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Gregory Dray is the Co-Founder of Animaj, a next-generation, digital-first media company that owns, manages and delivers engaging and premium brands to kids and families everywhere. Launched in May 2022, Animaj identifies the highest-quality independent IPs with solid awareness and engagement with kids that have yet to become global hits; buys and federates them; and uses a digital-first approach, leveraging data, technology, and distribution capabilities to transform them into multi-platform global franchises. From series and movies to L&M deals; location-based experiences to content distribution across 100+ platforms worldwide (incl. YouTube, Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, Max, RAI, Clan, ABC Australia, Roku, Youku), the company's brands live everywhere kids and families are, all at once. To bring this vision to life, Animaj has so far raised €100 million, building a portfolio of 3 owned-and-operated IPs: the iconic and award-winning Pocoyo, leading digital-native brands Kidibli and HeyKids; as well as Rabbids, a partnership with Ubisoft Entertainment. Animaj's lead investor is Left Lane Capital, a US-based, global venture capital and growth equity firm investing in high-growth internet and consumer technology companies that are fundamental to the lives of customers. With 20+ years of experience in the international media industry, Greg has built a remarkable track record of driving growth in global and rapidly evolving environments. He is recognized as an effective leader and operator, having successfully run both creative/content engines and business operations within major media/tech companies such as Google/YouTube, Lagardère Group, and Time Warner.
Chinese tech heavyweight Alibaba Group Holding Ltd's online marketplaces Taobao and Tmall announced on Thursday that they will accept mobile payment options from Tencent's WeChat Pay gradually from Sept 12, a significant step in breaking down payment barriers between the two internet companies, enhancing interoperability and interconnectivity of different platforms and improving user experience, experts said.中国科技巨头阿里巴巴集团控股有限公司旗下的在线市场淘宝和天猫于9月5日宣布，将从9月12日起逐步接受腾讯的微信支付作为移动支付选项，专家称这是打破两家互联网公司支付壁垒的重要一步，这将增强不同平台之间的互操作性和互联互通，提升用户体验。They added the move is conducive to elevating payment convenience, invigorating the vitality of consumption, and bolstering the innovation and development of payment modalities.他们补充说，这一举措有助于提高支付便利性，激发消费活力，并促进支付方式的创新发展。Taobao and Tmall said in a statement on Wednesday that they had issued notices on their platforms to solicit feedback from merchants about accepting WeChat Pay as an additional payment method, as part of a broader push to improve the shopping experience.淘宝和天猫在9月4日的一份声明中表示，他们已在平台上发布通知，征求商家关于接受微信支付作为支付方式的反馈，这一举措将有助于改善购物体验。The two platforms said they are upholding the concept of openness and cooperation and actively exploring interoperability and partnerships with various platforms to enhance user experience and make consumers' shopping activities more convenient, enjoyable and efficient.这两个平台表示，他们坚持开放和合作的理念，并积极探索与各种平台的互通性和合作伙伴关系，以提升用户体验，使消费者的购物活动更加方便、愉快和高效。Alipay, a popular mobile payment tool launched by Chinese fintech company Ant Group, said in a statement following the announcement, "Openness, collaboration, innovation and sharing are fundamental principles of the internet and the driving force behind the industry's development."由中国金融科技公司蚂蚁集团推出的流行移动支付工具支付宝在公告后发表声明称，“开放、合作、创新和共享是互联网的基本原则，也是行业发展的驱动力。Alipay said it will continue to deepen cooperation with Taobao and Tmall, and step up innovation in technologies and products. Apart from payment products, the company will further expand open cooperation in broader ecosystems such as internet technology and artificial intelligence to create more business opportunities, it added.支付宝表示，它将继续深化与淘宝和天猫的合作，并加强技术和产品的创新。除了支付产品，该公司还将在更广泛的生态系统（如互联网技术和人工智能）中进一步扩大开放合作，创造更多商机。As the main rival to WeChat Pay, Alipay is a major payment service provider for Taobao and Tmall. WeChat Pay said it is always open to collaborations, and is actively exploring interoperability with various sectors, adding it plans to continue exploring new partnerships and improving convenience for users on the basis of ensuring transactional security.作为微信支付的主要竞争对手，支付宝是淘宝和天猫的主要支付服务提供商。微信支付表示，它始终对合作持开放态度，并积极探索与各个行业的互操作性，同时计划在确保交易安全的基础上，继续探索新的合作伙伴关系并提高用户便利性。Pan Helin, a member of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's Expert Committee for Information and Communication Economy, said the move is a win-win result for the two Chinese tech giants as both Taobao and Tmall could attract WeChat users by adding WeChat Pay as a payment option and help bolster their business performances, while WeChat Pay will greatly expand its application ecosystems via its access to e-commerce platforms.工业和信息化部信息通信经济专家委员会成员潘和林（音）表示，这一举措对两家中国科技巨头来说是双赢的结果，因为淘宝和天猫可以通过增加微信支付作为支付选项来吸引微信用户，帮助提升他们的业务表现，而微信支付则可以通过接入电商平台大大扩展其应用生态系统。Pan said Taobao and Tmall have access to several mobile payment tools — such as Cloud QuickPass of payment giant China UnionPay — and digital renminbi, so accepting payments from WeChat Pay will not affect the current digital payment landscape.潘和林（音）表示，淘宝和天猫已开通包括支付巨头中国银联的云闪付在内的多种移动支付工具，以及数字人民币，因此接受微信支付不会影响当前的数字支付格局。"It is foreseeable that there will be more frequent and closer cooperation among different platforms and payment companies," Pan said, adding that allowing users to transact through WeChat Pay on Taobao and Tmall will help the platforms gain more users from smaller cities, where WeChat Pay has a higher penetration rate than Alipay.潘和林（音）说“可以预见，不同平台和支付公司之间的合作将会更加频繁和紧密”，他还表示，允许用户在淘宝和天猫上通过微信支付进行交易，将有助于这些平台吸引更多来自小城市的用户，那里的微信支付渗透率高于支付宝。Industry statistics show that WeChat Pay and Alipay together control 90 percent of China's mobile payments market. Experts said the acceptance of WeChat Pay on Taobao and Tmall is a landmark event in enhancing the interconnectivity of payment methods.行业统计数据显示，微信支付和支付宝共同控制了中国移动支付市场90%的份额。专家表示，淘宝和天猫接受微信支付是一个增强支付方式互联互通的里程碑事件。Wang Pengbo, a senior analyst at market consultancy Botong Analysys, said the move will allow consumers to choose their preferred payment methods freely, enhance their shopping experience, unleash consumption potential as well as provide more possibilities for bolstering the innovation of payment technology.市场咨询公司博通分析的高级分析师王鹏博（音）表示，此举将允许消费者自由选择他们偏好的支付方式，提升他们的购物体验，释放消费潜力，并为支付技术的创新提供更多可能性。Alibaba and Tencent have been taking measures to integrate services since 2021 after Chinese authorities urged tech companies to tear down their so-called walled gardens that block competitors' products.自2021年中国当局敦促科技公司打破所谓的“封闭平台”，即封锁竞争对手产品这一行为以来，阿里巴巴和腾讯就已开始采取联合服务措施。Alibaba has incorporated WeChat Pay into its on-demand food delivery app Ele.me, video-streaming platform Youku and online ticket booking platform Damai. Tencent, which once limited the sharing of links to Alibaba stores on WeChat, has gradually allowed users to open a variety of links and content from rival platforms within its messaging app.阿里巴巴已经将微信支付整合到了其即时配送应用“饿了么”、视频流媒体平台“优酷”以及在线票务预订平台“大麦网”中。腾讯曾经限制在微信上分享阿里巴巴店铺链接，但如今已经逐渐允许用户在其消息应用中打开来自竞争对手平台的各种链接和内容。Moreover, Meituan, a popular on-demand services platform, has launched its food delivery and hotel booking services as Alipay's mini programs, offering exclusive coupons and merchant discounts.此外，美团已经使食品配送和酒店预订服务进入了支付宝的小程序，并提供独家优惠券和商家折扣。Interoperabilityn.互用性，协同工作的能力upholdv.支持，维护，拥护
Victor Koo is a familiar face in China's tech industry. In the 90s, he was president of Sohu, China's second-largest search engine. Subsequently, he founded YouKu, China's largest online video platform with 500 million monthly users (commonly called the "YouTube of China" and later sold to Alibaba). Surprisingly, his journey of scaling began to turn inwards at a tech conference in Sun Valley in 2016, when a networking conversation with a young entrepreneur soon turned towards meditation. Upon hearing that Victor had always wanted to try it, the young entrepreneur let go of the opportunity to network with others, instead guiding Victor to an hour-long meditation. That was the first hour of meditation in Victor's life, a seed that he continues to cultivate through a daily practice now spanning several years. Along the way, on a trip to Thailand, he casually walked into a breathwork course without any context. That session, led by a teacher who had survived Stage-4 terminal cancer through breathwork practice, further opened up his inner world in a striking way. "If I never believed in chakras and energy body within each of us, that session blew all of that disbelief away based on direct experience that lasted over a day." As Victor's inner journey took root, it has also decidedly altered the course of his work in the world. After transitioning from his role at Youku, Victor shifted his focus to inner-purpose-driven service and investing. In late 2016, he co-founded Tianren Culture - a social platform based out of Hong Kong that aims to promote "One Wisdom, One Health" by encouraging and enabling contemplative practices and healthy lifestyles. It focuses especially on those practices and lifestyles with roots in spiritual and natural wisdom and non-dualistic philosophies, positing that human physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health and wellness is interconnected with the health of the broader environment and ecosystem. Tianren Culture partners with foundations, NGOs, and businesses to put in place effective social innovation initiatives to improve physical wellness through overall food system transformation, as well as mental, emotional, and spiritual wellness by supporting scientific research and promoting meditation and breathwork practices. The Tianren team is actively volunteering time for Servicespace's AI-related initiatives, including CompassionGPT. Related to Tianren's work, Victor is also a board director of Good Food Fund and on the advisory board of Global Wellness Institute. Victor's exposure to multiple cultures has been formative in his journey - he was born in Hong Kong, and apart from twenty-five years in China, he has lived extensively in Australia, US, and Japan - with Japan being his current home since the pandemic. He received his BS degree from University of California, Berkeley, where he was also a Regent's scholar and MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he currently serves on the Advisory Council. Victor's professional experience lies mostly at the intersection of the technology and media sectors, as well as private equity and venture capital investments. He continues to serve as Chairman of Heyi (his company that incubated Youku), which now focuses on disruptive innovation and social impact investments in areas such as health, genome, and new protein. He is also a senior advisor of Texas Pacific Group and a business advisor of DeCheng Capital. "If there was one thing I wish I had known before I started my company, it is meditation (by far!) because of the calm and equanimity that it brings you, and really helps you question the purpose of why you're doing what you're doing." It's a piece of advice that Victor can often be found paying forward now to b-school students and young founders. Join us in conversation with this founder-turned-server, as we learn more about his journey of scaling inwards, or as he loves to quote Bruce Lee, to "be like water". The call will be hosted by Xue Devand and Birju Pandya. Xue formerly founded one of the "50 most innovative companies of the world" and now currently runs The Space Between, a venture capital fund aiming to be a "sacred hospitality" company that helps inspire wealthholders to transition their consciousness from being owners of money to being the stewards of money. Birju is Chief Mindfulness Officer/Managing Director at Mobius.life, an integrated capital family office, and a long-time volunteer with Servicespace.
Hello c'est Margo ! J'espère que tu vas bien ? je suis de retour pour un episode different de d'habitude. Cet épisode est un guide pour les personnes qui débutent dans les dramas (pas que coréens d'ailleurs). Durant l'épisode j'explique: ce qu'est un drama, les différents types de dramas (Jdramas, Kdrama, Cdrama et aussi mes BL), les différentes manière de regarder des dramas (sous titré ou doublé). Et enfin le plus important je donne les différents sites/ plateformes où trouver des dramas. Les plateformes officielles: Netflix, Viki, Disney+, Amazon prime, Apple TV, Paramount et HBO. Les plateformes chinoises: IQIYI, Tencent, Youku et Mango Les plateformes gratuites: YouTube, Bilibili, Hitv, Voirdrama, dramacool et les fans sub J'espère que l'episode va te plaire ! Vous pouvez me retrouver sur Instagram pour suivre les actualités du podcast: @margo_dramas lien vers mes informations: https://linktr.ee/Margo_Dramas musique: Intro/ Outro by Thannoid - Bodytonic. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/margo-dramas/message
Xi Jinping, the dictator for life in the PRC, recently reversed the one child policy in the PRC. That's after years of forced abortions, sterilizations, and penalties for having too many children (more that one). This resulted in an aging population where women are rejecting marrage and childern for economic reasons. Xi's attempts to force women's hands falling on deaf ears. So you think Biden and Trump suck, check out Xi!
From the conversation that I had with Darlene Hope, who is an actress, I have some takeaways I wanted to share. First, it's all about your staying power. Being in the arts, especially as an actor is a marathon. Developing the skills and coping mechanisms you need to run the marathon is essential. Second, when running this marathon, allow life to guide you, stay flexible, and ask yourself if this step supports the next one I want to take. Third, there are levels to this thing. Don't be afraid to start at the ground level in a new artistic medium or career choice. As a classically trained actress, Darlene Hope's professional acting career has included leading and supporting roles Off Broadway and in regional theaters around the country, solo jazz vocal performances, commercial, film and television appearances, and voice-over campaigns. Miss Hope has had the pleasure of sharing the stage with and being directed & music directed by many of the most notable performers working today, including many Tony Award nominees and winners. Miss Hope has appeared in numerous award-winning commercial, print and new media campaigns. Perhaps the best known of these is her performance as the title character in A Visit From Aunt Flo, a viral video that has received nearly 3 million views worldwide on YouTube, Facebook, Youku, etc, and was officially recognized at the Cannes Lion Festival of Creativity. In the last year, she has worked on and performed in 5 world premiere & regional premiere plays and musicals, a revival classic American play, and Guest Starred on the network television series The Blacklist and Blue Bloods. Not to mention numerous staged readings, developmental labs, teaching artist residencies, workshops, and media interviews. Most recently, Darlene Hope has launched HopeFull Productions, a creative launching pad of diverse and inclusive content for Film, New Media, Theatre, Music, and Publication. Since its inception, HopeFull Productions has produced or is in development on 2 full-length plays, a full-length screenplay, a streaming series, numerous music recordings, and has published an online journal for women. Get in touch: Darlene Hope Instagram: @darlenehopenyc Ayana Major Bey Website: www.ayanabey.com Instagram: @ayanambey, @theartistpivot Monthly Newsletter: https://www.ayanabey.com/podcast Show Sponsor: Get 10% off your first month with BetterHelp at https://betterhelp.com/artistpivot ******* Host & Exec. Producer: Ayana Major Bey Editor: Kieran Niemand Part of the Boundless Audio Network
Matsinaya: Backdoors to state control— Shailesh ChitnisThe Chinese government has signalled a shift in how it plans to control big tech. This month, news reports emerged that state-owned enterprises are set to take a 1% stake in two of its most prominent tech companies, Alibaba and Tencent.Euphemistically dubbed "golden shares," this small stake grants special privileges and gives the government an outsized role in how these companies are run. Typically, these shares come with a board seat and the right to review or veto any content decisions. The stake in Alibaba was acquired by an investment fund set up by the Cyberspace Administration of China, the country's central internet regulator and censor.So far, the arrangement seems to target companies with a significant user base for online content. Alibaba owns social media entities, including Youku, the Chinese version of YouTube, and the web browser UCWeb. Tencent operates Tencent Video, a popular Chinese streaming service. In April 2021, the government paid around 2M Rmb (~$290K) for a percent share in ByteDance Technology, the parent of TikTok.Golden shares, known in China as "Special management shares" have been around since 2015 as a mechanism to control online content platforms. But over the past three years, the government has preferred more direct intervention to curtail what it perceives as an overreach by some of its largest companies. In October 2020, Alibaba controlled Ant Financial's IPO listing, which valued the company at a staggering $313 billion, which was pulled at the last minute. In July 2021, the ride-hailing app company Didi was banned from accepting new users over data privacy concerns. In the same month, China's edtech sector was crushed overnight when the government announced rules preventing these companies from making profits, raising capital, or going public.With the Chinese economy faltering and Xi Jinping's coronation completed, Beijing appears to be taking a subtler path to control its biggest technology companies. Business leaders may see this as a preferable approach to more aggressive and, at times, unpredictable regulation. Having a government representative on the board will reduce the companies' independence. But there is less scope for sudden rule changes since the insider would be privy to all content moderation decisions. However, shareholders of these companies, in particular overseas investors, won't be too happy with this arrangement. They will have less visibility and control over how the business operates. These concerns are now playing out publicly in how TikTok is trying to operate in the US. This month, the company shared details of a proposal that would spin off the US arm into a separate entity owned by ByteDance but entirely operated by US government-approved employees. It has also offered to allow Oracle and other third-party monitors to review its video recommendation algorithm. In the absence of a deal, the company is worried that it will be forced to sell its US operations or leave the market.ByteDance's travails highlight how difficult it will be for Chinese-owned companies to straddle both the US and Chinese markets.Antariksh Matters: Opening the doors for redressing orbital dangers— Pranav R Satyanath Over the past several issues of Techopolitik, we have covered several issues surrounding the weaponisation of space and the threats faced by satellites. One topic of particular interest has been the discussions and deliberations within the Open-Ended Working Group on Reducing Space Threats (OEWG). We began covering the OEWG back in May 2022, when the group held its first meeting in Geneva. The second meeting of the OEWG was help in September. And in 2023, we approach the third meeting of the OEWG.Much of the deliberations of the OEWG have been covered in a discussion document released in July 2022. During the deliberations, however, it became evident that India did little to be vocal about its own preferences for space risk reduction. After months of lamenting India's lack of proactiveness, we at the Takshashila Institution have put down our set of recommended approaches for India to pursue at the Conference on Disarmament and the United Nations. The new discussion document titled, “Redressing Orbital Dangers: Approaches to Advance India's Interests in Outer Space,” also provides an analysis of the US-led moratorium destructive DA-ASAT testing and India's position on space risk reduction. Here's an executive summary:In December 2022, the United Nations overwhelmingly adopted a resolution that called for states to commit not to carry out destructive direct-ascent anti-satellite missile tests. The proposed destructive DA-ASAT missile test moratorium does not restrict the research, development and deployment of counterspace capabilities. India, however, abstained from voting on the resolution and indicated its preference for legally-binding instruments. Moreover, India has yet to put forward its proposals for members of international fora to pursue. This document recommends four approaches which India can pursue to secure its interests. These recommendations are:* Pursue legally-binding instruments which ban the destructive testing of anti-satellite capabilities in outer space.* Advocate for mutual proximity notifications wherein states notify one another during close approaches or when one satellite operator notices unusual satellite behaviour by another operator.* Promote sharing space situational awareness data to increase the knowledge of the space environment and build transparency and confidence between states.* Advance existing norms, rules and responsible behaviours in outer space by adopting and strengthening non-legally-binding measures.No single recommended approach can redress all the threats in space. India must therefore advocate for multiple approaches in tandem to achieve peace and prosperity in outer space.Cyberpolitik: Closing all backdoors through open-source— Bharath ReddyOpen-source software (OSS) can help India achieve techno-strategic autonomy, economic growth, technology leadership, and skill development. As India takes on the G20 presidency, it needs to champion the adoption of OSS and create a sustainable ecosystem around it. A pledge by G20 countries to follow an OSS-first procurement policy that opts for proprietary closed-source solutions only when OSS options are unavailable can go a long way in creating an affordable and accessible common digital future. The rise of platforms and cloud-based services is a significant cause for concern in the information age. Big tech companies wield enormous power as gatekeepers of platforms. Network effects and vertically integrated services make it increasingly difficult for users to opt-out. User data often ends up being locked in silos. The need to have ownership and sovereignty over one's data is increasingly being recognised as an essential consideration in determining our choice of software.France and Germany have recognised the perils of having government communication on siloed big tech platforms such as Slack, Teams, WhatsApp or Telegram. They have taken the lead in moving government communication to a decentralised platform based on the Matrix open standard. France and Germany also have, to different extents, banned Microsoft's Office 365 and Google Workspace, citing concerns around compliance with GDPR and data sovereignty.These moves recognise that we live in an environment of increasing geopolitical risks. OSS offers a path to techno-strategic autonomy and data sovereignty. It provides unfettered access to secure, reliable and transparent technologies and ensures that data ownership stays with the users.The ominous term surveillance capitalism accurately describes the practice followed by tech companies to exploit users' personal data for advertising-driven profit. Surveillance capitalism thrives on the power of platforms. Tech companies have convinced users to trade our privacy for convenience to such an extent that they can predict our behaviour and influence it. We need software and algorithms that are transparent and inspire trust. If we indeed want to mitigate surveillance, open-source is the way to go.Building software using OSS components is now the de-facto model. Reusable modular OSS components can reduce costs and speed up the development process. A recent study shows that almost 97% of commercial software contains open-source code. This increased reliance on OSS puts additional strain on the communities of developers who maintain the code. Maintenance of OSS, including feature updates, bug fixes, and security updates, is a significant strain on the developers maintaining this code. Given that OSS forms the backbone of most software, a sustainable ecosystem with a contribution culture is essential.Governments are some of the biggest purchasers of software and IT services. The union government already has a soft preference for OSS in software procurement. Current IT procurement policies, such as the e-Governance Policy Initiatives under Digital India of 2015, state that the government shall endeavour to adopt OSS in e-governance systems and that OSS should be mandatorily considered as one of the options. A stronger preference for OSS in government purchases can go a long way in creating a sustainable open-source ecosystem. IT procurement policies of the union and state governments should mandate that all software purchased through tax-payer funding be open-source. Proprietary and closed technologies should be considered only where adequate OSS technologies are not an option. "Public Money? Public Code!" can be the guiding principle for government software purchases. In practice, this will lead to tax-payer-funded software having the freedom for everyone to use, modify, study, change and redistribute. The trickle-down effects will benefit society as a whole.OSS is an integral part of our common digital future, and promoting it will lead to economic growth and skill development. It will promote open standards and interoperability. It will also lead to skill development, job creation and entrepreneurship. All of these benefits are aligned with the objectives of the G20 in promoting an affordable and accessible common digital future. Investing in OSS will also help countries of the global south access state-of-the-art technologies.Adopting an OSS-first procurement policy by the G20 countries can create strong incentives for a vibrant open-source ecosystem. India must lead the way by adopting such a policy and champion other countries to pledge to do the same. In addition, G20 countries should also create a common fund which shall be used to fund critical OSS projects. The multiplier effects for the economy will far exceed the costs incurred towards maintaining these projects. Our Reading Menu[Blog] TikTok is a New Type of Superweapon by Gurwinder.[Article] Trust but verify: Satellite reconnaissance, secrecy and arms control during the Cold War by Aaron Bateman.[Report] Software Power: The Economic and Geopolitical Implications of Open Source Software by Alice Pannier This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit hightechir.substack.com
「Kiloview社、世界初フルNDIベースの中継車を発表。アリババグループ関連企業YouKuと共同開発」 12月16日、株式会社アスクは、同社が日本正規代理店を務めるKiloview社のNDIワークフローをベースにした世界初の中継車「NDI OBV」が完成したことを公開した。
Hey c'est Margo ! Je suis de retour pour vous parler d'un nouveau drama. Aujourd'hui je vais vous donner mon avis sur le drama Immortal Samsara ou 沉香如屑 un drama chinois special Youku, avec Yang Zi (杨紫 ) et Cheng Yi (成毅) . Vous pouvez me retrouver sur Instagram pour suivre les actualités du podcast: @margo_dramas Intro/ Outro by Thannoid - Bodytonic. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/margo-dramas/message
In the latest episode, Karen and Cathy discuss the current Chinese streaming platform landscape, the overall business model, and the key competitors. There are 4 major players, Tencent Video, iQiYi, Youku, and MangoTV. Tencent Video and iQiYi compete for the top spot while Youku and MangoTV have found their niches. Listen to our latest podcast episode to see the business strategies for these companies and how they dictate what dramas are produced and aired.
