I in your case, where were you selling the monitors? Were you selling them through retail stores or were you were you selling them to PC makers as a bundle? Like where they would just
they would sell it with their p their computers.
I found a really key customer.
Caldaway?
Gateway, yeah, sure. Yeah, two thousand back then, Scott, because we're the same age.
And uh
I used to go for th them a lot and we think alike. We say better technology.
Lower price. Better technology, lower price. And they were able to
Make PC cheaper by selling it direct.
Because they were male older.
E commerce there was there was no e commerce back then, but it were may older. Yeah. So they bypass everybody by making the computer so much cheaper.
So
They became one of my biggest customer and uh whatever
At me.
They sell.
So all right, so Gateway is a big your biggest customer, like eighty percent of your sales.
Yeah, I would say seventy, eighty percent. Wow. Okay. Yeah.
This is it this is key because I think within six years, you guys are doing six
hundred million dollars.
and revenue, so you really like caught
A wave here. I mean this was massively growing massively fast.
You had.
Four hundred employees for Mag Innovation, just very briefly.
William.
How were you able to make a cheaper product that was better quality? Was it I mean, A, I'm assuming you were making these in China so that
lowered costs. But but how else were you able to really
compete against these much bigger companies like Tatung.
Yeah, in in the very beginning.
We're just making it better.
My customer made it cheaper.
Like anyway.
And
I just I keep on again, in the early nineties the technology shift so fast.
Yeah.
Fourteen inch computer screen.
fifteen inch computer screen, seventeen inch computer screen.
This all happened in three or four years.
What has sixty hers, what has seventy hers. So my engineer background, I'll keep on pushing the technology envelope.
So in the first four years when it grow so far fast, I just focus on
Technology advancement.
And uh I found a factory to do it.
Oh it's a key.
I mean uh the the we're building everything offshore, so
So Thomas is pretty efficient back then.
I mean to go from zero to six hundred million within six years is mind blowing. I mean the the pace of growth
was probably so fast.
That you had no
I mean, I I don't even know how you you you were able to handle that because
And by the way
Not always a good thing, right? Because it can lead to
Huge challenges.
Fa very fast explosive growth like this must have been quite overwhelming.
Yeah, was way too overwhelming, all right.
Yeah, I mean let's so let's talk about this because we w obviously you there's a wave Gateway, eighty percent, seventy, eighty percent of your business is coming from Gateway, which
On the one hand is amazing, on the other hand is a little scary because you're dependent on gateway, right?
By by nineteen ninety eight
Your revenue drops to four hundred and seventy.
million and then it
really stops starts to drop further.
And further from there. Tell me what what happens. Is it just competition enters the space of many more companies are like, wait a minute, we can compete against these guys.
Exactly. It's'cause it's a combination of problems, right? The market got so much bigger, so efficiency became a a key ingredient for success.
And the competitor are coming like crazy.
You know, we're we're still focused too much on technology.
In other words, to focus on efficiency, so their cost is more competitive, so
I was the only supplier for them.
And they wanna diversify also. So
You know, gay way start to life on other people.
And uh because we grew so fast
I mean we couldn't control our quality.
But most importantly
I literally outgrew myself in management capability.
I'm still a a kid.
who think technology would dominate everything.
Yeah. So uh I wasn't a great manager. I don't have enough uh
Mm.
My my management team is not strong enough because I didn't hire good enough.
Also I was uh into too many
too many sector of the business. Well I was in the service business
Service computer monitor.
I had a an engineer lab designing
Smart T V.
Ninety eight.
Already an idea. Already in an idea. Yeah. Way before it's time.
Way before the time when when
Internet was still going through Moldem.
And uh
I sunk a lot of money in there, so I was uh
I wasn't good enough.
To make it to the next level. The management team
Well still
Challenge by me.
by the dumbness of
U entrepreneur like me.
You were a micromanager.
No is a magic. Oh yeah, it does. Yeah.
But I mean but but you couldn't see it at that time because you were young and learning, but
obviously with on reflection you s you realize that
Because you were
involved in s every p I mean I there's look there's different arguments that people make about this. That some people say you have to be involved in every detail of the business.
