Two years ago, I published Preparation for Re:Zero − Starting Life in North America. I wrote it before leaving, partly to sort through why I wanted to leave, the path I chose, and the prep behind the English tests, school applications, and visa. It was my way of breaking a huge life decision into manageable steps.

Looking back, no single course, new status, or immigration pathway changed me. The change came from the ordinary things that happened after I arrived.

I started showing up at in-person events. I talked to people I probably would not have met before. Slowly, I became more comfortable around people from different communities. Because English made me anxious, I ended up building Joe Speaking. After I left my job, the empty time that once looked useless helped me understand myself again.

So if the piece I wrote two years ago was about why and how I left, this one is about who I became afterward.

I was lucky in some ways, but there were pitfalls. Canada gave me freedom, along with policy changes and pressure. If you are also thinking about changing your life, I hope this can be a reference point, not a template.

Overall, I am very glad I left. Two years ago, I was reading The Pathless Path and feeling that kind of life was still far away. I did not expect that two years later, I would be living in a way that is less conventional and much more my own.

Timeline

• 2021.05 First learned about IELTS
• 2022.03 Hit my target score on my first IELTS attempt
• 2023.10 Applied for a Canadian study permit
• 2024.08 Arrived in Ottawa and started a new life
• 2025.01 Gave my first public AI talk
• 2025.03 Built my first app through vibe coding
• 2025.06 Visited the Bay Area for the first time
• 2025.07 Became obsessed with Claude Code, and building became part of daily life
• 2026.01 Attended a Hacker House and registered my first company
• 2026.04 Officially launched the Joe Speaking beta
• 2026.05 Reached CLB 9 for the first time using Joe Speaking

1. School

I did not expect to be back in school and graduating again ten years later.

To be honest, I did not come to Canada because I missed campus life. Immigration was the main reason. At first, school was not a romantic return to campus. It was a path in, a legal status, and some breathing room while I adjusted to a new place.

Looking back, the coursework was not the most important part. School gave me a local starting point. Classes, classmates, and activities around the program pulled me into local life.

I have also wondered whether I would have changed this much if I had simply left my job but stayed in Beijing. Probably not. The environment in Canada, student life, and the encouragement I found in local communities pushed me into a different rhythm.

Our program also gave us ways to meet people outside the university, including free tickets to events and conferences such as TiE Ottawa, SaaS North, Capital Angel Network, and Mindtrust. Those events helped me understand how the local startup and tech scene actually works.

Assignments still took real work in the first semester. But by the second semester, after Deep Research and Sonnet 3.7 arrived, it started to feel like a cheat code. I still remember the look on one professor's face when he saw the report we made with Cursor. After that, Claude Code and Codex turned the whole process into one workflow. I even turned my method for guiding Codex to write a hundred-page project report into a Skill.

Looking back, the program gave me more than course content: people, a place to show up, and feedback from actual conversations. Online courses struggle with that. The faster AI becomes, the more these slow parts matter. Being good at exams alone is no longer enough.

That was also when I began to understand the value of co-op, or paid work terms.

When I was applying to schools, I kept seeing people on Xiaohongshu, a Chinese social platform many students use to research studying abroad, say that programs with co-op make job hunting easier later. Once I arrived, I understood why. Co-op is not just a label on a program page. It gets students into real workplaces earlier.

Co-op means students spend set terms in paid work placements. The government also provides incentives for eligible roles, so co-op positions are often more attractive to employers than regular internships.

Our program itself does not have co-op. But even with it, a job is not automatic. You still have to go through the process yourself. If you cannot find a suitable role, you may not be able to start a work term at all.

I mention co-op because it made me realize something: if a student has already completed several internships and worked in real settings during school, they are in a much stronger position than someone who only learned from class.

This is also why I find some students here genuinely impressive, especially the Waterloo crowd you see on X going to the Bay Area for internships. They have not just taken classes. They have already learned what it means to work on projects, communicate with teams, and deliver something real.

That will matter even more in the AI era. Knowledge is easier to reach now. What separates people is whether they have worked in real environments, collaborated with others, and delivered something that had to work.

I am also grateful that I lived on campus during my first two terms here and met friends from all over the world.

I miss those weekends when we played board games and ate hotpot together.

I was lucky to become a student again and graduate right when AI and work were changing fast.

In some ways, every day felt almost like a break from the system. I had more unstructured time to explore what I wanted to do, or just sit quietly, let my mind go blank, lie down, and do absolutely nothing instead of staying on a track someone else had set.

At the same time, I could feel the old standard career path breaking apart. Credentials and past experience still matter, but they no longer protect you the way they used to. You have to decide what to do with yourself.

My work experience and savings gave me some security. But what helped most was that Canada nudged me to think differently, and people here encouraged me.

2. Professor Tony

One person shaped this period more than I expected: Professor Tony.

