I’ll be attending the annual China Travel Distribution Summit in Beijing September 15-16.  First of all, if you have any interest in online travel in China, this is *the* event of the year to attend.  Charlie Li, founder of TravelDaily.cn the organizer of the event, has put together a great program of global innovators and the most important players in online travel in China.

Special 10% discount for CNReviews readers and friends

As a moderator and media partner of the event, I can access a 10% discount off of the current rate of RMB 3800 from the event.  Use the code “CTS555″ when you register and you should get a $50 discount, or 10% off.  Use this link: http://www.traveldaily.cn/go/74.html

TripIt founder Gregg Brockway

Earlier this year, I discovered that Gregg Brockway, founder of itinerary management Web service TripIt, would be speaking at the event.  TripIt is the travel application I use more than any other, to coordinate on average 1 trip a month.  I highly recommend the service!

With permission from China TravelDaily, below is a excerpt of an article by Maggie Rauch:

What is TripIt?

TripIt, based in the Bay Area and founded in 2006, gives users one place online to organize their travel details. If travel providers are TripIt partners, then users can have their flights and hotel reservations automatically sent to their TripIt account. When they use non-participating travel services, they have to e-mail their reservations to TripIt, which then adds all reservations to an itinerary. Users can also choose to share their plans with others, a function which Brocway says gave rise to TripIt’s corporate offering, TripIt for Business.

How does TripIt make money?

“We saw one of the most common uses of the share function was sharing fellow employees,” he says. “So we created a corporate group function.” For $399 annually, companies can give employees access to TripIt Groups (available for free) and can also create their own subgroups for their travelers. Employees at companies with TripIt for business accounts also can use TripIt Pro services (which would cost $49 if bought separately), including flight-alert notifications, information about alternative flights, frequent flyer mile tracking and hotel rewards point tracking. Its business services and individual subscriptions are key revenue streams, the others being advertising and working with travel agencies to create e-itineraries for their customers.

In its efforts to beef up business offerings, TripIt recently announced a partnership with Orbitz for Business. The deal will allow travelers using Orbitz for Business to seamlessly sync their travel plans via TripIt, and to access additional planning tools like maps and online check-in.

Why is Gregg Brockway coming to China?  Is TripIt expanding to China?

With the Orbitz agreement inked and 300% growth year on year, Brockway’s trip to China comes at a time when the entrepreneur (a co-founder of Hotwire in 1999) has a little more freedom to look at new markets. TripIt is already used internationally, he says.

“With our mobile app, we see people using it pretty much everywhere,” he says. TripIt has mobile apps for Android, Blackberry and iPhone. Brockway emphasizes that it does not seek to be a one-stop travel shop, and has not invested heavily in destination-based content. If the company looks at expansion into a new market, he says that factors it will consider are the maturity of the travel market; e-connectivity for hotel data, and tour and flight information; what is the equivalent of a GDS in a given market; and how much travel activity takes place online.

“I’m very curious to learn more about the state of the travel market there,” Brockway says about his trip to China. He already has some experience in the Far East, having worked in Hong Kong for five years in the mid-90s.

He’s well aware of the pitfalls of charging into a new market without soberly evaluating the opportunity or finding good local support. “Even when I was working in Hong Kong, people would come in with misguided preconceived notions about how they could bring their business model there.”

“I’m looking forward to meeting people doing innovative things in travel, and perhaps help someone as an adviser. That’s not something I had time to do the past couple of years, but now that the company is really up and running, it’s something I would consider.

Please let me know if you’ll be at the event.  I’ll look forward to meeting up!

Post from: CN Reviews

TripIt’s Gregg Brockway coming to China Travel Conference

According to the company, there are three components of their program:

Financial support for college expenses:  Qifang will use its social lending platform to raise an estimated $1000-1200 USD per student per year as grants and loans for qualified students who have previously had their secondary education sponsored and will be graduating from high school at the end of the 2009-2010 academic year.

Mentoring:  Qifang will also develop one-to-one and one-to-many, life-long mentoring and support relationships between college sponsors and students and between student peers.

Community development: the loan process will require college majors in skills necessary in their communities such as education, medicine and law, and will feature programs for debt relief for students who return to work in their communities for two years after graduation.