48ème épisode de notre podcast où nous allons avoir enfin des séries B. agréables à voir, pas génialissimes certes, mais au moins suffisamment distrayantes pour nous redonner espoir dans le film de requin. "Shark Attack 3 : Megalodon" de David Worth en 2002 est le 3ème film d'une franchise pas bien passionnante jusqu'alors. En dégainant un requin géant préhistorique, "Nu Image" réussit à nous offrir un véritable nanar carrément réjouissant. "Land Shark" de Chen Si Yu sorti en 2020 fait partie de cette vague nouvelle de films de monstres prévus pour garnir les catalogues des chaînes de streaming du pays et s'avère généreux dans l'action comme dans la repompe de tous les clichés du genre. Recommandations:La chronique Nanarland de "Shark Attack 3" par votre serviteurLe DTV chinois exploré par la Maison du Cinéma Asiatique d'Arnaud LanuqueLa chaîne Youku pour retrouver gratuitement Land Shark et beaucoup d'autres films prometteursLe visionnage de Street Dancing Ninja sur Keski d'vientLe TopCast avec notamment un épisode sur tout ce qui est... nulLa soirée Nanarland au cinéma Lux de Caen le 29 avril
EP40 China Internet Landscape and Digital Giants Part 35 • 12 มีนาคม 2012 เป็นเวลาที่สำคัญสำหรับวงการแพลตฟอร์มวิดีโอ เมื่ออดีตคู่ปรับ Youku และ Tudou ได้บรรลุข้อตกลงในการควบรวมกิจการ โดยมีชื่อนิติบุคคลใหม่นี้มีชื่อว่า Youku Tudou Inc. และการควบรวมนี้ก็ได้สร้างเว็บไซต์แพลตฟอร์มวิดีโอที่ใหญ่ที่สุดในประเทศจีนเลยในยุคนั้นไปโดยปริยาย • เมื่อสองกลายเป็นหนึ่ง ในปี 2014 YouKu Tudou มี Active users มากกว่า 500 ล้านบัญชี และมีการรับชมในแต่ละวันมากกว่า 800 ล้าน views • ไตรมาสที่3 ปี 2014 Youku Tudou เป็นเจ้าตลาด ครอง Market Share ไปได้ถึง 22.82% แซง iQiyi ที่ครองอันดับสองคือ 19.07% และ Sohu TV 11.87% Tencent TV 10.67% • อันดับหนึ่งกับอันดับสองสูสีกันอย่างมาก ดังนั้นการครองตลาดของ Youku Tudou ในจีนเริ่มที่จะสั่นคลอนโดยการท้าทายจาก iQiyi ของ Baidu โดยเห็นชัดมากยิ่งขึ้นปีต่อมา • พฤษภาคม 2014 อาลีบาบาและกองทุน Yunfeng (云峰) เข้าซื้อหุ้นสามัญคลาส A (Class A ordinary shares) ของ Youku Tudou จำนวน 721 ล้านหุ้นเป็นมูลค่า 1,220 ล้านดอลลาร์สหรัฐใน Youku Tudou โดยอาลีบาบาถือหุ้น 16.5% (ลงไปประมาณ 1,100 ล้าน USD)และกองทุนหยุนเฟิงถือหุ้น 2% (ลงไป 132 ล้าน USD) รวมทั้งสิ้น 18.5% • 6 พฤศจิกายน 2015 อาลีบาบากรุ๊ปได้เข้าซื้อกิจการ Youku Tudou Group ทั้งหมด และกลายมาเป็นหนึ่งในบริษัทในเครือของอาลีบาบาในที่สุด • ในท้ายที่สุดอุตสาหกรรม online video media and entertainment จีนในยุคนี้ก็เห็นความชัดเจนมากขึ้นว่าถูกขับเคลื่อนจากสามค่ายยักษ์ใหญ่อย่างTencent, Alibaba, Baidu นั่นเอง • รายละเอียดทั้งหมดติดตามรับฟังได้ใน EP 40
In this week's episode, Anurag discusses the history of colors, such as indigo and carmine, and how they can help us understand what the world was like in the past. Christina talks about a few incidents of white people in the West starting businesses related to Asian cuisine and the Twitter feuds that followed. We also discuss the Chinese reality TV show Street Dance of China and why it's so much fun to watch.Links:The Secret Lives of Color by Kassia St. Clair, a book which provides brief histories of many colors.--Indian yellowAn article about the history of indigoGandhi's Champaran Satyagraha--Pippa Middlehurst's cookbook Dumplings and Noodles'Queen of Congee'--A dance battle from Street Dance of China Season 4 (full episodes are available on the Youku channel on YouTube - subtitles available in multiple languages!)Jam's Germs on Instagram
三协会发声！偶像人设频繁崩塌，是时候反思饭圈文化了丨Call on stars to abide by lawsTV, film and music industry associations have called for celebrities to abide by laws and devote more energy to their art to promote the development of the industry and set good examples for the public.影视、音乐行业协会呼吁，各界名人应遵守法律、严于律己，将精力投入到作品当中，为公众树立良好榜样。They made the remarks on Tuesday after Beijing prosecutors approved the arrest of Kris Wu, one of China's most popular celebrities, on Monday on suspicion of rape.北京市人民检察院周一以涉嫌强奸罪批准逮捕中国最受欢迎的明星之一吴亦凡后，三协会于周二就此事件发声。The people's procuratorate in the capital's Chaoyang district posted a statement on Sina Weibo on Monday saying it had approved the arrest of a suspect surnamed Wu.北京市朝阳区人民检察院周一在新浪微博上发布声明，称其已批准逮捕一名吴姓嫌疑人。Chinese media outlets then confirmed the suspect was 30-year-old Chinese-Canadian singer and actor Kris Wu, who was detained by police on July 31 after he was accused of tricking young women into having sex.中国媒体随后证实该嫌疑人是30岁的加拿大华裔歌手演员Kris Wu，他在被指控欺骗年轻女性进行性行为后于7月31日被警方拘留。The China Television Artists Association said on Tuesday that it does not tolerate such behavior in the industry, and called on everyone in the field to learn from the case.中国电视艺术家协会周二表示，电视艺术界绝不容忍行业内的这种行为，并呼吁该领域的每个人从该案件中吸取教训。It said actors should make ethical standards and art their lifelong pursuit, try their best to improve the quality of performances and strengthen self-regulation.声明中说到，德艺双馨应是每一位演员毕生的追求，演员要尽力提高表演质量，加强自律。"If someone only focuses on fame or online views, with ignorance of art ethics and professionalism, he or she will separate from life, go against the times or even fall into the wrong path," it said.“若罔顾德与艺，一味追求数据流量、明星光环，必会脱离生活，与时代潮流相悖，更有甚者误入歧途。” Describing Wu's case as a wakeup call, the China Film Association said that celebrities, as public figures, need to shoulder more social responsibility and impose stricter requirements on themselves while benefiting from their popularity.中国电影家协会将吴亦凡的案例描述为一记警钟，并表示明星作为公众人物，需要承担更多的社会责任，在受益于其知名度的同时对自己提出更严格的要求。It said stars should cherish the trust and affection from audience members and their followers, abide by laws, hold the bottom line and make better art to promote the industry's growth.明星应该珍惜观众和粉丝的信任和喜爱，守法纪、知底线，做出更好的艺术作品，推动行业发展。The China Musicians Association said on Tuesday it will boycott celebrities who have no morality or who violate laws, adding that stars, no matter how hot they are, will face punishment if they harm people's interests.中国音乐家协会周二表示，要抵制没有道德或违反法律的艺人，并补充说，无论光环再耀眼，名气再大，只要侵害人民的利益，终将受到法律的制裁。The China Netcasting Services Association on Tuesday voiced support for various internet platforms taking down Wu's works. Based on information collected from its members, including Youku, iQiyi and Tencent, more than 1.9 million short videos and 7,000 variety shows featuring Wu had been taken down.中国网络视听节目服务协会周二表示支持各网络平台下架吴亦凡的作品。根据从优酷、爱奇艺和腾讯等成员单位收集的信息，超过190万个短视频和7000个以吴亦凡为主角的综艺节目已被删除。It urged its members to shoulder their responsibilities to society, select actors and guests more carefully and boycott people who had violated the law or moral standards.中国网络视听节目服务协会敦促其成员承担起对社会的责任，更加谨慎地选择演员和嘉宾，抵制违反法律或道德标准的人。Wu's case has triggered huge public attention since June, when a woman named Du Meizhu posted statements online alleging Wu had lured young women and girls under the age of 18 to have sex by claiming he was recruiting actresses. Du said she was one of the victims.自6月以来，吴亦凡的案件引发了公众的极大关注，当时一位名叫都美竹的女士在网上发布声明，称吴亦凡通过声称自己在招募女演员来引诱18岁以下的年轻女性发生性关系。都美竹说她是受害者之一。The allegations saw several brands cut ties with Wu, who was born in Guangdong province and had more than 50 million followers on Sina Weibo. Some of his promotional events were also canceled.这些指控导致一些品牌与吴亦凡终止合作关系，他的一些宣传活动也被取消。吴亦凡出生于广东省，在新浪微博上有超过5000万的粉丝。
Learning about the history of the Communist Party of China has seen an upsurge among Chinese young people, as they gain wisdom from it being told in increasingly innovative and appealing ways.A recent hit TV series, which tells the story of a group of young people involved in the founding of the CPC a century ago, has gained popularity among young audiences and inspired them to learn more about China's revolutionary history.▲ Students visit a paper-tearing artwork exhibition at Nantong University in Jiangsu province, on Monday. A total of 100 exhibits, showcasing key moments of the Communist Party of China's history over the past century, were displayed at the event, which was held to mark the upcoming 100th anniversary of the Party's founding on July 1. Paper tearing is an intangible cultural heritage of Nantong. Photo by Zhai Huiyong/for China DailyThe Age of Awakening, based on events from 1915 to 1921－a critical period in the birth of the Party－is among film and TV productions celebrating the Party's 100th birthday.The TV drama has remained a hot topic on social media since being aired in February. A recent item about it on the microblogging service Sina Weibo has been read more than 1.17 billion times, and the discussions related to it show that it has had a positive effect in educating young audiences.Many netizens said they have been browsing through historical information while watching the series, in order to learn more about the founders of the Party.One wrote: "The characters in history textbooks came to life," while another said, "The sequel to the series is our life today."More than 70 percent of the TV drama's audience is younger than 35, according to data analyzer Guduo Media. Video platform Youku's data show that among the viewers who left "screen bullets", real-time comments that appear on the screen, the proportion of those born in the 1990s was 1.6 times higher than the average.Long Pingping, the series' scriptwriter and former deputy secretary-general of the Party Literature Research Center of the CPC Central Committee, said he was moved and grateful that so many young people like the series after he won a best original screenplay award this month."I wrote it to let the younger generation know how the awakening, struggle and sacrifice of revolutionary figures 100 years ago relates to our life today," Long said.This year, various forms of disseminating the Party's history have emerged nationwide, and these have become popular with the younger generation. Rather than being confined to textbooks and classrooms, such new forms have encouraged students to learn enthusiastically and voluntarily.Weng Tiehui, vice-minister of education, said, "Telling stories that young people love to see and hear is the key to passing on the spirit of the revolutionary martyrs."Recently, a rap song called 1921, the year the CPC was founded, circulated among students at Hunan Agricultural University. Its catchy lyrics, coupled with a dynamic beat, tell the history of the founding of the Party and the meaning behind it.It was one of a series of rap songs composed this year by Chang Lai, a teacher at the university, telling stories about the history of the Party in the form of music, in order to help students better understand it. Chang raps with students and explains the stories behind the lyrics."Rap is a popular form of music among college students, so I have been trying to integrate it with education," he said in a video interview. "I hope they can understand the knowledge and spirit behind each lyric and learn how to pass it on."Li Liyang, a graduate student at Shanghai University, said he felt that education related to Party history had become more accessible to young people."More content has been put on the internet on different platforms, such as livestreaming and videosharing websites, and these use lively language," he said. "It makes it easier for us to relate to the past."The 30-episode cartoon series Blood and Fire: How New China Was Forged is being broadcast daily from June 1 to July 1 on popular video-sharing website Bilibili. It features historical stories from the founding of the Party in 1921 to the founding of New China in 1949.Chen Rui, CEO of the website, said young people were attracted by their common interest in animation, cartoons and games, and they have gradually developed their own forms of expression for their love for the country.记者：张怡 曹忱 邢奕
Poya and Robby interview Greg Sands, founder and managing partner at Costanoa Ventures. Prior to founding Costanoa, Sands was a Managing Director at Sutter Hill, where he invested in early stage enterprise software startups, such as Merced Systems, AllBusiness, Youku, Quinstreet, and Feedburner. He was the first product manager at Netscape Communications where he wrote the initial business plan, coined the name Netscape, and built the SuiteSpot Business unit from $0-$140M. He also served as a business development manager at Cisco where he architected a channel management plan. He served a term as the President of the Stanford DAPER (Athletics Department) Investment Fund and remains on the executive committee. He is also the former Trustee of the Stanford Business School Trust and former Chair of its Venture Capital Committee. Connect with Greg: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregsands/ https://twitter.com/gsands Connect with Poya Osgouei: https://www.linkedin.com/in/poyaosgouei/ Connect with Robby Allen: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robbyallen/ This week's episode was supported by Indeed (get a $75 credit for your job post at indeed.com/scale) --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/uncharted1/support
Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and let us be the first to wish you a Happy New Year! This week, Brendan is catching up on editing and posting Yingying's recent interviews, and for our New Year's show we're very glad to bring you PADDY ROBERTSON. Paddy has been living in Beijing 6 years and is CEO of SmartAir. SmartAir is one of the first registered B-Corps in China and has been recognized and awarded as a leading Social Enterprise / Impact company. Happy New Years from us here at the show! We'll see you in 2021. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVQUgEABdkmWbWfmDmXhJpQ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/smartairfilters/ Quora: https://www.quora.com/profile/Thomas-Talhelm Twitter: @smartairfilters Facebook: @smartairfilters Zhihu (Chinese): https://www.zhihu.com/people/thomas-talhelm/ Weibo (Chinese): https://weibo.com/1562428855 Youku: https://i.youku.com/i/UMTQ3NTc5NDExMg==
Welcome to East West Hurricane! 🌪We update you on the most essential news from Asia in tech, media, and business—the things you need to know that you probably haven’t heard in Western media.Follow us on Twitter and Instagram! ⚡️China’s Golden Week is Tourism Health Check 🗺Right now is China’s ‘Golden Week,’ a national holiday that usually involves people traveling both domestically and internationally. Given the coronavirus, most people in China are adjusting to how they approach Golden Week this year. China’s tourism ministry reported that 425 Million people have travelled domestically within the first four days of Golden Week, which is lower than the 542 Million people from last year. Overall tourism revenue from the first half of Golden Week is reported to be $45.9 Billion, which is a 31% decrease from the same time last year.Trip.com, China’s largest online travel agency, has said that domestic travel bookings are at about 80% of pre-pandemic levels. These numbers are all very large, but overall shows a decline in travel and tourism-related spend. While restrictions have been pretty much lifted and people still flocked to major tourist sites this week, the travel industry is still in trouble. This shows signs of recovery, but there’s still a long way to go before consumption and tourism reaches pre-Covid levels and people feel safe enough to travel. Burberry is First Luxury Brand On Chinese reality TV 🧣Much like in the West, reality TV shows are a super popular category in China. As I’ve written about before, some of the most popular Chinese shows are based around street culture—like hip hop and street fashion. One example of this now is the show “Street Dance of China,” a hit show produced by streaming platform Youku. For brands, these reality shows are great opportunity to form a creative partnership and get in front of young audiences.Well Burberry has now become a trailblazer as the first Western luxury brand to partner with a Chinese reality TV show, “Street Dance of China.” Burberry has launched a co-branded box with the show and souvenirs from the show have also been featured as free gifts with certain Burberry purchases. And there was a special livestream on Tmall, where people could buy a limited edition Burberry item inspired by the street fashion on the show. In a world where it’s difficult for a brand to stand out, especially in China, having more of an integrated commerce partnership with a hip, young TV show will probably work better than just running ads.Alibaba Partners With Swiss Duty Free GiantChinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has just announced a partnership with Swiss company Dufry, the world’s largest operator of airport duty free shops. Dufry was founded in Basel, Switzerland in 1865. The two companies have now entered a joint venture where Alibaba purchased a 10% stake in Dufry for $273 Million. People estimate that the logical next step is for Alibaba to start launching airport duty free stores across China. Right now, the state-owned China Duty Free Group dominates airport stores across the country.When I think of offline commerce, I usually don’t think of airport duty free stores. However, duty free retail in China has grown 31% over the last two years, reaching a size of $7.6 Billion. Alibaba is always looking for growth, and this partnership with Dufry gives them much more legitimacy to get into duty free retail. At the same time, Dufry is aware of the huge opportunities in China that could be essential to the future of the company. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eastwesthurricane.substack.com
In this episode, Diaodiao and Afra talk about their latest obsessions — dance competitions! We are talking about Youku’s electrifying reality dance show "The Street Dance of China", and HBO Max's vogue ballroom dance competition "Legendary" with a special guest: Bazi, who is the father of House of Kawakubo, the first vogue ballroom family in China. Bazi talks us through the dance genre known as voguing and why it's as much of a community as an art form. We compare the representations of female and LGBT dancers on the two shows, unpack our own experiences in the dance community, and explain why both of the shows celebrate a subversive culture but fail to be subversive themselves.If you haven't watched either of the shows, don't worry, you can still enjoy this episode! "Street Dance of China" Season 3 aired on July 18, 2020 and very soon became one of the most popular reality shows in post-pandemic China. The show features four celebrities who are known as "Captains." The captains pick their own team from a group of insanely talented dancers and battle the other teams for the final championship. "Legendary" brings together eight ballroom houses to compete for a cash prize of $100,000. The show refuses to handhold its audience through the rich traditions, history and terminology of ballroom culture.Street Dance of China Season 3 is on the air, why is it still popular?HBO Max’s Legendary gives the ballroom community a deliriously fun twirl into the spotlightE410.「人妖」李二毛的一生 故事fm VOGUING! SHANGHAI! 聚焦中国首个 Ballroom 文化平台 Find Loud Murmurs in the iTunes podcast store, Google Play, Spotify, and wherever you listen to podcasts (e.g. Pocket Casts, Overcast)! Please subscribe, enjoy, and feel free to drop us a note and leave us a review. RSS feed: https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/258327.rss Itunes: https://apple.co/2VAVf0Z Google play: goo.gl/KjRYPN Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2IWNuRB Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=544416&refid=stpr Pocket Cast: http://pca.st/nLid Overcast: https://bit.ly/2SL7MNJ Please consider supporting us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/loudmurmurs. Please reach out to us at loudmurmursfm@gmail.com for any business inquiries.Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/loudmurmurs)
lottare per la società Sho zen nanshi. Oi un ga. a un nin no. Sesshi roi. Komo zai fu. Hot-cha. Seson. Butsu gon. Ga yaku nyo ze. Jo-butsu irai. Muryo muhen. Hyaku sen man nokoku. Nayuta. Asogi ko. I shujo ko. I hoben riki. Gon to metsudo. Yaku mu u no. Nyo ho setsu ga. Komo ka sha. Niji seson. Youku ju sen shigi. Ni setsu ge gon. Uomini devoti, qual è la vostra opinione? Si può affermare che questo bravo medico sia colpevole di menzogna? >>No Onorato dal mondo.
