Episodes
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Hi folks, welcome back! Today Sandy Diao (Director of Growth at Descript) joins us to guest host and interview Adam Bao, founder of The Harbinger and COO at Metatheory. Since 2017, Adam took the path less traveled to explore business model innovation and venture deals across China, Taiwan, and SEA. Adam double clicks into startups he evaluated alongside Hurst Lin (Cofounder at Sina and DCM Ventures) during the Covid years. It’s a roving discussion that highlights the importance of unconventional thinking and competitive differentiation across categories ranging from e-bikes to K12 dance networks to selling upcycled trash products. Adam also describes his early entry into the world of Web3, building games + new IPs at Metatheory with Kevin Lin (Twitch cofounder) and the team. To date, Metatheory has launched the DuskBreakers IP collection, raised $24m+ from lead investors including a16z, Pantera, Dragonfly, Breyer Capital, Sfermion, and Merit Circle, and is currently building out its flagship games. Finally, Adam shares hard earned lessons about scaling high quality teams and organizations, and how he manages (and leverages) chronic pain as a lever.
Show Notes
(00:00:00) — An early education on the value of differentiation
(00:04:40) — Insights into Chinese startups at Shunwei Capital (Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun’s fund)
(00:07:35) — Building out The Harbinger podcast and network
(00:14:05) — Generating 100m+ views for The Harbinger while on Chinese dating show 非诚勿扰 (If You Are The One)
(00:18:33) — Segue to Segway-Ninebot (Loomo, delivery robots, and e-scooters!)
(00:22:42) — Launching Beam, Asia Pacific’s largest shared micro-mobility company
(00:27:32) — Moving to Taiwan during COVID, sniffing out unconventional opportunities and hidden gems with Hurst Lin (Cofounder at Sina and DCM Ventures)
(00:41:28) — Taiwan the “recycling kingdom” and a business in upcycling trash!
(00:47:52) — K12 dance education to power the next vertical social network?
(00:53:03) — But what about manufacturing opportunities in Taiwan?
(00:56:53) — The wacky world of games, Web3, and building with Kevin Lin (Twitch cofounder)
(01:06:32) — Lessons learned while building Metatheory & DuskBreakers
(01:11:53) — Managing chronic pain and finding strength in vulnerability
Medium post here: https://medium.com/the-harbinger-china/building-off-the-beaten-path-in-asia-with-metatheory-coo-adam-bao-a31f16c750eb. -
Today we have joining us Peter Cheng, who is founding partner at Eminence Ventures. Eminence just raised $120m for its second fund focused on backing Chinese enterprise software and cloud start-ups. After a decade of torrid start-up growth driven by mobile and consumer internet, China’s enterprise software market is poised for a breakout and expected to reach $40bn in revenue in 2025. Peter shares with us his formative experiences across eBay, AdChina (adtech start-up he founded that was acquired by Alibaba), and Tencent (as GM of ads products), before launching his career as a venture capitalist. Peter provides an overview of China’s cloud market, key opportunities across horizontal and vertical software, AI, and IT infrastructure. He describes key success factors and go-to-market strategy for such companies, including for portfolio companies Tsign and Recurrent.ai. Finally, Peter illustrates key differences between the US and Chinese environments and how that impacts the development trajectory of software companies.
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Today we’re recording at the KKBOX studio in Taiwan, big thanks to the Firstory team for setting this up. We have joining us Phil Chen, founding partner of Race Capital and product executive at HTC, whom I can only describe as a basketball loving, deep tech investing, future building nerd of a modern Renaissance man. While at HTC, Phil led product management for the first ever Android phone, founded Vive VR, and launched the world’s first blockchain phone (HTC Exodus). At the same time, Phil ran HTC’s corporate development efforts, where he invested in KKBOX and SoundHound, and also led HTC’s acquisition of Beats Electronics, which was eventually acquired by Apple. As a VC and advisor at Horizon Ventures (Li Ka-Shing’s venture fund), Phil managed their deep tech investments, where he served as a board director for over fifteen companies globally including Improbable, Soul Machines, Kneron, Scopely, Sentient, Fano Labs, Amper and 88Rising. On today’s podcast, Phil shares the insider scoop on HTC’s incredible rise and eventual decline that hasn’t been heard before, including an early opportunity to invest in Xiaomi when it was worth only $150m. Phil describes his investments in VR, especially as it pertains to health and how VR hacks the visual cortex to reduce pain, improve mental wellness, etc. Phil speaks to the potential of a blockchain powered future, as well the opportunity for Taiwanese start-ups to build world-class companies, especially as so many successful entrepreneurs return from Silicon Valley during the COVID era. Lots to cover on today’s podcast, enjoy!