Some people say no, you really have to delegate and trust your people.
Sounds like that's where you you landed eventually.
Yeah. Yeah. Well learned the hard way because it's uh
I mean I was
Thirty years old. I don't know what management means. And uh
I don't know how to manage my finance, right? Because I was
I thought money will come easily.
But money
Didn't come.
Yeah.
Learned a hard way.
Pay my tuition.
That was tough.
When we come back in just a moment, William faces something even scarier than massive debt.
A catastrophic plane crash.
Stay with us.
Kai Raj, and you're listening to how I built this.
Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So
It's nineteen ninety eight, and Williams' first company, Mag Innovision, has gone from six hundred million dollars in revenue to
to being buried in debt.
And William looking for a way out.
decides to sell the business.
I wanna pay all my debt.
Yeah. Couldn't.
And uh
I so
companies to the fact that you're under duress.
How much debt did you have at the time?
Uh
I think we're at twenty five, thirty million dollars of depths.
And obviously you had some investors she wanted to
Payback, I guess.
Yeah.
Well the investor lost our money. They lost, yeah. They lost, yeah. Including myself. I'm putting another
More money.
So
The shareholder values saw the dot disappear.
And uh
Mm and it was tough. So the so on the rest we had to Sata was the supplier.
I try to, you know, from ninety eight, ninety nine until two thousand one.
I did nothing but
Sutton and theft. So I try to make money.
Pay them.
make money. So three years I didn't do anything but
Putting in suppliers.
Just to understand. So you you you sell it under dress. It's amazing because you're right, m a lot of people from the outside would think, Wait,
You were doing six hundred million in sales just two years earlier.
This is an incredible success story.
And yet
It just shows you how tough that business was.
That
It if the the bottom fell out and you had to sell it and you you were left with nothing. Like you were broke.
Yeah, nothing.
And you had to
uh pay back the the people you owed money to. I mean couldn't uh here's a just a weird question. Couldn't you declare bankruptcy and and have those debts forgiven, I guess?
I I I could, but I I don't I mean, that's not my motivation, right? I I believe I uh
I want to do better for them.
You know, we looked at bankruptcy, but I just don't wanna do it.
So what was your plan to to pay back the the debtors, the the people that had
You know, that you owe money to.
How are you gonna pay them back?
I was uh making
I become like a for example.
I know what's a new part, so instead of going through me
I say you pay me two person commission. I use that two person commission to pay you.
So you were doing consulting work for some of the people you owed money to, uh, basically
For free.
Yeah, for free to pay'em off because I want to pay that off.
And uh
Again, I know a lot of supplier. And they they know I didn't do anything wrong. I didn't take the money or anything. And uh they they still trust me. They just know that uh
During that time there was a major transition and uh
It's just uh
Poor management on my behalf.
So
They allow me to give me some time to
Yes.
My talent.
To make some money for them to pay all my debts.
Wow. Okay, so this is I think this is like a period of
for at least four years of trying to
you know, doing consulting work in part to try and pay back debts. And I think one of the
Things you got involved with.
was helping one of these companies
Try and figure out like
like a smart T V and and also plasma screen televisions, right?
Yeah, back then the plasma uh T V start to emerge.
Yeah, well very expensive.
They were like twenty thousand dollars, I think. And I mean today they they cost, you know, like nothing. But but but back then they mean they were super expensive. Uh meanwhile, I I wanna talk about about smart TVs for a moment because I mean this is the late nineties.
And I mean n no one was really interested in them yet, right? But I guess I guess you were, right? You wanted
to sort of make them or something that would resemble them, right?
Well, yeah, I just build it.
Connected to the internet.
I actually had a whole
Design label, we lay out a board, we
We found a software company in Boston to do Linux base uh software for us. I found the chip supplier.
Put a CPU in the TV uh connected to the internet and when you turn on that TV
First pace.
Well.
Apps.
Titã.
We didn't colour apps back then we're colour widgets.
Mm-hmm.
This is way before iPhone.
