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Venture Capital in China
For the last several years there has been a lot of talk on Sand Hill Road about investing in China. To a certain degree there has been a lot of talk about all the BRIC countries -- Brazil, Russia, India and China. But the most excitement is clearly around China. (Interestingly, while India is a relatively close second, I have yet to hear of a single Bay Area VC exploring investment in either Brazil or Russia). Drawn by huge markets and a rapidly expanding economy, American VC's are heading to China to stake their claims. Go East young VC's. Go East.
Venture Capital investment in China has not, however, been a headlong dive. Bay Area VC's seem to be sending over exploratory parties. By way of example, David Chao from Doll Capital has been in and out of China for some time. Now a number of his partners are getting in on the act as well. Paul Koontz from Foundation Capital spent a year in China exploring the market. And perhaps the best indicator that the Chinese market is hot is Dick Kramlich's pilgrimage to China this year. Kramlich is one of the founding fathers of Sand Hill Road -- a 25 year veteran of the venture capital business. Not one to miss out on a big opportunity, Kramlich has headed over to China for 2008 to catch the wave of entrepreneurship and, perhaps, some of the Beijing olympics. Chow, Koontz and Kramlich are not the only US VC's headed to China by any stretch of the imagination. But these high profile forays into the Chinese market are excellent indicators of the level of interest in the market.
It is hard not to be intrigued by the Chinese market. With 1.3 Billion people, you don't need a huge amount of penetration to hit big numbers. One percent of the Chinese market is 13 million people. As they say, if you are "one in a million" in China, there are thirteen-hundred people just like you. What's more, the Chinese government anticipates that approximately 300 Million people will move from the countryside to urban centers in the next decade -- that's the same number as the entire population of the United States. The combination of massive aggregate numbers, rapid urban migration (and the commensurate increase in wages) and relatively low concentrations of modernized business processes, suggest a market ripe for investment. And that is precisely the conclusion many of my brethren on Sand Hill Road have drawn.
Given all that, I was anxious to check out China for myself. And right before the new year, I had the good fortune to do just that -- I accompanied a group of Stanford Business School students on a ten day study trip to China. We met with senior executives from companies like China Telecom, Alibaba, GM China and Bao Steel, as well as senior government officials and party leaders (yes, it is still a Communist country). But the most interesting discussions, to my mind, were with the leading private investors in China. (Because my meetings with these private investors took place as part of a study trip, there was no expectation that I would blog about the content of our conversations -- thus, I have decided to exclude the names of the specific investors so as not to violate any confidences they may have reasonable expected.) These investors gave a surprisingly candid view of venture capital throughout the country -- the good, the bad and the ugly.
To the mind of the Chinese investing community, the market dynamics described above well outweigh the risks of investing in the current environment. Huge markets with lots of business white space provides for numerous opportunities for economic gain. While American investors are busy debating the degree to which the US startup market is saturated, Chinese investors are having trouble keeping up with the inflow of opportunities. The opportunities in China seem unbounded, making foreign investors starry-eyed. But despite the glories of the Chinese market -- and there is no denying that the demographic trends in China are glorious -- I heard more than enough from Chinese investors to scare me away from the market.
As an initial matter, the biggest challenge that investors find in building Chinese startups is identifying great entrepreneurs. Because there has been all but no startup culture prior to a handful of years ago, there are essentially no seasoned entrepreneurs. A few native Chinese business expats are returning from abroad to take advantage of China's increasingly open economy. But those numbers are de minimis and do nothing to staff the rest of the enterprise. Meanwhile, Chinese executives have been trained to function in a business culture of bureaucracy and Party connections -- not the fast-paced, fluid environment of the startup world. The investors with whom I met lamented the lack of qualified executives and warned about the significant challenges of doing diligence on Chinese entrepreneurs.
The second challenge with entrepreneurship in China is grounded in the laws of China. The legal structures needed to support a vibrant startup economy are, at best, embryonic. Neither entrepreneurs nor investors are particularly well protected by the Chinese legal system. One investor with who I met on my trip described a recent situation in which he funded an entrepreneur, only to have that entrepreneur turn around and leave for business school months later. The entrepreneur assured the investor that he would be better situated to make the business a success after the two years of school. The investor had no recourse as his money left the country with the entrepreneur. In another instance, an investor backed an entrepreneur in a business that thereafter appeared to be failing. However, a couple years later when the same company started thriving, the entrepreneur informed the investor that it was not the company he had backed. The investor was incredulous. He told the entrepreneur that it was the very same company with the same team and even the same name. The entrepreneur assured the investor that it was, in fact, a different company and that he had not invested in this successful company, his investment was in the previous failed venture. Despite the obvious deception, the investor told me that he again had no legal recourse.
