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@westleydang

Call me Wes.

Once upon a time I was a neuroscientist, and an environmental activist, who (voluntarily) lived in my car for five years. Now I'm "deep tech" venture capitalist, and a broad-spectrum enthusiast.

I love running, climbing, cooking, comedy, and learning to embody new wisdom with my body, my voice, my eyes.

I intentionally take things slow (with sporadic hard turbos). Slow airport walker. Slow cup of coffee. Handwritten daily diaries. Mere monthly postings on my blog.

I don't social media. But I send an "Annual Letter" to my friends via email, sort of like a holiday card.

Subscribe if you want updates every time there's a new post, or just once a year.

Featured Posts

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How I maintain friendships: A toolkit

Maintaining friendships is hard. It's even harder for friends in different time zones, friends who are busy and/or ambitious, and friends who have just fallen out of the radar over the years. I am reflecting on a few useful tactics I've accumulated over the years. I hesitate to publish

How I maintain friendships: A toolkit

Recent Posts

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2025 Annual Letter

Dearest friends, 2025 was a quiet whirlwind with so much happening, and one of the years where I browse backwards at my photos and think, "wow I haven't even reached 2024 yet." I feel so fortunate to be able to explore so many new places this year. Internationally, I flew

2025 Annual Letter
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Ugh, stop using AirPods

This is a PSA I've been holding onto for 4 years, since the pandemic pushed everyone to teleconferencing: You should stop using AirPods for taking Zoom/phone calls. It doesn't matter if you dished out $600 for an AirPod Max – it might feel like a Michelin-star dish on your ears,

Ugh, stop using AirPods
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#2 energy

#2 energy
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2024 Annual Letter

Happy New Year from Taiwan! 🇹🇼 My brother and I flew here the day after Christmas to be here for New Years with one of my best friends (Michael what up!) who said I should celebrate New Years here. Absolutely no regrets so far. I'm writing this from a shoes-off Japanese

2024 Annual Letter
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5 rules of my training philosophy (2024)

I'm a multi-athlete (climbing, running, yoga but also snowboarding, tennis, and rowing). My training goal is to be well-conditioned for a variety of movements, and to have the stability and coordination to not get injured. Strength training is purely supplemental. It's maybe one-fifth of the time I spend running or

5 rules of my training philosophy  (2024)
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What I said in Argentina: Innovation is a Transaction

📖Context: I was invited to be on a panel at the Inter-American Development Bank's Lab Forum in Buenos Aires, where I spoke innovation, climate change, and food security. It's online if you want to watch it, but I wrote the ideas here below. I humbly thank IDB Lab for the

What I said in Argentina: Innovation is a Transaction
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We should make public transit fare-free

💡This is Part 1 of a series that explores a question that I have been thinking about for a long time: Can we make public transit free?  We have a fare-based public transit because of the private-sector commercialization of mass transit in the 19th century, which had to operate on

We should make public transit fare-free
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A letter to the people who nearly crippled me

1: observations At 12:59 PM PST on March 11th, 2024, you violently swerved your white sedan into the bike lane that I was in. Luckily, I managed to skid my Lyft bike to avoid your car pinching me against the other parked car on the right. In my rage,

A letter to the people who nearly crippled me
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How to start running: A biochemical perspective

I started running seriously last year, coming from basically zero aerobic base. I think I made big improvements in a short amount of time, and it's largely because of how I focused my training. There are 3 main modalities of training: 1. Mechanical - musculoskeletal, kinetic patterns, strength, flexibility 2.

How to start running: A biochemical perspective
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2023 Annual Letter

Happy holidays, friends. Phenology refers to the study of cyclic and seasonal natural phenomena, especially in relation to climate, plant, and animal life cycles. I love writing an annual letter every year because it's like a phenology of the self. Some themes are cyclically recurring in my life. Some energies

2023 Annual Letter