The TV worked great, but the problem was in the internet connectivity was rather slow.
So it takes five minutes to warm out the TV.
Because uh Modo need to collect.
And uh again that was ninety eight.
And uh
Lost all my money.
Yeah.
That's that's part of the uh part of why your first business went under.
Yeah. Yeah.
So all right, let me let me kind of set the context here because i you are
financially in crisis at this time.
Um, trying to figure out how to pay back debt.
And also trying to figure out how to make money.
Um I guess both of them are connected.
And you are going back and forth between
Asia and Southern California to do consulting work and to try and figure out

You know, that you could generate the
income from and innovation, but none of them really work. Um
And you get on a flight.
October thirty first Halloween.
Two thousand. You've g about to fly back Singapore Airlines flight. You're in Taiwan.
And you're gonna fly back to
Los Angeles.
Tell me what happens.
Yeah, so
The reason I wanna get back that evening was because it's uh it was my daughter's uh first uh trigger tree.
Halloween. You were gonna get back even though you were leaving on the thirty first, by the time you get back to LA, it was still the thirty first. I'll leave like eleven thirty, I'll get back here like
Six thirty. I barely make it. I can still see my daughter in the Her costume. In costumes.
Yeah, so we want she's like four years old, three years old, so
So I say, Okay, and let's do that.
And by the time I finished my meeting at five o'clock, I came out of the office
Start a ring.
I don't know what's going on in Taipei, the weather, I didn't pay attention, but uh typhoon hit.
It was very stormy that night.
Fair swimming that night. So
By the time I got to the airport, uh Singapore Airlines is
Terminal.
This is kinda creepy.
There's nobody around.
Most people are not in airport because I think most people in Taipei
So I want to take the fly.
because of the typhoon. They don't even think they don't even know that the the plane's gonna take off or not.
But uh
I asked Singapore if you're taking arm, I'm gonna be on a plane, I I need to go back.
So I was the last person on the plane.
This was a a Boeing seven four seven, obviously, because of transatlantic flight, so big plane.
Yeah.
So he started taxing on the runway pretty rapidly because I think he wanna beat the uh the wind.
'Cause what were the winds at? Like thirty, forty miles an hour?
Yeah, I think it's going over
So it's a little bit over fifty, I think. I think the uh seven forty seven four hundred can still take out on a headwind like sixty mile per hour.
Right.
Uh he obviously he just wanna beat Typhoon. I he wanna get out of there quick. So we talked out uh rather quickly, but
I was on a plane, I was setting uh number I think twenty two.
I request a C was nobody was next to me, so I was watching people magazine.
And we hit we hit what? Uh the Lutospee.
Hundred sixty five mile power.
And uh
My portion of the plane was up in the air.
And uh then here's this uh
Noise like somebody knocking on the door.
Say
What what the heck is that?
Then immediately I start a link to the left.
I'll be see.
Something really bad happened.
The last
Uh Pires?
Are they playing?
Hit the construction equipment.
And the concrete barricade.
Where they were doing construction works.
It clips the con concrete barrier as it's taking off.
That's taken up and um
You know, the
Now you hear everybody scream.
Um
You know the playing obviously came down.
And I was in the front of the plane came down and uh
So I lift my feet up, I live my hand up.
That was my
Crash position?
And uh
The moment right after I left on my feet.
My hand.
The fire came out on east me.
What?
Orange fire.
Mm.
Apparently the
Sah sixty thousand gallon of Jeff.
Exploded.
Mm-hmm and the plane was torn to two pieces right where the fusel lodged.
Was?
And uh
The fire came underneath me and
Once he hit the wall, I thought okay, this is it, I'm gonna get burned.
But a fire disappear right away.
Because it's uh I think the fire
Burn up all the oxygen in the pseudo explosion, suck all the oxygen away from the plane.
The the
I mean the images of that
of of the aftermath are shocking. I mean it was
It was ripped in half and you were in the front half of the plane.
Ninety six people.
Survived eighty three people.
were killed in that flight and
You
I mean you
I can't even imagine what
W
What that was like
When it stopped.
When you could leave your seat and get out. What do you remember?