In many ways, venture capital in China is like the wild west. There are big opportunities, but they are not well defined and capturing their full value may well require manipulating the law to your own devices. One investor with whom I met described entrepreneurship in the United States like a zoo and entrepreneurship in China like a jungle. In the United States, he said, while there is always a lion next to you with sharp claws, driven by self-interest, there is a cage between you and the lion to keep you safe. You can count on the cage to protect you from unreasonable or illegal behavior. In China, on the other hand, there is no cage between you and the Lion -- if you don't take great pains to protect yourself from the self-interested behavior of the lion, you are going to get bitten. Case in point, one Chinese executive with whom I met on my trip described how he was able to leverage his dominant market position to force his competitors to sell at a discount. What's more, the entrepreneur described with pride that once he had bought up all of his competition, he was able to raise his prices three-fold.
Yet another significant challenge for United States VC's seeking to invest in China is the government itself. While China appears to be making huge market-driven strides in its economy, there remains a significant wild-card in all business transactions -- the Communist government. On my trip it was repeatedly pointed out to us that government officials don't make laws, Party leaders do. The government officials are tasked with managing the bureaucracies of their localities, but the party leaders are tasked with making the decisions. The Communist Party single-handedly makes all of the rules in China. For example, by mandate of the Party, no Chinese financial institution may be majority-owned by foreign investors. Thus, the fasted growing segment of the Chinese market is off-limits to foreign investment. What is to stop the Chinese government from making similar mandates in other market segments? This lack of predictability of the fundament legal underpinnings of business in China is sufficient in and of itself to make me take pause.
I thoroughly enjoyed my visit to China. The shear scale of Beijing and Shanghai was absolutely stunning, as was the velocity of the growth in both cities. And the extraordinarily candid conversations we had with Chinese business leaders and Party officials was both surprising and invaluable. But rather than leaving China emboldened to invest in their great economy, I returned to the United States surprised that my fellow VC's could accept the risks inherent in investing in China. I could not. And I don't anticipate that changing any time soon.
Welcoming Howard Hartenbaum to August Capital
When I first started talking to my now-partners about joining August Capital, I was stunned at the slow pace of the conversation. I couldn't imagine how it could take months to make a decision about whether or not to invite me to join the partnership. Admittedly, I wasn't coming from the most conventional background to enter the venture industry. But over the course of months, the August partners had more than enough time to talk with pretty much everyone I'd ever met in my professional life (plus a few choice grade school teachers while they were at it). In the end, after four months of grilling, I was invited to join August Capital.
At the time, I remember thinking to myself "how could it possibly take four months to decide?" It seemed like an absurdly long process. Yet, having now been in the venture business for some time, and having been on the other side of that process, it is amazing to me that it didn't take longer. Why is that? Two things in particular strike me.
The first is that partnerships are small, delicate creatures. At August, there were only four partners when I joined. That's not very many people. And partners spend a lot of time together. We make collective decisions about nearly all things in the partnership -- from investment decisions, to personnel decisions, to culinary decisions. And we each serve as a reality check for the rest of our partners. So keeping a partnership functional, let alone collegial, is tricky business. Rest assured, adding a new partner can throw off that balance really easily.
The second challenge is that adding a partner is a much bigger economic decision than making an investment in a company. I don't mean it is an economic decision in the sense of sharing the economics of the partnership. But rather, it is an economic decision because each new partner will be responsible for making a set of investments out of the partnership. If you make the right decision, your new partner will make investment choices that accrete large returns back to the partnership. But if you make the wrong decision, your new partner could easily invest tens of millions of dollars in companies that ultimately fail, hamstringing the overall fund returns. So adding a partner is a bit like making an indirect bet on a bunch of companies -- getting it wrong will have a widespread impact on your fund performance.
Given all that, the decks are stacked against anyone joining a venture capital partnership. It is just too easy to find reasons to say "no." Which is why it absolutely thrills me to welcome Howard Hartenbaum to the August Capital partnership. Howard has successfully run the gauntlet and come out the other side, and we are already enjoying the benefits of Howard's perspective and approach. Howard is simply a fantastic guy, and we are lucky to have him join us.
For those of you who don't know Howard, here are a few quick thoughts on why he's such a great fit for us at August.
First and foremost, Howard is a geek. After graduating from MIT, Howard didn't join an investment bank; he joined Honda Motor Company where he served as an ergonomics engineer. He got to build awesome products like the NSX. If there is one thing we like to do at partners meetings while eating lunch, it is talk about cars. Cars and email. Cars, email and digital photography. Cars, email, digital photography and high speed wireless. Cars, email, digital photography, high speed wireless and smart phones. Cars, email, digital photography . . . you get the point. Howard is a welcomed addition to the conversation.