Blogger and US/China consultant Aimee Barnes conducted an interview with Calvin at the Clinton Global Initiative 2009 Annual Meeting.  Calvin remarked on his new partnership:

In the past, everything we had been doing focused mostly on China, so the sponsors for the loans have been in China as well. The CGI commitment is a cooperation [with a not-for-profit organization] based here in the US called the 1990 Institute. It’s made up of some pretty successful Chinese-Americans who [organized] in 990 and had a heart for working and giving back to China. About ten years ago they created a particular project called the Spring Bud program for three counties in Shaanxi Province, where they chose 1,000 schoolgirls and sponsored their education through primary and secondary. Now, most education is free- for compulsory education- but of course there are other expenses. So, we sponsored these 1,000 schoolgirls and the first class is graduating this Spring. We are working with the 1990 Institute to ensure that these girls have a chance to have higher education. For us, it’s quite new in that 1) we are working with an international non-profit- in this case, the US- and we’re going to give tax deductions to people who are lending into the platform, into the loan. Basically, sponsors will make a gift to 1990 Institute and we won’t be able to take those funds out, but those gifts will fund loans. Spring Bud actually introduced this interesting hybrid in that, not only will these schoolgirls get these loans but that after two years, there will be loan forgiveness. We’re trying to cultivate community leaders in these disadvantaged areas. We’re very excited about it! It’s kind of a new, deeper engagement than we’ve done in the past.

Calvin agreed with me that China was terribly underepresented here at the Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting and had some insightful thoughts on people’s attitudes toward China here at the conference:

Elliott: Obviously because there are so few people from China here, you’ve probably had a lot of interesting conversations with folks who are interested in learning more about China. What do you think you’re sharing that’s most interesting in terms of helping people understand the social enterprise environment in China?

Calvin: That’s a great question. It’s easy for people not engaged in China to think only of the Olympics, the economic miracle, this idea of the G2 and China being a developed country, a world leader. So, when you talk about needs in China, it’s not always obvious. Along those lines, you hear [questions like] “how does China grow in a sustainable fashion” or “how does China manage the demand for 300 million cars?” These types of issues are about wealth. [The conversations are] much less about the rural poverty issues that are more commonly spoken about regarding South Asia, East Africa and Latin America.

Elliott: So, you’re helping them have a more balanced view of these issues?
Calvin: I think so. I wouldn’t overstate how much people don’t understand, but it’s much less talked about. We’re reminding them about the 800- to 900- million people who live in rural China. The second important thing that we’re trying to share is about social ventures, particularly that there is a lot of creativity, there is a lot of innovation, and there is a lot of dynamism in China. It’s not about the typical questions [regarding] government control or “isn’t education free?”- these types of things that point to the typical idea of a “socialist” or “communist” China. That’s the other thing that we can try to help people understand.

Go read the entire post at Aimee Barnes’ blog.

The insight I got from Calvin’s comments was that the narrative of China as a “rising superpower” or  “fragile superpower” is so focused on China’s economic ascent that China’s vast social and economic problems are not top of mind.  The giant Olympic sized “face projects” of 2008 have created a certain readjustment of people’s perceptions of China as a vibrant, modern superpower.  However, Westerners need to learn to hold a vast number of contradictions in their head in order to gain some understanding of modern China today.  Its not clear to me how the congested media environment of today’s information consumers can help Westerners gain a more complete and accurate view of what is going on in China.  Only by bringing people together to work on issues of common interest–environment, energy, internet governance, economy, business and international affairs–can we gain shared understanding that will help us create a more resilient world that can sustain future systemic shocks.

Congratulations Calvin on your continued progress with Qifang!

Post from: CN Reviews

Qifang’s Clinton Global Initiative Commitment Helps Sichuan Girls

It was in this knowledge gap that we saw an opportunity.  Unlike most developed nations, China has very little open source information.  Paying for traditional market research and consulting is expensive and the quality varies greatly.  Qualitative data is often inaccurate (simply completely made up) and more importantly qualitative analysis is disconnected from reality.  Over many long lunches and teatime brainstorming sessions, we came to the conclusion that the required information was not only offline, but still internalized by experts and industry practitioners.

In our day jobs and through personal networks we often received requests for assistance in understanding China or executing projects locally (those “hey, I know someone in China” sort of introductions).  What we lacked was a convenient, low-cost way to get market feedback.  While a lot is written on the importance of “guanxi” in China, most of it misses the point.  I can tell you that starting a business here today is not about bribing government officials and shady back alley deals.  If it were that easy everyone would be doing it. Guanxi is the friendly currency of favors, invested over dinners and trust-building exercises and spent in return for connections and assistance. To me, strong guanxi means having the ability to call someone who knows someone who knows the answer.