He founded our program. When I first arrived in Canada, I had a pretty simple idea of work-life balance. Tony and Dan, our program administrator, quickly helped me see that things were not so simple. I would see people replying to emails late on a Friday night or very early on a Sunday. If I emailed them, they might even reply instantly.

At first, I did not take Tony's class. But after hearing many of his talks, I could tell he was not just reading from slides. His language was plain, but you could feel the years of building and teaching behind it. The image below shows his final 14 life lessons. They are very Tony: practical and direct.

Tony was warm, generous, and deeply committed to helping students. The best teachers do more than transfer knowledge. They create opportunities and help you see potential you could not yet see in yourself.

He was also always learning. Once he realized I knew AI tools well, he would occasionally email me to ask how AI might improve a specific workflow. Sometimes I shared new tools and methods with him too. That exchange felt special: he was the professor, but he never stopped acting like a learner.

My first job in Canada felt like a lucky break. I did not apply for it; the opportunity found me. A big reason was that Tony saw what I could do and was willing to give me a chance.

In the summer of 2025, he encouraged us to take his course. Later, I took Directed Study, where I worked with him one-on-one on a project. Looking back now, I really did not expect that it would become the last project he supervised...

I probably should have noticed that something was unusual earlier. Later, when he stopped replying to emails as quickly as before, I thought he was simply too busy and felt too embarrassed to bother him. In November, when we discussed project progress, he also changed the time at the last minute. Thinking about it now, even near the end, he was still giving his energy to the program he had built.

In February 2026, I sent him an update on Joe Speaking. Instead, I received an email from him saying he was nearing the end of his life. I was completely stunned and did not know how to respond.

The only thing I could do, it seemed, was to keep making the product better and keep building.

In June 2026, we attended Tony’s public memorial service at a church.

Watching hundreds of people gather, and listening to his family, friends, students, and community partners share stories about him, made me realize how lucky we were to be among his final students.

As one alumnus from more than a decade ago told me, Tony changed many people’s lives.

What moved me even more was this: if someone spends the final years, even the final stretch, of his life still pouring himself into the thing he founded, still helping students, and still pushing the program forward, then that has gone far beyond work in the ordinary sense.

I hope I can live like that too. Not just completing tasks, but truly investing myself in something I believe in.

I also wrote separately about my story with Tony.

3. Sharing

Before coming to Ottawa, I did not realize that many AI workflows I took for granted looked almost magical to most people. Not because I was special, obviously. The information gap was just real, and absurdly large.

The moment that made this clear was Perplexity’s campus event in 2024. At first, I thought getting 500 registrations would be easy. After round after round of emails, we still ended up with only a little over 300. In the end, I had to go to the library and pitch it to people in person to close the gap.

That was when I realized that even on a Canadian university campus, most people’s understanding of AI still stopped at ChatGPT. Many things I saw on Twitter/X, used myself, and assumed were already common were still unfamiliar to most people.

That experience changed how I saw my own knowledge. I was simply explaining how I used AI in daily life, but the audience’s reaction made me realize that those habits were nowhere near as common as I had assumed.

With Professor Tony’s encouragement, I started giving more AI-related talks. At first, he asked me to give him two numbers. I was confused and asked what numbers. He said dates, so he could book a room for my Perplexity Workshop.

Those talks also helped me realize something: if you spend enough time on Twitter/X, follow AI progress closely, and actually use these tools every day, then even if you are not among the earliest users, you are already far ahead of most people.

Because I started using this generation of AI tools fairly early and fairly seriously, I began to feel a strong pull to build.

Even now, truly deep users of tools like Codex and Claude Code still feel like a tiny minority. As of June 2026, even with OpenAI pushing Codex hard, it had only just passed 5 million weekly active users. Many people know AI exists, but they have not turned it into part of how they actually work.

That means the information gap is enormous. So are the opportunities.

So stop thinking you have missed the “last train” of AI. If you are actually using these tools, you are still much closer to the frontier than you think.

At the same time, I now see the value of the “wrapper apps” I used to look down on or ignore. They make powerful capabilities accessible to more people.

Later, I gave many more talks. Because they were based on firsthand experience from things I had actually built, they were well received. In a way, simply showing how I used these tools in my daily work was already enough. And because the examples came from real building, I felt confident even though my spoken English was not native-level. At least locally, I really was one of the people using this generation of AI tools deeply and aggressively.

But without Professor Tony’s encouragement and the opportunity he gave me early on, I would not have discovered this so quickly.

This is a classic example of how confidence grows: someone encouraged me first, then I discovered my own potential, and that was when my confidence started to build. That kind of environment, full of encouragement and help, is incredibly powerful.

4. Networking

I first became aware of networking in 2023, when I saw @bearliu say on X that if you want to find a job overseas, LinkedIn is the most useful social platform. That was when I gradually started using LinkedIn and reposting some of my longer X posts there.