In today’s episode: how China’s answer to Youtube managed to sell hundreds of thousands of collectible figurines in just 60 seconds; Shenzhen tackles land redevelopment holdouts — and how this could impact the rest of country; and three years after acquiring Syngenta, ChemChina is deep in debt. SPECIAL OFFER: Great News! Caixin Podcast listeners can now enjoy a 7-day complimentary access pass to caixinglobal.com and Caixin app. This is a limited-time offer. Get your pass by heading to: https://www.caixinglobal.com/institutional-activity/?code=J3XVJC
This week on Wrestling Omakase we talk one of the greatest AND one of the worst matches of all time plus a whole hell of a lot more! If you haven't listened to a 5 Matches episode yet, every week John and the guest each choose 2 matches to watch and talk about on the episode. Then we each choose a third match, which is put up to a vote on the @wrestleomakase ( http://twitter.com/wrestleomakase ) Twitter account, letting the listeners choose our fifth and final match of the week. It's a fun retro format featuring all sorts of different wrestling! John is joined by Bryan Quinby ( http://twitter.com/MurderBryan ) from Street Fight Radio ( https://www.streetfightradio.com/ ) , making his first appearance on the show in a number of years. Before they get into the five match selections today John & Bryan catch up on a ton of topics, including how they're hanging in during this whole pandemic thing, wondering if you should even plan any live shows at all for the rest of 2020, what life might be like after this passes and whether or not John should go to Vegas, arcades, and some more talk on empty arena wrestling. Then we finally get into our 5 matches for the week, and it's honestly a pretty incredible list: 1. WALTER & Timothy Thatcher vs. Dominic Garrini & Tracy Williams, EVOLVE 1/13/18 ( Youku ( https://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMzMyMzM2MTEyMA==.html? ) , match starts around 20:30) 2. Sabu vs. The Sandman, ECW 11/30/97 ( WWE Network ( https://watch.wwe.com/episode/ECW-November-to-Remember-1997-10382 ) ) 3. Brock Lesnar vs. Dean Ambrose, WWE 4/3/16 ( WWE Network ( https://watch.wwe.com/episode/WrestleMania-32-1811 ) ) 4. Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Kohei Sato, Z1MAX 3/2/08 ( Google Drive ( https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gqcyRjDfXkzBj-lzaMM16I0FURZV_cLB/view ) , match starts around 1:30:47) 5. Kazuchika Okada vs. Katsuyori Shibata, NJPW 4/9/17 (NJPW World: English ( https://njpwworld.com/p/s_series_00433_1_09 ) or Japanese) ( https://njpwworld.com/p/s_series_00432_1_09 ) Topics that come up along the way include: where we wish US wrestling could have gone vs. where it ended up going, Timothy Thatcher rules actually, John didn't know who Dominic Garrini was and feels bad because he was great, setting up elaborate spots and botching every single one, Sandman's flips (are good), Brock Lesnar destroying WWE, interpromotional feuds and why they rule, and finally a detailed breakdown of one of the best matches of all time (and maybe it's more okay to love it now that things turned out a little better with Shibata at the LA Dojo). It's a really packed episode! Support Wrestling Omakase with a donation through Red Circle ( http://bit.ly/2o42FP6 ) ! All donations are split with that week's guest. We really appreciate it! Wrestling Omakase has dedicated channels on TWO Discords! Come join either one where you can chat with John and show guests and submit questions for future episodes! Super J-Cast Discord ( https://discord.gg/zWEgNK5 ) VOW Network Discord ( https://discord.gg/rGTXwXd ) Missed any of the 5 Matches episodes or just want to revisit one of the matches discussed previously but aren't sure what episode it took place on? Here's a handy Google Doc ( https://bit.ly/3dv3BjF ) with links to every single match we've discussed on this series so far, which will continue to be updated every week! Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
The difference between leadership and management | A new dawn for the DRL | Giving autonomy vs taking control in a work from home environment. Episode 83 of the Leaders Sport Business Podcast is brought to you by Onside Law. As a gesture of help, the specialist law firm is offering a number of free sports law clinics for those grappling with issues arising from Covid-19. Request a free session here. This episode of At home with Leaders features a conversation with newly installed Drone Racing League President Rachel Jacobson (conversation starts at 17:19). The former NBA SVP of Global Partnerships became one of a small number of female presidents in sport when she started the role earlier this week. Founded in 2015, the Drone Racing League now has broadcast deals with NBC, Sky, ProSeibenSat.1 and Youku, and has put on eye-catching events in venues such as Alexandra Palace in London, BMW Welt in Germany, and Chase Field in the US. Also joining James Emmett and David Cushnan for this episode is the Leaders Performance Institute's Matthew Stone, who gives an insight into how leaders from across the sports performance world are coping with their current environments. We hear from England Rugby coach Eddie Jones, and Wall Street Journal writer and author of The Captain Class, Sam Walker (conversations start at 7:45), both of whom have been featured recently on the Leaders Performance Institute's own line of podcasts - a series of at home conversations with the biggest names from across the world of high performance. On the conversational agenda: - Knowing when and how to devolve organisational autonomy; - The difference between leadership and management; - The political leaders who have made an impact recently; - Onboarding into a leadership role during Covid-19; - The DRL's focus on innovation, its virtual product, and its STEM programme; - How David Stern and Adam Silver paved the way for Rachel Jacobson.
How did 16-year old online learning company Mindvalley double the size of its user base in a year? This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Mindvalley head of marketing Alessio Pieroni talks about the company's internationalizing strategy, and how entering new markets fueled dramatic growth. From translating versus dubbing content, to what international expansion means for hiring, how your social media strategy needs to change, and what to consider when localizing your product, Alessio talks about all of the different dimensions of internationalization. Check out the episode to hear more about the impact that internationalizing has had on Mindvalley's business, and the advice that Alessio has for anyone thinking of entering new markets. Highlights from my conversation with Alessio include: Mindvalley is an online learning company that focuses on teaching people the things they can't learn in school. The company has been around for 16 years and has historically focused on english speaking markets. In 2011, Mindvalley first attempted to enter international markets but was not successful because they tried to recruit employees to star in their online course videos, rather than the company's founder Vishen, who had always been the face of the brand. After that experience, they refocused on english markets again, but then a year ago, they were approached by someone who wanted to translate their course material into Spanish and market it in Mexico. They did it as an experiment and put some advertising dollars behind it, and were able to realize ROI in 5 days. After that early success, the company copied that same formula and now has course materials in Spanish, Portuguese, French and German. In just the Spanish speaking market, Mindvalley was able to add 1.2 million new users in 10 months, and now the company's Spanish customer base is larger than its English speaking customer base. This year, Mindvalley plans to add courses in Italian, Arabic, Japanese, and Indian to its offerings. Alessio says that the keys to the company's success are the quality of its courses and years of data, which it has leveraged to develop pay-per-click advertising programs that have allowed it to quickly scale growth. The company's cost to acquire a new customer in the US is between $8 and $10, whereas in Spanish speaking markets it is between $1 and $2. Going international is more complicated than it might seem and it's important to get details like language right. For example, with Spanish language material, they had to determine whether to use a South American accent or a Spanish one, and whether to dub the course material or subtitle it. There are other challenges as well, such as different payment processors and cultural attitudes towards credit cards versus cash. As the company has entered new markets, it has relied on contractors to help create course material. In some markets, it has had to outsource social media and paid advertising. Mindvalley has not yet localized the UI of its product as that would require a significant investment in technology. Alessio says that these efforts have resulted in the company doubling and nearly tripling its business in a year. Resources from this episode: Visit the Mindvalley website Connect with Alessio on LinkedIn Listen to the podcast to learn how Mindvalley experienced its strongest growth ever by internationalizing its marketing -- and what you need to know if you're considering marketing to an international audience. Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth. And this week my guest is Alessio Pieroni, who's the head of marketing for Mindvalley. Welcome Alessio. Alessio Pieroni (Guest): Thank you so much for having me. So excited to be in this podcast. Kathleen: Yeah, I'm excited to have you here. And fun fact, I am sitting here at 8.00 a.m on a Friday in my office and you are sitting there at what time? Alessio: That's 9.00 p.m Kuala Lumpur time. Kathleen: 9.00 p.m, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia time in the hot weather, whereas I am sitting here and it is cold and rainy and dark. So I think you win this one because it's not even happy hour, it's Friday night party time in the beautiful tropical Malaysia. About Alession Pieroni and Mindvalley Kathleen: Thank you for joining me and maybe we could just start by having you tell my audience a little bit about yourself and who you are and what Mindvalley is. Alessio: Yeah, absolutely. I like to define myself as a full stack marketer. Because in my experience in the past six or seven years I've been working different areas of marketing. So I started out around email marketing and funnel marketing, went on then going deeper into organic traffic and SEO. And then from there I moved into Product Marketing and conversion rate optimization till the last one took about two years ago where I'm managing an entire marketing division for Mindvalley, where I kind of need to be a generalist. To speak a bit about Mindvalley, Mindvalley is the biggest personal grow the education platform in the world. And what we like to say that we do is that we take all the kind of education that traditional education doesn't teach you, and we bring it to you. So education, for example, teaches you accounting, but doesn't teach you how to be rich. It teaches you science, but doesn't teach you nutrition, or does not teach you fitness. It teaches you a lot of things but doesn't teach you memory, doesn't teach mindfulness, doesn't teach you to be a great parent and lover, or how to be happy. And that's kind of our mission to the world -- to bring that great education to the life of everyone so that everyone can improve their own life and live a happy life. And we'e been doing that since about 16 years ago now. And now privy to about 10 million people reach across our social media. We have about four million users on our platform and hundreds of thousands of customers every year. So it's an exciting company to work for definitely. Kathleen: The world's largest personal growth and learning platform. And it's interesting to me that your focus is on that gap between like what you can learn from a book or a class, a normal school versus what you really need to know for life. I feel like that's actually kind of what we do on the podcast. It's like, you can take marketing classes in school but what are the things they never teach you? Alessio: Absolutely. I just had this discussion few weeks ago with some marketing students that came to our office and they were asking me some questions about how they could actually nurture their careers and I was like -- I speak frankly -- like, university will never teach you Facebook ads. It is too new for you to learn something like that in university. Take university for what it is, but once you're out of university you learn so much more. And there is so much non formal education. And I believe that podcasts are changing the world for that. It's so beautiful, so much free and amazing education is out there and I love to market it every day. Kathleen: Absolutely. I learn so much just from hosting this podcast and talking to people like yourself. And that's one of the reasons I was looking forward to talking with you because you bring, I think, a different experience than a lot of the other guests I've had. Specifically, Mindvalley is headquartered in Malaysia. It's grown considerably in the last few years. I mean, it was already experiencing a very healthy pace of growth. But then in the last couple of years, the company really made this decision to go more international. And that has just fueled this tremendous uptick in the company's growth. So, we've talked a lot about many different aspects of marketing on this podcast, but one of the things we really haven't covered much is international marketing and what it means when you want to start selling into different markets around the world from a geographic standpoint, from language, cultural standpoint, etcetera. So I am so excited to dig into this with you. But let's start. Mindvalley's international growth Kathleen: And can you talk a little bit about what that journey has been? And when did the company start thinking about going international? What was it doing before that? What was the pre international phase? And that sort of thing? Alessio: Absolutely. So Mindvalley has been very focused on the English language and on covering all the markets that are English speaking. And we're pretty big on that. And with it, with the wave of internationalization that we have been trying to do in 2011 - 2012, we like to say that that was a bit of a failure as a company. What happened exactly in this case is that, Mindvalley, for the ones that are not familiar with our business model, we have a host, which is our CEO and founder Vishen, and he's the one basically hosting the personal growth and learning from all over the world. And what we were doing 2011 and 2012 is that we tried to recruit some great employee and make them host in their own languages. So Vishen wasn't any more the face of Mindvalley, but that employee was the face of Mindvalley in that language. And it was okay for maybe a couple of years. But then it definitely wasn't the right way to scale up. And all these kind of businesses that we were starting around the world kind of faded away and we kind of stopped them. So for the next few years, we focused completely on English. Last year, we actually got a call from a guy that's in the marketing space from Mexico. And he was simply telling us, "guys, I really believe so much in Mindvalley, I really believe so much of what you guys do, can I translate your content in Spanish?". And we were just like, you know what, that just such a small bag that we can play Just give him a product will pay him very little amount of money just to test out and see what will happen. And what seemed to happen is that in this time we simply translated the program, keeping Vishen as our host. And after translating the program, we simply tried to say, "What would happen, now that we have this program, if we just put some advertising budget on that? What will happen?" And the results were shocking. We're this very small firm, and we have been having such a big growth for a new market, which we weren't in, given the little investment that we made in the beginning. We literally paid it back in about five days. When we looked at that, we were like, "Wow! Really, like, that's incredible." And, so that simple little experiment that we did in a very random way, from that we said, "Okay, maybe this is something that is so much bigger", and that's when we started to actually assemble a team around that, and we started looking into the different languages that we can actually work on, which is the prioritization of languages. And how we can actually scale up this entire system. So one year and a half later, we are now in four different languages -- Spanish, Portuguese, French and German. We added, just in the Spanish speaking market, 1.2 million users in 10 months. And right now, the Spanish list -- actually the internationalization list overall -- it's bigger than the English speaking list. So we have so many more users from all over the world. And for now, this year, we're looking into a lot of different languages -- Italian, Arabic, Japanese, and Indian. And so yeah, it's becoming global. And its so beautiful to see the impact that we're able to make in a lot of, I would say, underserved markets, because a lot of these markets are very hungry and very willing to actually get the learning that we're giving at Mindvalley. What's the secret behind Mindvalley's international success? Kathleen: Now, you kind of, I don't want to say stumbled into going international but it wasn't this grand plan that you know, you worked up to it for two years. It was you, you were opportunistic, you had somebody come to you. The company jumped on this opportunity and went and it was successful. Why do you think it worked so well? For you? Alessio: Well, I would say that there are definitely a couple of things that were very interesting, and some feedback we got from our customers as well as why they love us so much. So number one is definitely the quality of the product. In the last couple of years, we need to level up so much because the English speaking market ,the American market, its so competitive. I truly believe that the average customer of Mindvalley every day will kind of think, "Should I watch Netflix? Should watch MasterClass.com or should I watch Mindvalley?" The level of quality that we need to match for the English speaking market is so difficult that we really need to push ourselves so much more. And the reality is that when we went to the Spanish speaking market, so many of our competitors are just not there. And the quality that that market is used to is so much lower that we as English speaking people are actually used to. And so when we went out there we just found ourselves being so much better than everyone else. And that's actually a big advantage for us and it's definitely been a super great thing. On the other side, I will say also that another big advantage we have had is that we've had tons of years of data. And having data -- even on English speaking customers, but also that you have maybe some English speaking customers from Mexico, from Spain, from Latin America -- learning which kind of customers we were still able to capture from those countries gave us a lot of ideas on how we could capture more of them. So the data was especially amazing when we needed to actually just run advertising to that and let the Google and Facebook algorithms help us find customers that were similar to the ones that were already following us from that region. And it worked really magically in a very scalable way that allowed us to grow exponentially. What does it really mean to go international? Kathleen: So I want to dig in a little bit to really what it means to go international because I think someone listen it would be easy to feel like, "I just need to translate my marketing materials into another language and, blast it out there and people will buy." That's not really what we're talking about here. I mean, you have a product, which is an online product. So it's not just advertising that needs to be localized. It's the product itself, correct? Alessio: Absolutely. And what I like to say is that when we took this approach, there have always been two phases of localizing. The first phase is to kind of bring the best of Mindvalley in that language. And the second phase is to bring that language and that culture into Mindvalley. Because obviously, it's really easy to take a program, translate it and put it out there. But the first thing is that you start to get tons and tons of feedback. And the reality is also that every different culture, every different language, and sometimes different countries in that specific language, will give you very different feedback. So just to give you some examples, in the Spanish speaking language, there is a very big debate of, should you actually translate with a Spanish accent? Or should you translate it with the Mexican or the Colombian one? And it's very interesting to see this debate and understanding. So a lot of time what we needed to do is simply test it out a bit, and we've seen, okay, if we translate one program with a Spanish accent, what happens? If we translate another one with a Mexican accent, what about that? So it's very important to check it out and actually get different feedback from different people. Another important debate that you always need to face and understand is should you dub your content or do you actually want just to subtitle your content? We are having this problem and debating in the Portuguese market, especially because what's happening in that case is that apparently, like some years ago, some companies went into the Brazilian market, they translated and dubbed their content. But they did it in such a bad way and the program was done in such a skanky way that they kind of destroyed the whole dubbing industry. So there are so many people that just don't want to consume a program that is dubbed. But then there are so many other people that don't want to just read the subtitles for every everything. So it's very difficult, even in the same market, to satisfy everyone. So we're trying different approaches and we are trying to understand exactly which approach will work better in which country. But a lot of that, frankly is really trying look for what the customers says and improve our progress day by day. Kathleen: This is such a fascinating topic to me because I actually lived in Spain for a year after I finished college, and I happen to live in Barcelona, which has, it's not the same accent as even like the regular Spanish accent it's a little bit I guess you would say cleaner. But, it's interesting too. It's not just accents, it's like between Spain and South America, there are different levels of formality in the way they speak. Like, if you're a Spanish speaker, it's the difference between using "tu" and "usted" and "ustedes" and vosotros" and things like that. I guess, for somebody, you don't have to speak Spanish to understand this. It's like the difference between British English and American English. They're very different. And in fact, it's so funny because I used to do a lot of work in India, where they have call centers, and somebody once told me this funny story which I have to relate. This is a little bit of a tangent. But they told me that in Karnataka, which is the state where I was working there... Alessio: By the way, I lived in Karnataka, in Bangalore for a year. Kathleen: So well, so you might even know this already. So they said there are two different schools. Like, if you're Indian and you're going to go work in a call center, you either go to the school where they teach you British English or