Well the fire came on on east me.
And uh fire disappeared. Immediately I couldn't breathe.
No oxy, yeah. No no oxygen.
First thing once in my mind was
Dead.
And uh
Immediately.
You know, was seen.
Half a second.
I thought
Oh wow.
You know.
I miss all my family.
My mom, my dad, my wife, my daughter, my sisters, my brother, everybody.
Then
Nicing flash of my mind was uh
Oh, okay.
Uh
And no more headache.
And uh no more stress.

I'm kinda
Uh relief.
Because at the time I was my blood pressure was hundred sixty over one hundred thirty.
Constantly because uh I was under a lot of stress, obviously because my because I was in debt.
So
That was uh
Well it went through my mind in like two seconds.
Because you were gonna die.
Yeah.
And that was it.
Yeah, so
I I'm back on my sea bill, the plane was still moving.
I'm back on my CBO. I say I'm gonna get out of here.
I need to breathe.
So
I went to the first one, right?
I tried to open that door while the plane was still moving.
I couldn't open it.
Obviously because of pressure.
pressure the plane still fully engaged.
And uh now went to the door on the left.
Well I went from a tower on the right to a tower on the left.
The plane stop
But uh
The last few seconds I had no memory.
I don't know what happened.
And uh
Nicene.
I
New.
was a door.
Popped open.
And the ring here my face.
The rain.
The ring hit my face and just
Exploded open.
And
Along with the
The escape shoot?
And the fire
And the smoke.
Rushing all of playing.
push me I I got ejective on the plane.
Yeah.
It's um
It's unimaginable.
And um
I mean it's it's almost a
you know, a cliche, I guess, which which is when when somebody has a near death experience, it does
Often

Life because it changes their perspective.
And
From what I gather.
That happened to you. I mean, here you were
Focused on these
Stressful things about
Debt and
And
And then you go through this experience and I
I have to imagine that
This
was going to fundamentally change the way you saw your life.
Yeah.
This this is really hard to describe because uh I'm I'm always uh
I'm so I'm super optimistic, always.
No, I really I didn't really look back that much.
Honestly.
It's kinda unfortunate. It it is unfortunate, but
I didn't want to think
Too much on that.
I never really think into my own mind what what really happened. Wha what did uh what did really change me, how did it really change me?
Because I don't think it's gonna help me anyway.
So I say just keep on looking forward. What else can you do? Wha what other problem can you solve? So I really focus on that instead. So
Yeah, that didn't did it really change me. I don't you know, I'm still the same person.
I guess my question is
Did it change what matters to you?
I know.
I know I really want to come back home.
Yeah.
That's one thing I really want to do.
To me, the fire I mean after the plane.
That's something I really really want to do at the time.
I really want to cloth be close to my family.
And uh
Not better.
to me the most.
Versus
You know, anything else. Yeah, you have money, success, a lot of problem to solve, technology.
I had to
Does it really matter? Yeah.
I think the most important thing is
Love.
I kinda
Differentiate love and passion.
Yes.
I went to a single parent next day, I say, Get me out of here, I wanna go back.

I I I mean, I can't imagine like getting on a flight after going through that.
Yeah.
Come on.
I I I don't have a sweaty palm.
I had a pretty sweaty palm in that that flight. Yeah. The whole flight. And uh
Well sorry, I know.
I I wanna I just want to get back.
Okay.
So you get back. Um, and eventually
You continue with.
with your work, but um
I guess one of the things that you'd been doing, one of the consulting jobs you'd been doing was with your former customer Gateway.
I guess they're retail stores.
in the US at that time and they they wanted to sell other
things besides computers because uh the market was
getting competitive and pr presumably they wanted to
build out their inventory, their product offering.
Um
And you suggested
that they look into televisions, into plasma televisions, which were again
In two thousand one
really expensive. I mean they were like fifteen, twenty thousand dollars.
Um but I guess your idea was hey
Maybe you guys should get into the plasma TV business, but make them really cheap.
Tell me tell me about your your proposal to them.
Yeah, so
I know.