After arriving in Canada, I began to understand more concretely how networking actually happens.

In August 2024, before school had officially started, I joined a TiE Ottawa monthly event provided by the program. At first, I was pretty quiet at first and did not know what to talk about. But as I kept talking, I realized there were actually many things to discuss: my past work experience, how I used AI, my feelings about Ottawa, and why I came to Canada. Even as an introvert, if the other person took the initiative, I could gradually get into the conversation.

LinkedIn plays a bigger role here than I had imagined. After some small talk in person, people add each other on LinkedIn and then gradually stay in touch through posts, comments, and likes.

But networking is not simply about “adding someone.” It is about letting both sides keep seeing what the other person is doing. Meeting in person first and then staying connected online feels much more natural than forcing a conversation with someone you have never met.

When you first arrive somewhere, it takes courage to talk to strangers. I am no exception. Now I mostly follow my own energy: if I can talk, I talk more. Do not be too afraid of awkwardness. Just go up and say something. The key is to take the initiative, because the other person may be even more introverted than you are.

If I am not in a good state, then the priority is simple: get some food first, look around, and if it still does not work, leaving is fine too.

Yes, networking events usually have snacks too, so there is no shame in solving a meal while you are there. A friend in San Francisco even told me that if you go to enough events, you can basically avoid paying for meals yourself.

Of course, some friends have told me that using networking to find a job is inefficient. That is true, but it is also one of the most effective methods. If you can have a good face-to-face conversation with a future manager first, your odds are much better than if you only mass apply online. Through networking, a friend of a friend, or a recommendation, you may find exactly the person you need.

In an era where online AI is becoming stronger, offline has become the new online.

Even someone like me who usually stays home now goes out several times a week. When I travel somewhere new, I also search for local events instead of only checking off tourist spots.

Over time, I moved from simply attending events into more stable communities.

I did not feel this concept as strongly when I was in Beijing. It is not that Beijing has no communities, but after coming to Canada, I felt more clearly how people with different interests and backgrounds can naturally gather around a shared thing.

Following my interests, I gradually found different communities, and they helped me adapt here more quickly. Technology Innovation Management itself is a community. I also joined communities such as AGI Ventures Canada, Build Canada, where I met many interesting people. Even Pokémon Go has its own communities. People simply play together, without so many rigid rules.

So my suggestion is simple: when you first arrive somewhere, go to more local events. Try different ones first. Only then will you know what you actually like. Later, it is no longer about attending as many events as possible, but about whether you can meet people I clicked with.

Shopify Builder Sundays is currently my favourite regular event. A friend once asked why I still go if I already code every day. I said the main reason is to talk with different people. It gives me a regular place to show up and meet others.

But I still want to say this: networking is a means, not the goal.

The most effective way is not attending events every day or mechanically updating social media. It is continuously making things that are truly valuable. When you have your own work and your own projects in motion, it becomes much easier for others to understand who you are and remember you.

In the end, a network is not something you force into existence. It grows naturally after you keep showing up and creating in the real world.

5. English

English has been one of the main threads of these two years, and the part I worried about most.

What I did not expect was that it would later become the starting point for Joe Speaking.

At first, Canadian Language Benchmarks (CLB) level 9 felt almost out of reach. In IELTS terms, that meant 8777, or 8 in listening and 7 in the other three bands, with every sub-score meeting the requirement. I knew my level too well at the time, so I did not really believe I could get there.

I wrote about this before in Toward That Farther Purity: My Multi-Dimensional Experience in New Zealand. It was only after traveling in New Zealand for two weeks and speaking with dozens of native speakers that I realized my spoken English was usable. Only then did I apply for a Canadian study permit.

Speaking had always been a source of anxiety for me, but in practice, it rarely caused serious problems. The most direct lesson was simple: just say it. Language is for communication, not perfection, especially in daily life.

At first, the main reason I went to so many events was to practice speaking. The more I talked with different people, the more my confidence grew.

One conversation left a particularly strong impression on me. In October 2024, I talked with Owen at school for an entire evening. I shared a lot about my past, and that was the first time I realized I could speak in English for that long, and go that deep.

But honestly, clearly describing everyday life is still hard. I need to thank Mark here. He encouraged me to describe my daily life in my own words, then gave me feedback.

I did not stick with it in early 2025. By the summer, after realizing that my score had not improved much after a year in Canada, and after watching immigration scores keep rising, CLB 9, and even CLB 10, suddenly became urgent.

That urgency became one of the reasons I built Joe Speaking.

I did not want more templates, memorized answers, or fake conversation practice. What I needed was speaking practice that felt natural and closer to real communication. That is why I later spent months building the real-time IELTS speaking simulation feature.

On the night of May 16, 2026, when I received the text message and saw that I had reached CLB 9 in one attempt, I was genuinely thrilled.

