The China Startup Pulse

Tencent Music, China’s answer to Spotify, filed for U.S. IPO with its soaring valuation at approximately $20 billion in 2018. What is happening in China music and entertainment industry?

Today we have Kenny Bloom who has 40 years experience in the global entertainment media space as the “Zero-man” for Warner in China to walk us through the history of China music industry from the 1980s until now and share his observations from every angle of the market. Once controlling 85% of the international music market in China and producing the #1 Chinese rock star Cuijian, Kenny is telling us the next big opportunities to succeed in this competitive market.

“If you think you can come to China and become a concert promoter, don’t come; if you want to start a record label, don’t come; but if you get innovative technology, this is a really great place to use as a launchpad to test.”

With his five-decade experience co-founding and investing in over 90 IT companies, Yossi is unofficially titled with “Israeli hi-tech godfather” and twice received the Prime Minister Award for life achievements in the high tech area. He is also the creator of ICQ, the world’s first instant messaging company, which inspired many messaging products including QQ in China.

We are honored to have Yossi to be on China Startup Pulse Podcast today where he shared his thoughts about the copycat, innovation, IP protection, Israeli tech ecosystem, and Chinese startups. As he mentioned, “We have to evaluate the whole picture...not just good or bad to be a copycat".

MWC Shanghai 2019 4YFN Startup Event now is opening 1000 free tickets to Chinaccelerator and China Startup Pulse fans! Fill in this form to reserve your seats in advance: www.wjx.top/jq/35116917.aspx

247tickets is a leading social commerce platform for entertainment in China, which just secured $2M in Series Pre-A led by Artesian Venture Partners with the participation from SOSV and Haitao Capital, and the company’s annual revenue in 2018 reached $4.9M. Greig Charlton, CEO at 247tickets and alumni of Chinaccelerator, joined us to share 247’s growth story today. After listening to this episode, you will understand how the new idea was born, how to deal with your competitors, the biggest challenge to run a business in China, and also how difficult it is to fundraise in China. In the future, 247tickets plan to utilize AI technology for personalizing the user experience.

95% of exits are acquisitions rather than IPO. Also nearly a half of them are before Series B. In today’s episode, we invited Benjamin Joffe, who is a partner at the leading global hardware accelerator HAX and has made nearly a thousand angel investments, to share his insights about exits. Here you can find out the big differences between exits in China and exits in the rest of the world, how Chinese companies develop the acquisition playbook globally and also for entrepreneurs, how you can plan your exits and the better way to integrate yourself into another corporate body.

One way for startups to grow or even exit is to work with corporates. Are corporates looking for financial return or strategic values while working with startups? For entrepreneurs, what are the challenges and opportunities to have corporates as their shareholders? How do overseas corporates see the chances in China? In this episode, we invited Andrew Gaule who has almost 20 years experience in Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) to analyze both sides of the table and delivered insights and suggestions for corporates and startups.

Many people don't believe that the senior care is a big healthcare need in China. Our guest for today, Mark Spitalnik, CEO of China Senior Care, is actually one of the first movers in this area from 2009 to educate the market, bring the international experience to China and also localize the product for the aged in China. As he mentioned, the fact is “Chinese customers don’t know what senior care is” rather than “they don’t want it”.

In addition, he also shared how he started the company, the initial challenge he was facing and also the untouched opportunities to look at in China.

China Senior Care provides senior healthcare services to promote the health, happiness, and independence of residents in China. It offers geriatric care services for the aged. The company was incorporated in 2009 and is based in Hangzhou, China.

The second episode of the 8X8 Speakers Series is about lessons learnt from failures from the perspective of an investor, a successful entrepreneur and a tech expert.

The first talk in this episode is delivered by Sophie Yao, China Regional General Manager of Fenox Venture Capital, who shared 3 most “effective” ways to screw up a startup based on her experience working with startups. Problems include no market needs, wrong timing, management issues and also the way you spent the money, etc.

We also have Gen Kanai who used to grow communities of tens of thousands of Firefox users across Asia, to share the lessons he got from Firefox’s failures. Currently, he works as the Director Of Strategic Partnerships at Animoca Brands.

Prakhar Khandui (PK) is a serial entrepreneur who sold his company Pulse to Tencent-backed Hike Messenger in India. He also delivered 2 mistakes and 3 failures he learnt in this episode, for example, selling the startup too early is not a good choice.

Chinaccelerator’s 8X8 Speakers Series invite 8 of Chinaccelerator mentors - serial entrepreneurs, industry experts and investors - to share their personal stories about entrepreneurship twice a year in Beijing and Shanghai.

8X8 Speakers Series is back! Today, we are happy to present you the first 3 talks selected from Chinaccelerator 8X8 Speakers Series events in Autumn 2018 about how knowing yourself matters while running your business. Em Robin, Founder of Inner Circles, is a female entrepreneur for 8 years who shared “Entrepreneurship is about sharing what you created”. Founder of Beijing Mindfulness Centre Dalida Turkovic shared her personal journey including how she experienced the depression and financial crisis. Andrew Schorr, Founder of Grata, delivered his insights about how important it is to be honest with yourself, have passion and experiment.

Happy New Year everyone! Today we invited Sean O’Sullivan, Founder and Managing General Partner of SOSV, the fund behind Chinaccelerator, to start the Year 2019 for China Startup Pulse and our listeners. In this episode, Sean shared his experience in China and provided his analysis of the investment trends in biotech, food tech, hardware, and software areas. Also, he pointed out the role of China in the global technology ecosystem and the impact that US-China trade war will have on startups and investors.

Sean’s entrepreneur life started in 1985 as a founder of MapInfo, bringing street mapping technology to personal computers. MapInfo went on to become a $200 million public company. He is also the co-creator of the term “cloud computing”. Now, Sean is managing SOSV, a Venture Capital firm which is running 6 accelerators in the world supporting investments in over 700 startups.

In the second episode of our series on due diligence, we learn from Blockchain Founders Fund about how they evaluate blockchain startups and what they specifically look for in the due diligence process.

Recording from Money 20/20 China in Hangzhou, our host Oscar Ramos had an in-depth discussion with Aly Madhavji and Mansoor Madhavji, partners of the Blockchain Founders Fund, who shared their insights about the due diligence process, strategy and preferences when evaluating blockchain projects, and the examples how they work with early stage projects, which is also illuminating for other startups. Here are some keywords they mentioned: Trust, product, traction, finance, etc.