Premium business intelligence · Every Friday

Solve the problem you’re stuck on with the business intelligence the English-speaking world is ignoring.

Every Friday, I answer one question with the thinking from the best founders in China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Brazil, and Latin America. Ten minutes of strategic advice that won’t reach anyone else at your table.

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中文 China 繁體中文 Taiwan 日本語 Japan 한국어 Korea Português Brazil Español Latin America

Why this exists

He’d never heard of Xiaomi.

A friend of mine read an interview with the founder of Xiaomi and was amazed. Not by the interview itself. By the fact that he’d never heard of Xiaomi.

He reads the business pages. He runs a company. He’s not stupid. But Xiaomi is one of the biggest companies in the world. And the information simply never reached him.

Because English-language media only covers foreign companies when they raise money or arrive in Western markets. The actual thinking — the strategy, the decisions, the hard-won lessons — stays in Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish. The interviews and podcasts that never get translated. The founders the English-speaking press ignores. The stuff that would change how you run your company.

And no, a chatbot can’t fix this. He could have asked ChatGPT about Xiaomi any time he liked. But why would he? He’d never heard of it.

The stuff that changes how you think is exactly the stuff you’d never think to ask for. Someone has to put it in front of you. That’s my job.

Markets, read in their own languages — nothing waits for an English edition

Publications, podcasts, YouTube channels and conference circuits we follow — most have never been translated

104

Founders, operators and investors we track by name

Question a week, put to all six desks. Ten minutes on a Friday.

The blind spot

What you’re actually missing

You already know the English-speaking internet. You’ve read Paul Graham. You’ve heard the same five founder stories on every podcast. You’ve seen the same frameworks repackaged by the same people.

The problem isn’t that you’re not reading enough. The problem is that the English-speaking business internet is a closed loop. The same ideas circulate. The same examples get cited. The same companies get studied.

Meanwhile, a founder in Shenzhen solved your exact problem three years ago. She talked about it on a podcast. In Mandarin. It never made it out.

A founder in São Paulo figured out a growth model that would work in your industry tomorrow. He explained it at a conference. In Portuguese. Nobody in your world heard it.

A CEO in Seoul wrote a shareholder letter that answers the question you’ve been stuck on since January. It’s public. It’s in Korean. You’ll never read it.

This is not a gap in your knowledge. It’s a structural blind spot in the entire English-speaking business world.

Every week, something is published in one of these six markets that would change how you run your company. You just don’t know it exists.

The Sixth Desk

One question. Six desks.
Ten minutes. Every Friday.

Each week, I take one question — the kind of question that keeps a founder awake at night — and put it to all six desks. Not six markets reduced to one answer. Six markets, each with its own answer. The patterns that emerge are the real value.

Week 1

What is AI actually doing in companies your size?

Week 2

How do the best founders decide what to stop doing?

Week 3

How do you make good work repeatable?

Week 4

What do you do when growth stops?

Monthly

The deep dive. First up: Xiaomi.

Once a month, a deep dive on one company or one founder, done properly. The first is Xiaomi — the company my friend had never heard of — on Saturday 10 October. Sent Saturday morning to be read over a coffee and a croissant.

A sample answer

Don’t take my word for it

The question from the first issue: what is AI actually doing in companies your size? Here is the Japan desk’s answer.

The Sixth Desk · The Japan desk answers Real excerpt

From Japan

The AI is ready. Japan’s call centres aren’t.

You’ve probably heard that customer service is the first sector that AI will eliminate. Japan is a bit of a test case, and the people working in the call centres tell a different story.

In July SoftBank tied up with Sierra, the American AI agent company. They talked a good game - their goal was to automate the whole of the Japanese customer service sector. NewsPicks took that claim to the people who currently do the work.

The first challenge is boring but real: customers’ filing systems. Kato Hiroshi, an executive officer at Bell System 24, which runs outsourced call centres for corporate clients, says the technology demos beautifully and then comes up against the client’s systems. ‘The reality now is that the data simply isn’t properly organised. That’s the state of most call centres today.’ He has watched trial projects fail on exactly that for years, while the debate rages on which AI model to buy.