It was not just a score. It felt like a problem I had carried since arriving in Canada had finally loosened. More importantly, I did it with Joe Speaking, the product I built myself.

This is not the end. I know I am still far from expressing myself as freely as I want to, and there is still a gap between me and native speakers, or Chinese people who came here when they were young. But this cannot be rushed. I can only keep practicing.

English used to be my pain point. In the end, it became my entry point into product building.

Joe Speaking was not an opportunity that simply appeared, but an opportunity I created after working through a long-standing struggle. I needed it first, and only then did I believe that others might need it too.

6. Immigration

Many of the decisions I made along the way were tied to immigration.

In short, I had planned around Ontario’s Master’s Graduate stream under the Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program (OINP): after completing an eligible master’s program, I could apply for a provincial nomination and, from there, a relatively predictable path to permanent residence (PR). The problem was that when we were about to graduate, that path was cancelled with no grandfathering.

Choosing Canada, choosing Ottawa, choosing TIM, setting my English target at CLB 9, and even later building Joe Speaking all had immigration running in the background.

Technology Innovation Management was one of the few master’s programs that matched my background, was outside the Greater Toronto Area, belonged to STEM, and met the requirements of Ontario’s Master’s Graduate stream. So from a pathway perspective, it was almost tailor-made for my situation at the time.

If everyone had known in 2024 that Ontario’s Master’s Graduate stream would be cancelled in 2026, far fewer people would have come here, and even I might not have chosen Ottawa.

When the reform proposal came out at the end of 2025, I stopped everything I was doing that same day. I wrote feedback, built a website, recorded a video, sent emails, and did basically everything I could.

I was angry, but I did not want to stop at anger. What truly upset me was not just that the pathway changed. It was that many people had already made real life decisions based on the old rules. Schools, students, and related industries were all involved.

Unexpectedly, in early March 2026, I received a reply from Ontario’s immigration minister. The response itself was fairly neutral, but invitations were indeed issued in March and April. Unfortunately, after we received our graduation letters in May, there were no more invitations, and the Master’s Graduate and PhD Graduate streams effectively came to an end.

So even though I need to look for work next, I still want to publish my feedback on this reform first. Not as a personal complaint, but because these real voices should not stay only in private conversations.

Of course, this is not the only path. My current fallback plan is to gain one year of Canadian work experience. Overall, I do not think permanent residence will be a major problem, since I still have more than three years. So I am not panicking.

It sounds like a joke, but if even someone like me, with some savings and a willingness to try things, feels the path getting narrower, then people with fewer buffers are probably feeling it much more.

[OINP Feedback Video]

I remember having dinner with a newly arrived friend in January. He said something very direct: my real goal was not immigration itself. Judging from what I am doing now, immigration is more like a byproduct.

I think he was right. Even if my permanent residence were approved today, tomorrow I would still need to live, build products, practice English, meet friends, and solve the next problem.

As an immigrant, I sometimes wonder: why do we have to work so hard for things locals are simply born with? But perhaps that is also what makes us more competitive. Let's call it part of the immigrant experience. Some things are easiest to understand after you have lived them.

So immigration matters, but it is only an intermediate goal, not the destination.

7. Not Working

A big reason I can have being able to keep some distance from the process now is that I have not been working a traditional job.

But that sentence only makes sense with its conditions: I am single, have no mortgage, have some savings, and do not carry much daily family pressure.

Three years ago, when my former colleague Mr. Chen talked to me about these things, I did not pay much attention. Only when it became my own life did I understand this sense of calm: when you have a huge amount of unstructured time that belongs to you, you feel free. Every day becomes about doing what you want to do, or more precisely, trying to make yourself do what you truly want to do.

Quite a few friends have asked me: if you are not working, what do you do about income?

Two years ago, my answer was roughly the same as it is now: even if I had no income for a while, I could still live for many years without doing much.

On one hand, my past savings gave me a buffer. On the other hand, the actual cost of living in Canada has not been as scary as I had imagined.

More importantly, by 2026, AI had already started bringing in some income. It was not much, but the basic shape was there.

Since 2024, I have increasingly felt that, at least for me, money and traditional work are moving down the priority list. They still matter, but they are no longer the center of every decision.

It sounds like a joke, if the only goal were to make money, I should just go all in on SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI. Come back to this sentence in three years.

I was also lucky that after coming here, some income opportunities came to me through my program. After Claude Code and Codex appeared, I could sometimes finish months of work in a few scattered days. If there was feedback later, I could keep revising.

You could say that after coming to Canada, compared with my days in Beijing, I did the easiest work and earned the highest hourly rate.

Not working also taught me something else: people need work of their own.

No matter how capable you are inside a system, many things disappear quickly once you leave it. Titles, permissions, processes, and institutional endorsement are not fully yours.

