The China Startup Pulse

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.

Entrepreneurs looking for funding can not escape from the due diligence from investors. In order to have more founders to understand the process of investment due diligence, we are introducing a new and special series, where we talk with investors about due diligence.

Recording from Money 20/20 China in Hangzhou, Oscar Ramos talked with Carman Chan, Founder and Managing Partner of Click Ventures who successfully invested in Spotify, Meetup and many tech companies. 


In this episode, Chan shared insights on how they evaluate traction, team, product, as well as what founders should have prepared for investors, the proper plan for companies to work on and lastly the differences in Asia versus the West regarding due diligence.

What are the differences between the Chinese market and international market regarding User Experience (UX)? What are the crucial principles to localize your design for the Chinese market? Samuel Jesse is the right person to talk with who co-founded a UX research lab UXSPOT in Shanghai. With 10 years of experience in UX, we talked with Samuel about his experience working with Chinese clients as an International designer, UX practices for Chinese consumers, Why mobile is crucial and more about product localization. Here’s a short quote from Samuel , “when something is [well] designed, it gives that perception of trust, it transfers that perception of quality.”

PK is an Indian entrepreneur and angel investor in social network, content and live-stream space who built, grew and finally sold his startups InstaLively and Pulse to Tencent-owned company Hike Messenger. After selling them, PK came to China for new opportunities and challenges where he started being a consultant for Various Startups which helps China-India Startups and VCs in building the next billion Internet users in Indonesia and India, as well as mentoring founders for Chinaccelerator.

In this episode, PK shared his journey about selling startups to Tencent and also delivered insights about the China-India startup and investment ecosystem, including the challenges to localize Chinese companies in India and how the Chinese data drive model works in India, etc.

Liulishuo is an AI-powered English language learning platform operated by the AI firm LAIX founded in 2012 and it went public on New York Stock Exchange in Sept 2018. We are lucky to have Ben Hu, Co-Founder, CTO and Head of Adult English of Liulishuo to share the first 6 months of starting the company, their early successes, the growth, as well as his insights about managing a team from 5 to 200 people. “Empathy and strategic thinking together make the management easier.”

As of June 30, 2018, Liulishuo has over 83.8 million registered users and 7.2 million average monthly active users in 175 countries. The average daily time per user is 60+ minutes.