From transporting cannabis to making work more fun.

Max Hsiao’s life has been a whirlwind of adventure. After graduating from Harvard where he started a party rental business, he boldly ventured into the cannabis industry, founding a logistics company amidst a landscape of uncertainty. 

Now, Max is set to launch Real Life Studios, tackling the intersection of work and gaming. The platform empowers users to earn money while truly having fun.

He finds inspiration from Star Trek’s Jean-Luc Picard, who explores the universe on a starship, impacting countless lives with high-pressure decisions, while never forgetting the beauty of life.

Below are 6 key learnings he picked up on his journey so far.

Power Washing Driveways, going house to house washing driveways
Founder
Vancouver, WA
2014

Lesson 1: Meaningful improvements over perfection.

“It took [my friend] twice as long to power wash than me. You can tell his was slightly cleaner than mine. But when you get to that small difference, it was very hard to tell how much cleaner it was. 

Perfection is good, but in some cases it isn’t necessary. At the end of the day, what matters more is improving it to a degree that is substantially better than what you had before. Sometimes what you really need to do is just do well enough where people are able to get what they want.”

Harvard | College Party Rentals, renting speakers and DJ services to students
Founder
Cambridge, MA
2014 – 2018

Lesson 2: Leverage existing resources.

“It’s way easier to spend someone else’s money than your own money. College students, we didn’t have a huge budget. Organizations could tap into this party fund sponsored by the student government. They had a quota, they wanted to promote healthy spaces and a good environment. 

So the easiest way for you to convince an organization to throw a party is to lead them to where the money comes from. And so if you’re able to get people to spend money using someone else’s dime, that is the way to create a sustainable business that makes everyone happy.”

Cannaport, B2B cannabis logistics
Founder and CEO
Vancouver, WA
2018 – 2021

Lesson 3: Adapt in a world of gray area.

“I realized how messy the world is. The cannabis industry, I had to navigate through a lot of governmental issues. What the legislator has is different from what the executor, which is the liquor cannabis board, has. Even individual field agents had their own discretion and interpretation. These become very up to your judgment, especially in places where there are no legal systems. There’s nothing black and white. Everything is a little bit gray.”

Lesson 4: Business is business. Don’t take it personally. 

“It’s easy to say, but it’s hard to embody. I became very scared of our customers, because whenever something bad happened, I felt really bad. Those are not reflective of who I am. Those are just reflective of something that happened in the system that was out of my control and out of their control.

I couldn’t divorce who I am or what I believe, and the feedback or complaint that I would receive from our customers. It took me a long time to realize that at the end of the day, customers are not supposed to be scary, they actually are people that I want to be close with. 

Now, I am not afraid that whatever mistake that happens is 100% on me. How we address it is actually more important than anything else. Let’s work together to figure it out. With that mindset, I feel like people are more people, people are less infallible, and humans are humans.” 

Workstream, HR software
Product Manager
San Francisco, CA
2022 – 2023

Lesson 5: Entrepreneurship is a rollercoaster.

“When you work for someone, things feel less personal, less intense, and the stress level is much lower. When you have a job, your stress level is consistent, maybe a seven. When you run your own thing, there are days when you are at a nine or ten. Your head is exploding, [you’re] having chest pains. And then there are other days when things are a two.”

Lesson 6: Work must align with your purpose.

“The reason why I joined was I wanted to make some money, learn and then do another startup. That was why I joined Workstream. What ended up happening was I just got caught up in the rat race. I got so caught up with this idea of, ‘I gotta have a job, I gotta make income.’ I forgot that my calling has never been to get more jobs. My calling was to build things.”

Real Life Studios, platform for the future of work and gaming
Founder
San Francisco, CA
2024 – present

Lesson 7: TBD!

All photos courtesy of Max Hsiao.