the school where they teach you American English, and they jokingly call the American school the "duh duh duh school" and the British school the "tuh tuh tuh school." And the reason is, think about how people say the word "butter." I'm American, and so I say butter, which is duh, duh, duh butter versus the Brits who say butter, which is tuh, tuh, tuh. So you know, it's fascinating, like, these nuances of language that I think we really take for granted. But then the other half of the story -- and sorry, I'm totally going on but you've made me recall all these memories -- is when I was living in Spain this issue of dubbing is so fascinating because Spain actually has like, I think it's like the world's preeminent dubbing school / industry. And I'll never forget this is going to totally date me but I moved to Spain when the show Melrose Place came out in the United States, which was a really huge hit, but I happen to be living there when it started. And so, I only ever saw it dubbed and listened to it in Spanish with the dubbed voices and there was this character played by the actor Andrew Shue, who in Spain, he had this very manly dubbed voice, you know, and he would be like, "Hola, Carolina". And then I came back to the United States and he has this more, like, high pitched voice. He's like" hey Caroline", and it totally ruined the show for me. Sounds like so anyway, total tangent, but it is super fascinating to me. Just the impact that those choices can make on your effectiveness and communicating and the way that your audience absorbs and forms an opinion about your product. Like, I formed an opinion about Melrose Place the product because of this voice that was different the voice that actually was, etcetera. So, anyway, that's my whole two cents on the dubbing and the language thing, but it's really interesting, and I think most people probably don't think about this. So I'm curious to hear from you, as you did these tests. What did you learn? Like, what were the winners from the tests that you conducted? Alessio: Absolutely. So definitely for the Spanish speaking markets, having a cleaner accent, so having a Latin American accent, has been working much better for us. The program that we actually tried in the Spanish accent from Spain, we needed to retranslate it into Spanish from Latin America, because we got so many complaints from our customers that now we're in the process of retranslating and recording that. And that's actually a very interesting point. I guess about 65 to 70% of our users from Latin America are from Mexico. So a lot of time its simply about understanding the customer that you want to serve more, and understanding where your interest is going, where you're actually growing. And interestingly enough, what we've been seeing now is that in terms of users, Spain is just number six among the Latin American market, but in terms of customers it's a close number two to Mexico. So obviously, the conversion is much better than when it comes to Spain, but then in terms of depth of the market and width of the market, it's definitely not the biggest one we could find there. So for the Spanish market, we definitely decided to set them work. The standard for the Portuguese market, frankly, is something that we are still trying to figure out. Probably between all the markets we've been going for, Portuguese was one with the highest expectations we had, but we still weren't able to go into that. For example, another very big problem that we found in the Portuguese market is the fact that having a localized checkout makes the entire difference. So for some interesting reason, people from Brazil can't really buy products that we normally buy. They need a very specific checkout that is normally in a very specific way that allows the Brazillian credit card to work. Kathleen: Is it just that they need the currency to be in reals? Or is it just the credit card processor? Alessio: It's the credit card processors and 80% of Brazilians cannot buy with a normal process that is normally used for a normal website, or at least with our current websites. So one of the major things that we're doing -- and this obviously, it's a tech change that you need to do -- is changing over checkout in order to be able to serve more markets. So that's something that we're in the process of doing, but as you can imagine, it's such a big project because to better serve one county, you kind of need to start to change your entire process for the entire company. So now we're working on that and ideally, in a couple of months, we should be able to have a solution that should allow us to serve these customers better. Kathleen: Well, it isn't that really like, the classic conundrum of the product marketer, which is that, you know, there's this very natural tension between, you have a customer who could be a great customer, and they have this really specific need that might suck a ton of resources out of the organization versus, like, the population of the rest of the potential customer base who might need smaller changes in order for them to buy. It's like, which one is more valuable, the bird the hand or, the bird that could potentially fly in the next week? I think that's a conversation product marketers everywhere can really relate to. Alessio: Absolutely. I completely agree with that, it's something so crazy. And it's funny, because the more you actually learn about other languages, the more there are certain things that are kind of very interesting. Like, an example of that is in the Russian market, which is actually the only market that's from the previous kind of internationalization that is still alive in Mindvalley. They have 20% of their sales that happen offline. So what that means is that that people buy, but instead of buying, they actually take a screenshot of something that you put on your website. And then they go to the local shop, they show them the screenshot printed, and then they say "I want to pay in cash, and then they pay in cash to the shop, and the shop make sales for you." And it's just like it... Kathleen: So interesting. I know. Alessio: You're like "Why?", but a lot of people don't trust credit cards in our local countries. And a lot of people simply don't trust banks or don't trust anything. They believe much more in cash. So that is very normal, and they expect, when they actually need to make a sale or to buy something, they want to pay in cash, simply because that's how the culture is. Probably in few years, also in other countries, things will change. But at the moment, if you want to properly serve that kind of customer, you need to adopt your business a bit. Localizing the product in addition to the language Kathleen: That is fascinating. You talked about having to create a localized checkout experience for people in Brazil. When you talk about internationalization, or localization really, is what it is, for these different markets -- you've got four now, Spanish speaking German, French, Portuguese. I guess the question I have is, you're obviously translating and subtitling or dubbing the course materials, but are you really presenting a completely localized UX as well within the Mindvalley web experience? Alessio: So we definitely translated the entire UI of our app, and our website and everything. Let's say that, in terms of you UX, there is definitely a lot more that we could do. Especially like, there are certain countries that we're looking at that present these kind of challenges. So just as an example, right now we're entering Arabic. Now one of the biggest questions is, do we write everything left to right or right to left? Like, what do we do? And actually, for us, writing in the Arabic way, so right to left, we would need to make so many changes, tech wise, that if we want to do that we would probably be internationalizing the country two years from now, not today. So sometimes you might need to make some compromises. And also, for me, being a non English speaker, natively, when when I was a kid, and I was playing games, I grew up basically with playing games that their UI was completely in english. It was actually my way to start learning English a lot of time. Sometimes there are certain things that people are way more forgiving. And maybe even if the UI is not translated, it's still good. And the UX is definitely a very advanced level that you might want to adapt, just maybe in a second space. So answering the question, in terms of UX, we have not done that yet. But it's something that we're definitely looking for. But for that, also, it would acquire our platform to become much more flexible than what it is right now. So it is a lot of tech work involved. What kind of a team do you need to support internationalization? Kathleen: Now, what about your team? Because this obviously has implications for the people behind the scenes, both those who are involved in creating the content and adapting it for new languages. Do you have any kind of, like, support functionality that needs to be internationalized? Like, what has that done to the structure of the company itself? Alessio: That's a very interesting one. Because the team, the simplest way to do it, is to do it with flexible contractors. Okay? So what we did for every country is that we have some very strong project managers, and those are the main hires that we did. And these project managers are the ones that actually coordinate all the different contractors of the different areas. So we have some contractors that are in customer support, some contractors that are doing the entire voiceover, scripting, and copywriting in that specific language. We have some contractors doing the learning part. And then slowly, as demand for work is becoming bigger, the more we're starting to hire those people. So we started to hire, for example, social media managers in all those different languages because obviously we want to go bigger in terms of social media. And the next one will be hiring people to take care of the learning, because one of the next steps in terms of our localization is actually to start creating programs that are specific in that language. So that's very interesting, because studying these markets, we've come to understand that there are specific needs that that market has that maybe the English market doesn't have. And so there are these possibilities that we can create specific programs just for that market. And that's something that we are exploring at the moment. Mindvalley's international marketing strategy Kathleen: Fascinating. I mean, I could talk to you for hours about this stuff. But I want to make sure that we build in some time to talk about, like, some of the marketing activities you did to really fuel the growth. So you mentioned advertising. Is it fair to say that that was the primary channel that really drove customer acquisition in these new markets? Alessio: Absolutely. In our industry, online education, advertising is always one of the major channels. But what was incredible for us was that the cost per acquisition in that market was incredibly low. So while in the US we may need to spend about $8 to $10 to acquire a lead, in the Spanish speaking market, we spend between $1 and $2. So literally, we can acquire four or five people per every English user. So, it's very interesting from this point of view, which is why we were able to grow so much in terms of users in the year. Then what's been interesting is that the more users you acquire and the more programs you launch, the more you can actually monetize this fan base and user base that you've been creating. So definitely, email marketing was the other part that was incredibly important to keep those people engaged and to make sure that we could serve them with the best content, with the new classes, with the new programs, and create this kind of fan base. That was incredibly important. Kathleen: To what do you -- you mentioned the lower cost of acquisition in some of these new markets through ads -- to what do you attribute that that big difference between what you're paying to acquire customer in the US versus, for example, say Mexico? Alessio: Well, two different things. So number one, the competition, having a much lower competition in the Spanish speaking market means that the cost is much lower. And we see very clearly obviously, acquiring a new user in India is much cheaper than acquiring a user in the U.S. And the other side is also that, obviously, we need to take care of our markets, as marketers, is not just about how much does it cost us to acquire users, but also what is the return that we can get from that? And that's also a very, important one. So we've been looking into that. And obviously, it's very clear that the conversion rate that you will get in U.S market, it's very different than the conversion rate that you will get in a Spanish speaking market. So you know that if in U.S you have 5% of users buying in the Spanish speaking market, might be only 2% or maybe 1% sometime. So that's something that you always need to take into account and always pay attention to how you're scaling up and how this affects profitability. So it's been actually a very good lesson for us because, in certain moments we were just so bullish, and we're like, "Okay, let's spend more and it just grow it." And then for a couple of more, if you look back and are like, "Okay, cool. Let's just make sure the profitability is there are we're able to do this sustainably" because that's one of the most important to you ought to do. Kathleen: I feel like in the U.S, when we talk about pay per click and online advertising, 95% of the time we're talking about Facebook, Google and Google remarketing. Maybe some LinkedIn, but that's more B2B. Maybe some Twitter. But it's really mostly Facebook and Google. So I'm curious, did you find that to be the same when you went internationally? Or were there other platforms or channels that performed really well for you? Alessio: We definitely found that to be the same. Specifically, what actually has been working really well for us is YouTube. YouTube has been an incredible channel for us. And we've had a few reviews, especially in the Spanish market, where we've had about 35 million views on a specific video that was part of our advertising mix. And that started to go very viral in the market. So definitely, that's what we've been seeing now. But when we actually internationalize in a new market, what we're looking for in the future is definitely we're seeing that there are some other opportunities out there. So in the Russian speaking market, Yandex is a big one. They have Yandex, they have VK -- they have a lot of different social media. Telegram is a big thing there. So definitely, that would require a different mix that we're exploring much more at the moment. Or, for example, in Japan, they have LINE, which is a sort of a Whatsapp, let's say, for the Japanese market and is much stronger than Facebook, for example. So going in these markets really means changing your marketing mix. But let's say that in the four languages that we've been internationalizing until now, we don't have these needs at the moment. Kathleen: Yeah, I feel like that's a whole nother kind of scary area for marketers, when they think about going internationally. They're like, "Hey, it's taken me a long time, but I finally understand how to do Facebook and Google. Now you're telling me I need to learn Yandex and WhatsApp and all these other platforms that can be really intimidating." How did you handle that? Did you guys really just like, learn it yourselves? Or did you find somebody who's really good at it and pull them in to help? Alessio: So let's say that's for Yandex, we would definitely work with external agencies. And we are literally, one year announced that we are studying China, because China is probably the ultimate internationalization that you want to do. And if we want to announce that we are studying the market, we understand what's really there because it's a complete different ecosystem from every single point of view. And we're slowly approaching that big box because it's really the biggest opportunity out there for internationalization. But we want to make sure that once we go there, we go that properly and with the right instrument to make sure that we will be able to actually do it effectively. And in that case, obviously, WeChat, Weibo, Youku, and all the different platforms they have -- so it's really a different system. But as of now, I would say that 80-20 is really what matters. And we're really trying to be able to understand what the best is that we can do with what we have right now. And then slowly, the more these get successful, and also give us enough profit to invest more, understanding how can we go deeper and deeper into the different channels, the different markets and doing understand though, can we do even better? Mindvalley's international growth Kathleen: Yeah, that sounds like it's so complicated. It's fascinating. So before we run out of time, I want to make sure that we really highlight the results you've gotten. So before you did this -- before that person came to you and said, "Hey, can you turn this program into another language?" -- how big was the user base for Mindvalley? Alessio: Our user base was about 1.7 million at that time. Kathleen: Okay. And that was when? Alessio: That was December 2018. Kathleen: Okay. Wow. So, a little over a year ago. Alessio: Yeah, a little over a year ago. And now, our user base is about 3.8 million. We also had a very good growth in English because we've been growing also there. But we've been adding at least, in total, 1.5 million/1.6 million users, just from the internationalization effort. Kathleen: So okay, I want to make sure I'm recapping this correctly. So the company is about 16 years old. And from years zero to 15, let's call it you grew to 1.2 million? Alessio: 1.7 Kathleen: 1.7, sorry. Okay. Thank you. And then in the last little over a year, you've almost tripled that, correct? Or doubled to tripled it? Alessio: You would say double to triple. Yeah, 2.5 million. Kathleen: Wow. That is amazing. Alessio: It's been a really, really exciting year from this point of view. Kathleen: That's amazing. Well, kudos to you and the team for what you've done. This is not easy. But it definitely highlights what a game changer it can be from a growth standpoint, if you're able to do it and navigate it correctly. Alessio: I personally think, after one year and a half of working on this, that it's probably one of the biggest opportunities out there that a lot of marketers have not been taking. Alessio's advice for marketers thinking of internationalizing Kathleen: So, if you had to start over again and talk to yourself two years ago, what advice would you give yourself? Is there anything you wish you would have done differently or you had known before you started? Alessio: So what I would say is that I would have probably, from the first moment, I would have approached it, I would have tried to over hire probably, and to hire a bit more people because it really requires some good HR to make sure that you're actually been able to go that deep into the market. We've been stretching our resources a lot to launch as much as possible. But I think that if we would have had two to three hires per languages versus just one we would have been able to do a better job, and been more profitable and growing more. These are probably the only few things that I would say to myself because for the rest, like, the team, even if it was the very simple payment stuff, has been able to deliver amazing things. Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: Wow. That's incredible. Well, we have just a few minutes left so I want to make sure I ask you the questions that I asked everybody who comes on this podcast. The first one being, you know, this, the show is all about inbound marketing. Is there a particular company or individual that you think is really killing it right now with inbound marketing? Alessio: So my actual favorite guy in inbound marketing is Patrick Campbell from ProfitWell. I'm a big geek, in terms of revenue, subscription terminology, growing revenues and listening, and he's incredible in terms of looking into pricing, hosting a show that's fun, but speak about things that for the probably 99.9% of the people are very boring. But he's able to do it in such a great way. Such a great quality, having some great guests as well. And I'm really incredibly surprised the content he's able to put out there. Kathleen: That's a good one. I'll definitely check that out. And you know, the biggest complaint I hear from marketers is that things are changing so quickly. It's really hard to stay on top of all the new developments in the world of digital marketing. How do you personally do that? Alessio: I would say that one of the habits I've implemented is that I always keep one hour and a half a day to learn. That to me is just a huge part of my job. Like, you can't be a great marketer if you don't learn. Digital marketing in 2020 is different than digital marketing in 2017. And if you don't have enough time to learn it, you just won't get it. In terms of sources of learning, I definitely have a couple of Chrome extensions that that helped me out a lot. So number one is Zest.is, which is a fantastic Chrome extension that gives me the best marketing articles every single day. That is followed by growthhackers.com, which has a fantastic newsletter. And then I follow a couple of podcasts, a couple of different things in the startup, entrepreneurship, marketing, business space that helps me to think outside of the box. Kathleen: So what are some of your favorite podcasts? Alessio: Actually the podcasts that I like the most are more around growth hacking and how companies have been scaling and growing. So Reid Hoffman Masters of Scale and Andrew Chen from Andreessen Horowitz. That's really incredible for me and something that I'm always trying to be on top of and, and to learn as much as possible from them. How to connect with Alessio or Mindvalley Kathleen: Great. Well, this has been so much fun and so interesting. And I feel like we've barely even scratched the surface. But that's all the time we have. So if someone wants to learn more about Mindvalley, or if they want to reach out to you and ask a question about this experience you've had with internationalization, what's the best way for them to do that? Alessio: Absolutely. So if you want to learn more about Mindvalley, just go to Mindvalley.com, and you can learn a bit more about that all our classes, our courses, and all the opportunities you have to improve your personal growth and education. If you want to reach out to me, find me on LinkedIn, that's my favorite platform. I'm always putting out a lot of interesting content on marketing there, and just follow me -- Alessio Perioni. And I try to catch up with all the messages I get, and I'll be happy to answer every single question. You know what to do next... Kathleen: Oh, fantastic. I will put the links to both the Mindvalley website and Alessio, his LinkedIn profile, in the show notes. So definitely head over there. And check that out if you want to get in touch with him. And if you're listening and you found this episode valuable or you learn something new, please consider heading to Apple podcasts and leaving the podcast a five star review. That's how we get in front of new people and we get to share all this great information from folks like Alessio. And if you know somebody else who's doing kick ass inbound marketing work, tweet me @workmommywork because I would love to make them my next interview. That's it for this week. Thank you so much Alessio. Alessio: It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. It was such a fun conversation.