But if you have your own work, your own products, and your own expression, you gradually build a kind of confidence that does not depend on any organization.

8. Work

When I first came to Canada, I still planned to look for a job. That was one reason I went to so many events.

But after 2025, I gradually realized that if I was only looking in Ottawa, there were not many companies I especially wanted to join. With the arrival of Claude Code and Codex, I began seriously thinking about something else: perhaps what I truly wanted was not to find a job, but to not return to traditional work at all. This was also the “not working” desire I talked about with a classmate at Mooney’s Bay in the summer of 2025.

To be honest, I do not really want to return to traditional work.

On one hand, AI capabilities are improving so quickly that many things that once required long team collaboration can now be turned into usable versions much faster by an individual.

On the other hand, if we keep following the old path, the risk is not just that a specific role gets replaced. The entire way organizations work may be redefined.

At least for me, the traditional path of “finding a good job and climbing the ladder” no longer feels that attractive. Even the idea of a “good job” has become harder to define. According to OpenAI’s latest blog post, even AI researchers are expected to have a large share of their work replaced.

I do think I have been quite lucky along the way. My first two jobs in Beijing were both things I genuinely wanted to do, so I could be enthusiastic instead of hating work. In November 2024, I wrote a dedicated piece about my view of work. Looking back now, many things in it have come true, and I am being guided by my own past thinking.

It is not that I do not want to work. I just do not want to return to a traditional system that stuffs people into processes and defines them by job titles.

Over the past few months, I often worked on Joe Speaking from morning to night. But because I was building something I believed in, it did not feel draining in the same way.

I have also felt the limits of the so-called one-person company. If you want to build seriously, you still need a small team. The leverage a team brings is far greater than what I can create alone. And with Ontario’s Master’s Graduate stream cancelled, I still need to find a startup team where everyone believes in the value and competitiveness of what we are building, in the same way I believe in Joe Speaking.

As for job hunting itself, I increasingly believe the new way is not to rely only on resumes and past credentials, but to let people see what you have already built. In fact, it probably should have been this way all along. It is just becoming more common now.

Your products, articles, talks, open-source projects, and real user feedback can explain who you are better than a few bullet points on a resume. Ideally, an interview should not feel like an interrogation. It should be a conversation between both sides based on real work. If you are intentional enough, you can even skip the interview, just as I did when I joined Smartisan more than ten years ago.

I think that wherever you are, it is important to build yourself patiently over the long term, instead of only starting when you need a job.

The more ideal state is the kind of ability Naval talks about: being able to survive anywhere, and eventually becoming unemployable.

Especially over the past year, the boundaries of my skills have moved beyond the product manager role. I can try many things now, and different roles are starting to blend together. It is getting harder to treat people like interchangeable parts. Traditional function-based roles are starting to blur.

Of course, going from not knowing someone to truly knowing them is still hard. Relationships need time to settle. That is also the value of networking. The best way is to work on projects together, where both sides naturally come to understand each other.

I have also told classmates that if you truly use tools like Codex and Claude Code deeply enough, and seriously build something every week, your chances of finding a decent job will become much higher. You are no longer just someone who says you can do things. You are someone who has already built things.

So for me, job hunting itself has become another Building problem: not fitting myself into a position, but finding people I can truly build with.

9. Building

If there is one concrete change from these two years, it is this: I finally built my own product.

For people with ideas, this is the best time.

At least in software, you no longer necessarily need funding at the beginning, and you do not necessarily need a full team. If you have a clear enough need and tools like Codex and Claude Code, you can start turning what is in your head into something real.

When I built Joe Speaking, I also wanted to prove one thing:

I did not have traditional coding experience, and even last year I did not know what a Pull Request was. But based on my own pain point, past experience, and the help of AI tools, I could still independently build a product that truly works and may even have a chance to become very good in the industry. It was as if I alone, in a few months, completed what used to take an entire team half a year or even longer. What is even more outrageous is that this was only the state of things in the first half of 2026, during the Opus 4.5/4.6 period.

Joe Speaking is not an ordinary project to me. It is the first time I truly turned my own pain point and judgment into something other people can use.

What does this mean? It means the traditional work path I mentioned earlier is loosening. If something frustrates you, or if you cannot find a tool that meets your needs, you can now create it yourself and build something real. In 2026, the barrier for individuals to build software has dropped dramatically. The harder and more interesting frontier will gradually move toward hardware and real needs in the physical world.

Many friends immediately ask: Is it profitable? How much did you invest? What is the return?

But making money was not the first goal of Joe Speaking. At the beginning, I just wanted to build a product I genuinely wanted to use, and one that could help people with similar experiences. That is why it uses a credit model and even supports users bringing their own API key to use it for free.

