The China Startup Pulse

In this episode, we have invited Florian Bohnert, head of global partnerships for Mobike. As an entrepreneur, Florian developed an interest for Asian culture and the East very early on and has been leading Mobike’s global expansion journey, especially in China. He stresses the importance of being in the country where you want to expand your business and letting passion drive you. He also touches upon the positive impact mobike has on people’s health other than the obvious convenience it has brought to people’s lives.

Running a business is an exciting and rewarding process, but at times, can also be very stressful and fraught with many pitfalls. In this episode, Mike Burns, Founding Partner of Asia Growth Solutions, talks about his experiences as an executive coach, business coach, and strategy consultant in China. He highlights the challenges his clients often encounter and gives crucial advice to leaders of all levels. This includes the importance of having a good support network, the need for strong personal values compatible with business, and the 4 key issues most leaders face! With prior leadership experience at Walmart and General Electric, Mike’s advice is invaluable to all those trying to navigate the difficult task of starting a successful business in China.

Blockchain is hot. However, what we do not know is whether ICO is a viable way for entrepreneurs under the dual effects of legal regulations and market booms. Robin8, a data-driven influencer marketing platform utilizing AI and Big data, raised 3.6 million USD and also closed ICO in 6 weeks. Miranda Tan, CEO and Founder of Robin8 joined us to introduce how she developed Robin8 in China, raised money after meeting over 100 investors, and met blockchain in the end.

She shared many factors she considered for the fundraising and ICO. For example, how consistent product and repeated pitch practices helped her to raise ICO in a short time. Not stopping at talking about the positive sides of ICO, she also noticed the drawbacks. Can’t wait to share this episode with you! Click to listen to it!

In this episode, we have invited Casey Lau, Co-host for the largest tech conference in Asia - RISE. Unlike traditional conferences, RISE has helped break down social barriers not only by its highly intellectual talks, but also by a lot of workshops, drinking, networking events. Casey talked about how RISE has developed as the world class conference in Asia. More interestingly, he analysed the trends he has observed in Silicon Valley versus China and compared their different approaches to innovation.

Aiming to build diverse culture and mindset in the whole ecosystem, Jan manages Startup Grind China & APAC as the Community Director. Startup Grind is the world's largest entrepreneurship community connecting more than 1 million entrepreneurs in over 365 cities, among which over 80 cities are in China. In this episode, Jan shares how Startup Grind China grew up to a successful program, his focus in managing community and most importantly, his perspective on opportunities for startups and investments in China. Can't wait to listen to it! Cheers!

Are you struggling to form a team and curious what influence team dynamics? Alan Clayton, roaming mentor of SOSV took us through a journey on team building, diversity and people development.

The increasing demand of mobile UI/UX and the gradual openness of the society to freelancers have led to the rapid development of China's design and creativity industry. Tezign, as a data-driven design platform, helps companies connect and match designers in different scenarios. In this episode, we invited Tezign's co-founder and chief product officer Steve Wang to share his observations in China's design ecosystem and his judgments on future opportunities. He particularly shared how Tezign, as a bridge between foreign designers and Chinese companies, has promoted the development of creativity ecosystems both at home and abroad.

When you ask foreigners why they come to China to start a business, many people will say that because the Chinese market is very large and they marvel at China speed. But the key to the problem is not what brought you to China, but why you have stayed in China for so long. Today we have a special podcast with 3 "Laowai" guests who have been in China for over 10 years and are respectively leading the frontiers of venture capital accelerator, corporate innovation and entrepreneurship in Shanghai. From their mouths, you will hear China's great changes in the past decade in the eyes of foreigners. Let's listen to it!

Host: Graham Brown, Host of Asia Tech Podcast Guests: Oscar Ramos, Chinaccelerator Partner and Program Director
Kapil Kane, Director of Innovation at Intel Geoffrey Handley, Founding General Partner of Haitao Capital

With more than 8 years of experience at the world’s leading gaming companies, Kevin Yu decided to stay in China and build Sidechef, “Netflix for recipes” after his first startup exit. Realizing people’s passion for food and cooking, Kevin is determined to unlock the inner potential of people and used the lessons from gaming industry to food industry.

With 11 team members working and living in 5 different cities, Fei Yao and her company QLC are redefining working, learning and living. After leaving a traditionally successful career path as a management consultant, Fei founded the remote internship platform QLC. In this episode, she shares her view of the growing demand of people changing their jobs, and advocates the idea of lifelong learning and co-living.