#MrTherPod #CreativesCare4China #ShenzhenStreetSpirit #CoronaVirus Today, Dr.Emanuele Gatti, Counseling Psychologist and Mindfulness instructor based in Shenzhen, China, joined Mr.TherPod on SDG Agency SZ. Emanuele gave us an update on the situation in Shenzhen at present; a far more positive and upbeat update than you’ll probably read or hear anywhere else at this time. He made an impassioned plea to people throughout the world to help raise the spirits of the people in China through any means possible, be it, song, dance, poetry, art or design. (He didn't mention podcasting.....I'll forgive him this time....) Dr.Emanuele stressed the value of 'Strength through Unity' saying; “Instead of only consuming the terrible gloomy records with the number of deaths due to the virus….instead let’s create positive content for other people to see that they are not alone in this situation and to help them go on…..everyone can make a small but significant contribution” His advice to the rest of the world is: “If you can sing, sing.... if you can paint, paint......Whatever you can do, do it, and record it and share it with the people of China, to let the people know they are not alone, and that you are thinking of them". This is a real call to action by Dr.Emanuele Gatti....who also said; "Instead of being sad, or bored or concerned at home, do something creative and share it out. Let the people know, you are with them. We are all on the same boat. Reduce your tension by giving to somebody else". So people of the world - let's listen to Dr.Emanuele and let's get creative during this time and share your work with the people of China through any means possible be it Twitter, YouTube, FaceBook, YouKu.....Pigeons.....and be sure to use the #CreativesCare4China #ShenzhenStreetSpirit #MrTherPodsCommunity #MrTherPod #mentalhealthawareness With Mr.TherPod, You're Not Alone https://www.facebook.com/mrtherpod https://twitter.com/MrTherPod https://anchor.fm/sdgagencysz https://anchor.fm/prsradio/episodes/The-Vadas-Experience-e5nemv #MrTherPodsCommunity #MindfulConnections #DrEGatti #CoronaVirus #SDGagencySZ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/sdgagencysz/message
INTERVIEW BEGINS AT 4:42 In Episode 11, we meet Ellis, also known as Li Hei Shuai( 李黑帅 ), a social media comedian and viral content maker living in Chongqing, China. Ellis has been living in Chongqing since 2013. He has a funny story too! In 2016, he made a video for his friends in China addressing the day to day questions and sometimes rude comments he would get from locals, living as a black man in China. He did this all while speaking standard Mandarin too. After casually posting it online, the video snowballed and spread all around social media, even Time magazine reached out to him for an interview. Now Li Hei Shuai, has become some what of a local celebrity in Chongqing because he can speak Chongqinghua which is the local dialect in the mountain city. Not only has he been creating content from big social media sites like Youtube and China’s Youku and Weibo, but he’s been on a slew of Chinese TV game shows and even movies too. Li Hei Shuai chats to Shannon about his acting career, thoughts on the Rap Of China TV show, his favorite Chinese rappers and what the future holds for him next. Follow Li Hei Shaui 李黑帅 @李黑帅 (Weibo + Youtube) Follow Shannon too! @oh_ya_girl (Instagram) @Shannon1DJ (Twitter) BE APART OF THE PATREON COMMUNITY www.patreon.com/clubmanagement1
Emma Schermer Tamir – Marketing by EmmaSelling online is about story telling. This story is told in pictures, words, packaging, product listings and much more. Emma and her team are experienced copywriters that help you tell your brand story.Why you should use verbal textiles?How to present your brand and present yourself?What to consider when you localize and personalize your brand?How to manage your creative team if it is outsourced?How to provide feedback to your creative team?Find Emma on LinkedIN or check out http://www.marketingbyemma.com John Cavindish– ecomDNA | SellerCandy | FBA Translations | FBA FrontiersAs offline distributors started to open Amazon stores brands can lose the control on how to properly present their brand and their story. EcomDNA offers a solution to have a long-term growth strategy in their B2C presence as a partner of their marketing team.What is the Amazon GAP report?How the VAT system works in Europe for Amazon sellers?Main differences on US vs EU Amazon sales?How to differentiate from Chinese Amazon farmsFind John on LinkedIN or check out http://www.ecomdna.com or http://sellercandy.com/ James Chane– Online mediahost and teacherJames has spent more than 8,000 hrs volunteering and doing charity in China for more than 13 years. He has produced and uploaded more than 800 videos on China's popular video sharing sites Youku, and Miaopai. teaching English, interviewing businessmen, and sharing people's talents, passion and dreams. Some of his short videos have received over 1 Million views in a few days.Why he is so passionate about teaching English?Differences between Western and Chinese educationWhat can we learn from Chinese education?What video’s work well on social media?Find James on LinkedINDownload and SubscribeDownload this episode right click and choose "save as"Subscribe to China Business Cast on iTunesOr check out the full list on subscription optionsAdd Jons ('jslemmer') or Simon ('sraadt') on WeChat to join China Business Cast WeChat group
Today on The Negotiation, we talk with Mathias Chaillou, Global Head of Strategic Operations at Zenith. He relates his decade-long traditional marketing and, eventually, eCommerce career in China. In the days when TV was the medium of choice in the advertising industry, everything was about the cost-per-rating point around roughly a thousand TV channels, along with continuous negotiations with around 26 provinces.Some provinces were more traditionally-minded than others when it comes to marketing communications. Because of varying points-of-view within different regions, Mathias likes to think of the whole of China as a “continent”, and each province as a “country”.Two factors accelerated China's move to digital marketing. The first, according to Mathias, is Weibo, which is regarded as China's Twitter. The second is Youku, which functions similarly to YouTube. A lot of money began to flow through social media and online TV at a much faster rate than in the West. In fact, alongside Youku, Baidu and Tencent (and their subsidiaries) together are much bigger than YouTube.There is a lot of pitching involved, particularly with agencies, to obtain contracts. However, agency-client relationships tend to be much shorter than they are in the West (usually under two years). Turnaround times are also relatively quick (around three weeks in China as compared to three months in the West for the same project). The reason for this urgency is the fact that China had to catch up to the West in many ways when digital marketing rose to prominence. This level of speed is part of what defines the business culture in China today. In short, “Don't look back; just move fast and move quickly,” says Mathias.To succeed as a foreign company in China, you need to be ready to bring something to the market that sets you apart from the big local players. This could be a unique strategy or new technology. Without this “Unique Selling Proposition”, local brands will beat the average multinational on cost and cultural understanding. Aside from that—and just as importantly—you must build a very tight relationship with your local partners, which starts even before the first formal meeting begins. The company that understands and appreciates nuance will thrive.Above all, adaptation is key.
Zoe Kravitz cast as Catwoman, Venom Director talks Spider-Man crossover, Samara Weaving cast in Snake Eyes, Youku to co-produce Stan Lee's Superhero Kindergarten. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Musical Magic with Elfy Jo Radio Show Welkom bij mijn nieuwste project! In deze aflevering vertel ik hoe 60 seconds of Zen with Elfy Jo tot stand is gekomen en welke ideeën ik gebruik voor de creatie van de verschillende stukken. Elfy's wijze van Zen is uniek en heeft veel verschillende facetten. Het volledige project is te beluisteren (en te bekijken!) op de volgende locaties: FaceBook https://bit.ly/2lWHME9 YouTube https://bit.ly/2k0bnfm YouKu https://bit.ly/2k2nbxP ~ More about Musical Magic with Elfy Jo ~ Do you enjoy music? Is music something you enjoy rocking to in your car or in the shower? Do you happen to play an instrument? Or are you wishing you played an instrument? Have you ever noticed that music can makes everything in your life better? On Musical Magic with Elfy Jo she explores the magic that music truly is and can be for you as well. Come play and enjoy a whole new world of possibilities. AND have a whole lot fun while we are at it too! Elfy offers music classes and sells her art online. You can reach her at www.elfyjo.com To get more of Musical Magic with Elfy Jo be sure to visit the archives page for replays of all her shows here: https://www.inspiredchoicesnetwork.com/podcast/musical-magic-elfy-jo/
Musical Magic with Elfy Jo Radio Show 欢迎到60 seconds of Zen with Elfy Jo！大家过来一起放松一下。 60秒都可以改变你的能量和情绪哦。Elfy Jo 的 Zen 当然跟别人的不一样，嘻嘻。 下面几个网站可以听和看到所有的60 seconds of Zen with Elfy Jo： FaceBook https://bit.ly/2lWHME9 YouTube https://bit.ly/2k0bnfm YouKu https://bit.ly/2k2nbxP ~ More about Musical Magic with Elfy Jo ~ Do you enjoy music? Is music something you enjoy rocking to in your car or in the shower? Do you happen to play an instrument? Or are you wishing you played an instrument? Have you ever noticed that music can makes everything in your life better? Are you curious about how it can bring more ease, more joy and more possibilities in to your life, body and play? On Musical Magic with Elfy Jo she explores the magic that music truly is and can be for you as well. Come play and enjoy a whole new world of possibilities. AND have a whole lot fun while we are at it too! Here's some more info on Elfy Jo: Hi everyone! I’m originally a professional musician but these days I’m also a radio show host, a spokesperson for consciousness, a teacher, a healer and a lover of shenanigans. In all of my work I combine my joy for life with my knowledge of energy work and mastery in music. One of my strongest magical powers is transmuting heavy energies to light and expansive ones. I do this with my specific skill set that incorporates kindness with a “whatever it takes” attitude. I’m here to inspire people and to be a catalyst for positive changes on this planet. I offer a wide range of services: instrument specific music teaching, music coaching for professionals, music coaching in preparation for concerts or exams, BARS and Body Process sessions, musical healing sessions and online classes on consciousness. If you’d like to work with me, you can contact me at elfyjo.magic@gmail.com or visit my website www.elfyjo.com Book Your Session with Elfy Jo, here - https://elfyjo.as.me/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MusicalMagicwithElfyJo/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChuK3CeqonxZQRBFK1Uqc6w To get more of Musical Magic with Elfy Jo be sure to visit the archives page for replays of all her shows here: https://www.inspiredchoicesnetwork.com/podcast/musical-magic-elfy-jo/
Musical Magic with Elfy Jo Radio Show Welcome to my newest project! In today's show I invite you to come on a Zen journey with me. I explain what 60 seconds of Zen with Elfy Jo is about and I will share six different creations with you throughout the show. The full project is available in the following locations: FaceBook https://bit.ly/2lWHME9 YouTube https://bit.ly/2k0bnfm YouKu https://bit.ly/2k2nbxP ~ More about Musical Magic with Elfy Jo ~ Do you enjoy music? Is music something you enjoy rocking to in your car or in the shower? Do you happen to play an instrument? Or are you wishing you played an instrument? Have you ever noticed that music can makes everything in your life better? Are you curious about how it can bring more ease, more joy and more possibilities in to your life, body and play? On Musical Magic with Elfy Jo she explores the magic that music truly is and can be for you as well. Come play and enjoy a whole new world of possibilities. AND have a whole lot fun while we are at it too! Here's some more info on Elfy Jo: Hi everyone! I’m originally a professional musician but these days I’m also a radio show host, a spokesperson for consciousness, a teacher, a healer and a lover of shenanigans. In all of my work I combine my joy for life with my knowledge of energy work and mastery in music. One of my strongest magical powers is transmuting heavy energies to light and expansive ones. I do this with my specific skill set that incorporates kindness with a “whatever it takes” attitude. I’m here to inspire people and to be a catalyst for positive changes on this planet. I offer a wide range of services: instrument specific music teaching, music coaching for professionals, music coaching in preparation for concerts or exams, BARS and Body Process sessions, musical healing sessions and online classes on consciousness. If you’d like to work with me, you can contact me at elfyjo.magic@gmail.com or visit my website www.elfyjo.com Book Your Session with Elfy Jo, here - https://elfyjo.as.me/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MusicalMagicwithElfyJo/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChuK3CeqonxZQRBFK1Uqc6w To get more of Musical Magic with Elfy Jo be sure to visit the archives page for replays of all her shows here: https://www.inspiredchoicesnetwork.com/podcast/musical-magic-elfy-jo/
This week we have the opportunity to speak with Jerry Liu. Jerry is a full time digital content creator and currently have more than 130K subscribers on YouTube, 181k subscribers on Facebook. Having spent time in journalism, PR, and more than 10,000 hours in the digital media space, Jerry carry unique communications experience in traditional and digital media and offer a unique blend of passion, energy, and focus to his works and to clients and employers. Jerry started his first YouTube channel (called JerryLiuFilms) for fun, but it developed into multiple brands. Since 2011, He gained more than 30 Million views and partnered with Multi-Channel Networks like Fullscreen and BBTV. Besides YouTube, he also experimented with other digital media platforms. He also put videos on YouKu and Bilibili, two of China's biggest video content sites, and gained more than half-a-million views on those Chinese site. I've also tested Vine, Twitter, and Instagram. Jerry mentioned that he learned how to use metrics to elevate his success. For example, he started to analyze what product companies care about when it comes to releasing content on a platform and looking how to get conversions and receive wide engagement. He mentioned there are a few key things to keep in mind when starting out. For example, he evaluated based on three metrics: Passion, ROI, and Effort. He doesn't keep a project going if there is no passion, because in the downturns, it is hard to get things going. As for ROI, he wants to see how much effort it takes him to generate a profitable ROi. If there is very low return he might consider starting another passion project. As for efforts, he mentioned that if it stresses him out in terms the number of efforts require to get things going, he would start and deplete his cognitive and decide to stop completely. He also shared one of his biggest lessons from my first YouTube channel was to specialize. Every idea should be its own brand on a separate channel. That's the secret to success because fans on each platform and each account are different and expect different content. Applying this lesson, he shared he experienced 600% growth of my brands since 2016 when he started creating focused channels based on the needs and trends of the digital media community. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app
小桔车服昨天宣布，组织架构升级，成立车企业务部和小桔能源业务板块，打造以租车为主线，汽车、养车、能源的“三大引擎”。小桔车服原有的业务板块包括小桔养车、小桔租车、小桔充电、小桔加油和汽车创新中心。升级后，小桔养车将在原有的维保业务基础上，整合保险和安全驾驶业务，推动养车与租车平台的打通，通过线上化、数据化的管理，降低车辆生命周期成本，负责人为顾海杰。此外，小桔车服还宣布成立车服大区，实现整体的城市业务规划布局，探索在单城内租车、养车、能源等的充分打通与协调联动。 瑞幸昨天正式发布战略级茶饮品牌“小鹿茶”，共上线芝士茶、手摇茶、牛乳茶、其他共4大品类，活力柠檬红宝石茶、芒芒芝士茉莉茶、桃桃山雾乌龙茶、核桃芝士红宝石茶等10余款茶饮。新品茶饮即日起将在全国40个城市、近3000家门店上线。小鹿茶主打年轻人的新式茶饮，在这个领域里，已然跑出来喜茶、奈雪の茶等品牌。这意味着，与星巴克正打得火热的瑞幸，又有了新的对手。 哔哩哔哩昨天宣布，上线“互动视频”功能。UP主可制作包含不同选项的互动式视频，用户则可以通过播放器做出选择，触发多重剧情和结局。目前这一功能仍在测试阶段，仅向粉丝数量过万的UP主开放。继腾讯视频、爱奇艺推出互动剧后，如今B站也加入“互动”的队伍中，推出互动视频了。互动视频，是一种观众通过选项互动，主动参与剧情走向的视频形式，早在很多年前就已经有视频公司在尝试了。 优酷启用全新品牌标识系统，据优酷视觉设计负责人介绍，此次品牌焕新的核心关键词为“突破、前行、胜利”。全新LOGO去除了外围的“圆圈”设计，保留中间的播放按钮，并使其以更为自由、进取的姿态呈现于大写“YOUKU”右侧，象征优酷破“圈”前行，以更简洁、开放的形象，面向未来、拥抱未来、创造未来。 据蚂蚁金服昨天发布的消息，相互宝自去年10月16号上线以来，用户已经超过7500万。截至今年7月7号，将累计救助重病成员597名。“相互宝”是支付宝App上线的一项大病互助计划。支付宝用户加入后，如有成员遭遇重大疾病，可申请最高30万的互助金。互助金费用由所有成员分摊，2019年人均分摊上限不超过188元，多出部分由蚂蚁金服承担。蚂蚁金服副总裁尹铭昨天在接受媒体采访时说，“相互宝和保险并不是互相竞争的关系，但相互宝能够推动保障意识的教育和服务的普及。” Airbnb爱彼迎昨天发布了《2019夏日旅行白皮书》。数据显示，今年夏天，旅行者的住宿需求升级，爱彼迎Plus房源需求同比增长6.2倍，青海海西游客数增长9倍。北京周边的延庆度假区预订量增长高达14倍。在学生群体方面，二三线城市如长春、芜湖、石家庄、太原、佛山等，成为暑期出游的人气之选。 美国外国投资委员会批准了软银对通用旗下自动驾驶公司Cruise的22.5亿美元投资，这也是软银在自动驾驶领域最大的一笔投资。通过这笔投资，软银将拥有Cruise近20％的股份，至此，Cruise成为背靠通用、软银、本田三大巨头的自动驾驶公司。8点1氪，今日言论。首汽约车CEO魏东说，现在滴滴还算一家独大，虽然很多玩家进场，但其他人还没形成足够强的市场地位。不过，一家独大的局面不会持续太久。对于小平台而言，如果它们转型成为第三方出行服务商，短期内至少能活下去。现阶段这样的平台还有它的市场价值，因为它能承接聚合平台来的运力需求，获得生存空间，并从中获益。
This week's special guest is Helen Wong from Qiming Ventures. Helen was ranked among Top 100 VCs in China and Top 25 female VCs in China in 2018 by Forbes. Past investments/ exits include Mobike (acquired by Meituan), Lagou (acquired by 51jobs), Ruhnn (Ticker: RUHN), Luojisiwei (audio platform). She is currently responsible for investments targeting overseas markets including Clubfactory (cross border ecommerce focused on India), Pratilipi (online literature in India), Akulaku (SE Asia consumer financing), RedDoorz (SE Asian budget hotel chain), and Chinese investments such as Jingling (social ecommerce) and Motianlun (secondary ticketing platform). Helen is a long time venture capitalist and spent 11 years at GGV Capital. She was an early investor in Tudou (merged with Youku). She was also involved in the investment of Alibaba. She received degrees from Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business, INSEAD, and Oxford University.