In a sense, I am already experimenting with a way of working that feels closer to the future: starting from my own real needs, using AI to build the product, facing user feedback directly, and continuously iterating. I am genuinely excited to talk with users. Once a need is clear, I can ship the feature they want in a day or two. That kind of relationship used to be unimaginable.

Honestly, I also see Joe Speaking as leverage for the future.

On one hand, it paved the way for the products I want to build next. It forced me through the full process: need, design, development, launch, user feedback, and continuous iteration. That is more effective than reading countless articles or tutorials. It also became my representative work.

From a competitive perspective, even if similar products try to copy it, the cost of the Real-time API means they will likely be much more expensive than mine. In other words, my pricing is genuinely affordable, and I would want to use it myself.

Even if I eventually need to take a job, this product is my strongest proof, stronger than my past work experience. Of course, I am also testing how far a product built with my own idealism can go.

For individuals, this may be a rare window to build.

I have said this many times, but this time it is not because I saw some grand trend. It is because I actually built something myself.

I am spending even more of my attention on building Joe Speaking than I used to be in playing World of Warcraft.

The difference is that this time, I am not just trying to win inside rules someone else wrote. I am creating something that belongs to me.

This is why I always start from personal needs. Only when something passes my own test first can I invest in it over the long term.

I started Joe Speaking because of my own speaking pain point, my immigration needs, and the market demand already validated by my earlier IELTS Speaking Simulator GPT. Building a product I can be proud of matters in itself.

There are many things whose weight you only understand after doing them yourself. You also realize that believing in yourself is not a slogan. It is the premise that lets you keep going every day.

While building this product, I also became aware of my own shortcomings again.

I am not good at exaggerated promotion, and I am not very good at shouting for attention. I always feel the product is not good enough, so I would rather spend time improving features than doing promotion. But now I realize that after finally building a product I genuinely believe in, I should be bold enough to let more people see it. This is also part of expanding my comfort zone.

Overall, Joe Speaking lives up to its name. It is a product with a very personal character and a strong sense of idealism.

It is still far from being a top-tier product, but it is something I built myself, believe in deeply, and hope can help more people. One step at a time.

10. Entrepreneurship?

Am I an entrepreneur?

For now, I still do not quite see myself that way. That is why I prefer calling myself a Builder rather than an Entrepreneur.

I did not start building products because I wanted to start a company. I started because I wanted to solve my own real needs. After building for a while, I found myself at the edge of entrepreneurship.

Joe Speaking is not entrepreneurship in the traditional sense. It is more like an extreme experiment I ran on myself using new technology.

But it was through building this product that I understood entrepreneurship more deeply than ever before. It was no longer entrepreneurship in books, podcasts, or other people’s stories. It became something where I had to personally face users, costs, product decisions, pricing, distribution, and responsibility.

When I was in Beijing in 2023, I also talked with friends about whether to start a company. My thinking back then was simple: if I wanted to build something, I needed to get out first and not limit myself to the mainland market. Looking back now, that judgment was clearly right. Even the company itself should have been registered overseas.

By January 2026, I realized that Joe Speaking was no longer just a personal tool, but a product that needed to be taken seriously. Later, a friend reminded me that releasing a product as an individual means unlimited liability, while a company offers limited liability.

Thanks also to everyone at AGI Ventures Canada for their help during the January Hacker House. I registered JUST JOE TECHNOLOGIES INC., a name that very obviously sounds like a one-person company.

The registration process was much smoother than I expected. After getting proof that the name was available, I completed the official registration online in about half an hour. Most of the remaining steps could be handled online too.

After registering, I was a little stunned. That was it?

I used to think a company was something complicated and distant. Later, I realized that much of that complexity was self-imposed. Besides, now we have AI. If you do not understand something, you can at least start by asking.

If you truly want to build something, you can feel that many parts of this environment are built to help you.

Once you have a company and a product, you can apply for all kinds of startup programs and free credits, from Google for Startups to Sentry, PostHog, Cloudflare, Vercel, and more. That support made the pressure of building Joe Speaking much lighter.

Because I had actually built something of my own and registered a company, I also found it easier to talk at events. Out in the world, identity really is something you give yourself.

Also, as I mentioned earlier, with Claude Code and Codex, you can build the product first and talk about fundraising later. If you really want to raise money, walking in with real market data is much stronger than showing only a slide deck.

From a fundraising perspective, Joe Speaking is not currently a sexy unicorn story. I think it has a chance to become a strong personal product or small-team business, but it is still too early to tell a multi-billion-dollar company story.

But if I can truly build a fully personalized tutor, one where the system uses each person’s practice history to keep telling them what to practice next, how to improve, and how to reach their goals, then the space becomes completely different.

In short, before coming to Canada, I never imagined I would seriously step onto the path of entrepreneurship, although a friend did say last year that I was well suited for it. I guess this is one of the unexpected surprises. Mentally, I have also become more open to entrepreneurship.