For foreigners and locals alike, “research” means talking with experienced people in the industry.  Understanding the complexities of the Chinese markets (China is certainly far from uniform) and staying ahead of the competition remain the largest challenges.  But everyone’s personal guanxi is limited and repeatedly asking personal connections to help others without compensation isn’t fair.  BloggerInsight was founded with the idea of closing the knowledge gap by using crowdsourcing to democratize market intelligence in China, connecting companies and experts online.  We use Chinese bloggers because they cover so many facets of life and their blog allows us to qualify their expertise.  What started as our own personal guanxi has ballooned into a full network of authoritative experts who specialize on their unique areas of expertise that we target based on their past performance.  As a platform BloggerInsight controls quality and works to build trust with both bloggers and clients.

Since launching in October 2008, we’ve been fortunate to grow quickly.  As entrepreneurs we chose to execute the BloggerInsight concept over all other competing ideas for two main reasons. First we felt the service was very practical; it filled a need we had ourselves.  Second, and this has become increasingly important given the current worldwide financial situation and troubles companies face fundraising, the business model generated cash flow from the very start. There’s a rule of thumb in startups that everything will take twice as long and cost twice as much as anticipated.  This was at least half true with our development taking much more time and energy than originally anticipated.  Finding reliable Chinese hosting providers, registering for ICP licenses and jumping through legal hopes is not my favorite part of running a company.  Main takeaways from our pre-launch period were:

• Bootstrapping shouldn’t mean skimping – Find people, quality people, with experience doing exactly what you want and pay them what’s needed to do the job well.
• Try before committing – It is true that working long hours in a startup is similar to marriage (or so I’ve heard as a bachelor).  I certainly spend way more time with my coworkers than my friends.  Luckily there’s overlap here.
• Nothing is impossible, it just takes time and patience – Learning “on the fly” is absolutely necessary and everyday is a challenge but baby steps turn into real progress.

Since launching in October at the CNBloggerCon in Guangzhou, our platform has grown to include hundreds of bloggers.  They continually impress me with their knowledge and critical thinking.  Each individual approaches problems from a unique angle but brings an open mind and constructive criticism.  As founders, our challenges have quickly changed from finding enough qualified experts to complete case studies to limiting the number of responses to avoid overwhelming clients.  We’ve learned how to shape the questions we ask and information we present to more accurately help customers make decisions and solve problems.

By connecting clients and expert bloggers, BloggerInsight hopes to fundamentally alter the economics of information and lower the barriers to success.  In doing so, we hope to reward new media for it’s independent voice.  Finally, entrepreneurs and businesses have access to high quality qualitative market intelligence in China at reasonable prices.

I’m pleased to have the opportunity to share my experiences here on CNReviews, BloggerInsight will be contributing more in the coming months with mini-case studies, translated Chinese blog posts and personal experience. We’re looking forward to hearing your thoughts and ideas as well, I hope CNReviews can continue to be a place to share and connect with others.

BloggerInsight founders Lucas Englehardt and Xue Ying will be regularly guest-posting on CNReviews over the upcoming months, sharing with CNR readers some interesting insights their army of expert Chinese bloggers from various fields have on modern China. Have a topic about China you’d like to ask them? Take this opportunity to suggest some questions in the comments below.

Post from: CN Reviews

China’s Knowledge Vacuum & Founding BloggerInsight

This year’s South By Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, Texas, included a panel on Business in China.  The panel was composed primarily of non-Chinese business people (and one academic/writer) providing a foreigner’s perspective on China business and the China market.

Introduction to the panelists

Kris Krug (@kk, Raincity Studios) moderated the panel.  His partner, Robert Scales (@scales, Rainwater Studios) shared his experience opening a Shanghai development center of Raincity Studios to do Open Source and Drupal development.  Also on the panel was Shanghai-based Sage Brennan (@sagebrennan) who was a market analyst for the well-regarded market research firm Pacific Epoch and later serve as Research director for Pacific Sun, a small China-focused hedge fund.  Beijing-based Andrew Lih (@fuzheado), author of the Wikipedia Revolution and previously professor at Columbia University and Hong Kong University, shared his insights on the Internet in China.  Christine Lu (@christinelu), co-founder of The China Business Network, also shared her insights derived from interviewing over 100 business professionals involved in China.

