Fu on Silicon Valley: China in the eyes of two Americans

in the eyes of two Americans

Absrtact: China is very hot in Silicon Valley. Most Americans love free products and are eager to learn about China, but unfortunately they have far less knowledge of China than Chinese companies.

Author: Fu

Silicon Valley is beginning to talk about China.

On the September 22, a line of people from downtown, driving along the San Francisco Highway No. 280, came to the Facebook headquarters. Here I have a short dialogue with Vaughan Smith, vice president of corporate development and misfit CEO Sonny Vu, on Cross-border innovation in the US and China. The presenter of the dialogue was Jessica, founder of the famous American magazine information, who had won the highest honor in the American press for the "Pulitzer Prize" in the Digital privacy series, a very perceptive questioner.

We talked about a lot of topics, and we talked a little bit more. Below I will take a few impressive points to share with you:

1. Why Alibaba can kill ebay in China

Mr. Smith also worked on ebay in 2002, Vaughan. At that time, they bought 33% of ebay's shares. 2003 years later, they all bought the company, accounting for nearly 80% of the entire Chinese electricity market share, and this year is exactly the year of the birth of Taobao.

Ma Yun, the English teacher appeared.

Vaughan Smith reminded a lot of Americans to pay attention to this man and the company. But ebayceo that this kind of free is not a good business model. He laments that, 12 years later, Alibaba's market capitalisation is higher than both ebay and Amazon combined.

As Vaughan Smith said, Ma Yun, although an English teacher, but his platform does not charge the merchant any fees, there is no e-commerce transaction fees, this free business model makes ebay ebay in the face of Taobao attack quickly decline.

2. Is the U.S. market really that important?

When the host Jessica asked: "Cheetah mobile such a Chinese company, why now more value the U.S. market, but also set up an office in San Francisco?"

I know, she wants me to tell her story.

I told them that although Cheetah Mobile is a Chinese company, it has opened the way to internationalization a year ago. After that, we take the company as a whole and devote all our efforts to the market of mobile tools with Google Play as its core. Our monthly active subscribers to the mobile end of the world rose from more than 40 million to more than 300 million, and the United States became our largest overseas user country.

Why, then, does the cheetah operate at the heart of America?

I have to mention the three phenomena I observed in the United States for the first time three years ago:

The first phenomenon is that American consumers are willing to choose foreign brands. For example, Samsung mobile phones, Japanese cars in the United States are very popular, especially television sets are largely occupied by foreign brands.

The second phenomenon is that America's best development engineers are recruited directly from China. China can recruit people in two weeks, but America needs six months.

The third phenomenon, in the mobile tool this big category, the U.S. Google Play rankings on the quality of products far less than China, competition is far less competitive, and even some poor tool software is still charging.

Of course, the American people are very rich. But I am convinced that free is the common demand of the world's people.

Chinese companies are very adept at this.

In China, the software never confiscated fees because of early competition. Such a living environment makes Chinese companies understand how to build effective business models with free software.

At the same time, along with the development of mobile interconnection, China's competitive advantage is increasingly obvious:

First, the rich user experience, makes the product quality to be better.

Second, the natural talent advantage, so that research and development resources to invest heavily.

Third, the mobile internet makes the world even more flat, and China's free model can be replicated globally.

So the American market is important for cheetahs, both in terms of external circumstances and their own advantages.

3. Chinese people don't just like to buy cheap smartphones

Vaughan Smith thinks the total number of smartphones in China is three times times the total number of smartphones in the United States. "Everyone in Shanghai or the Beijing subway is looking at their smartphones almost everywhere, which is a scary trend," he said. "Although there is plenty of room for technological innovation in China, the Chinese market is huge and workers are more productive than anywhere else." ”

Yes, these are the unique advantages of Chinese enterprises.

In Sonny Vu's view, although the Chinese like cheap things, but in fact, they will not just because this product is cheap to buy it, such as millet and red rice mobile phones. Because they are not only cheap, but also of good quality.

4, we do not produce goods in China, but we invented a lot of things in China

Although China has many advantages, Sonny Vu tells us that his company only sells goods in China, rather than producing them in China.

Interestingly, they set the research and Development Center in Shenzhen, China. To some extent, he says, it is because China's operating costs are lower, but the main reason is that there are a lot of great software professionals, more efficient, faster, and shorter product development cycles.

China is very hot in Silicon Valley. Most Americans love free products and are eager to learn about China, but unfortunately they have far less knowledge of China than Chinese companies.

But it has left a new space for me to discover the US and to discover Silicon Valley again.