As Paul Graham wrote in his latest essay, “HOW TO EARN A BILLION DOLLARS”, the most common path is still entrepreneurship. In the past, I mostly read books, listened to talks, and tried to understand how other people did it. Now it is finally my turn to step onto the field and try it myself.

This is also a psychological shift for me: if I stay within traditional work alone, it is hard to imagine freedom in the fullest sense.

Sometimes I wonder: if I had known I would end up building products and moving toward entrepreneurship, should I have gone directly to Silicon Valley back then? But people can only make decisions based on what they know at the time. The version of me from a few years ago did not have the confidence I have now.

So it is still the same idea: since I am already here, I should walk the Canadian path well first. If what I build is good enough, there will be opportunities wherever I go. Immigration status matters, but it is still only a byproduct.

11. Personal Change and Long-Termism

The biggest change in me over these two years is that I no longer set limits on myself so easily, and I am more willing to break old patterns of thinking.

Job hunting is one example. You do not necessarily have to wait for someone else to give you a position. You can create an opportunity yourself, or even go directly to an employer and say: this is the role I created for you.

You also do not need to care too much about other people’s opinions or judgments. If you fail an interview or a competition, that is fine. It only means you did not fit their standards. Everyone has different standards, and you cannot please everyone. Maybe this piece will attract plenty of comments too, but whatever happens, at least I have said what I truly think.

In the end, the most important thing is still to trust yourself.

This sentence sounds like a self-help cliché, but it is actually very concrete. You have to trust your own judgment, trust your own pain points, and believe that you can actually build something. If Joe Speaking had not started from my own pain point, it would have been hard for me to persist this long.

Many things do not become clear before you start. They become clear as you move. Action brings feedback, and feedback reshapes judgment.

Expressing yourself works the same way. When I was in mainland China, I always felt a bit uncomfortable putting myself out there, and I did not really want to be seen by too many people all at once. But after coming here, I gradually realized that my experiences and expression are resources. I should learn to use them.

Your experiences, judgment, work, and expression are all entry points for others to understand you. If you never show yourself, how will others know what makes you different?

If something truly bothers you, or if something has affected you, you should say it. Complaining alone is useless, and passively waiting is useless too. Here especially, you have to speak up if you want something to move. You need to give feedback, express yourself, and push things forward.

That is also why I still have confidence in myself, and why I can move forward without feeling so frantic.

As an individual, I think my greatest advantage is sincerity. Next is insight into real needs. Finally, there is long-termism and persistence, or Don’t Die.

Thinking about it carefully, I am actually kind of terrifying, hahaha.

Once I understood this, many short-term things started to matter less from a longer-term perspective, including work and money themselves.

I have always moved forward with the belief that life is a long, continuous accumulation. From that perspective, many of my past behaviors that seemed strange can actually be explained. More importantly, this way of living is sustainable.

It is still better to be a person with your own character. The faster AI becomes, the more you need to be yourself. The things that truly belong to you will only become more important.

There is a line in The Design of Everyday Things that roughly says designers communicate with users through products. I understand that more now. Users can feel how much care went into a product.

So I still want to keep making things with my own temperament. They may not be the fastest or the best marketed, but at least they are real.

12. Nature and Everyday Life

After writing so much about work, immigration, AI, and products, I still want to end with everyday life.

Because for me, these two years were not only about doing many things. They were also about learning how to live again.

Before, life revolved mostly around work. After coming here, I started noticing the air, the weather, cooking, walks, friends, and a pot of hotpot again.

I really love the air, the blue sky, and the white clouds here.

Even in the city, beautiful scenery is right outside the door.

Walk a few blocks and you can see squirrels, geese, and other small animals. These things sound ordinary, but they really do change a person’s daily state.

Summer days are long, and it gets dark very late. Winter is the opposite. Sometimes it already starts getting dark after 3 p.m. But after a friend took me winter hiking last year, I realized winter is not only cold and darkness. Snowfields, forests, and frozen lakes have their own kind of joy.

Walking, cycling, hiking, skating. After coming here, I also became more active. There are so many outdoor resources here, and they should not be wasted. I hope I can keep using them more.

At least in Ottawa, strangers are usually friendly to one another. Most of the time, people greet you with a smile. Cars yield to pedestrians, and compared with many places, daily life feels less chaotic.

The small details add up too. Public washrooms in national parks have toilet paper and places to wash your hands. Many buildings have automatic doors. The overall pace is slower. None of this is dramatic, but it makes ordinary life easier.

Meeting friends from different countries also made their customs feel less like something I had only read about.

For example, I learned what halal-friendly really meant after organizing hotpot with Muslim friends. After that, whenever we organized activities, we naturally kept those needs in mind.

A lot of understanding does not come from reading things online. It comes from eating together and talking.

This also changed how I think about "going global."