Serving as an unofficial panelist–and thus free to sling the F-bomb, insert the term “schtupping” into the conversation, and even rain scorn on unsuspecting Shanghai civic boosters–Kaiser Kuo (@kaiserkuo, formerly Red Herring, Ogilvy Digital China) added an extra dimension of depth and entertainment to the discussion!

Advice to potential China entrants

The panelists made several simple but powerful points that, for some reason, often go unheeded by Western individuals or companies when going to China.

1.  Take your time to understand China.
One of the most profound and simple points made was by Sage Brennan:  China is complex.  It is different.  It is even more different than it first appears.  Therefore, take your time to understand China.

Elliott’s thoughts: This seems like such a simple point, and yet many Western companies and individuals rush into China in a mad dash to stay competitive with a fast moving local market.  There is a growing recognition that no global company can ignore China if it seeks to be a global leader.  This recognition may compel companies to enter the market with too much money, too many expensive foreign executives, and unrealistic expectations for immediate success.  But market insight–and a localized leadership team that can operationalize that insight–takes time to develop.  “Taking your time” doesn’t mean commissioning market research studies and sitting on the sidelines.  It may mean aggressive experimentation–on a small scale or a local scale–to build up your operational abilities and to learn in the marketplace.

2.  You simply cannot succeed without a trusted and capable local Chinese partner.
Robert Scales repeated a mantra that may be obvious to most.  You cannot succeed without a trusted and capable local Chinese partner.

The heart of the problem is related to point #1: impatience.  For virtually all business opportunities, there is usually some intense sense of urgency because of the speed of the market and the high level of competition in China.  But in the heat of the moment, a company may enter into a business relationship with a partner that they really don’t know very well.

Elliott’s thoughts: It may be a fallacy to say that there is no legal system in China to enforce contracts and to award damages.  But you can assume that regulations change quickly; can be enforced inconsistently from place to place, from time to time, and from regulator to regulator; and that greater market and business uncertainty will more likely result in situations not fully contemplated by your contractual relationship.  Therefore, contracts are necessary but not sufficient.  A baseline of trust is needed to provide a more supple foundation in an uncertain environment.  To get a feel for these issues, subscribe to China Law Blog and read it religiously!

3.  Question your assumptions about how things work in China.  Always.
Foreigners (and returnees) bring with them a set of assumptions about how the world works based on their Western experience.  While Western management techniques and functional expertise can no doubt provide advantage to foreigners (and returnees), these advantages can be offset by a slew of Western assumptions that can create blind spots on how the Chinese market actually works.  According to Kaiser Kuo, “No American company has charged into China using their current business model [without modification], and been successful.”

Andrew Lih provided a series of examples (mostly familiar to our readers in China, but not to Americans with limited exposure to China):

• No one uses voicemail.  When some one calls you on your mobile phone, you generally pick it up.  Mobile calls take precedence over face-to-face conversation, which is generally interrupted by a call.
• China uses SMS more intensively.  SMS may have become entrenched because of the low cost of sending text messages.  The first thing Chinese do in the morning is check their IM first, not their email.
• Instant messaging, combined with SMS, is a hugely popular means of communication.  China’s leading IM platform, QQ (Company: Tencent (HK:0700)), has 350 mm users–over 50 times the audience of Twitter!
• Only 56% of all Chinese internet users have email addresses.
• Ownership of PCs is much lower, especially in 2nd and 3rd tier cities, where heavy PC usage is at Internet cafes
• Unlike the West, where e-commerce was Web 1.0 and social media is Web 2.0,  China’s internet usage started as a social phenomenon first and is just now moving to more utilitarian purposes.

4.  Learn to handle more nuance and complexity than you are used to in the West.  Evaluate China on its own terms.

Its easy to look at China and evaluate it based on a Western point of view.  Often, that point of view can be very “black and white.”

Christine Lu made an insightful comment:  “Don’t come to China trying to change China.  Instead, China will change you.”  This does not mean you should compromise your core values or abandon useful Western techniques.  It does mean that you need to first seek to understand China, and then expect to localize your approach.