Welcome to the 86th installment of the Caixin-Sinica Business Brief, a weekly podcast that brings you the most important business stories of the week from China's top source for business and financial news. Produced by Kaiser Kuo of our Sinica Podcast, it features a business news roundup, plus conversations with Caixin reporters and editors. This week: We discuss how the U.S.-China trade war is dragging on after Trump raised tariffs from 10 percent to 25 percent on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods. We hear that investors have shown greater-than-expected interest in China's Starbucks challenger Luckin Coffee, oversubscribing the company's U.S. IPO several-fold. We learn that Netflix is acquiring the rights to another show from Alibaba's Youku video service, increasing efforts to serve Chinese viewers around the world. We analyze the shutdown of the Melbourne office of China's second-largest online seller, JD.com, as it has come under growing pressure to show investors it can be profitable. We note that China is beefing up control of the deadly pig contagion ravaging its mammoth pork industry, ordering mandatory testing for African swine fever at more than 10,000 slaughterhouses nationwide. We learn the news that China's rural migrant worker population grew at a decade-long low last year. We chat about the removal of Chinese liquor-maker Moutai's chairman from his post, with a source saying that the dismissal may have been related to him abusing his power and manipulating the market. In addition, we talk with Tanner Brown, co-producer of this podcast and head of real-time news at Caixin Global, about a case of corruption.
Making a feature film can be a long and painful process — especially when you’re shooting an indie film in below-freezing conditions 16 hours per day for 14 days. But that is exactly what the creative team behind The Last Sunrise 最后的日出 was able to do, and along the way, they generated useful insight into China’s science-fiction movie scene and the realities of filmmaking in China on a shoestring budget. Featuring: Wen Ren: Director | 任文 ：导演 Wen’s IMDB | Wen’s Instagram | Wen’s Vimeo Elly Li: Producer, Co-writer | 李昳青：制片人，编剧 Elly’s IMDB And, as usual, your host, Aladin Farré. Aladin’s LinkedIn | Aladin’s Twitter Four main takeaways from this week’s episode: 从这期访谈中，我们总结出四个主要观点： 1) Chinese science-fiction productions tend to be optimistic about the future. While Western science-fiction productions are dominated by dystopian tropes, in contrast, Chinese sci-fi tends to paint a far more benign portrait of how science will usher in a better future. Of course, state regulations that govern cultural production in China have something to do with this, but gifted creators can often find workarounds to these restrictions. 2) In China, getting started in the film industry is like founding a startup. The main goal of most filmmakers is to make a good-quality film and, if at all possible, to pay the filmmaking team along the way. There is no shortcut to a successful career in making feature films; making a high-quality movie is the end result of years of experience in the industry. Big payoffs do not happen by accident. Just like any other entrepreneur, filmmakers need to make good products before they can hope to earn serious revenue, and this means working on as many projects as possible. In China as in many other markets, the jump from making low-budget films online to big-budget films intended for cinematic release is a large one, and not everyone makes it. 3) Chinese internet distributors usually pay a flat fee and keep audience numbers secret. If an internet platform agrees to distribute a film, the producer will receive a flat fee and will need to budget the film accordingly. There is no incentive or bonuses for films that reach a large audience on an internet platform. The general public will likely never learn how many people have actually watched the movie, just as with Netflix in the West. Platforms like Youku do provide an indicator of popularity 热度 and share it with the creators after some time. However, the popularity of any given film peaks only briefly before audiences move on. In the case of The Last Sunrise, for example, the movie was the second-most widely viewed movie on Youku for a few weeks before plunging down to number #799 three months later. 4) There are a few key secrets to shooting a film in 14 days. Do a lot of advance planning to avoid wasting time. Surround yourself with a team who can work long hours and understand your creative vision. Select only a few locations, and shoot indoors as much as possible. For The Last Sunrise , for example, the team limited filming locations to only three places: Beijing 北京, Zhangbei 张北 in Hebei Province, and Ordos 鄂尔多斯 in Inner Mongolia. As you pitch the project, be prepared to propose a variety of budgets and lengths to appeal to different types of investors. Recommended watching and reading: The Last Sunrise 最后的日出 (2019): Youku (VIP account needed) | Facebook page Train to Busan (2016): Wikipedia page Black Coal, Thin Ice 白日焰火 (2014): Wikipedia page The Wandering Earth 流浪地球 (2019): Wikipedia page South Korean director Kim Ki-duk: Wikipedia page Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda : Wikipedia page Zhang Yimou’s opinion piece in the New York Times, “What Hollywood looks like from China.” Answers to the episode quiz: Lu Xun 鲁迅 was the famous Chinese author who translated several science-fiction books over a century ago. Amazon Prime bought the rights to the book The Three-Body Problem 三体, by Liu Cixin 刘慈欣. The full series has yet to be released. The year 2003 was when the first Chinese astronaut, or taikonaut, Yang Liwei 杨利伟, went to space.
When prodded to think about documentaries at all, most people imagine features films that are shown in festivals and cinemas. What this picture misses is the fact that the majority of documentary filmmakers make their living producing documentaries for television. Does this mean that documentarians in China are all but guaranteed to make money in the country, with its billion-strong audience? 当我们谈论纪录片的时候，很多人会想到在节日和电影院放映的故事片。但实际上，大多数纪录片制作人都是以电视纪录片为生的。中国的亿万眼球能给他们带来财富和名誉吗？ Featuring: Steven Seidenberg: Script writer and consultant | 编剧、顾问 Zhang Nan: Director, PANGO Pictures | 张楠：导演，盘古影业 And, as usual, your host, Aladin Farré. Aladin’s LinkedIn | Aladin’s Twitter Three main takeaways from this week’s episode: 从这期访谈中，我们总结出三个主要观点： 1) Documentary storytelling is not the same everywhere. 纪录片的叙事方式在不同的地方并不一样。 Chinese documentaries often feature strong narration with impressive visuals, often called the “voice of God” style. Generally, in this style, the narrator will explain the actions of the characters of a film, with interviews and sound bites reduced to a minimum. This approach to documentaries gives filmmakers more control over the message of the film. While Japanese documentaries are frequently shot in this style, it is markedly less popular in other Asian nations, including South Korea and Singapore, where documentarians prefer to directly show conflict and the end product resembles a fiction film. This preference is also shared in most Western nations, suggesting that cultural preferences may be at work. 中国的纪录片通常有很多的旁白，通常被称为“上帝之声”，然后再由漂亮的画面来修饰它。在采访中，片中角色的行为通常由旁白来讲述，同时现场的录音被减小到最低的程度。同样的现象也出现在日本的记录片中。但是西方国家及某些亚洲国家，比如韩国或者新加坡，他们倾向与表现冲突，这看起来更像一部电影。这种分歧可能来自文化差异，也因为对于制片人来说，这样更容易控制出现在影片中的话语。 2) If you want to make TV documentaries in China, you’ve got to call on the big guns. 如果你想在中国拍一部电视纪录片，那就去找一些大机构。 In China, finding a broadcaster to release your documentary is easy; between CCTV 9, CCTV 10, CGTN, and the plethora of local channels and internet platforms, distribution is hardly a problem. However, many of these platforms will merely post the film and won’t invest in distribution. Funding must come from other sources, such as a local government that wants to advertise the location in which the film is shot, an institution promoting a certain message, a company with a PR angle, or a donor who just wants to support a given project. 有了CCTV 9、CCTV 10、CGTN、许多地方频道和互联网平台，找一个广播公司来播放你的纪录片是相当容易的。但有些平台只是提供一个展示你电影的机会，而不会投资。为了给你的节目制作人投资，你必须找到其他类型的资金。可能是地方政府想宣传拍摄纪录片的地方，想宣传某一主题的机构，愿意参与公关活动的大公司，或者只是想帮助某个项目的慈善家。 3) Filming documentaries is not a path to riches. 做纪录片是不会发财的。 Often we see documentary filmmakers as white knights fighting on behalf of the public by reporting on difficult or marginalized issues. However, even if your film is screened at a famous festival or aired on a popular television network, it is still difficult to make a living. Producers, directors, and script writers of documentaries often have to supplement their incomes by doing other work (e.g., corporate videos, teaching, or doing technical jobs in bigger productions). 我们常常把纪录片制片人看作是白衣骑士，为了公众而报道困难的问题或提出有趣的话题。但是，即使你的电影在著名的节日放映，或通过电视播放，以此来谋生也是相当困难的。制作人、导演和编剧必须另找工作（企业宣传片、教学、在大制作中当技术员），以便在做纪录片的同时维持生活的。 Recommended watching: 1. Last Train Home (归途列车), a Chinese feature film by Fan Lixin (範立欣), released in 2009. 2. A Bite of China (舌尖上的中国), a Chinese documentary television series on the history of food, eating, and cooking, broadcasted by CCTV 1. 3. The Great Shokunin (了不起的匠人), a Chinese mini-documentary series that tells the stories of craftspeople across Asia. All seasons are available on the internet platform Youku, but you can see the first season on YouTube (with English subtitles) here.
GGV Capital's Hans Tung and Zara Zhang interview Jixun Foo (符绩勋), who is a Managing Partner at GGV Capital based in China. Jixun joined GGV in 2006 and has more than 20 years of experience in venture capital investing. He focuses on travel and transportation, social media and commerce as well as enterprise services in China. Jixun has led GGV's investments in Qunar (去哪儿), Grab, Didi (滴滴出行), Youku-Tudou (优酷土豆), UCWeb, Mogujie-Meilishuo (美丽联合集团), MediaV, Full-Truck Alliance (formerly Yunmanman) (满帮集团), Meicai (美菜), and currently serves on the boards of XPeng (小鹏汽车), Hellobike (哈罗单车), Tujia (途家), Xiangwushuo (享物说), Zuiyou (最右) and Kujiale (酷家乐). Jixun played a critical role in many key strategic mergers and acquisitions, such as those of Youku-Tudou, Baidu/Qunar, Ctrip/Qunar, and Mogujie/Meilishuo. Jixun has been recognized by Forbes China as one of the “Best Venture Capitalists” every year since 2006, and frequently appears on the Forbes Midas list. Before GGV, Jixun was a Director at Draper Fisher Jurvetson ePlanet Ventures, where he led the firm's investment in Baidu. Prior to DFJ ePlanet, Jixun led the Investment Group under the Finance & Investment Division of the National Science & Technology Board of Singapore (NSTB) and has also worked in the R&D division of Hewlett Packard. Jixun is from Singapore and graduated from the National University of Singapore with a First-Class Honors degree in Engineering, as well as a Master's in Management of Technology from the university's Graduate School of Business. In this episode, Jixun discusses how he started his career in venture capital, the insider story behind the merger between Youku and Tudou (the largest merger in Chinese tech history at the time), why he invested in the bike-sharing company HelloBike (which overtook Mobike and Ofo to become the top player in the country), and what sectors excite him today. Join our listeners' community via WeChat/Slack at 996.ggvc.com/community. You can view the full transcript of this episode at 996.ggvc.com. We are excited to announce a new program, "GGV Fellows", designed to help "sea turtles" or (海归) and Chinese students studying overseas to get to know the Chinese entrepreneurial landscape better. If you're a Chinese student/professional who is studying/working overseas (or have done so in the past), this is a program designed for you! It's a weeklong program in Jan 2019 in Beijing (during most US college's winter break). You will be able to learn from executives at some of China's most valuable tech companies, and visit some of their offices. You will also participate in mixers with students at top Chinese universities like Tsinghua and Beida to build a local network. Please visit fellows.ggvc.com for the application link and for more information. The 996 Podcast is brought to you by GGV Capital, a multi-stage venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley, Shanghai, and Beijing. We have been partnering with leading technology entrepreneurs for the past 18 years from seed to pre-IPO. With $3.8 billion in capital under management across eight funds, GGV invests in globally minded entrepreneurs in consumer internet, e-commerce, frontier tech, and enterprise. GGV has invested in over 280 companies, with 30 companies valued at over $1 billion. Portfolio companies include Airbnb, Alibaba, Bytedance (Toutiao), Ctrip, Didi Chuxing, DOMO, Hashicorp, Hellobike, Houzz, Keep, Musical.ly, Slack, Square, Wish, Xiaohongshu, YY, and others. Find out more at ggvc.com.
GGV Capital’s Hans Tung and Zara Zhang interview Jixun Foo (符绩勋), who is a Managing Partner at GGV Capital based in China. Jixun joined GGV in 2006 and has more than 20 years of experience in venture capital investing. He focuses on travel and transportation, social media and commerce as well as enterprise services in China. Jixun has led GGV’s investments in Qunar (去哪儿), Grab, Didi (滴滴出行), Youku-Tudou (优酷土豆), UCWeb, Mogujie-Meilishuo (美丽联合集团), MediaV, Full-Truck Alliance (formerly Yunmanman) (满帮集团), Meicai (美菜), and currently serves on the boards of XPeng (小鹏汽车), Hellobike (哈罗单车), Tujia (途家), Xiangwushuo (享物说), Zuiyou (最右) and Kujiale (酷家乐). Jixun played a critical role in many key strategic mergers and acquisitions, such as those of Youku-Tudou, Baidu/Qunar, Ctrip/Qunar, and Mogujie/Meilishuo. Jixun has been recognized by Forbes China as one of the “Best Venture Capitalists” every year since 2006, and frequently appears on the Forbes Midas list. Before GGV, Jixun was a Director at Draper Fisher Jurvetson ePlanet Ventures, where he led the firm’s investment in Baidu. Prior to DFJ ePlanet, Jixun led the Investment Group under the Finance & Investment Division of the National Science & Technology Board of Singapore (NSTB) and has also worked in the R&D division of Hewlett Packard. Jixun is from Singapore and graduated from the National University of Singapore with a First-Class Honors degree in Engineering, as well as a Master’s in Management of Technology from the university’s Graduate School of Business. In this episode, Jixun discusses how he started his career in venture capital, the insider story behind the merger between Youku and Tudou (the largest merger in Chinese tech history at the time), why he invested in the bike-sharing company HelloBike (which overtook Mobike and Ofo to become the top player in the country), and what sectors excite him today. Join our listeners' community via WeChat/Slack at 996.ggvc.com/community. You can view the full transcript of this episode at 996.ggvc.com. We are excited to announce a new program, "GGV Fellows", designed to help "sea turtles" or (海归) and Chinese students studying overseas to get to know the Chinese entrepreneurial landscape better. If you're a Chinese student/professional who is studying/working overseas (or have done so in the past), this is a program designed for you! It's a weeklong program in Jan 2019 in Beijing (during most US college's winter break). You will be able to learn from executives at some of China's most valuable tech companies, and visit some of their offices. You will also participate in mixers with students at top Chinese universities like Tsinghua and Beida to build a local network. Please visit fellows.ggvc.com for the application link and for more information. The 996 Podcast is brought to you by GGV Capital, a multi-stage venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley, Shanghai, and Beijing. We have been partnering with leading technology entrepreneurs for the past 18 years from seed to pre-IPO. With $3.8 billion in capital under management across eight funds, GGV invests in globally minded entrepreneurs in consumer internet, e-commerce, frontier tech, and enterprise. GGV has invested in over 280 companies, with 30 companies valued at over $1 billion. Portfolio companies include Airbnb, Alibaba, Bytedance (Toutiao), Ctrip, Didi Chuxing, DOMO, Hashicorp, Hellobike, Houzz, Keep, Musical.ly, Slack, Square, Wish, Xiaohongshu, YY, and others. Find out more at ggvc.com.
In this third episode of the NüVoices Podcast, Alice Xin Liu is joined by Sophie Lu, a board member of NüVoices who works in the cleantech and environment space. Sophie will be a rotating co-host with Alice and Joanna Chiu for future episodes! Our guest this week is fantasy writer Mima, known in China as Qima 七马 (she says she picked that name for her Chinese readers because “it looks like a man’s name…Of course, I don’t like that”). Her fantasy novel The Legend of Strangers 蝼蚁转 is a road adventure told in a style that melds Quentin Tarantino’s quirky violence with Miyazaki whimsy. Although untranslated (for now), The Legends of Strangers is the first in a series of six novels. Right now, Mima is working with Youku, one of China's biggest video-streaming services, scripting the novels into a hotly anticipated Web series. We expect her to be the next George R. R. Martin. NüVoices has just launched an official WeChat account, which you can follow by searching "NüVoices女音" on the social media platform, and a new website will be launched in September, so watch this space! This podcast is wholly coordinated by the NüVoices board, with production by SupChina. All opinions of guests and presenters belong to the individuals alone and do not reflect the views of NüVoices. Follow them on Twitter at @nvvoices. On a final note, we’re co-presenting, with the local arts collective Spittoon, an event in Beijing on Tuesday, August 28, called Spittunes, in which musicians and poets collaborate to create special musical pieces inspired by the poet’s words. Check it out if you’re in town! Three pairs of poets/musicians will be taking part, including SupChina’s very own Anthony Tao.
Hey guys! It is Aiko with Schwagirl. I am an American English pronunciation coach. Welcome to my podcast "The Voice of English" The purpose of this podcast is to encourage English learners and also English teachers. We all share tips and points of how we can improve our English and become better communicators. In Episode 5, I invited a native English speaker from New York; Michael from Happy English. Michael started his English teaching career in Sendai, Japan in 1994 and has helped students from all over the world learn English since then! Now he teaches private English lessons online and in his New York City office in addition to hosting two active YouTube Channels and two podcasts to help people learn English. Here are some of the important tips for improving English he shared: Laugh and learn from your mistakes. Enjoy! Other people can do it, so you can do it, too! Write and speak English everyday Talk to yourself in English 20% teacher's talk and 80% students' talk (Focus on the output) As Michael has been studying Japanese as a second language, he understands the struggles that Japanese people have when it comes to learning English. His Youtube videos and podcasts are soooooo easy to understand. Enjoy his learning material and connect with him. Michael's social media links are as follows: English Website: https://www.myhappyenglish.com/ (All the Social Media links can be found here) Japanese Website: https://myhappyeikaiwa.com/ YouTube https://www.youtube.com/user/happyenglishny Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/happyenglishny Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/happyenglishny/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/happyenglishny Google+: https://plus.google.com/+MichaelDiGiacomoHappyEnglish LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeldigiacomo Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/happyenglishny/pins/ VK: https://vk.com/michaeldigiacomo Weibo: https://weibo.com/happyenglishny Youku: http://i.youku.com/u/UNDA1NTAzODcy Ameba: https://ameblo.jp/happyenglishny Mixi: http://mixi.jp/show_profile.pl?id=17062850 LINE: MichaelHappyEnglish WeChat: HappyEnglishMichael If you have any questions regarding English learning or pronunciation, living in the US, working in the US, or if you would like to be a guest on this show, please contact me through http://schwagirl.com/contact MUSIC: Artist: Nicolai Heidlas Title: Hawaiian Winter If you like this podcast, support me on https://www.patreon.com/schwagirl
Hey guys! It is Aiko with Schwagirl. I am an American English pronunciation coach. Welcome to my podcast "The Voice of English" The purpose of this podcast is to encourage English learners and also English teachers. We all share tips and points of how we can improve our English and become better communicators. In Episode 5, I invited a native English speaker from New York; Michael from Happy English. Michael started his English teaching career in Sendai, Japan in 1994 and has helped students from all over the world learn English since then! Now he teaches private English lessons online and in his New York City office in addition to hosting two active YouTube Channels and two podcasts to help people learn English. Here are some of the important tips for improving English he shared: Laugh and learn from your mistakes. Enjoy! Other people can do it, so you can do it, too! Write and speak English everyday Talk to yourself in English 20% teacher's talk and 80% students' talk (Focus on the output) As Michael has been studying Japanese as a second language, he understands the struggles that Japanese people have when it comes to learning English. His Youtube videos and podcasts are soooooo easy to understand. Enjoy his learning material and connect with him. Michael's social media links are as follows: English Website: https://www.myhappyenglish.com/ (All the Social Media links can be found here) Japanese Website: https://myhappyeikaiwa.com/ YouTube https://www.youtube.com/user/happyenglishny Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/happyenglishny Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/happyenglishny/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/happyenglishny Google+: https://plus.google.com/+MichaelDiGiacomoHappyEnglish LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeldigiacomo Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/happyenglishny/pins/ VK: https://vk.com/michaeldigiacomo Weibo: https://weibo.com/happyenglishny Youku: http://i.youku.com/u/UNDA1NTAzODcy Ameba: https://ameblo.jp/happyenglishny Mixi: http://mixi.jp/show_profile.pl?id=17062850 LINE: MichaelHappyEnglish WeChat: HappyEnglishMichael If you have any questions regarding English learning or pronunciation, living in the US, working in the US, or if you would like to be a guest on this show, please contact me through http://schwagirl.com/contact MUSIC: Artist: Nicolai Heidlas Title: Hawaiian Winter If you like this podcast, support me on https://www.patreon.com/schwagirl
In this episode we chat with Chinese travel influencer Ariel Chen. If you’ve been following Chinese consumer trends you know that the Chinese outbound travel market has exploded over the past few years and more than 135 million Chinese are projected to travel abroad this year, making China the world’s largest outbound travel market. While in the past, the majority of outbound travelers traveled abroad with tour groups, recently there has been a big shift in the market towards independent travel. This shift has left many destinations wondering, who are these independent travelers and how to we reach them? Well, surprise surprise, one of the best ways to reach Chinese travelers and inspire them to visit your destination is by working with Chinese travel influencers! In this episode Ariel and I discuss the characteristics of young independent Chinese travelers, the Chinese traveler’s customer journey, why brands should pay travel influencers, what is the most common travel question her audience asks her, why companies shouldn’t completely rely on marketing agencies to help them choose travel influencers, and much, much more! Guest: Ariel Chen Weibo: @人字拖游记 Official WeChat ID: TripCouturePublic Personal WeChat: TripCouture Video introducing Travel Flip-Flops’ origin story: http://www.miaopai.com/show/koh9Ol3EXJKZXLYqibrrew__.htm Host: Lauren Hallanan Website: www.laurenhallanan.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauren-hallanan/ Instagram: @laurenleren Some of Ariel’s Recent Projects: Collaboration with Canadian Tourism board and Youku: http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMzA4MzA5MzM1Mg==.html?spm=a2hzp.8253869.0.0 Recent collaboration with hotels and local tour agency in Palau: http://www.miaopai.com/show/S4-MuKi7eKEs1XjtIpU-S4CD1HgEL~Ns35hPHA__.htm Articles on the Chinese Outbound Travel Industry: 5 Charts Showing the Rise of Independent Chinese Travelers China's Millennials Are Driving World Travel Growth Chinese Consumers on Rebound in Paris After Disastrous Year for Retailers (however the recent attack on a Chinese tour group in Paris might change this) Platforms and Apps mentioned: Fliggy (alibaba’s platform) Mafengwo Ctrip Qyer/Qiongyou Thanks to our sponsor PARKLU: www.parklu.com For additional information and show notes head over to www.chinainfluencermarketing.com If you like this podcast and know someone who might find it interesting, please share!
