blog.thomaspan.com

HYSTA’s Emerging Leadership Forum has organized an interesting panel discussion in June 26th, comparing Chinese and US Internet companies. Panelists included Rob Solomon, CEO of SideStep, Fritz Demopoulos, co-founder and CEO of Qunar.com, CC Zhuang, co-founder and CTO of Qunar.com, and Jason Tian, CEO of Baihe.com. The comparison happened mainly between sidestep (US) and Qunar.com (China), which are in the travel search field. Recently, SideStep has finished an acquisition, reported at techcrunch. Baihe.com is the largest Internet relationship site in China.

Here are my notes:

• It is expensive to run a company in US, but the return is also more lucrative.
• Generally speaking, labor cost is cheaper in China but not true for skillful engineers.
• Successful business models from US Internet companies form a good start point for their Chinese siblings but that’s far from enough.
• Google AdWords is a good way to lure customers to the site but it is not the only way, and it is not necessary the best way. Most time, it is not.
• Chinese companies face more challenges to keep company secrets.

The moderator was Richard Lim, who is a veteran VC. He felt pity that Google Adsense came out too late. Otherwise, one of the companies that his firm invested could be saved during bubble bust since the company had fantastic page view growth. In that sense, Google’s eco-system helped Web 2.0 boom.

Overall, it is an interesting panel discussion for these that have strong entrepreneur spirits in their bones to enjoy!