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Memes in the video. Iterate quickly. Copies in China. Horizontal platform plays are hard. Regulation sux. Public POC makes competitive landscape more dangerous.
by contingencies 6y ago
Memes in the video. Iterate quickly. Copies in China. Horizontal platform plays are hard. Regulation sux. Public POC makes competitive landscape more dangerous. Validation vs. investment for mass manufacturing / prototyping vs. DfM. Value of robotics in food delivery.
Yet to see anyone else with a robotic startup conclude "iterate quickly" + "relaxed regulations" = move to China and own your own factory, production hardware and know-how, operations and deployment, keeping R&D and POC in-house, in the food distribution domain. This happens to be our exact strategy and play.
- marcell 6y agoDid you move there as a non-Chinese person? If yes, is that hard to do? Any challenges you've faced?
- contingencies 6y agoAny challenges Hahah. Yes. Where to start...
- marcell 6y agoMainly, I'm surprised this was even allowed. My understanding is that if you're not a Han Chinese, you cannot really do business in China, that you're basically swimming against both cultural exclusion, and government exclusion.
- contingencies 6y agoYou can do business OK. Areas of difficulty include: highly dynamic environment, heavy paperwork, sometimes opaque bureaucracy, really unfamiliar banking system (particularly forex), many regulatory bureaus with seemingly overlapping responsibilities, etc. However, the reality is once you are up and running there is a tremendous degree of freedom, perhaps a more friendly regulatory environment than in most western countries, 100% mobile payment penetration, rapid supply chains for everything, simplified tax, single timezone, etc. It's simultaneously scary and awesome.