Bloomberg View columnist Barry Ritholtz interviews Greg Sands, founder and managing partner at Costanoa Ventures. Prior to founding Costanoa, Sands was a Managing Director at Sutter Hill, where he invested in early stage enterprise software startups, such as Merced Systems, AllBusiness, Youku, Quinstreet, and Feedburner. He was the first product manager at Netscape Communications where he wrote the initial business plan, coined the name Netscape, and built the SuiteSpot Business unit from $0-$140M. He also served as a business development manager at Cisco where he architected a channel management plan. He served a term as the President of the Stanford DAPER (Athletics Department) Investment Fund and remains on the executive committee. He is also the former Trustee of the Stanford Business School Trust and former Chair of its Venture Capital Committee.
This Podcast Is Sponsored By TiENPAY TiENPAY is not your average fintech start-up. With the company's origins dating back to the first mobile wallet launched in Australia in 1996, the Hong Kong-based firm has a grand dream: to become the number one global mobile wallet clearance and settlement platform. Founded by Singaporean entrepreneur and finance veteran William Tien, the company integrates a mobile wallet app, a SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) currency exchange (with Bitcoin and other cryto-currency capabilities), and a digital asset pool that includes intellectual property rights to dozens of web films it plans to produce. "The difference of our wallet is that we focus on clearance and settlement, a less tapped market segment," said William Tien, founder and CEO of TiENPAY. "I've spent years traveling around the world and always had difficulty conducting currency conversions and cross-border transactions. We should have something that is universal so that people don't need to wait for two weeks before receiving money." TiENPAY Founder William Tien Speaks To China Money Network: TiENPAY, with its Shenzhen office housed in a Tencent Incubator, has the capacity to connect to more than 350 payment gateway or aggregators like Visa, MasterCard, China UnionPay, WeChat and Alipay. The company's services are currently set to cover the United States, U.K., Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Cambodia, Russia and India. Once fully operational, users can enjoy instant money transfers across country borders and convert currencies among major fiat money, bitcoin and other forms of digital currencies. TiENPAY’s innovative digital wallet conducted its first transaction trial in January between an account in China and another in Australia via China UnionPay. The mobile wallet app is to formally launch on Wednesday, and users will be able to download and sign up for its unique service offerings. The key to TiENPAY's systems is a network of financial institutions located in each of its operating countries to allow a seamless transaction experience for users. "Over the last four and half years, we have gone through a lot of regulatory work, and I'm telling you, it's very tough," Tien said. But the future looks promising. The company wants to expand to 35 countries in five years, and to bring in significant profits in the next five years. To achieve that, TiENPAY has come up with a creative idea: to produce 20 web films in China and Asia with a total investment of US$10 million. The first movie, a comedy on the subject of the mobile wallet, with episodes involving a bank robbery and kidnapping, is commencing production this week. You can listen to our conversation above or read a Q&A below. Don't forget to subscribe to China Money Podcast for free in the iTunes store, or subscribe to China Money Network weekly newsletters. You can also subscribe to China Money Podcast's Youtube channel or Youku channel. Q: TiENPAY is such a unique product, how did you initially come up with the idea to start a company like this? A: I have spent years traveling around the world doing projects overseas and have always had problems of adapting to the local environment. I thought that I should have something that is universal and I don't need to wait for two weeks before I can get the money, or even for one month if in Russia. So the idea actually started back in 1996 in Australia, and we want to create an inter-operative mobile wallet that everybody can use. Q: What do you think sets TiENPAY apart from other types of mobile wallets? A: What makes us special is that we are inter-operative. The question is do I have a wallet that I can use in China, in Africa and in the U.S.? TiENPAY is the answer. The most important thing is that this kind of pavement is instantaneous. You don’t need to wait for three days for a bank clearance or go to the bank to remit the money. Q: How are you able to provide this transaction services acros...
At the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting of the New Champions (also known as the Summer Davos) in Dalian last week, China Money Network caught up with Prof. Xiaodong Lee, former president and CEO of China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), to chat about the development of the Internet industry in China and the country's role in managing the world wide web. CNNIC, established in 1997, is best known for twice a year publishing the Statistical Report on Internet Development in China, chronicling the growth and major trends of the nation's Internet sector. As a unit operating under the Cyberspace Administration of China, the country's main Internet control and oversight authority, CNNIC is also responsible for the registration of Chinese domain names and Roman letter names ending with .cn. According to CNNIC's latest survey, there were 731 million netizens in China at the end of 2016, equal to the entire population of the European continent. There were 20 million registered .cn domain names, the largest pool of any country-specific domain names. China is also far, far ahead of other countries in terms of mobile Internet usage. In total, more than 697 million people currently use mobile Internet in China, of which 469 million use mobile payment apps, representing a penetration rate of 67% . That compares to a mobile payment penetration ratio of just 19% for U.S. smartphone users in 2016 and an expected penetration ratio of 33% in 2020, according to eMarketer. In addition, mobile payment in China goes beyond facilitating online transactions, and is widely used at offline venues such as restaurants, stores and transportation hubs, where users pay with their phones instead of cash or bank cards. Nearly half of Chinese mobile Internet users have utilized mobile payments while shopping at offline stores. Prof. Lee, who holds a P.h.D degree from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and teaches at some of China's top universities, also shared his views on how to better manage the Internet in the fast-growing Internet of Things (IoT) industry. He announced last week that he had resigned his post at the CNNIC, but did not reveal his next move. Read below a lightly edited Q&A transcript between Prof. Lee and China Money Network host, Nina Xiang. Subscribe to China Money Podcast for free in the iTunes store, or subscribe to China Money Network weekly newsletters. You can also subscribe to China Money Podcast's Youtube channel or Youku channel. Q: CNNIC has been conducting bi-annual surveys of China's Internet industry for the past 20 years. How has the focus of the survey changed over time? A: At the beginning, the report only covered fundamental resource statistics, such as how many domain names there were, how many Internet Protocol addresses there were, and how many servers were connected to the Internet, etc. As the Internet and particularly mobile Internet evolved, we tried to provide more detailed information covering different industries across different regions, as well as offering a lot of analysis based on the age or educational background of the users. The most obvious trend is that companies were initially focused on "copy-to-China," but more and more, there are new technologies and new business models originating from within China. That includes the sharing economy, think Mobike and bike sharing companies, and (innovative applications of) mobile payment services. It's a huge change in the past ten years, particularly in the past five years, I would say. It means that even more new business models and technologies will be applied first in China in the future. Q: The next big boom looks to be the IoT industry, which is expected to reach over eight billion connected devices globally this year. What kind of regulatory and management challenges does this create for regulators? A: I think if billions, or potentially trillions of devices are connected to the Internet,
In this episode of China Money Podcast, guest Jie Gong, a partner at Pantheon’s Asia Investment Team, spoke to our host Nina Xiang. Gong discussed new and important trends she sees in China's private equity and venture capital space, and what the fund-of-funds manager looks for when considering backing funds in China. You can listen to our conversation above or read a Q&A below. Don't forget to subscribe to China Money Podcast for free in the iTunes store, or subscribe to China Money Network weekly newsletters. You can also subscribe to China Money Podcast's Youtube channel or Youku channel. Q: What exciting new trends are you seeing in China's private equity and venture capital space, and also what types of funds are you focused on backing nowadays? A: The Chinese private equity and venture capital landscape has been going through very big changes. We're seeing two very distinct trends. The first trend is that specialization is definitely deepening. We see specialists setting up separate teams to build verticals around sectors that they're interested in, rather than being dependent on reverse inquiries of deal flow. Those that were originally specialized in different industries are certainly building more of their external resources to deepen their expertise, because in today's competitive market you need to have this extra knowledge and foresight as well as resources that you can bring to the company and make yourself indispensable. The second trend is that there was a great proliferation of venture capital managers during 2014 and 2015, which in a way puts the growth capital firms in a bit of a bind, because their operating space previously was wider. We're seeing some of the growth capital firms leaning a bit forward in their investment stages, or moving into more early-stage investments, for example, investing in companies that are pre-breakeven. So, I think for the growth capital firms, they need to recalibrate their strategy and (perhaps) not focus on those really hot themes that the entire market is focusing on. They also need to think about what kind of risks they take or not take as a growth-capital firm. So there's a lot of soul-searching and rethinking of strategy that the growth capital firms are going through right now. Q: We are seeing more buyout firms in China. So, for your own portfolio construction, growth capital versus buyout, which one do you favor? A: We actually construct a widely diversified portfolio of general partners at different stages of the investments life-cycle. But I think, growth capital or classic buyout, both are benefiting from a new wave of entrepreneurs looking at succession options for their businesses, as (family business owners) realize that an IPO isn't the only way to materialize their dreams. Q: The year 2015, as the peak market of the mobile Internet boom in China, created a lot of excess. How do you feel about the return prospects for the funds of this vintage year? A: Well, I think that fund vintage is really a confluence of several things. There was a huge wave of start-ups, entrepreneurial enthusiasm, a lot of capital flowing into the start-up space (that year), as well as many new venture firms (entering the market). So generally speaking, with a lot of capital going into the sector, it can create opportunities that could increase the competitiveness of the deal dynamic. I think 2015 will be remembered as a very busy, very hectic and very buoyant vintage year, with the subsequent return repression coming out from generally elevated and heated valuations. But it doesn't mean that 2015 will not have very good funds, it depends on how disciplined the manager is in their fund size, their investment pace and how they add value to the companies. Q: Can you give us some examples of characteristics that you look for in funds when considering whether to commit to them or not? A: We will choose general partners,
To say that Meng Xing, V.P. and entrepreneur-in-residence at Chinese venture firm Shunwei Capital, has been busy would be a gross understatement. Over the past ten years, the 31-year-old venture capitalist and entrepreneur has founded two artificial intelligence (AI) start-ups, selling one, an image recognition AI company, to Amazon and the other to a listed Chinese company. In between, he worked as an investment banker at J.P. Morgan Hong Kong and casino giant Caesars Entertainment, on top of getting an MBA from the Sloan School of Management at MIT. In March 2016, Meng joined Shunwei, a US$2 billion venture firm co-established by Chinese billionaire entrepreneur and Xiaomi Inc's founder Lei Jun. He has so far screened over 200 Chinese AI start-ups and led efforts to invest in nine AI companies during the past year. While Meng's first success was in image recognition, he believes that a stand-alone image recognition type of business popping up in China will face increasing challenges going forward. In order to survive and thrive, Chinese AI companies must focus on a niche vertical industry and create niche products, he says. Rather than simply creating AI technology, they want a company that is applying artificial intelligence for a specific purpose. The industries most likely to create the next great tech companies are financial technology, healthcare, surveillance, agriculture and autonomous driving, in his view. Meng spoke to China Money Network's Nina Xiang on the sidelines of the Montgomery Summit on March 9 in Santa Monica, California. You can listen to our conversation above or read a Q&A below. Don't forget to subscribe to China Money Podcast for free in the iTunes store, or subscribe to China Money Network weekly newsletters. You can also subscribe to China Money Podcast's Youtube channel or Youku channel. Q: Can you give a brief introduction of Shunwei Capital? A: Shunwei was founded in 2011 by Lei Jun and Tuck Lye Koh, together we manage around US$2 billion in assets across three U.S. dollar funds and two RMB funds. Since 2011, we have invested in 200 companies across a lot of sectors including Internet of things devices, financial technology, agriculture, new real estates, and coming-of-age technologies. I personally focus on technology-driven companies, more specifically, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, visual reality and 3D structure, for early-stage funding rounds like series A and series B. Q: You had an interesting career before joining Shunwei. Tell us more about that? A: I started my career as an investment banker at J.P. Morgan Hong Kong in 2007 covering the telecom, media and technology (TMT) sector. Then I started a few companies, but the one that really took off was Orbeus in 2012 when I was getting my MBA at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was a company based in Boston and we were doing image recognition and object recognition. It was later sold to Amazon in 2015. Then, I joined Caesars Entertainment, an international casino company, and was responsible for their Asian online gaming sector for two years. After Caesars, I founded Cogtu, a start-up that leverages image recognition to build a native advertising network. The company was sold to a listed Chinese Internet company as well. And I joined Shunwei last year. Q: At Shunwei, you invest in AI start-ups. How many companies have you reviewed and what's your overview of these start-ups? A: Probably over 200 companies so far in the broadly defined artificial intelligence field, and we invested in about nine companies last year. When we are screening companies, first we want to know who are the founders. The good ones, or the ones that venture capitalists are chasing, are companies founded by research scientists from top research universities or research department from Google, Facebook and so forth. The problem is that those researchers have a lot of experience publishing ac...
Hamilton Tang, managing partner of Chinese private equity firm SMC Capital China, is betting on horses; or more importantly, the growing number of wealthy Chinese who want to own one. Back in 2012, SMC invested RMB22 million (US$3 million) in Rider Horse Co., Ltd, a Chinese firm engaged in the age-old art of horse trading. With SMC's support and driven by growing demand from aspirational consumers eager to mimic the lifestyles of U.K. or European elite, the company has since expanded into horse breeding, managing horse clubs and equestrian events. Revenue has increased more than six fold. Despite a national ban on horse race betting in 2000, Rider Horse is among the most successful horse racing event organizers in China, Tang said during an interview on the sidelines of the HKVCA Asia Private Equity Forum 2017 in Hong Kong. The company imports roughly two hundred horses each year, including New Zealand thoroughbreds to meet demand from aspiring Chinese consumers engaged in recreational riding, playing polo and racing. But this ride is almost over for SMC, which hopes to gain a handsome return on investment when Rider Horse completes an initial public offering later this year. After SMC's initial investment, Rider Horse went on to raise a RMB45 million series B round led by CDF-Capital in 2013, and a RMB120 million series C round from Jiangsu Delta Capital Investment Management Co., Ltd, DT Capital Partners, Jiangxi Gaoqi Investment and Jimei Investment in 2014. It raised another RMB120 million series D round in 2015 from undisclosed investors in 2015, according to the company's website. The thorny question if whether Rider Horse's IPO can cross the finish line under current market conditions. A listing on China's A-shares market now requires years of waiting time. An IPO on the country's over-the-counter market, the so-called New Third Board, can be completed more quickly, but faces the critical problem of low liquidity. Nevertheless, Tang said the company is aiming to file for an IPO during the first quarter 2017, five years after its initial investment in the horse trade. You can listen to our conversation above or read a Q&A below. Don't forget to subscribe to China Money Podcast for free in the iTunes store, or subscribe to China Money Network weekly newsletters. You can also subscribe to China Money Podcast's Youtube channel or Youku channel. Q:Could you give us a short introduction to SMC Capital China? A: We have been a China private equity specialist for the past 14 years. We started our business way back in 2003, and in the past few years, we have been focused on the consumer sector in China, in particular consumer upgrades, consumer tech and cross-border deals. We focus on growth stage and typically are series A lead investors (in our deals). At the moment, we manage three private equity funds in addition to some co-investments pockets and deals that use our own balance sheet, with around US$700 million to US$800 million under management. Our most recent private equity fund, which is a vintage 2011 vehicle, secured US$100 million. Q: Back in 2012, SMC Capital launched a joint venture with Chinese equestrian company Rider Horse Co., Ltd. Could you tell us a little bit about how that company has grown over the past few years? A: Yes, we invested RMB22 million (US$3 million) in the company. Since our investment, the company has increased revenues by more than six times. Besides that, what I think is even more important is the composition of its revenues. When we met Lang Lin, the founder of the company, in 2011 or 2012, the business was entirely a horse trading business. But with our help, particularly helping with cross-border engagement, the company today is much more diversified. The company still has the horses buying and selling business, it also has a strong breeding program. It is also the largest importer of thoroughbred horses from New Zealand. In addition,
Venture capitalists around the world are having second thoughts about the value of some of their earlier investments. Over the last year, 102 companies were obliged to raise financing at a lower valuations than during earlier funding rounds, according to CB Insights. While only a few Chinese companies are on the list of so-called down rounds, that will not last long as more Chinese tech firms will be forced to raise money at lower valuations, says Tommy Yip, managing partner at US$210 million-under-management Unicorn Capital Partners. Mr. Yip, founder of the Hong Kong-based fund-of-funds, predicts companies that raised massive series B and C rounds at extremely high valuations, especially O2O (online-to-offline) and P2P (peer-to-peer) start-ups, may be forced to raise money at reduced prices in order to survive. "I think for companies like Didi Chuxing, they have pressure from existing investors to go public sooner. But if you look at the capital market, it’s not a great time for companies like Didi to go public because an IPO today means a down round from a valuation stand point," Yip said during an interview with China Money Network on the sidelines of the HKVCA Asia Private Equity Forum 2017 in Hong Kong. Chinese on-demand local services provider Meituan-Dianping and Chinese smartphone and smart device maker Xiaomi Inc are in similar situations. The peer review and Groupon copycat Meituan-Dianping raised over US$3.3 billion at a post-money valuation of US$18 billion last January, while Xiaomi's gross worth was set at US$45 billion when it last raised US$1.1 billion in 2014. Investors of both companies have been reportedly seeking to sell shares in private markets at significant discounts. That could hurt other Chinese companies looking to raise money, especially overseas. Qudian, an installment online shopping platform previously known as Qufenqi, last raised money in October at a valuation of RMB7.5 billion (US$1.09 billion), down from a pre-IPO round two month earlier valuing the company at a RMB10 billion (US$1.46 billion). Qudian is now rumored to seek US$500 million to US$800 million through a New York IPO during the first half of this year, at a valuation of US$5 billion. Will U.S. investors buy shares at that price? We will soon find out. You can listen to our conversation above or read a Q&A below. Don't forget to subscribe to China Money Podcast for free in the iTunes store, or subscribe to China Money Network weekly newsletters. You can also subscribe to China Money Podcast's Youtube channel or Youku channel. Q: Why did you leave Emerald Hill Capital Partners to establish Unicorn Capital Partners? A: We believed it was a really good timing. I left Emerald Hill back in the end of 2014 and founded Unicorn Capital Partners with my partners in the beginning of 2015. Over the past few years in China, we actually went through a very interesting period, what we call venture capital 3.0 period, where we see a wave of younger venture capital professionals coming out of top firms to start their own venture funds. At that time I believe China was going through an inflection point in technology, media and telecom (TMT) sector, where the economy is starting to shift from the old economy to the new. I think in the next five to ten years, the new economy, mainly TMT and healthcare, will be driving a lot of the growth. We are currently managing two funds, both U.S. dollar funds. Our first fund, I know this is a bit confusing, is actually called Fund Zero, and our second fund is called Fund I. Together, we manage approximately US$210 million. Q: How’s did your fundraising process go? What was your fundraising target? A: We started the fundraising directly after we established the company back in January 2015, and luckily, it was quite smooth. It was a little bit more than our target of US$200 million. Q: China's venture capital sector has experienced a boom and is perhaps adjusting to...