Link to write-up: https://www.theharbingerchina.com/blog/phil-chen-htc-vr-blockchain-1 -
Raymond Yang is founding partner of WestSummit Capital, a leading technology growth equity fund that primarily invests in the US and China. Since 2010, the team has led investments into defining unicorns including Unity (~$41bn mobile game and real-time 3D development engine), Segway-Ninebot (~$8bn mobility + robotics platform), Twitch (gaming live video platform leader acquired by Amazon), GigaDevice (~$15bn NOR flash storage chip design), and more. Before his investment career, Raymond led the turnaround of Linktone and its successful IPO on NASDAQ in 2004. He also founded RivalWatch (retailer market intelligence) and Saratoga Technology (voice messaging services equipment). Today, Raymond shares with us his fascinating story, from growing up in Beijing and attending Tsinghua University to moving to Silicon Valley, launching his entrepreneurial career. Raymond then describes WestSummit Capital’s investment strategy in more detail, and shares more insights and lessons learned from key portfolio companies such as Unity. Raymond also shares key success factors for Segway-Ninebot and explains the significance of its IPO on the Shanghai STAR board (issued first CDRs in China). Hope you enjoy!
Link to write-up: https://www.theharbingerchina.com/blog/westsummit-capital-raymond-yang-snipers-approach-to-tech-growth-capital -
Joseph (Jo) Phua is non-executive chairman of 17LIVE Inc, a company he cofounded and ran as CEO until June 2020. 17LIVE operates the largest live streaming platform in Asia (ex-China) with over 50m global users, led by its flagship app 17LIVE, as well as Meme Live and live stream eCommerce solutions HandsUP and FBBuy. Today, Jo shares with us his fascinating story, from selling watches in China to building Paktor (Tinder of Southeast Asia) and eventually merging it with 17 Media, resulting in one of the few and most notable internet unicorns that grew out of Taiwan + Japan. Jo discusses the operational challenges of running an online dating and live stream business, a fundraise strategy unique to Southeast Asia, and the importance of product-market fit and execution. He also shares his approach to growth, both in terms of M&A as well as market entry. Hope you enjoy!
Link to write-up here: https://www.theharbingerchina.com/blog/pioneering-live-stream-and-social-entertainment-in-asia-with-17live-founder?categoryId=23497 -
Today we have joining us Faisal Galaria, CEO of Blippar, a pioneer in augmented reality (AR). Now Blippar has a roller coaster of a story… the one-time unicorn raised $100m+ in venture funding but struggled to find a sustainable business model, burned through its cash and entered bankruptcy proceedings, before returning as a new business based on its drag-and-drop AR content creation tool (think WordPress for AR). Faisal joins to guide Blippar’s relaunch and set it on a sustainable growth track, leveraging experiences from his time scaling Skype as an early executive, and Spotify as SVP of International. Faisal shares with us what Blippar is working on these days, key drivers for AR adoption (from COVID-19 to 5G), what developments he sees in the AR/VR space, as well as examples of what Blippar is working on with clients, including with key clients in China and Asian markets.
Link to write-up: https://www.theharbingerchina.com/blog/ar-s-comeback-kid-with-blippar-ceo-faisal-galaria?categoryId=23497 -
The Harbinger interviews Chee-We Ng, founding partner of Oak Seed Ventures. Chee-we invests solely in early-stage enterprise and core technology startups, and offers strategic advice and his network in order to help them succeed. Chee-We studied Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT and has been programming in C and C++ since he was fourteen. Prior to founding Oak Seed, he was a managing partner at CRCM, a venture partner at Redpoint, led Cisco Investments in China and was a McKinsey consultant. He was the seed investor in many enterprise and core technology startups including Kyligence, Fastone, Oushu and Shangyong/Xinji. With Chee-we, we talk through several developments in China’s enterprise and cloud market, including trends across SaaS, data analytics and AI, data infrastructure and more. We also discuss the impact of geopolitics that has brought about an opportunity in “import substitution” away from global chipsets and core enterprise software. Finally, Chee-we shares his views on how to assess technical deals and founders, and offers advice to aspiring technical entrepreneurs.