Hot Devon TV is gonna be a hot
I don't know
Because US government
was really pushing for H D T V.
But
High development T V wasn't affordable back then. It was yeah.
Fifteen, twenty thousand dollars.
Yeah. So there's problem.
The problem this
Government wanna push
Digital?
And this is the TV.
are not affordable.
And and I guess I should point out that the government
had required
this digital makeover at the at the time. They wanted
Um television's to move away from analog to
Digital video signals. Hi Def.
Yeah. And high def was part of that. And so it required all manufacturers to move from analog televisions with a antenna.
Essentially to a a new type of digital well, there's digital antennas, but a a digital
receiving digital video signals.
Yeah.
Yeah, government wanna do that desperately. Their mandate was like nineteen ninety eight, nineteen ninety nine, two thousand, two thousand one, two thousand. They keep on pushing back. Right. Because T V the the Sony and Panasonic of the War and the retailer of the war don't
Don't care.
They were making so much money on Analog TV, why should they give away?
The digital TV, right? They they look at digital TV's something belonging to rich people.
So I knowing the cost
of the components
I say
I think I can build his T V.
Solar for like three thousand dollars.
Mm-hmm.
So
I was running around asking for money to farm my new
Project.
And though
I went to the Consumer Tron show to talk to my friends at Gayway.
Um
I say how about investing me, I wanna do TV.
Uh at the time Gayway had like five hundred country stores, retail stores.
All across the US. All across the US. And I found a U US retail store. The p the person computers is um uh
Uh price point.
When from like twenty five hundred dollar average to like a thousand dollars.
Right. So I mean at at that time P Cs were getting
cheaper for consumers, but not I mean not much cheaper to make, I guess. So so uh imagine Gateway was just cutting their profit margin in half.
Yeah.
So
They were suffering.
Because uh
They lost fifty percent of their margin.
to support a stores.
So they went to the consumer tunnel store, they wanna know what else to put in the store.
And uh so I went to them and say, Oh, I wanna do you fetching me.
And uh
So later around
Say
How about this? Why don't you help us get into
This face.
Under the gay way brand, so we can settle at the gay way country stores.
So later on they say okay, in that case it's uh um
We'll pay you two percent.
Oh.
All the revenue you help us generate on TV.
And uh
We're and on top of that, we'll pay you twenty thousand dollar months.
So here it I think okay.
I saw the visio as a consultant.
And uh my own money is started from my second mortgage my house.
Four hundred thousand dollars.
To farm my business, I hire a few people.
Who's been with me for a long time.
And uh
We saw those business.
So just a
Just to clarify, you
You you went to Gateway

On
cheaper plasma TVs, but then you started a business called Visio?
I started business as a V Inc.
V Inc, okay. And the brand was called V.
The the probably initial was called V at the time. So I actually my first T V was V.
Yeah.
But and the business was to make
Plasma Televis for Gateway under their under their brand?
My origin of business was
Sony V
T Vs.
But I had no funding.
And K B say
Help us get into the Gateway brand.
I see
Okay, we do game we bring st so I changed my business plan, I say, I'll do it because you're paying me.
So from two thousand two, two thousand three, and two thousand four.
the very beginning of the uh visio.
V E later became Vizio. Yeah.
we were making money from Gayway. So w I went to Asia, set out a factory for them
I went to Korea to get the component for them. I went to the chip manufacturer to
Computer chips, yeah.
We did everything for them. And uh
They just marketed a part uh.
Which we help them build.
You were trying to get the t cost of a plasma TV down to under three thousand dollars.
Which would have been
Which which you did, and that would that was kind of
Crazy. How did you do that? How are you able to get them so so much
You know, if they were selling for fifteen grand.
How are you able to get them
Retail to get the retail price down to three thousand.
Yeah, the same thing I've been doing all my life, right?
Simplify the supply chain and uh
Control costs.
The supply chain at a time for Sony or Panasonic this Sony will build a TV in Japan, which is very expensive.
They will
Build everything, right? It build even their own plasma screen. They were vertically integrated. Totally vertically integrated.
They build it.
