Raymond Hou’s childhood and adolescence refers to the period before he entered National Cheng Kung University (around 2012), mostly spent in Taiwan. Several themes that later ran through his career emerged during this time: working to obtain resources when money was tight, relying on and questioning “mainstream definitions of success,” and turning the pressure to get by into action. Raymond has looked back on this period in several public articles, framing it not as a dramatic inspirational story but as a long-running case study in “how someone from an ordinary background repositions himself.” This entry brings together his published retrospectives. In discussing individual circumstances of family members, it does not name them or magnify their private lives.
Background and “illusory connections”
In public retrospectives, Raymond describes himself as coming from “an ordinary family without much money,” which contrasts with outsiders’ first impression that he grew up privileged.1 During elementary school, his family could not afford extracurricular classes, so he sold CDs and did part-time work at a shop selling game cards to afford pop-music albums and toys. The main purpose was often to keep up with classmates’ conversations and have something to exchange and share with the group.
He calls this relationship of using material things to gain acceptance an “illusory connection.” The concept stopped working after he entered The Affiliated Senior High School of National Taiwan Normal University: the economic and resource gap among peers was far greater than his labor could make up for, so a sense of belonging tied to material things could not hold. Forced to give up “fitting in for the sake of fitting in,” he shifted his question from “How can I be accepted by the group?” to “What is something I can do myself?” This way of asking became an early form of his growth mindset (see Growth Mindset and The Tortoise Philosophy and Blue-Collar Roots).
Academics and the blessing and curse of being a “good student”
Raymond’s academic path took a clear turn during adolescence. By his own account, he ranked near the bottom of his junior-high class for a long time. After a major family event in ninth grade, he decided to focus on schoolwork, moved far up the rankings in a year, and entered The Affiliated Senior High School of National Taiwan Normal University with high scores. The experience of raising his grades quickly made him believe for a time that “studying is like leveling up in a game: put in the work and you get a reward,” and he enjoyed the privileges society gave students with good grades.
In his second year at the affiliated high school, classmates again disrupted this belief. He realized that “a considerable proportion of people were smarter, better at studying, and from wealthier families than I was,” and that effort and results did not have a linear relationship. Raymond later called this “the blessing and curse of being a ‘good student.’” Good grades brought recognition and opportunities, but also contained a standard of success he did not truly accept yet remained bound to for a long time. Loosening the hold of that standard ran through his remaining teenage years and university period.2
Supporting himself and his first savings
Financial self-reliance is another main thread from this period. In junior high, Raymond earned what he called his “first pot of gold” by playing online games, one of his earliest experiences of turning an interest into income. In 2004, at age 10 and in fourth grade, he played Diablo II in an internet café, defeated Pindleskin hundreds of times, and got the high-value item Windforce, but was tricked out of it in a trade when the other party swapped in a fake Mage Plate. This first experience of being scammed and psychologically manipulated in a transaction deeply influenced the cautious habit he later showed in business and life dealings.3 During high school, he worked part-time at tutoring centers and restaurants, and says that “since age 18 I haven’t taken money from my family.”
He sees having to cover his own living expenses early as one of the key factors shaping his work philosophy. On one hand, being responsible for his own income and expenses forced him to care about efficiency, laying the groundwork for his later study of productivity methods. On the other, he says that financial independence made it harder for his family to use money to influence his life choices, indirectly giving him more room to depart from mainstream paths later.
Street dance, the high-school dance club, and the beginnings of rebellion
In ninth grade, through an introduction by a senior from his dance class, Raymond joined the Korean pop dance team Knight and encountered K-pop and Urban Dance. He loved the way they combined dance with music, narrative, and personal style in a staged performance. He says that one reason he initially chose dance was financial: he thought he could learn at home by watching music videos without buying expensive equipment or hiring a teacher.
After joining the dance club at the affiliated high school, however, he became disillusioned with its system. One issue was the rigid hierarchy and etiquette between senior and junior students (bowing, being forbidden to wave, and other formalities). Another was that, while the club outwardly encouraged free creation, in practice it treated American-style HIP HOP and Battle as the only legitimate forms, marginalizing other choreography and styles. Raymond observed that the system had little tolerance for “brainy types,” such as people who ran classes, focused on choreography, or took commercial gigs. The older generation engaged in tacit monopolization, creating a form of pseudo-democracy under authoritarianism. At the same time, costume and event fees for each performance were high, yet the club had no business model to sustain itself. After recognizing the limits of the system, he left the street-dance scene.
This experience led to an early belief: “The real way to save a culture is to find how to make it commercially valuable.” He argued that if a culture cannot generate a corresponding industry and integrate into its own context, it amounts to blindly copying American culture or moral coercion. Looking back later, Raymond said this mindset—having been hurt, then refusing to blindly follow “the emperor’s new clothes”—was the beginning of his distinct rebellious character and reflection on institutions. It directly extended to his marginalization in campus organizations and camp culture during university.4
A 35-day independent trip to India at age 18
Raymond’s first trip abroad alone was a roughly 35-day independent trip to India at age 18, early in university. In his timeline, it is an important early turning point. He has also mentioned that he ultimately earned back the cost of the trip through the trip itself, echoing his usual pattern of “trading action for resources.” The experience of spending a long time on a low budget, traveling alone through an unfamiliar place, is seen as an early precursor to his later digital-nomad and remote-work lifestyle (see Super Individual).
Significance for later stages
Several threads from this period continued to develop throughout Raymond’s later career. Doubting mainstream definitions of success led to his changing majors twice at university; self-reliance extended into freelance work and the start of a business of one; and the question “What can I do?” evolved into a core method behind his work on Super Individuals and personal branding. In a reflection on turning 30, Raymond described growth as “gradually discovering one’s ordinariness, and still doing one’s best to live an extraordinary life,” which can be read as a summary of his childhood and adolescent experience.5
Further reading: Career Development, Learning Methods.
Sources cited
Footnotes
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Hou Zhixun, “Leadership Forum: Reflections on Zhuang Zhichao’s IOH Talk (From PR18 to the Original Aspiration of Reversing Social Stratification),” public Facebook post, 2015-05-27. View original ↩
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Hou Zhixun, “From Remedial Class to the Affiliated High School to Changing Majors—When Did I Escape the Blessing and Curse of Being a ‘Good Student’?” public Facebook post, 2020-11-17. View original ↩
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Hou Zhixun, “The Diablo II: Resurrected Beta Is About to Go Live,” public Facebook post, 2021-08-13. View original ↩
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Hou Zhixun, “Why Did I Stop ‘Dancing’?” public Facebook post, 2020-09-21. View original ↩
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Hou Zhixun, “What I Learned About Turning 30 Over the Past Decade,” WordPress, 2024-09-17. View original ↩