Overall, I feel that China is like the U.S. in its early days (1920s). Or the 1999 Silicon Valley
There are a lot of opportunities, but less rules. It's a jungle basically. For people with tech depth and want to build something steadily, China is not the best place.
a high percentage of young entrepreneurs there are just opportunists. They are not interested in sitting down and building something useful. Instead, they just want to quickly raise/burn money and go public.
There are way more theranos' there in China.
And you need to have connections to success in China. This is a historical and cultural thing.
I don't know how many of you noticed the recent news of didi acquiring uber China. The leaders of the two companies are actually from the same family. One is the daughter of the Lenovo CEO. The other is the niece of him. Probably coincidence，but you see coincidences more often in China.
My attitude towards China is that I take it seriously. I admit what it does better. But I don't think I'm strong enough to fight in the jungle.
I worked for several SF startups and most are the same. So I don't agree there are way more Theranos' in China. I would say they are probably around the same level in terms of many people claiming they are for something when they are not.
This doesn't just happen in tech though. I have seen it in banking as well when it was booming. When there is a booming industry, it tends to attract a lot of posers that exasperates the hype.
I see this phenomena everywhere in China. I can't tell where Chinese silicon valley and wall street are. running start-ups has become a all-people movement.
For those who do manage to become billionaires, the game often becomes even rougher: http://www.forbes.com/sites/raykwong/2011/07/25/friends-dont...
But on the other hand, you seldom see people in Silicon Valley are actually from the valley. They are immigrants from different states and countries. They abandoned their connections (especially family connections) from home to start over here. Many of them became successful.
China simply doesn't have the same soil for this kind of success.
at least, SV is the birth place of many hardcore tech companies like intel.
We've had these in Japan for decades, but less high-tech - it's just a manual code lock and the delivery man writes the code down on a delivery slip and sticks in your mailbox.
For example, in the yard of our apartment we have storage cabinets with password locks. The deliver guys won't deliver each package to your door, as it is inefficient, especially because apartment buildings are tall in China, you have to take elevator. Instead, they put packages into one of the cabinet doors. And you will receive a password on your phone. Put the code in, the cabinet door will open. you can then get the package.
But China invented the fruit lockers: you want fresh fruit, it gets delivered to a locker in your apartment everyday. I haven't tried it, but was a bit floored when I saw one.
We personally just have them leave packages at the wuye (apartment management), any high end apartment just has a counter that will keep your package for you, no need for a locker solution.
Whether that's advantage China or advantage US depends on your perspective.
I heard that railway systems in most countries are not profitable, they have to be funded by the government.
But the Chinese railway system is so advanced and profitable, due to cost-of-labor and population density. Even high speed railway wasn't a Chinese invention. As a comparison, the U.S. railway is so old and kinda desolate.
Most ideas are not originated from China, but they grow better in China.
Because of the population density, the network effect is stronger in China.
For example, consider high speed rail in California. Due to the existing rail system, the marginal increase in economic benefit gained by building a new high speed system is fairly small.
Compare this situation to high speed rail in China. Without the existence of a fairly efficient existing system, the economic benefit to building the high speed lines was massive.
This historical pattern is somewhat common.
Rising societies have all of the latest advances gained by building previous systems, and none of the existing societies' technical debt.
They get the newest and shiniest technological base, simply because they're building it now.
That's only true of passenger rail though--freight rail in the US works really well.
Best thing ever.
Strange to hear no one uses them.
Granted, post offices are beginning to hold less and less now, cutting costs I guess, which may be increasing the usage.
But in the U.S., it may be a good idea to locate the lockers in grocery stores. Picking packages while doing groceries is also convenient.
I bet facebook is thinking hard how to merge Messenger and Whatsapp without getting people angry.
Indeed. Simultaneous communication between WeChat circle, QQ group, the odd email CC'd to people in and out of the conversation. 'Keep the momentum'. Should anyone get confused, send them a screenshot from your phone of the other conversation. It is very fluid. Show you're communicating and getting things done. For transactions, pay via WeChat, or pay via AliPay, doesn't matter, works anywhere.
No need to integrate anything; users will do it themselves if they see a compelling need.
Nah, WhatsApp was just crippled by its origins. It was started independently from a major social-network, and in a country whose currency and payments infrastructure wasn't going to scale outside the original borders very well.
and wechat is indeed in the center of this system. For example, a fruit stand would now accept mobile payment via wechat. those who run fruit stands are usually farmers.
I think it makes a lot of sense to build mobile payment into a a social app. because any currency would require a social network. and transferring money is a key social activity.
building independent mobile payment without the support from a mature social network is a bad idea, for example square and apple pay (only useable in the apple ecosystem, a partial mobile ecosystem).
China never seemed to have a credit card era, it jumped directly from paying cash to paying with mobile. whereas in the U.S., credit card is so convenient, people don't want to change.
for many years, wechat has been combining new features with its social network, whereas whatsapp wanted to be a pure chatting app and missed many opportunities.
you can use wechat to order food at restaurants, you can log into public wifi with wechat ....
This is just one example. Another thing I noticed is online shopping. At the gate of our apartment, each day, there are many deliver guys on tricycles. They have a more efficient and cheap delivering system.
For example, in the yard of our apartment we have storage cabinets with password locks. The deliver guys won't deliver each package to your door, as it is inefficient, especially because apartment buildings are tall in China, you have to take elevator. Instead, they put packages into one of the cabinet doors. And you will receive a password on your phone. Put the code in, the cabinet door will open. you can then get the package.
This is not a complex idea, but hard to implement in the U.S., because we don't have the same population density here. When you build an infrastructure like this, you want to serve as many people as possible.