It's already a little bit more expensive than it should.
And they sail it to Sony US.
And another layer of margin, right? So it's only US has big organization and they do Sony marketing.
Yeah, it was a
adding additional overhead and Sony will probably sell it to a distributor. Distributor will add more margin. The distributor will sell to Circus City at a time.
Circuit.
Well market plasma screen is the ultra high end for ultra rich
Uber wealthy people.
the being here in Beverly Hill and they were
It's like
White gloves over this?
And they will mark her like forty points.
So what did you do to beat that? Like what what was your strategy?
I I founded Right Factory in Taiwan.
That be a lot cheaper.
Then
and I tell the labor cost in Japan.
And
The components are the same.
At the same time.
We've we're vertically deintegrated, uh use that efficiency and we're passive saving to the consumer.
So
I want the gateway say, let's do the same thing we done before.
You have your own retail store.
You don't need a lot of margin.
You go direct.
When we come back in just a moment, how Williams gateway strategy to go direct
gets derailed.
Leading him to start a new business and revive.
An old idea.
Stay with us, I'm Guy Roz and you're listening to how I built this.
Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2004 and William has teamed up with his old partners at Gateway to sell affordable flat screen TVs.
And they're selling well at first.
But then
But twenty four.
GB was under a lot of pressure because the PC price went down even further.
Right. And they had pressure to shut down the country stores because the I think each store at a time is costing them like one million dollar a year to run.
So
For fine and store this.
Five hundred million dollars. So they had to shut down the store. But when you shut down the store, nobody I mean people when people buy TV, they wanna see it.
Right.
So they end up shutting down the store. Once they shut down the store they say we're gonna get out of TV business.
Which meant that you were gonna focus on
your on building out your brand.
Essentially.
Yeah, so I try to license the Prime Fund and they won't they don't they don't wanna license to me and uh say
Okay, what I do, right? So I came out with my own brand call viso and uh one to the supplier tried to get them to build T V for me.
But just to be clear, v Gateway would not even though they decide to get out of the business entirely.
Plasma tilt.
the brand name to you.
Yeah.
So you decided well.
I'm just gonna
Come up with a new brand name.
Yeah.
It's also an interesting time because most televisions in two thousand and two, when you really really when you launched Visio
We're still big.
Re rear projection, right?
T Vs. They were like huge, uh heavy
Uh things.
Yeah. If you had a flat screen plasma TV, you were a
Very wealthy person.
Yeah.
So
you start to produce these televisions, but I think you also did something
Which proved to be very pressured, which is
You cut a deal with Costco.
Right, to that they would sell your televisions.
And w did that happen almost immediately that you made that deal with them?
Yeah, so around I think two thousand four, two thousand five.
I used to sell computer monitor at Costco.
Tell the people a little bit.
You had a you had a connection there. I had a connection there. So
At the time Costco had no market share.
For T V.
And people didn't buy uh that at Costco at the time. They still mainly bought
You know.
Food.
Yeah, because people like Sony and Panasonic and they don't want to deal with Costco.
They they give Costco the l the leftovers because it's uh
They want to protect their existing
Dealer was so.
So I want to cast her and say
You know, you guys are so aggressive in costs.
And uh your biggest frustration is that you cannot get good brand product.
For you.
What does it carry us? Let me prove to you that we can
work together and disrupt the whole T V market.
And they're very efficient because it's uh at that time their break even is around nine and a half percent. And they don't wanna make money on merchandising anyway.
They just wanna make money on membership fee, right? The membership fee, yeah.
And merchandising for them is a service for members.
Uh with the same mentality I say I don't need to make a lot of money, I'm pretty small, but I can put together s great screen for you.
Yeah.
twenty five hundred bucks. So we did a deal.
twenty five hundred bucks that they would buy the televisions from you.
There was they were buy like twenty four hundred seller for twenty five hundred dollars. Wow, so their margins were n wow, that's and so all of a sudden people go to Costco and see these flat screen T Vs
For twenty five hundred bucks.
Yeah, yeah, it was uh so like a hot cake and uh
The Gabon was happy because uh more people are buying digital TV and uh Carso is really happy because all of a sudden there's there's somebody in the consumer channel space.