When I was in mainland China, going global sounded like a business phrase. Once you live here, international users, other cultures, and unfamiliar living habits stop feeling abstract. It becomes harder to assume you are building for only one environment. Friends from around the world also help you see things you would miss on your own.

There was a time when I thought "going abroad" sounded glamorous. After doing it, I realized it is still just life. No matter where you are, life still has to be lived. A place can influence you, but it will not automatically change your life. You still have to choose how to spend your days.

I also have plenty of complaints. Restaurant prices here are probably about five times higher than in my hometown and three times higher than in Beijing. Food delivery and package delivery cannot match mainland China for speed or price. But then again, even if a simple meal feels expensive by Chinese standards, how often are you really going to eat out in a month? Overall, it is manageable. Food safety and quality are also better in many cases.

You can buy most of what you need in Canada, and many big Chinese restaurant chains have opened here. Still, the food options are not as varied as they are in mainland China, even in Toronto or Vancouver.

Now I cook for myself most of the time.

It keeps the cost manageable, and I can eat what I actually want. Grocery shopping and cooking helped me feel like I had a life again, instead of just working all the time like before.

Another thing: I rarely order delivery here or use instant delivery services the way I used to with Chinese platforms like Meituan or Hema. Price is one reason. Another is that the apps and websites here are not very easy to use. I often cannot find what I want, so I would rather go to the store, even if I have to take a taxi.

Also, yes, I do not drive. Here, I mostly get rides from friends or take taxis. Taxis are much more expensive, and I cannot use them as casually as I did in Beijing, but it is still manageable.

I hope Tesla can eventually remove the parentheses from FSD (Supervised). Maybe then I will finally have my own way to get around. I am looking forward to that day. Of course, the next problem would be whether I can pass the driving test.

For housing, I did not expect to end up living in a brand-new apartment here. In Beijing, an apartment of this quality would cost much more. I also bought my own bed and mattress for the first time. That made me realize I should have treated myself better earlier in Beijing.

And of course, my most food-obsessed roommate!

You have to make your own fun.

I really love hotpot, so I hosted many hotpot gatherings here and kept introducing it to friends around me. When I graduated, a friend posted a Story saying the Hotpot Master had graduated.

That might be my most successful cultural export in Canada.

My three favourite foods in Canada right now are snow crab, spot prawns, and Costco beef ribs.

Canada has the clean air, nature, friendliness, and day-to-day ease I like. It is also expensive, slow, inconvenient, and thinner on food options. Every place has tradeoffs. For me, the question is whether I can build a life here that feels balanced.

13. If I had to choose again

Two years ago, I moved from Beijing to Ottawa. If I had to choose again, I would definitely still leave.

What I did not expect was how quickly AI would move. When I read SITUATIONAL AWARENESS in 2024, I was already excited. Many things that felt distant then feel close now.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I had left ten years earlier. Maybe I would have taken a completely different path. Maybe I would have made more money and found bigger opportunities. But that would have been another timeline, and it would not necessarily have given me the same ease and freedom I have now.

Overall, I am happy with the choice.

Compared with what I expected when I left two years ago, life has gone much further than I imagined. The original immigration goal is still unresolved. But the process has already given me more than I expected.

A lot of the time, I would just sit around, let my mind go blank, lie down, or do nothing at all. It sounds wasteful, but those blank spaces slowly helped me figure out what I actually wanted to do.

The faster AI becomes, the more I feel I need to stay close to what I actually know and care about. Tools are getting stronger, so judgment, taste, lived experience, pain points, and the ability to keep taking action become harder to fake.

For now, I want to stay optimistic and keep investing in things I actually care about. Move first. Let the rest come slowly.

What's next

No matter how much I complain about immigration policy, I still have to keep moving.

To put it plainly, I also need to find work. But I am not looking for a traditional job where I am just filling a slot. I want to find a small team where we respect each other and the work feels worth doing.

What I want most is to join a small, strong, AI-native team that cares about the product itself. A team that moves fast, works directly with real users, and is willing to rethink products, interfaces, and the way people work.

I have not fully figured out the exact shape yet, but I have a rough sense: more human-centred products, more natural interaction, and maybe hardware. The real-time voice work in Joe Speaking is already pointing me in that direction.

These two years made one thing clearer: I am better suited to building things with a point of view and real needs behind them. I do not want to create the illusion of growth around problems people do not actually feel. I also do not want to return to systems that slowly consume people through process and hierarchy.

Maybe English, AI, immigration, community, Joe Speaking, hotpot, barbecue gatherings, and all these scattered experiences will connect someday.

So next, I will keep building and showing up in the real world, turning what I notice and struggle with into products.

I still have to keep the immigration process moving. More importantly, I have already stepped onto this Pathless Path, and I intend to keep walking it.

Not to chase traffic or prove anything to anyone, but to keep building what I believe in.

So let's keep going.