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An absolutely fantastic presentation, although some of the pages aren't loading for me. As a non-Chinese startup guy who has lived in China for about a decade,
by trevelyan 15y ago
An absolutely fantastic presentation, although some of the pages aren't loading for me. As a non-Chinese startup guy who has lived in China for about a decade, my only quibbles with the stuff that loaded:
(1) As much as I love Beijing, Shanghai is better for startups that are in branding or sourcing. Shanghai has a more established local angel and VC network too, but the investment community is not very sophisticated, and even with revenues you won't get a decent valuation. Investors feed copycats because they are cheap to build and the business model is taking them public.
(2) It is not worth raising money in China.
(3) There is no culture of acquisitions and once companies establish a decent business model, the Chinese government usually intervenes in some regulatory fashion. This tilts the field in favor of larger companies and organizations like Baidu or Tencent or Sina, who tend to build-their-own as opposed to partnering.
- iag 15y agotrevelyan - These are some great insights. I'd love to hear more from you. Can you think of anything else to share with us about China?
- trevelyan 15y agoThere are a decent number of startup and tech people on HN from China these days, so I'm not sure I can say anything anyone else can't. If you have any specific questions or are passing through Beijing feel free to get in touch though -- contact info is in profile and it's always good to meet HN people out here. :)
- xiaoma 15y agoI'm also in Beijing and at a start-up funded both locally and from US investors. I think one of the most telling signs of (3) you mentioned is that the major internet companies in China is virtually the same as it was 10 years ago. While Yahoo! have and AOL have long since fallen by the wayside in the US, Alibaba, Tencent and Sina keep chugging along in China. This doesn't tend to happen in more open tech markets.