Startonomics Beijing 6/11/09: Suit Up For Startup Boot Camp

Dear reader, please raise your hand if you think its easy to start a successful high-tech business.

Okay.

Now raise your hand if you think it’s easy to start one in China.

If you still have your hand up, you’re mentally insane. Please contact me so I know never to give you one yuan/dollar/euro/Gold Kruggerand of my hard earned money.

But if you’re not insane, and are seeking to realize entrepreneurial success in China (no I don’t think that fully counts as insanity), you should attend Startonomics Beijing on June 11, 2009.  It just might turn startup failure into survival, and startup survival into success.

1.  So when and where is this event?

When: 8:30 am – 6:30 pm, June 11

Where: OrangeLabs’ Innovation Gardens

海淀区科学院南路2号融科资讯中心C座南楼10层

10th floor, South Tower, RaycomInfotechPark C.  2, KeXueYuan Nan Lu, HaidianDistrict

Tel: (010) 8217 5000

2.  How much does it cost?  And can I get a discount because I’m your blog friend?

Its going to cost you RMB500 unless you enter the secret code.  (The secret code is “startupprice300″ and you’ll get a RMB 300 ticket price instead. You are supposed to be a “pre Series A startup.”  If you take advantage of this offer, please come up with a suitable story of what “pre Series A startup” you are forming in case the organizers ask you.  If you come up with a weak story, you will embarrass me and cause me to lose face with the organizers.  But if you accept this offer and enjoy the conference, you are forever indebted to me and will make a small amount of room in your hot Series A venture round for me to invest in your company!

Click the button above or register here.

3.  I’m still not sure if its worth the time and money.  Who else is going?

Sounds like you’re either too indecisive to start a company, or you have a fully localized cost perspective and you’re living on 100 RMB per week, so you don’t want to blow 3-5 weeks of living expenses on a conference.  If you’re saving money like “real” Chinese people, then this is the event that you’ve been saving up for.  You can eat street food and avoid taxis for a few more weeks, can’t you?

The event is organized by George Godula, founder of Shanghai Web incubator Web2Asia and Dave McClure, Venture Partner of FoundersFund.  Along with connector Christine Lu, they have put together a very notable group of people:

• Haila Wang, CTO Orange Labs
• Dr. Kai-Fu Lee, President Google China
• Kaiser Kuo, Writer, Technology Commentator & Musician
• Sam Flemming, CEO CIC Data
• Benjamin Joffe, CEO +8* | Plus8Star
• John Wu, Chairman FangJia & former CTO Alibaba
• Jerry Wang, CEO Goyoo Networks
• Dr. Pan Haidong, CEO Hudong
• David Wolf, CEO Wolf Group Asia
• Weihan Liu, Venture Partner Nokia Growth Partners
• Jui Tan, Partner BRV
• Charles Pan, GM Orange Capital
• Tangos Chan, VP China Growth Capital
• Frank Yu, CSO/COO Shouji
• Season Xu, Co-Founder & COO 5 Minutes
• Larry Zhang, GM Troodon
• Xin Ye, CEO Casee
• Nick Yang, President KongZhong Corp.
• Steve Mushero, CEO & CTO ChinaNetCloud
• Dan Martell, Co-Founder Flowtown
• Florian Pihs, Data & Analytics Director MRM Worldwide
• Dave McClure, Founders Fund (FF Angel, fbFund)

Christine, George and I collaborated on the China 2.0 blogger tour last November.  Many of these exceptional individuals were part of that tour, and I even got a picture with Google’s Kai Fu Lee after his presentation to the blogger tour.

4.  OK, I’m convinced. I’m going. Can you introduce me to some people?

I can’t attend because wife just had a baby so I have to stay close to home here in Silicon Valley for a while.  But here are some of the folks I would introduce you to:

Dave McClure

Dave is the main instigator of the Geeks on a Plane tour that will have a international delegation of 35 people attending the event.  He is an ultimate connector and has organized conferences like Web 2.0 Expo with O’Reilly Group, Startonomics, Startup2Startup, and is otherwise a prominent character in the Silicon Valley startup scene.  He pioneered a course at Stanford on viral adoption of Facebook applications, and has some good materials on “Startup Metrics for Pirates” which I’m sure he will go through in this session.

photo credit: Joi Ito

George Godula

George runs a direct marketing company called MHDirekt and a Web startup incubator called Web2Asia.  He has a compelling vision of supporting startups with conferences, events, meetups, specialized media, and angel funding.  To connect with the Shanghai web and mobile startup ecosystem, get in touch with George.

The above picture was taken at the Forbidden City with George playing tour guide to a bunch of entitled Western bloggers.

Kaiser Kuo and Tangos Chan

Kaiser Kuo is a writer, journalist, and rock-musician with a passion for technology, media, and bridging China and the rest of the World.  He does not suffer fools gladly, either on the Chinese side or the “Western” side.  As former lead China correspondent for technology magazine Red Herring, and as former digital strategies for Ogilvy Digital China, Kaiser brings a journalist’s eye toward issues related to technology and social change, in what is the most dynamic society of our current era.  He enjoys flinging rough cross-cultural idioms like 牛-bility and has been known to drop the F-bomb while on stage at industry conferences.

Tangos Chan is a venture capitalist and private placement advisor at China Growth Capital.  He is also a pioneering English blogger at China Web 2.0 Review.  Tangos brings a deep understanding of social media, the internet startup market in China, has been on the steering committee of CNBloggerCon, and is an exceptional communicator.

This picture was taken after CHINICT 2008.  I remember “牛-bility” and “shability” was discussed.

Christine Lu

Christine played an instrumental part putting together the Geeks on a Plane delegation from Silicon Valley led by Dave McClure.  She introduced Dave to George and the rest was history.  She is working on some amazing projects including a Creative Commons book about China and applying the principles of Sharism to what she is doing.

This picture was taken at SXSW 2009.

And many more…

I’ve had the pleasure of meeting with Sam Flemming, Benjamin Joffe, David Wolf, and Florian Pihs on previous trips and am disappointed I won’t be able to come.  Look forward to the event…you won’t regret it!  I’ll be following it from afar!

All photos (unless otherwise mentioned) CC CNReviews. Please credit as shown.