Andrew Lih gave the example of censorship of China.  The most simplistic Western perceptions on China media control focus on the “Great Firewall” that prevent Chinese netizens from accessing unbiased external sites.  A more sophisticated view refocuses on the filtering of “sensitive” content on domestic Websites that is enforced not by government regulators directly but by the private companies that operate these sites under license.  An even more nuanced view might considers the increasing freedom of speech and press that is happening on the Internet over time, and government efforts to “shape popular opinion” as a command-and-control bureaucracy struggles to handle social media.

To understand this issue of censorship, one needs to dig a lot deeper than just the “Great Firewall.”  Andrew gave the example of “human flesh search engines,” where bands of netizens form online vigilantes to bring justice to bear.  Andrew talked about the example of Chinese “kitten snuff films” where netizens successfully hunted down the woman responsible for the films.  Another famous incident from 2008 was the Weng’An Mass Incident.  This example shows the complex interplay between netizens and the government that gets lost when Westerners bring their own simplistic views of “censorship” to the study of China.

Kaiser also brought up the issue of intellectual property rights.  Copyright infringement has actually been a growth enabler for many products.  An example was open source software and Microsoft software.  Piracy of Microsoft software has actually reinforced its dominance in China and provided Microsoft with ways to make money on companies that do have to comply with copyright laws.  Music piracy is another example of how popular adoption can be a nice side benefit of piracy.  Of course that means you still need to find a way to make money on your music!

5.  If you want to truly change China, you must also localize your approach – dramatic laser light shows may gain international acclaim but no real effect on Chinese popular opinion.

In reference to the laser light protest during the Olympics by performance artist James Powderly, Christine Lu argued emphatically that such dramatic protests from Westerners really have no effect at all.  If you sincerely want to change China’s policies on press and speech freedom, human rights, the environment, Tibet, religious freedom, etc…then start with points 1 through 4 above!  Make a long-term commitment to understand China, to find a trusted and capable local partner, and to localize your perspective and solutions.  Of course, that may not be the fastest way to a comic-book deal, wealth, fame, and Western acclaim.

Kris Krug: That’s It!

In short, a great panel!

Post from: CN Reviews

SXSW China panel shares market-entry advice to Western businesses

Moderator Jeremy Goldkorn introduced two of the speakers–Richard Robinson was “so busy entrepreneuring that he was late”–and their backgrounds.  All of the speakers had more than a decade of experience in China, arriving in China in the 80s or 90s and putting in a lot of time on the ground before becoming successful.

Johnson-Hill has been an entrepreneur for most of his time in China.  One of his first companies here was a cigarette market research company introducing foreign companies to the Chinese market.  After selling that company, he was able to live off the proceeds for several years before making his way to starting Plastered T-Shirts.  Started in Beijing about two years ago, Plastered T-Shirts is now being carried in cities around the world.

Kuo was famously involved in Tang Dynasty (唐朝), one of China’s first heavy metal bands, and also worked as a tech journalist before ending up as an ideas guru at Ogilvy.

Richard Robinson had an interesting career trajectory, which you can see for yourself in his LinkedIn profile.  In addition to working at tech startups, he has been a ski bum, grape picker, and assembly line worker.  He also runs the

Some interesting points:

- Don’t quit your day job to write your Great Novel.  Really, don’t do it.

- For writers, find a niche that no one else is covering. Kuo developed his portfolio by figuring out which beat journalists hated to cover.  At that time, it was the telecom industry, so he went after that and became known as a tech journalist.  He said that while Beijing has many writers masquerading as travel or arts beat writers, there were few writers covering business, which is what publications are particularly interested in paying for.

- Being a family man (or woman) can help with being a creative entrepreneur; as Robinson put it, by becoming a father, he was forced to delegate and prioritize so that he could leave work and spend time with his family.

- China’s advantage for entrepreneurs is what corporations have figured out already: overhead is low. Plastered, for instance, was started with just 40,000 RMB. Johnson-Hill admitted that during the first month he was only able to sell 12 shirts, with the overhead costs being so low at the time he was able to keep it going until it became successful.

- Guanxi (relationships, 关系) is a point belaboured by many foreign businesses trying to break into China, but as Kuo put it, the idea that guanxi is particular to China is pretty silly, as there is not a single country in the world where your social capital isn’t worth something. Nonetheless, for Johnson-Hill, the ability to drink a lot of baijiu and hand out cigarettes went a long, long way.  Get started by talking to everyone you know; you’ll soon find suppliers and connections who can help you out.

- One question that came up was whether or not their success was due to being in China just as it was beginning to take off in the mid-nineties.  Yes, timing is everything, but China’s creative industries are still only beginning to hit the curve, so there are plenty of opportunities out there to develop and create your own market.

