China Mobile Internet Conference and GeeksonaPlane

I am coming to the conclusion that China doesn’t need us. Last night, a star-studded panel of expats and Chinese-American returnees basically let us know that they had it under control. they simply got the big ideas from us, took them to China, and executed on them.This was the kickoff evening of the China Mobile Internet Conference. Mobile, of course, is on the way up. Only 30% of Chinese are on the Internet, but 770,000,000 people have mobile phones and as 3G spreads ( it’s new here) the move to smart phones is inevitable. We heard from companies and investors already in the space.

There is no endemic entrepreneurial culture in China, where people are fungible. It seems to be the people educated outside who start the companies, employing teams of top engineers from the many graduating In China every day. There is still a shortage of capital but a host of SiliconValley and corporate VCs are in the process of changing that.

Once the companies are started or cloned, the size of the market makes them quickly into $500 million behemoths that can IPO on their choice of exchanges: London, NASDAQ, and China’s own NASDAQ, which after just one year has already seen over 65 IPOs.

The biggest problem for Chinese companies is not market– it is retaining talent. A company can expect 20% turnover every year. Most large American companies trying to enter the Chinese market and most American investors don’t know this. The most outspoken panelist said if you weren’t willing to relocate your CEO and management team to China for at least 6 months of the year, you shouldn’t even attempt China. That’s why most early American entrants to the Chinese market from the west failed.

I can see that personally we GeeksonaPlane have no function here, except to be learners and to bring information back home. Much like the early explorers, I feel lIke I have discovered the mysteries of the Orient, but there’s so much customization necessary here that we can’t colonize it anymore.

Posted via email from Not Really Stealthmode