Kai-Fu Lee on Sino-US entrepreneurship differences: In China everything starts with people

Kai-Fu Lee Lead: foreign media recently to Lee's interview, in the interview process, Kai-Fu Lee expressed for China's entrepreneurial culture understanding. The following is the full text of the article: Kai-fu Lee's most famous identity is Google China's first president, in addition, he also led the Apple Research and development department, and set up Microsoft's research and Development center in China.　　Therefore, the IT industry's "three giants" have left his shadow. After leaving Google last September, kai-Fu Lee recognized that there are many deficiencies in Chinese technology start-ups and venture capital culture.　　First, young Chinese entrepreneurs find it hard to get seed money and early investment, and China lacks figures like Silicon Valley investor Rohn Camves Ron Conway. In order to solve this problem, Kai-fu Lee set up the "Innovation Workshop", which is a start-up company incubation institutions.　　Instead of diversifying into potential projects, the agency is looking for engineering graduates across the country to help companies that are supported by innovation workshops and help them build their own start-ups within 12-18 months. "Innovation Workshop" is a bit like the Y Combinator incubator company in the United States, but the "Innovation Workshop" is devoted to human capital--one of China's strengths.　　After Kai-Fu Lee left Google, foreign media on the "Innovation Factory" in the future of his interview. At present, "Innovation Workshop" in Beijing has 80 employees and more than 232 square meters of office space.　　It is reported that the agency plans to raise 115 million of billions of dollars to build 5 successful start-ups within a year, involving mobile internet, cloud computing and E-commerce. Talking about the "Innovation Workshop" and its plans, Kai-Fu Lee talked about the differences between the Sino-American entrepreneurial culture, and said that his incubation institutions will also have the characteristics of the two countries entrepreneurial culture. Here are his five points: 1. Education gap: Lee said that China's education system is not set up for the establishment of start-up companies. Chinese graduates have a high degree of technical literacy, but lack market, sales, operation and leadership skills. "They are all programmers, but they need training," he said. "The government has encouraged young people to start businesses, providing them with financial and credit support, but China's education has not followed these policies," he said.　　Kai-Fu Lee said that graduates should start by "innovative workshops" or other forms of entrepreneurship before they start their own business; if they start their own business, they will almost certainly fail. 2. Parental restrictions: The older generation of Chinese are still very conservative, including the parents of some emerging entrepreneurs who are skeptical of entrepreneurship.　　Lee said he had to persuade young parents and relatives to tell them that joining the "Innovation Workshop" was the right choice. The "Innovation Workshop" is only half the wage level of Microsoft, Google and Baidu, and there is a greater risk. In a culture that attaches great importance to stability and reputation, it is difficult to persuade young people to start a business.　　Lee said some parents have expressed in their reply that "my son's success depends on you". 3. Fear of lossDefeat: In Silicon Valley's entrepreneurial culture, failure is even worth celebrating. Many successful entrepreneurs say failure teaches them the most. Some venture capitalists are also more willing to invest in teams with failed experiences. This is not the case in China. "People don't understand risk and failure," he said.　　"In China, the failure of startups means giving up rather than restarting, which limits the entrepreneurial experience and hinders innovation." 4. Everything starts with people: "Y combinator will be difficult to operate in China because it is difficult to find qualified investors," Lee said. It usually takes hundreds of startups to find two outstanding companies. "In China, you have to find the right people, and then study the entrepreneurial project."　　At present, "Innovation factory" is supporting two outside of the start-up companies, five other projects are "innovation Workshop" built inside. Lee said that as entrepreneurs get better training, the proportion of good startups will increase.　　In setting up the "Innovation Workshop", he discussed with Bill Gross, Idealab's Pimco, and decided to provide some of the same models for all the startups it supports, including focused human resources, monitoring services and other tools. Lee said the "Innovation Workshop" is now a talented person, and that talent is an important factor in attracting investment. When he started recruiting, he immediately received 7,000 sets. By the end of the first month, "Innovation workshop" had 40,000 sets to be screened. At first they picked about 30 engineers.　　At present, the company's database has more than 10 resumes, which facilitates the recruitment of start-up companies. 5. Face the Chinese market in different ways: Kai-Fu said that while mobile internet, gaming, E-commerce and cloud computing have developed rapidly in both China and the United States, there are some or obvious or subtle differences that affect start-up companies. For example, the iphone and Android have not been well developed in China because prices are too expensive and contracts with operators are too complex and substandard. Nokia has a large market share but lags behind other companies in the mobile Internet.　　These are the problems that Chinese developers have to face. Lee said Apple's App store might not work in China. "The Chinese are unwilling to spend money to buy software, and the free model may be successful," he says.　　"With regard to the Chinese preference for software, he says, the Chinese prefer games, music, photos and instant messaging, relative to Americans ' enthusiasm for search, YouTube and different browsers." Kai-Fu Lee also said Chinese social-gaming start-ups had difficulty getting into U.S. platforms such as Facebook because of strong competition from developers such as Zynga. It is noteworthy that Zynga is negotiating with SoftBank, which could create opportunities for it to open up Asian markets. We will see whether Zynga will encounter many difficulties in opening up the Chinese market. (Chin Liang)