I start to grow my business.
Wh what's what's remarkable is that there are parallels between the Visio story and your previous company, the the Mag you know, the monitor company that that really had this rapid rise and then a fall.
But here, I mean within a few years you hit seven hundred million revenue, right?
Visio, I think by 2007, so just a few years after you launch it.
It was
It was the number one H D T V brand in the US. It it
Surpassed
Samsung?
Yeah, market share of like fourteen, you know
And a half percent.
And from what I understand.
That year
You were
You did about two
billion dollars in sales.
Which is
Remarkable. What what I'm wondering is
Why didn't the big players see this coming? Samsung, Sony, Panasonic. I mean
Why didn't they compete when they saw you selling these TVs at Costco and just
Sign these.
T Vs like hot cakes.
Yeah, uh a legacy.
I think their legacy relationship, their legacy business model.
Right.
I mean I pick a a Power like Costco
I mean only need nine person to break even.
You got Suke City require what?
Twenty five percent of break even.
They they had to make twenty five percent
margins to break even.
So Costco Clear was the winner and uh
Also, right, we we look at inventory control like a hawk.
And versus
big company like Sonia and Panasonic and then for them to make a decision
The the salesperson gotta talk to their US corporate. US corporate gotta talk to their Japanese counterpart, Japanese counterpart gotta go up.
Is that twenty five I don't know how many tiers are reporting. We have one tier.
So if we please it's the right thing to do, we'll do it right away. So about how about efficiency? Um we'll have
You know.
Few people and they have a lot of people.
I I read a stat that's that you you claimed it in two thousand seven that your overhead was zero point seven percent of sales. That was your overhead cost.
And that your competitors, their overhead cost was ten percent of sales or more.
So so your your costs were a fr a fraction.
Yeah.
Now, here's my question though. I mean
You saw this happen in in a different business before where
You catch a wave.
There's all its excitement, but then the other competitors come in.
So
I know you had this strategy of like let's make cheap T V, let's sell them to Cut Through Costco and then eventually Walmart and
Kmard and others.
But you must have known in the back of your mind.
That history could repeat itself that very soon.
The big players were gonna figure out how to make cheap T Vs and go after your customers.
Yes.
Oh, it's a twist on pay the early for When did that start happening? I mean when did you start seeing the the you know some of these
Competing brands start to come in.
Right around the same time. There's
A lot of people try to compete in the space. A lot of new brands came in.
Was a branch called Olivia?
Mm-hmm.
had their own brand. So I say okay, well we better be really efficient, be really smart, better have better Pada
I've better have a better management team.
So that means uh
I can't manage everything by myself by technology anymore.
I want a great team of people, so I start to
Higher.
Who understand like finance better than me, so
I start to
Spent a lot of time putting together a great team.
Yeah.
Uh I mean it's interesting because physio's
Sort of.
You know.
it it your sales would go up and down and up and down like two you know two thousand seven I mentioned two billion in sales
But then there were some years, you know, where the sales were
You know, uh
three billion, but then they would then some years they went down to one and a half billion and and and
I know that this is a tough business, right? Енсо.
Was the outside pressure on your sales really

More competitors?
A lot of competition, right? But
We invest healthy.
We're into the company.
Mm. I think that kinda set us apart, right?
I say this time around, I'm not gonna be
Money's not the only thing, right? I wanna I wanna make physio uh uh enterprise.
So we invest in the brand, we invest in the people.
And around two thousand eight, two thousand nine, I think.
God, my compilers are on hardware.
Getting stronger and stronger.
Yeah. Sooner or later I gotta add more value.
Right. And and I and I guess to add more value, you
you revive this earlier idea you had about about making smart T Vs because
right back in the late nineties when when you tried doing that it it didn't work.
But now you're talking about ten years later.
The technology's better.
Uh, so I guess you we went for it again, right?
Yeah, I went back to my roots. I say
We gotta have recurring revenue.
I said, How do we do that? We gotta get T V connected to the internet again.