Link to write-up: https://www.theharbingerchina.com/blog/investing-in-chinese-enterprise-and-core-technology-with-oak-seed-vc?categoryId=23497 -
The Harbinger interviews Tiger Fang, cofounder and CEO at Kargo Technologies, a Jakarta-based startup that aims to digitize trucking and freight logistics in Indonesia before expanding to other markets in Southeast Asia. Kargo counts among its investors Sequoia Capital, ZhenFund, Intudo Ventures, ATM Capital, Coca-Cola, as well as Uber cofounder Travis Kalanick. Kargo recently raised $31m in its Series A led by Tenaya Capital. With Tiger, we cover his journey over the past decade, initially as Managing Director at Lazada Thailand before joining Uber to manage Western China and Indonesia as General Manager. We then examine Kargo’s solution, discuss how it incorporates into the logistics supply chain, how to develop route and pricing optimization, before shifting to competition and opportunity in the market, and the impact of China on Kargo and the broader SEA ecosystem.
Link to write-up: https://www.theharbingerchina.com/blog/digitizing-logistics-infrastructure-with-kargo-founder-and-ceo-tiger-fang?categoryId=23497 -
Zac (Xiang) Pan is Associate Partner at Lightspeed China Partners (LCP), one of China’s top early stage VCs managing $2 billion USD. Zac joined LCP in January 2013, after having worked at Steamboat Ventures (Disney corporate VC) and China Renaissance. Since then, Zac has invested in some of Lightspeed’s top deals, including QingCloud, Spark Education, Full Truck Alliance (Manbang), IfChange, PeerSafe and more. With Zac, we hop on a Zoom call (while the coronavirus epidemic rages on), to explore LCP’s investment strategy, team structure, and how it collaborates with its sister funds around the world. We also touch on consumer, enterprise, deep tech, and macro trends as Zac shares what he’s looking at and what he finds interesting in the China market. The zoom call quality came out ok, apologies for some any disclarity in the audio!
Link to write-up: https://www.theharbingerchina.com/blog/a-lightspeed-review-of-enterprise-tech-and-the-chinese-consumer-with?categoryId=23497 -
Jacky Wang is COO of SHAREit, a platform that provides global users with high-quality digital content simply and quickly. Its basic file transferring function is over 200x faster than Bluetooth and enables sharing of files, photos, videos and music of any format. SHAREit has served emerging markets since 2015 and now has 1.8 billion installs and 600 million MAUs. Jacky previously worked at Google, Zynga, and Pinterest, before moving back to China to lead SHAREit. Jacky shares how SHAREit stumbled into the emerging market opportunity, deeply understanding and then serving core user needs, riding viral growth to capture a huge user base, and future monetization methods.
Link to write-up: https://www.theharbingerchina.com/blog/enabling-content-discovery-and-sharing-for-the-next-billion-users-with?categoryId=23497 -
Zou Jia is CTO of OYO JiuDian (OYO China), a Chinese hotel chain operator that since November 2017 has scaled to over 500,000 rooms on its platform by February 2019 and raised over $800 million from Softbank’s Vision Fund. OYO JiuDian partners with fragmented hotel owners in China by aggregating them onto its platform through leases or franchises and through renovations, standardizes the user experience. Jia shares insights on why he moved back to China from SF, OYO JiuDian’s consumer product philosophy, how they manage supply, the fragmented Chinese hotel marketplace, and how he’s applied blitzscaling learnings from Uber China and Mobike to OYO JiuDian and more.
Link to write-up: https://www.theharbingerchina.com/blog/blitzscaling-hotels-in-china-with-oyo-jiudian-cto-zou-jia?categoryId=23497 -
Yuan Liu is a managing director at ZhenFund, one of China’s top seed funds founded by Xu Xiaoping (Bob Xu) and Wang Qiang (Victor Wang), cofounders at NYSE listed New Oriental Education, along with Sequoia Capital China. While at ZhenFund, Yuan has invested in some of their top deals, including autonomous driving unicorn Momenta, Yi23, Castbox, 12 Sigma, and more. With Yuan, we’ll learn more about ZhenFund’s investment focus, fund strategy, and how it differentiates against other funds. We’ll explore best practices when it comes to deal sourcing and portfolio management. Yuan also shares with us what trends he’s looking at in China, and some of the advantages and disadvantages of Chinese teams building start-ups tackling global markets.