Second, Howard firmly believes that the most important thing in a start-up are the founders. Howard has a great track record of working with entrepreneurs to help them bring their vision to fruition. As a result, entrepreneurs love Howard because he is helpful without being overbearing. What's more, Howard was an entrepreneur before becoming an investor. So he's been on both sides of the table and can bring that perspective not only to his portfolio companies, but also to our investment decisions.
And third, Howard is a great investor. Prior to joining us at August Capital, Howard was a General Partner with Draper Richards. He has invested in dozens of interesting technology companies. Notably, Howard was the very first investor in Skype and got involved in the business on the company building side (Howard was active in Skype's global business development efforts and served as the GM of Skype's US business). Howard was also an investor in Photobucket and Bebo, among many others. Howard's track record is impressive and it hasn't gone unnoticed -- he was named to the Forbes Midas List in 2007.
Given all that, it only took us a few months to invite Howard to join us at August. After all, we had to find time to talk with Howard's EE professors and his chess team coach :) We consider ourselves very lucky to have Howard as part of August Capital. He is a fantastic investor, a geek at heart, and a great guy to hang out with. What more could one ask for?
MicroHoo: The Social Network That Could Have Been
Over the course of the many weeks of on-again, off-again MicroHoo madness, I did a fair bit of pontificating and speculating of my own about the would-be deal. After all, it was THE Bay Area topic of conversation (for one brief moment we all put our Facebook speculation on hold -- I am so pleased that we can get back to speculating about Facebook now and, better yet, speculating about MicroBook, or is it FaceSoft?).
Many of the MicroHoo conversations I had centered around the combined assets of Microsoft and Yahoo. What could the two companies, in combination, bring to bear upon the Internet landscape? And while the press largely liked to discuss the impact a Microsoft/Yahoo merger would have on the search market, to my mind that was not the biggest advantage of the combination. From where I sit, the greatest combined asset of Microsoft and Yahoo would be their vast social graph data. Farmed properly, MicroHoo could have enabled a stunningly powerful social network using nothing more than the fumes of their existing services.
To see the power of Microsoft's and Yahoo's social data, one need look no further than the first visit to virtually every social service. The first thing you are asked to do in the registration process is to give your login data for Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, etc. Why? Because each new social experience on the Web needs to recreate your social graph and the best way to jump start that process is to use the social graph data you already have stored in your existing communications services.
What if MicroHoo were to simply farm the social data contained in all of its current social services? Step one, implement a unified login across all MicroHoo services. I must say that this is one thing that Yahoo has gotten right from the very beginning (and Google has been a fast follower). Since its inception, Yahoo has viewed the customer experience as a unified one across all of its properties. And with each of its acquisitions, job number one has been to unify the login experience. Thus, Yahoo knows that "davidhornik" on Yahoo Mail is the same as "davidhornik" on Flickr is the same as "davidhornik" on MyYahoo. What if MicroHoo also knew that it was the same as "davidhornik" on Microsoft Messenger and as "davidhornik" on Hotmail? In fact, MicroHoo could know that I am the same "davidhornik" on:
Yahoo Mail Yahoo Messenger Flickr Delicious Upcoming Hotmail Windows Live Messenger Xbox Live etc.
Every one of these services contains data from which MicroHoo could have created a social graph an order of magnitude larger than MySpace or Facebook. Add on top of that social data compelling personalized experiences drawn from the likes of MyYahoo, Yahoo Finance, Zune.net, etc. and you've got the makings of a pretty powerful social experience.
So why haven't Yahoo and Microsoft done this on their own, let alone in combination? That's a great question. If I were in charge, it is where I would start. As all experiences on the Web increasingly are informed by social relationships, the long term winners will be the players who can bring the most social data to bear on their services. What's more, as can be seen in the recent announcements by MySpace, Facebook and Google, the ability to own that social graph and make it available for use by third-party services will prove invaluable. While Google has relatively little to offer in terms of existing social data, both Yahoo and Microsoft sit on treasure troves of data (as does AOL for that matter) that would allow them to legitimately compete with MySpace and Facebook as the Social Graph of Record for the rest of the Web.
Not that it would be easy for Microsoft or Yahoo to create a social network from whole cloth. I know it wouldn't. (Just look at Yahoo 360.) But the prize is well worth the effort. Consider the millions of people who have yet to join any social network. While Yahoo and Microsoft may not be the likely starting point for Millennials, it strikes me as a very natural place for the rest of the Web to discover and embrace social networking. Similarly, Microsoft and/or Yahoo seem the natural repositories of the social graph of record for the rest of the Web. If MicroHoo is ever reborn, the big opportunity for the combined companies is to create the social network for everyone else (and the social graph for everything else). In the mean time, Jerry and Steve, if you are listening, you probably should get working on it independently. My guess is that your future in the Web depends upon it.