I think
You thought uh making money once.
On TV sales.
The custom customer probably come back seven years later to replace their T V.
I say why don't we just make money every time people turn on the TV. How do we do that?
And uh I started investing to Internet T V in two thousand nine.
Um
We start shipping.
The first internet TV
on the digital T V in two thousand night.
And did that really turn things around?
Yeah, actually
Yeah, we've got
Kulu YouTube.
And Netflix.
Although it's not hundred percent of a volume.
People respect that, right? So people say, Well, what is the streaming?
Right. We had the first wifi T V.
And uh we had a first
T V was uh a little keyboard.
Right, so you can browse the web.
And uh back then with with T
was uh Yahoo.
They build the first operating system for T V for us.

Um
Eventually, I mean that now we're we're going into
Twenty twenty four.
I mean you guys did eventually go public and but in twenty twenty four you were
outright acquired by Walmart. They they bought Visio.
For two point three billion dollars.
And Walmart. It's amazing. I read that
According to Walmart, ninety percent of Americans shop at Walmart every year.
Tell me about the decision to
go with Walmart because I mean you you guys had gone public at one time you were valued at three
and a half billion and and then the revenue you know, the the value had gone up and down. But you know
P pretty good outcome, two point three billion dollars.

in twenty twenty four.
D was it kind of a relief for you when that when that happened, when that offer came through?
Well
I
As an entrepreneur, I don't think
You know, it's my intention to ever
Stop.
Solving a more problem for this industry.
I I love
Attacking making T V better.
So when they came to us and they want us to consider this deal
Uh was a tough decision for me.
But if I look at
Was
Best for the company.
Potentially.
This is big.
Okay. Yeah. This is this is a lot bigger well we
I feel fun.
This is a way beyond my entrepreneurship now.
We build right. We'll build a platform that could that you know, last year we d did over seven hundred million dollars in
media.
Yeah.
This is not something uh all of my garage anymore.
This is the enterprise.
I I think one of the happiest moment in my life.
I told that to a lot of people. It's like ten years ago when I walked into Vizio, I felt Vizio's bigger than me.
Right.
The sec
I I describe that to a lot of people. It's like having
Daughter. We'll have daughter, right?
It's like
Sunday you're gonna walk down.
Bow for her, whistler.
Or marry her to somebody else.
I mean
The sad is not your girl anymore.
Hey.
But it's actually great.
Because that's the outcome you want. You want you want the you want her to continue her own legacy.
You want her to start her own family. You want her to s create her own
Chasing after her drink.
So I c I couldn't find a better punter.
The Walmart to do that because
You reach ninety percent of America.
Do you when you think about
You know.
What what you built and what you achieved.
And everything that happened. I mean how much of of
of your success do you attribute to the work you put in and and how much do you think has to do with just getting lucky?
You know, uh
Okay.
You need to define being lucky because uh I was real unlucky on the on the plane. Yeah.
I was really unlucky when I lost my first uh
millions of dollars on my first business.
It was very unlucky when uh
I had a great idea on connected T V, smart T V, but I was way ahead of time.
I think
My definite lucky is always
Worry more about other people.
So Ronaldo U.
And yourself.
I think the locks doesn't drop out of sky. You can't stay at home and be lucky.
But last is given to you by uh
But people are wrong.
Right.
And sometimes you never know who's gonna make you who's gonna help you.
But I wasn't lucky enough because I didn't hire good enough, uh back twenty, thirty years ago.
But now I surround myself very, very critical of uh very smart uh business people, a lot smarter than me.
I'm lucky.
Yeah.
Because I have the
That's William Wong, founder and CEO.
A physio?
Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. And please sign up for my newsletter at guyros.com or on Substack.
This episode was produced by JC Howard with music composed by Ramteen Arabui.
It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Alex Chung.
Our audio engineers were Robert Rodriguez and Maggie Luthar. Our production staff also includes Cather.
Iman Mani, Casey Herman, Sam Paulsen, Chris Massini, Carrie Thomson, John Isabella, and Elaine Coates.
I'm Guy Raz and you've been listening to how I built this.