- At the risk of sounding like one of those motivational business books, don’t be afraid to fail.  All three had failures that they learned from before they became successful.

The take-away here is that China is a great place to be a creative entrepreneur with an idea and a bit of seed money, and of course, a lot of hard work.

Post from: CN Reviews

Tips on Creative Entrepreneurship in China

I have been following Yeeyan (译言) – a community for people to translate articles in foreign languages (mostly English) into Chinese language volunteerly, since Aug. 2006 when it was called “言多必得”. I personally like the old name which means”you will certainly get something if you express more”. It is form a Chinese idiom “言多必失” means the opposite: you will certain leak some secretes if you keep talking. The current name is more straightforward: “translation” and “language“.

In a presentation by Zhang Lei(张雷), one of Yeeyan’s founders in CnBloggerCon 2007 in Beijing, Zhang Lei compared the online resources about “Breast Cancer” in Chinese (乳腺癌) and English. In the example of Sohu Health Channel, there are less than 30 articles about the general knowledge and treatment. But in a single website of http://www.breastcancer.org/, there are more than 8,000 pages. Statistics show that 1/7 of women will suffer from breast cancer in the world.

• Baidu: 乳腺癌: 8,210,000
• Google: breast cancer :38,800,000

According to Lei, the huge gap of quality contents between Chinese language and English was one of the motivation that Ding Ding (丁丁), Zhao Jiamin(赵嘉敏) and himself found Yeeyan. These three founders from Silicon Valley saw the opportunity in “High Quality Chinese Contents” on the web with the inspiration to encourage Chinese to “discovery, translate and read the best of the Web“.

Yeeyan is a bridge of KNOWLEDGE in Chinese and other languages. I found 140 results about “earthquake” (地震) on Yeeyan 9 days after the earthquake, and more than 100 translators joined a translation group. These articles include the reports by western medias (such as CNN, Newsweek, BBC, etc), knowledge about earthquake forecast, rescue, disease prevention. For example, one translator finished <Epidemics after Natural Disasters> by World Health Organization 4 day after the earthquake. Webtizens have helped to spread the word about these great resources on what to do scientifically after the disaster. (see here, here, here and here)

Zhang Lei even contacted Dr.Barbera Joseph from George Washington University and consulted him about crisis and disaster management. Here is the abstract of his post on Yeeyan blog:

请译言的读者、译者、合作伙伴、媒体广为转载本文！
今天，我与美国乔治华盛顿大学灾难、危机、风险管理学院（ICDRM）主任约瑟夫·巴贝拉博士（Barbera, Joseph）通了电话，听取了他对 四川地震紧急应对状况的看法。巴贝拉博士提出下述几点呼吁：
*第一：目前最关键的问题，是救援的决策者**决定**何时停止**对被掩埋者的搜救工作。* 巴贝拉博士紧急呼吁，*搜救工作至少应坚持到震后14天！*他提供了这样一份研究报告：《地震垮塌房屋受困幸存者时间与存活分析》（译言正在紧急翻译)…

Thank you! Yeeyan and all volunteers who have built a bridge in knowledge in face of such crisis.

I have also Interview Zhang Lei on phone about two weeks’ ago. Here is what I learned from him about the team, product and plan.

Q: Why did you and your other two founders get this idea?

Lei: We are very interested in translation. And when we are able to read some many great and fresh contents online, we want to share them with more people in China.We were the first translators of Yeeyan.

Q: What’s your background?

Lei: I am a Tsinghua 96 alum. After I got my Master Degree on Operation Research (OR) in US I worked for Oracle in Silicon valley. Yeeyan is not my first start-up. We tried to launch fantansy sports product during 2006World Cup. As you know, it is very common that first startup fails. Yeeyan is our second baby.

Q: Could you briefly share with us the milestones Yeeyan has achieved today?

Lei:

Jul 2006: 言多必得 found; it was a platform for volunteer translators to publish articles.

Dec 2006: Yeeyan launched. It is a more open platform with more support for translation. For example, users can copy and paste the original contents into an editor, and can run machine translator before editing. Users can tag the article and join different group,such as business, literature, current issues.

Mar. 2007: Yee Pro Beta launched. It is a wikimedia platform also translators to work together for larger projects.