Instantly Get Important RSS Alerts with IM Feeds
RSS feeds are the all the latest craze. It's one of the best and most popular way of staying up to date quickly. However, with services web feed readers like Google Reader and even desktop readers such as FeedDemon, those updates may not always come as quickly as you'd like them too. Or maybe you just don't live in your feed reader like I do. If you're not using Snackr, or Anothr, and you'd like your RSS updates as quickly as possible, try out IM Feeds.
IM Feeds
Similar to the real-time news tracker Anothr, IM Feeds allows users to get RSS alerts sent via instant messengers. To get start started, simply add any of the corresponding IM Feed bots to your instant messaging program of choice. Supported IM clients include Google Talk, Yahoo! Messenger, AIM, and MSN Messenger. Send the bot a message with "join" and from there you'll be presented with a link to register your account. It's as simple as that. To add feeds, you can send a message to the bot using the 'sub' command or go through your web account with IM Feeds. You can upload an OPML file or enter the full url of each RSS subscription you'd like to subscribe to.
If you're managing your IM Feeds account on the web, your subscriptions will show up in a sidebar with a link to each. On the left, you'll be presented with a list of links to each of the latest updates from your subscriptions. Subscriptions are listed in order by site instead of by date and time, which is a bit unusual for an RSS feed manager. The user interface for the service is nice, simple, and clean with little to no distractions. Even the technologically challenged can set up an account and manage their feeds through the web interface without any help.
Quirks and Suggestions
While the layout is very nice and the service is simple, there were quite a few annoying quirks I ran into when using the service. For one, you need to know the entire feed url for each site. It would be more helpful and convenient to users if they could just type in a site address and have IM Feeds automatically find the feed url to import the feed. Also, the service takes a while to show the latest items for your subscriptions. So be prepared to wait a few minutes before seeing anything in order to prevent feed duplications.
All in all, IM Feeds does the job it was meant to do. When adding a feed, you won't immediately receive any updates. However, once they started rolling in I saw them in my instant messenger before seeing them in Google Reader. There's even a badge that bloggers can add to their sites to get users to subscribe to their RSS updates via Im Feed. I'd say IM Feed does the job quite well.
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We have gathered all the resources to help you know all about pregnancy.
The desire to find a good bargain certainly doesn’t leave you when you become pregnant. In fact, your interest in getting the best value for your dollar grows as your family—and your tummy—enlarge. Therefore, it’s no surprise that mothers-to-be are eager to locate bargain maternity clothes whenever and wherever they can.
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BT to Cut Carbon Emissions by 80%
UK telco British Telecom has been working hard to reduce its carbon footprint: Last year the company said it would invest close to half a billion dollars in wind farms, and in February BT installed a solar system for its U.S. headquarters. This morning the company says it plans to reduce its carbon emissions 80 percent by 2020. Ah BT, you put our U.S. telcos to shame. Earth2Tech has the full story.
RSS Reset: Dump Your Feeds for a Month
Are you subscribing to too many blogs? Tired of the same old stuff flowing through your feeds? Think there's a better way? Well, I have just the idea for you. Join myself and others in the dumping of our RSS feeds for an entire month!
RSS Reset Month
Devised by myself and Phil Glockner of Scribkin, we recently talked for a few hours about the overflow of feeds and the repetition of certain topics and sites. With so much more out there to see, there were only a limited amount of ways to get to them without jeopardizing what was already amounting to information overload. This is where RSS Reset Month comes in. Here's the plan and list of rules:
- Keep feeds that track web site buzz (business-impacting).
- Allow feeds such as Disqus, Intense Debate or other low-volume feeds that are necessary for timely work decisions.
- Allow adding as many Google Reader Shared Items feeds as needed.
- Allow adding of aggregate, smart or keyword-filtered feeds such as RSSmeme FriendFeed Friends or TechMeme.
- Allow adding smaller site feeds. We set the upper limit for a small site to be 200 at the time of adding. This can be re-visited if the number is too small.
- Allowance process: If a site feed is so unique that it is not being covered by the processes defined above, an allowance will be made to subscribe to a direct feed to any site. The number of allowances can not exceed 10.
RSS Reset will be in effect for an entire month. Be sure to back up your original OPML file just in case you want to give it a try and decide not to continue at some point. Meanwhile, you can check out what Phil and I are adding on Toluu (Corvida, Phil). All the feeds added will also be conveniently "retweeted" on Twitter.
What's the Point?
Finding new content is hard enough. Finding new subscriptions while keeping up with your current subscriptions can be even tougher. Subscribing to more aggregation sites and smaller quality blogs will allow you to venture into unexplored territories, while giving the "little guys" a chance to be heard.
If you'd like to sign up for Toluu and join in on the fun, leave a comment down below.