The second issue is much more human. A veteran of more than twenty years describes the job as being about drawing out what the customer actually needs, and trying to solve the problem for them while they talk. One customer rang because a programme wouldn’t record. The fault was fixed, and then the customer mentioned it had been her late husband’s favourite. They talked about him for a bit. This wasn’t efficient. It wasn’t part of the official script. But the customer said ‘I’m glad I called today,’ as she rang off. The AI is ready but maybe the customers aren’t?

The third obstacle is that American firms will forgive a bot a certain amount of error. Japanese business culture is less willing to absorb the damage to customer-satisfaction scores when a machine invents an answer. Hallucination, the industry’s word for a confident lying, carries a different price in Tokyo.

NewsPicks, 9 August 2026. Japanese, YouTube. Re-transcribed on our own machines; names come from the published episode description, not from speech recognition. This is one answer from the first issue. Every Friday issue puts the same question to all six desks and publishes only the answers that survive.

Become a founding member · £49

£49 for your first year. Future annual price £99. Read four issues; if they aren’t worth what you paid, every penny back.

What changes

What changes when you read this

Right now, when you get stuck on a business problem, you have two options.

You can ask the English-speaking internet. You’ll get the same answers everyone else gets. They might be good. They won’t be original.

You can ask your network. They’re smart. They also operate in the same information environment you do.

After you start reading The Sixth Desk, you get a third option.

You see what the best founders in six markets are telling each other. In their own words. In their own languages.

You spot patterns before they reach the English-speaking press.

You find answers that nobody in your network has heard yet.

You bring something to the table that nobody else at your table has.

Readers

What readers are saying

“This is a brilliant idea!”

David M.

“I love this concept! I am now a Founding Member.”

John B.

“Brill. Love it. As usual you are one step ahead :)”

David H.

The founding-member offer

What you get as a founding member

Founding membership is open before the first issue lands. Here is everything it includes.

The Friday issue. One question, six desks, ten minutes. Every week. No exceptions. No guest writers. No filler.

The monthly deep dive. One company or one founder, done properly. Read over a Saturday coffee. The first is Xiaomi, on Saturday 10 October.

Every quote linked to its source. You can check the original recording yourself. When something is our interpretation, we say so. When we get something wrong — and in six cultures and five languages, we will — the correction runs in the next issue.

The founding member price. £49 for your first year. The future annual price is £99. You lock in the lower price for as long as you stay subscribed.

The guarantee. Read four issues. If you don’t think they’re worth what you paid, email me and I’ll refund every penny. No questions. No hoops. You keep the issues you received.

£49 for the first year

Future annual price: £99 a year

Become a founding member

The method

How the desk works

This matters because it’s the difference between a newsletter written by a machine and one written by a human who cares.

The machines read.

The two-hour podcasts, the conference talks, the shareholder meetings, the founder interviews that will never be translated. All of it, every week, in its original language. 53 publications, podcasts, YouTube channels, and conference circuits. 104 founders, operators, and investors tracked by name.

I decide.

I read what the desks found, pick the question, and write the answers myself. If it isn’t worth your time, it doesn’t go in.

You check.

Every quote links to its original. You can hear it for yourself. When something is our interpretation, we say so.

The editor

Jon Kaye

Co-founder of Do Radio, and producer and presenter of Tomorrow’s World: The Future of Work. Before radio, a private equity investor and a founder several times over — so he’s sat on both sides of the table.

Who’s writing this

I’m not a China expert. I’m an interviewer.

What I do for a living is find people worth listening to and ask them the right questions about how work is changing. The Sixth Desk is that same job with the net cast further — into the places whose stories almost never reach the English-language press.

The desks report the whole world, including the brutal bits — the punishing work cultures, the price wars, the growth-at-any-cost playbooks. I read all of it through one lens: what’s the human cost, what would doing this right look like, and who’s proving there’s another way.

No hero-worship, no hit jobs. If the verdict isn’t honest, the whole thing is pointless.

Founding membership

You can’t search for what
you don’t know exists.

You’re already reading the English-speaking internet. You’re already getting the same ideas as everyone else. You’re already operating with a blind spot you can’t see. The Sixth Desk puts something genuinely new in front of you every Friday: what the best founders in six markets are telling each other, in their own languages, before it reaches anyone else at your table.

Become a founding member · £49 for your first year

Four issues. If you don’t think they’re worth what you paid, you get every penny back.