Q: Why do you want to turn Yeeyan into a wiki? Isn’t wiki difficult to use for most users?

Lei: We believe in the social collaboration(SC), and wiki is a great tool for SC. In the past year, we have learned that translation is addictive. It is also very time consuming. In a wiki platform, we will enable more users to work together for big projects. We want more volunteers to join us, even though they don’t have time to finish a long article, but just editing a paragraph whenever possible. A wiki platform creates the possibility.

Wikipedia is successful. I have written a very detailed guide on how to use wiki on editing. I don’t think the technical aspect is a problem.

Q: What’s the status after you launched Beta?

Lei: There are 4 completed projects (including “Long Tail” which has been completed before) and 14 on going projects. It is pretty amazing.

Q: What are the difficulties you have in the past 18 months?

Lei: In Chinese websphere, except of Baidu Zhidao(百度知道), there are not many communities generating high quality contents. Good news is that we don’t need to translate ourselves now. lol. The community is generating 30+ pieces a day. The one big challenge we are facing is that we don’t know much big the UGC market is in China/Chinese.

Q: I know you have quite some Techcrunch translations. What are the most popular contents ?

Lei: A lot. Yes, technology, entrepreneur, business, these are what we ourselves are interested in. Arts and literatuer, current issues are also very popular. Curently, we have 5000+ articles contributed by 1500+ active translators.

Q: How do you guarantee the quality of the translating works? What about copy right issue？

Lei: We have a feature called “眉批”, a sticky note like feature with which readers can always comment on the translating for correction or improvement or whatever. Readers can also rate the work.

We think a published piece of content online is meant to be distributed and shared, especially blog posts. We encourage translators to inform the authors before publishing. And we will take down the contents if the authors disaprove. So far, we get permission from some prominent bloggers such as Guy Kawasaki, Fred Wilson (A VC)and haven’t received any ”complaints” from the authors.

Q: What about your other team members? Are you full time?
Lei: The other two founders are Ding Ding (丁丁) and Zhao Jiamin (赵嘉敏). At early stage, we three did technology, product and marketing together. Now, Ding Ding is more focusing on product, Jiamin is on contents/editing and I am repsonsible for media and marketing. Jiamin and I are full time for Yeeyan. Jianmin is now in Beijing leading a team.

Q: Are you in need for any financial funding?

Lei: We are talking very closely with a few VCs.

-End

More coverages of Yeeyan from the web and media:

• YeeYan Translates Blogs Posts Into Chinese – ReadWriteWeb
• A window to the world (China Daily)
• web2.0时代背景下的网络翻译与创业 (Chinese)
• Interview of Zhao Jiamin (Life Weekly,三联周刊) (Chinese)

The current projects on Yee Pro.

A Yeeyan fans meet-up in Beijing early this year.

Post from: CN Reviews

Yeeyan Interview: Another Bridge between East and West

On 4/29 I attended a Asia American MultiTechnology Association dinner called “Silicon Valley-Style” Startups in China: The Next Wave. The panel was moderated by Evan Ng, of Dorsey & Whitney, a Silicon Valley law firm. Flickr photo set for the event is here.

Panelists were:

• Dr. Min Cui | Investment Professional, Bay City Capital
• Eric Chen | Partner, WI Harper Group
• Michael Chin | Partner, Dorsey & Whitney (Shanghai)
• Dr. Winnie H. Wan | Serial Entrepreneur and former CEO, ForteBio

The panel was pitched at Chinese (either from mainland China or Taiwan) in Silicon Valley considering going to China to startup their next company. Much of the advice given would probably feel basic to people with 6 months or more experience in China. Here are some highlights (and doesn’t do complete justice to the entire discission):

Q: What are the perceptions of returnees going back to China?

• In summary, the ideal businesses for returnees to pursue are (a) attacking global markets, like semiconductors, (b) have high technology component where Silicon Valley best-practices provide an advantage.
• If the target market is primarily domestic, and the business doesn’t require high technology, and the key success factor is “run fast” execution, then many investors prefer teams lead by a domestic entrepreneur who has not recently left the country.
• Some VCs, like Min Cui of Bay City Capital, are more comfortable making an investment in a returnee led team because of shared Western business context. Min was making an investment in a healthcare play pursuing a global market.
• Eric Chen shared that WI Harper raised funds in 2004 and said strategy in China was to explicitly target local, domestic entrepreneurs. WI Harper had network of repeat, local entrepreneurs and wanted to leverage that reputation. An example of who WI Harper backed was Jason Jiang of Focus Media. In their model, WI Harper has historically only backed domestic entrepreneurs.
• Winnie Wan shared that prospective returnees need to be prepared to understand that China is complex and different, especially if you have worked in the US for a long time.
• According to Winnie, prospective returnees need right mindset to learn new things and like change and challenge. China is daunting (Elliott: she meant “not a good fit”) for those who “think they know best.”

