Shenzhen Speed: From Good to Great - Chapter 2

This post continues our journey from Good to Great.
If you missed it, start with Chapter 1: Unshakeable Truths.

Shenzhen used to be a quiet fishing village. Today, it’s the Silicon Valley of China, one of the fastest-growing cities in human history. Most of the tech you use today was built there or nearby.

I’ve been flying to Shenzhen since I was 19 or 20. Back then, I was building Plugged, a headphones brand I started in college. We had Beats designers, Bose engineers, and Skullcandy’s manufacturer. My ego thought I had a lot of things figured out, until I walked into a Chinese factory.

That trip changed me.

Meeting the manufacturers, walking the factory floors, and having lunch with the workers, who lived in dorms above the factory line, was a crash course in global scale. Things that take weeks in the West happen in hours there.

That’s when I realized: the world will not wait for me to catch up. It's moving faster than I could have imagined.

Fast forward to 2023. I was back in Shenzhen, this time for WellBefore. But I wasn’t a college kid anymore and Shenzhen wasn’t the same city either. It had exploded: 100x wealthier, 100x faster, and more connected than ever.

But this time, I wasn’t just meeting vendors. I was reconnecting with close friends who had become family and who I also happen to be working with. They were my age or younger, dead set on building billion-dollar companies, sending me prototypes overnight, texting me updates around the clock as if sleep was a defect that didn't transfer into their DNA.

And the wild part?

They were again moving faster than me (god dammit so annoying).

And every time I’d react with:
"Wait, it’s already done?"

They’d laugh and say: "Shenzhen Speed."

What Shenzhen Speed Looks Like

This isn’t hype. It’s real.

Here’s what I’ve seen and what I now expect from every company I lead:

• I ask our China team for a 3D rendering of a product idea — it's in my inbox in 24 hours. Others take 1–2 weeks.
• I float the idea of launching an affordable, recycled-material Lululemon competitor — 24 hours later, samples show up at my hotel. They came from a factory 3 hours away by plane.
• I ask our manufacturers to upgrade our products with XYZ features. They often already know what I was going to request, and they’ve started building it before I even asked and I'll receive the sample next week.

In Shenzhen, product cycles aren’t months, they’re days.

Ideas don’t die in Slack or email threads, they get executed immediately.

Shenzhen Speed is a culture of agency, urgency, and zero excuses.

Why This Matters to Emagineer

Between 2022 and 2024, I noticed something:
Our speed dropped.

We were thinking too much, hesitating too often, getting bogged down in approvals and ambiguity. We got way too damn comfortable and if I'm being brutally honest, we thought we couldn't be replaced.

I own that. That’s on me for not setting the bar clearly enough and not having the right people and processes in place to uphold this expectation.

So I’m doing that now:

If you’re part of the Emagineer family of brands — Shenzhen Speed is now your default operating system.

This second core value is how we have won in the past and will continue winning in the present. And here’s exactly what it looks like:

The 9 Laws of Shenzhen Speed

1. Slow Down to Speed Up
   Get clear on what needs to be done. Only about 30-50% clarity is needed before execution. Then move fast with conviction. No excuses.
2. Action Over Approval
   Don’t wait for perfect. Don’t wait for permission. Build momentum immediately.
3. Close Every Loop
   Loose ends create drag. Silence kills speed. Always follow up. Always respond. Always over-communicate.
4. Extreme Ownership
   If you touch it, you own it. Projects, problems, blockers — drive it until it’s done.
5. Kill Dependencies
   Dependencies slow you down. Remove them. If you can’t, pressure them until they move faster.
6. AI is Your Second Brain
   Use AI to do what humans can’t — faster analysis, smarter workflows, fewer bottlenecks. Use it daily, every hour, if not every minute to execute your goals.
7. Launch Ugly, Iterate Fast
   Version 1 now > Version perfect later. Build. Learn. Gather data. Improve. Repeat.
8. Flat Access Wins
   Skip the hierarchy. Go straight to the source. Get answers fast. Make moves faster. I don't care your title in the company. I care about the quality and speed of your output.
9. Comfort Is the Enemy
   Comfort slows execution. And in our world, slow = dead. Stay urgent. Stay sharp. Stay moderately uncomfortable.

Shenzhen isn’t just a city in China, it’s a cheat code.
A place where “we’ll circle back” means “we already shipped it.”

Emagineer is about speed, scrappiness, and a permanent itch to execute.

While others are drafting the deck, we’ve already built the product, launched the site, shipped the first batch and are now iterating to improve the product for launch next day.

This isn’t theory. This is how we’ve survived so far.

This is how we’ll continue win.

So no, we’re not waiting for approvals, another meeting, or “the next quarter.”

We’re moving, we're doing it now. If you’re not keeping up, Emagineer isn't for you and you will be lapped, Shenzhen speed.

I'm serious.