1. What I’ve Learned in Geeks On a Plane (SO FAR) - Explained in Board Games

    China Vs. Other BRICs & Developing Countries

    As a communist government, China is incredibly efficient. Shanghai (now #1 by population) and Beijing (now #9) are two of the largest and most advanced cities in the world - through the ’08 Olympics and ’10 World Expo the government poured ton’s of money into infrastructure. If you haven’t picked up on the hype, China is also the leader among all developing nations in Foreign Direct Investment – 3 times Brazil or India, 2 times Russia (source: World Bank). High-speed trains are continually being added between major cities. All of this facilitates population growth (migration) and increases in productivity – two primary factors of GDP growth.

    The Dark Internet

    There’s a whole internet universe that English speakers can’t fathom, many multiples bigger in comparison to what they’re aware. Take for example PPLive.com, one of China’s many video sites which has 175 million users who spend on average 165 minutes (nearly 3 hours) per day on the site. Kris Krug, who’s lived in Shanghai for half a decade and put together Shanghai’s first BarCamp, estimates there’s a 100x more US educated Chinese entrepreneurs who know and understand the English web than the other way around. There’s opportunity here.

    Future Predictions- Why US Buinesses Should Worry

    I’ll use the board game Risk as an analogy. Think of China as the Asia continent. If you’ve played, you know Asia is the hardest to control because you can be attacked from many sides at once. China is intensely competitive, teams of engineers work relentlessly to copy successful business models and gain customers. For example, there are currently close to 40 Chinese clones of Groupon.com. One panelist said, “The Chinese are used to squeezing water out of rocks.” This aside, controlling Asia grows your resources at a faster pace than any other continent. Wait a few turns and you’ve amassed enough scale to invade any other country.

    And the game Risk always ends with one winner–the web is becoming more and more flat. While there’s plenty of domestic internet growth to keep Chinese tech companies occupied for several years, it’s not long before they look for other places to go. Just last week Buy.com was acquired by a Japanese company and Zynga acquired a Beijing based gaming startup.

    What China Lacks

    Tolerance of Rule-Breaking and Failure – Here we have both sides of the coin. The Chinese are natural business people; the last 100 years of drastic change has deeply ingrained a survivalist mentality in the culture. Yet collective culture is not as tolerant of rule-breaking and failure, making innovation and risk-taking a challenge.

    Experienced Angel Investors & Early Stage Mentoring – The VC market (+1MM) is supposedly just as saturated as China’s real estate market. But the angel market is undercapitalized and developing. The internet is at an early-stage in China and there are few local serial entrepreneurs. It’s tougher for foreigners as angels because it takes culture & language to evaluate teams without traction or track-records. China doesn’t have incubator programs like Tech Stars or Y-Combinator and China doesn’t have large business plan competitions like NYU or MIT.

    Favorable Acquisition Market – When it comes down to build or buy, in China it’s much easier just to build vs. the US. Both in mindset and in cost.

    Impressive Numbers

    China has the world’s most internet & mobile subscribers - 400M and 770M respectively vs. second place of 285M (US) and 550M (India).

    3G usage is about to explode - at this time there are only 20M users, but expected to grow to 150M next year.

    2. 1 year ago 

      1. mikeprasad reblogged this from trevorowens
      2. trevorowens posted this