Q: What advice do you have for prospective returnees:

• Eric Chen had some pointed advice for returnees: “Make sure that there are not 20 guys from Tsinghua doing the same thing at potentially 1/10 the cost structure of what you have…In the span of a few years the guys over there have caught up faster than you would ever have thought”
• Eric Chen: “The entrepreneurs in China are really tough and resourceful, smart, hungry and work their butt off.”
• Be prepared to build an organization chart that looks like a “toothpick on top of a comb” because there is not really good VP or Director level management available. As a result, WI Harper “prefers to back a CEO that is really dominant and can will a company into being successful.” They can always complement him with talent that happens to be Chinese returnees.
• According to Eric, the problem with returnees is the “have a different level of expectation” in terms of financial spend. “As an investor, we’re guarding the cash…A bunch of Harvard MBA McKinsey trained guys in a Chinese startups really mess up the culture.”
• Winnie: “networking capabilities developed in Silicon Valley can be helpful. If you are resourceful and willing to reach out, you’ll be amazed that people would be willing to help out”
• Min: returnees need to realize that “You’re road is going to be tough…have to be prepared and fully committed and cannot do it by commuting.” He emphasized the need to consider the family dimension of returning to China.

Q: How do you get started?

• Michael Chin: Getting started can be easy. You can create a special purpose vehicle in BVI or Cayman Island for no more than a few thousand dollars. Its a cost-effective way to get started. Then do your fundraising. Its easy to start with a representative office in China. Can be fast and easy.
• Michael: If you are on a shoestring budget, you can just set up a cheap offshore structure to do preliminary activity. There is no need to set up a Wholly Foreign-Owned Enterprise (WFOE). Don’t let people tell you that it costs $80k to set up a WFOE, you should be able to set it up for about $25k. Should be comparable to setting up a business here in Silicon Valley. There is also a registered Capital requirement of at least RMB100,000.

Q: What about the government? Opportunity or risk?

• Min Cui: Local governments compete for business and will be supportive of foreign investment. If you go to the northern part of China you need to be prepared to drink a lot.
• Eric Chen: There really are two schools of thought. The first school is to avoid, and stay under the radar screen of the government. For some areas, like internet and wireless, you can start out small enough to fly under the radar. The second school is to use the government as a strategy to secure grants, land, financing, concessions. This makes more sense when there is larger capital to be raised, such as their deals in semiconductor fabrication, outsourced preclinical SRO (Elliott: don’t know what this is), and other healthcare plays.
• Cities are very capitalistic. Municipalities are trying to attract foreign direct investment and are measured on it. They are competitive with each other.

UPDATE: 5/12

Dan Harris of China Law Blog posted his thoughts on the advice given at this talk. In summary:

• Representative Offices do not confer legal rights to conduct many important aspects of business in China. Switching to a WOFE down the line is also costly.
• Increased enforcement by Chinese regulators of means that compliance is more important than before.
• Having a valid business entity is also helpful in getting a long-term stay visa. Detailed here.

Dan also warns companies not to go to China without an entity:

I also do not like the advice of going into China without a business entity. There are all sorts of reasons not to like this, but two spring quickly to mind. The first is that it will probably be illegal, which could lead to your business being shut down soon after it starts. My firm received a call from an American company just last week that had been ordered to shut down for not having registered. As everyone knows, China has really stepped up its law enforcement against foreigners in the last few months and now is not the time to be starting an illegal business. The second is that having a business entity has become nearly vital for securing a decent China visa. I agree that one should not be paying $80,000, but I also think one should not have to pay even as much as $25,000 either. It is somewhat misleading to say the minimum capital requirement is at least RMB 100,000. That is the written minimum for all of China, but in many of the most desirable cities like Beijing and Shanghai, it is virtually unheard of to get a WFOE going for anything less than USD$100,000 in capital.

Post from: CN Reviews

AAMA Panel on “Silicon Valley-Style” Startups in China: The Next Wave