Link to write-up: https://www.theharbingerchina.com/blog/pioneering-china-seed-investing-with-zhenfund-managing-director-yuan-liu?categoryId=23497 -
The Harbinger interviews Dr. Fan Ling, founder and CEO of Tezign. We had our initial conversation with Dr. Fan back in fall 2017, and his company has since grown from 30 to nearly 200 people, so we’re quite excited to dig in and understand what’s changed at Tezign and in the broader China market since that time. As a refresher – Tezign is a digital platform for creative talent and content resources based in Shanghai. It provides two primary solutions for large global brands: a creative supplier platform (match projects and companies with the right designers and creatives) as well as a digital asset management, data intelligence solution. With Dr. Fan, we discuss Tezign’s growth, evolution in its business model, key client pain points, a competitive landscape ranging from freelance platforms and SaaS solutions to agency models, the importance of culture and talent development, and more.
Link to write-up: https://www.theharbingerchina.com/blog/digital-asset-management-with-chinese-characteristics-with-tezign-founder -
We interview Ben Hu, Cofounder and CTO at Liulishuo, an AI-powered English learning solution with nearly 100 million registered users that IPOed in September 2018 (as LAIX). On Liulishuo’s platform, AI technologies are integrated with learning content, well-established language learning pedagogies, gamified features and social elements to deliver an interactive and adaptive learning experience. Ben shares his perspective on a number of topics, including: his journey from China to NYC/SF and back, what is Liulishuo and how does its AI work, the importance of integrating cutting-edge tech with a keen understanding of consumers and quality education content, how Liulishuo compares to other edtech giants in China, Liulishuo’s growth strategy, and more.
Link to write-up: https://www.theharbingerchina.com/blog/who-needs-an-ai-teacher-with-liulishuo-founder-cto-ben-hu -
Today we have the pleasure of interviewing Howard Chao, an active cross-border investor and advisor to entrepreneurs. Howard began his career as a corporate lawyer with O’Melveny & Myers, helped found the firm’s offices in Tokyo, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Beijing, practiced law for many years as a cross-border investment specialist, and was chair of O’Melveny & Myers’ Asia practice. In the past six years, Howard has moved to the principal side of investing, and now makes angel and other VC investments in earlier stage companies through his personal vehicle, Doon Capital. Howard invests primarily in startups located in the US and China, including fintech, mobility, agtech, foodtech, and other verticals.
Howard shares his perspective on a number of topics, including: the development of Chinese trade and investment flows since the 1990s, the progression of VC investment into China beginning in the mid-2000s, Chinese outbound capital, the role of CFIUS in monitoring Chinese investment into US companies, and the beginnings of not only a trade war, but potentially an economic cold war between China and the US, and what this can mean for investors and founders.
Link to write-up here: https://www.theharbingerchina.com/blog/china-us-investment-and-how-it-evolved-with-howard-chao-founding-partner -
Rapid fire Q&A with Tina He and Adam Bao. Covers China VC trends and opportunities across consumer internet, education, enterprise, AI, China US, and more. Full transcription at: http://www.theharbingerchina.com/blog/where-are-the-most-promising-vc-investment-opportunities-in-chinaTL;DR 👇🏻- Wechat's ecosystem offers a new playground where customer acquisition cost is extremely low, so there's a lot of new opportunities here to leverage this distribution channel.- Ed tech in China is booming with people's eagerness to learn as well as the companies' capability to monetize through paid content. Accessibility of knowledge and information becomes huge because more and more people feel anxious that they'd be left behind.- Mobile first payment has made transactions within products extremely seamless and easy.- Enterprise software is still in its early stage because companies are unwilling to pay, but tons of opportunities in the future as small companies are undergoing rapid growth.- Competition is super fierce in China with major big players (counterparts of FANG in the US)... incumbents have a lot of power! There are so many peeps in China that a specific TAM can be a lot larger than people expect— serving a targeted niche market or coming up with a creative business model are great ways to stand out.- The startup ecosystem is truly becoming global — more VCs are coming to China and Chinese VCs are also encouraging talents in the US to found companies in China.
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We recently visited the Xiaomi office to chat with Donovan Sung, Director of Product Management and Marketing at Xiaomi Global. Over the past few years, Donovan has led not only product development, but also helped build the global team at Xiaomi responsible for launching in dozens of new markets around the world and turning Xiaomi into a truly global brand. We discuss Xiaomi’s global product and business strategy, how this varies by market (e.g. China vs. developing markets vs. developed markets), key channels and partners, and how Xiaomi has been able to achieve incredible international success in such a short period of time.
Link to write-up here: https://www.theharbingerchina.com/blog/understanding-xiaomi-s-global-strategy-with-donovan-sung-xiaomi-global-s