C-Bridge Capital, a Shanghai-based private equity firm focused on China's healthcare sector, hopes to profit handsomely by bringing better drug know-how from developed markets to the underdeveloped Chinese pharmaceutical industry. Headed by finance veteran Fu Wei, the US$700 million-under-management firm led a follow-on US$100 million round in Chinese pharmaceutical start-up Ascletis earlier this month. Ascletis has licensed and conducted clinical trail on a hepatitis C treatment drug developed by an American company, and is launching the drug in China during the first half of this year. The sheer scale of the Chinese market makes the investment attractive, says Fu, a University of Chicago Booth School of Business graduate. With 40 million hepatitis C patients in China, compared to just four million in the U.S., he is confident that the drug will hit it big and bring a lucrative return on his investment. C-Bridge Capital is also looking at other areas such as hepatitis B, which is an even bigger market, and also lung cancer, which has seen a dramatic increase in China due to an aging population of smokers and the effects of high pollution levels in Chinese cities. Fu also sees the need for widespread consolidation in the Chinese pharma and healthcare sectors, which he described as lagging other sectors of the economy by 10 years. He sees Ascletis as a vehicle for acquiring other, smaller players in the pharma sector. Likewise, he described a recent investment in Anrei Medical as a typical consolidation play where the company will be a platform to acquire consumable businesses, especially in the minimally invasive surgery category. You can listen to our conversation or read a Q&A below. Don't forget to subscribe to China Money Podcast for free in the iTunes store, or subscribe to China Money Network weekly newsletters. You can also subscribe to China Money Podcast's Youtube channel or Youku channel. Q: Could you give us a brief introduction of C-Bridge Capital? A: C-Bridge Capital is a China-focused healthcare fund. Our name, "C" stands for commercialization, consolidation and China. It's because we invest in growth-stage healthcare companies, and the industry in China is being increasingly commercialized and waiting to be consolidated at the same time. Currently, we manage US$700 million in total including our Fund I with US$200 million, plus US$100 million in co-investments. We also manage a venture fund called I Bridge, it’s a US$100 million vehicle led by Jimmy Wei, who was a partner at Kleiner Perkins. Q: You've worked at all kinds of financial institutions before setting up C-Bridge, including Far East Horizon, Themes Investment Management, Goldman Sachs. How did these experiences lead to the establishment of your current fund? A: Working in all sorts of funds offered me the experience of different investment strategies, as well as cross-sector investment experience. In general, I think the healthcare sector is ten years behind (other sectors in China). Unlike the boom of TMT (technology, media and telecommunications), the boom of financial institutions and the boom of consumer goods, which all started in around 2004 and 2005, the healthcare sector is ten yeas behind. Consumers of healthcare products and services are mainly 55 years old or older, so it’s the old people’s demand. China is just rapidly aging. From the supply side, if you want to be in healthcare, you need to be a PhD with ten years working experience in a big pharmacy company. So China is entering the time for healthcare to repeat what other industries did ten years ago, such as 20% annual growth and industry consolidation. Q: You recently made a follow-on investment in Chinese pharmaceutical start-up Ascletis. How did that investment came about? A: This is a typical example of a commercialization story in China. Gilead Science is a US$100 billion U.S. company with huge success in hepatitis C.
The closing months of 2016 have been kind to Qiming Venture Partners. The US$2.7 billion-under-management Chinese venture capital firm saw three of its portfolio companies list in public markets during the past month: in Shanghai, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Meitu Inc., a phone retouch app and smartphone maker backed by Qiming, IDG Capital and others, was valued at HK$35.9 billion (US$4.6 billion) following its Hong Kong IPO. It was the biggest IPO by a technology company in Hong Kong since Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings Ltd. went public in 2004. The IPO marks the latest high point of a "harvest season" Qiming has entered to cash out of investments made over the past decade, says JP Gan, Qiming's managing partner. The firm just celebrated its tenth anniversary with a lavish party in Shanghai's Ritz Carlton featuring U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps and Chinese national volleyball coach Lang Ping. Now into the second decade, Qiming must identify the industries from which the next great Chinese tech companies will emerge. Not surprisingly, the sectors cited by JP Gan included artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality, Internet-of-Things (IoT), all of which are the buzzword in today's venture world. For artificial intelligence, Gan likes mission-specific products that can be commercialized quickly, such as voice recognition, image recognition and driver-less cars. In terms of VR and AR, he believes the hardware platform will evolve away from head-mounted goggles to something more user friendly. As for big data, he thinks Chinese start-ups in that field face greater challenges than their U.S. peers as the country's technology giants typically like to do things in-house. To learn more, read on to a Q&A of our conversation. Don't forget to subscribe to China Money Podcast for free in the iTunes store, or subscribe to China Money Network weekly newsletters. You can also subscribe to China Money Podcast's Youtube channel or Youku channel. Q: Qiming celebrated its tenth anniversary last month in Shanghai. You have backed some of the most notable companies in China's mobile Internet sector. What's your thinking on how to capture the next emerging trend for the ten years ahead? A: That's definitely something we worry about a lot. The question is: which trend do we bet our house on? Mobile Internet has been an important investment theme for us and for our fellow venture capitalists in China. Meitu, which just went public in Hong Kong today, is a perfect example of that. In the next few years, we will continue to look at mobile Internet. We will also be looking at artificial intelligence, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), big data, and other disruptive technologies. Q: Since you mentioned Meitu, the company is still loss making. How does the company become profitable? A: The majority of its revenue comes from its smart phone sales. The company has sold hundreds of thousands of picture-optimized smartphones. It's one of the most popular phones among female users in China. The ladies love it as their second phone or designated selfie phone. We hope to get our production up to sell more smartphones. With around 446 million monthly active users, advertising is another revenue source. The company hasn't monetized on ads before. Gaming is another potential. Meitu can use its popularity to attract users to play its games as well. Given its huge user base, we feel like Meitu is in the position where Tencent was ten years ago. Q: Baidu's chief Robin Li recently said that there won't be any unicorns (start-ups valued at US$1 billion or more) emerging in the mobile Internet sector any more. Can you still find massive opportunities in this industry now? A: Of course, user growth rate in mobile has stagnated. But in terms of application, there are still lots of potential. Many apps are still growing its user base. New features and functions are still being explored.
Grant Horsfield, founder of Shanghai-based resort and co-working space operator naked Group, always sees things differently. When others saw dilapidated farm houses in China's countryside, he envisioned seclusive luxury resorts. Now, a year after entering China's co-working space, the South African entrepreneur is convinced that the future of his multi-pronged hospitality and property business lies in fast execution. The tomorrow of the co-working business model is moving HSBC or Coca-Cola from their "ugly offices" to much cooler and lively spaces, such as his own shared office unit naked Hub, Horsfield said at the annual MIPIM Asia Summit in Hong Kong last week, not hiding his disdain for "cubicles" and "grey boxes" commonly seen at rigid corporate headquarters. Co-working should not just be offering cheap work environments for start-ups, a concept all Chinese co-working space providers hold dear, Horsfield argued. After all, start-ups take up only a small share of the overall office market. The founder of popular eco-friendly resort naked Stables seems to have struck a chord with some big corporations already. Chinese logistics firm Debang has taken up some space at naked Hub in Shanghai. And at a panel discussion at the MIPIM Summit, a gentleman from a big insurance company asked how to better utilize a 1,500-cubicle office that sits empty half of the day. New York-headquartered co-working pioneer WeWork Cos., which raised nearly half a billion led by China's Hony Capital and Legend Holdings in March, is perhaps one step ahead. It has secured many multinationals including Microsoft, HSBC, Sprint, Bank of America, Salesforce, Dell and General Motors in its locations worldwide. But when it comes to the Chinese market, Horsfield plans to outpace WeWork by adding more locations much faster. His naked Hub will have 36 locations by the end of 2017, while WeWork's current blueprint calls for adding three more in China next year, in addition to its current two locations. Even though Horsfield disagrees with his Chinese competitors on co-working's future direction, he is very much on the same page in terms of expansion, because he understands "China speed" is essential in defining success and failure in the country. UrWork, China's biggest co-working start-up, is planning to add 50 locations next year, in addition to 36 it would have by the end of this month. Kr Space wants to add 60 next year to its current portfolio of 28. Others including Fountown, 5Lmeet and Nash Work are opening hundreds more throughout China. With six new resorts planned in Moganshan, Suzhou, Shaoxing, Chengdu and Chongqing, in addition to rapid growth in the naked Hub business - which just raised US$33 million led by Hong Kong-based Gaw Capital - naked Group has now transformed itself into a powerful boutique player moving at breakneck speed. This behind-the-scenes frenetic pace contrasts with the idyllic feel its resorts convey to guests. An anonymous industry insider said that he is concerned that the company might be growing too quickly, a mistake suffered by many companies. Horsfield brushed off such concerns, saying "We just enjoy what we do." And Horsfield not only pours soul and energy into his projects, he literally puts his heart into his work. During the early days of the company, he suffered a mild heart attack amid a cash squeeze after the global financial crisis. To learn more, read on to a Q&A of our conversation. Don't forget to subscribe to China Money Podcast for free in the iTunes store, or subscribe to China Money Network weekly newsletters. You can also subscribe to China Money Podcast's Youtube channel or Youku channel. Q: Congratulations on securing funding from Gaw Capital. What's next for naked Hubs? A: We have a plan to grow across Asia and give our members more access to more locations. We also want to innovate in our business to make it about more than just a co-working space by inco...
In this episode of China Money Podcast, guest Jixun Foo, managing partner at GGV Capital, spoke with our host Nina Xiang, on GGV's new funds, China's travel and education sector, and why Chinese companies have a better record of avoiding "down rounds." Don't forget to subscribe to China Money Podcast for free in the iTunes store, or subscribe to China Money Network weekly newsletters. You can also subscribe to China Money Podcast's Youtube channel or Youku channel. Foo spoke to China Money Network on the sidelines of the 29th Annual AVCJ Private Equity & Venture Forum in Hong Kong. Q: In April, GGV raised a massive US$1.2 billion across a number of funds, with a first time discovery fund geared for early-stage investments. What are the considerations behind these new funds? A: Yes, the new US$250 million discovery fund is a first, and will allow us to invest in seed and series A rounds, mostly in China but also in the U.S. Our main fund generally invests in late series A, or series B and C rounds, which are our sweet spot. During our 15-year history, we have built a good network of entrepreneurs who we have strong connections with. That is leading us to some early-stage companies. Also, after having backed a lot of successful entrepreneurs, we are getting good deal flows but also seeing serial entrepreneurs who want to start up something new again. These are the factors driving us to raise a discovery fund. Q: U.S.-China is a key element in GGV's investment strategy. If you can divide between U.S. vs. China investments, what are the ratio between the two? A: I guess when we started the firm, we were more U.S. centric. But we have a bottom-up methodology. We are driven by companies and opportunities in the market, not by certain asset allocation guidelines. Q: It seems like GGV has slowed the pace of investment this year, supposedly to around ten deals in 2016, compared to 30 to 40 investments annually during the past two years. Why? A: It really depends on what number you look at. In 2014 and 2015, there were a lot of new start-ups driven by the whole mobile revolution. But we've seen a slowdown in the market and industry consolidation during the past 12 months. But we are still actively investing. It should be more than ten deals this year. In terms of our investment pace, we have gone earlier stage, which means the check size has become smaller. On the other hand, we have also done more follow-on investments. The number you mentioned probably doesn't include our follow-on deals. Q: The increased number of follow-on deals is because the valuations are more attractive? A: It's the companies we know well, like Wish (a San Francisco-based e-commerce mobile app) just announced they raised US$500 million led by Temasek. Q: Has GGV participated in a follow-on investment where company's valuations dropped, in a down round? A: There are a few situations in our portfolio. So far, these are U.S. companies, not Chinese ones. Q: It seems Chinese companies are more capable of avoiding a down round, why do you think that is? A: Chinese companies are more efficient in capital, so they will survive without needing to raise financing. Usually, down rounds are not easy to execute and insiders will resist. In the U.S., it is very much a norm. Chinese companies can control their "burn rate" very quickly, so they will either survive, disappear, or get bought out. A down round is usually a sign of weakness. Are investors prepared to back a company whose valuation is going down? You really need to understand the risks. It's easy to ride the momentum, where everyone is fighting to get in, that's an easy sale to an investment committee. But if you go to your investors and say "I'm going to invest in this company in a down round, and it's a great deal," that's much harder. Q: Let's move on to some of your key portfolio companies. Iwjw, a Chinese online real estate agency,
In this episode of China Money Podcast, returning guest Dr. Marc Faber, renowned investor and publisher of The Gloom, Boom & Doom Report, speaks with our host Nina Xiang. Dr. Faber played a game of Long & Short, where he spelled out his view on central banks, currencies and commodities, among other items. Then, he gave probabilities on a number of possible world events and explained his reasoning. Don't forget to subscribe to China Money Podcast for free in the iTunes store, or subscribe to China Money Network weekly newsletters. You can also subscribe to China Money Podcast’s Youtube channel or Youku channel. Here are Marc Faber's long and short bets, in the time frame of the next one to two years. The Federal Reserve: Short The European Central bank: Short The People's bank of China: Short USD: Short Euro: Short RMB: Short Japanese Yuan: Short Thai Baht: Long Gold: Long Oil: Long Steel: Short Natural Gas: Long Soybeans: Long Windmills: Short Solar power: Short New York Property: Short Silicon Valley Property: Short London Property: Short Beijing Property: Short Hong Kong Property: Long Shopping malls in China: Long Facebook: Short Apple: Short Tesla: Short Uber: Short Amazon: Short Tencent: Long Alibaba: Long S&P500 Index: Short The Hang Seng Index: Long The Shanghai Composite Index: Long Hedge funds: Depends Planet Earth's Environment: Short Containing climate change: Short World peace: Short Terrorist attacks: Long Social unrest: Long Donald Trump: Long Hillary Clinton: Short US-China relations: Depends In a game of probability, Dr. Faber made guesses about how likely a number of world events would occur. The U.S. will go into a recession by 2020 A: 100% probability. We are in a lengthy expansion already, far above the average expansion in the 20th century. We have a lot of imbalances, in my view a recession is inevitable. But unlike central banks, I do not regard a recession as negative. It's like the human body, an economy also needs a resting period occasionally to adjust. A recession is not something that has to be avoided at all costs. The European Union will break up by 2020 A: 80%. Economically, the EU would probably will break up. But it's also a political issue as there may be lot of political obstacles to complete a split from the EU. Some countries like Austria or France would like to split from the EU, but if they could do it in practice is not entirely clear to me. Gold price will hit 5000 per ounce by 2020 A: 60%. But I hate to put in a price, as my projection is that gold price will go up against the loss of the purchasing power of paper money. The RMB will depreciate 10% from current level against U.S. dollar before 2017 A: 20%. Unlike other people, I'm not that bullish about the U.S. dollar. I don't see anything much great about the U.S. economy. On the contrary, China is still a competitive country even if wages have gone up substantially. I don't see the necessity for China to devalue. World War III before 2025 A: Under Hillary Clinton, 80%. Under Donald Trump, 20%. The neocons led by the Bush family are pro-Hillary, because they made a deal with her, in which she does her social agenda in the U.S. while the neocons take over foreign policy. As such, the people in Asia are more likely to become harsher towards China. In Ukraine, for example, if Hillary's administration starts a conflict there, the Chinese will react because China now has the power. Nowadays, an aircraft carrier is a sitting duck ready to be shot down. A Mars colony before 2050 A: Even if people can live on Mars, I don't think there will be an economy any time soon. About Marc Faber: Marc Faber is the editor and publisher of The Gloom, Boom & Doom Report. Born in Zurich, Switzerland, he studied Economics at the University of Zurich and obtained a PhD in economics magna cum laude at the age of 24.
This month, we'll be uploading a new episode every day! We want to hear from you, so please send your questions and feedback to allthingsvideopodcast@gmail.com. You can also like and comment on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/allthingsvideo Follow All Things Video on LinkedIn for the latest episodes and updates! http://bit.ly/allthingsvideolinkedin In this episode, we take a look at the Chinese video market, which is much more fragmented than that in the U.S. and many other parts of the world, in large part because YouTube is not available in China. Instead, there are about dozen video platforms competing for audience attention, the largest of which include Iquiyi, Youku, Tencent Video, LeEco, and Meipai. Host: James Creech ABOUT THE SHOW All Things Video is a podcast dedicated to uncovering the past and charting the future of the online video ecosystem. Listen to interviews with founders, executives, and thought leaders from the world’s leading video networks and engage in... --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app
In this episode of China Money Podcast, guest Herry Han, partner at Lightspeed China Partners, spoke with our host Nina Xiang, on making early-stage investments in China's media and mobile healthcare sector. Don't forget to subscribe to China Money Podcast for free in the iTunes store, or subscribe to China Money Network weekly newsletters. You can also subscribe to China Money Podcast’s Youtube channel or Youku channel. Q: In China's media and advertising sector, where do you see future opportunities? A: For advertising, I think there is much more room for growth in the mobile and globalization space. Not so much mobile traffic has been well monetized, or mobile advertising accurately delivered to consumers. There is a great opportunity to create a smart platform to deliver advertising to mobile sites, or to augmented reality (AR) platforms if you think ahead. Also, we see a lot of Chinese companies going global, and they want to market their products to international markets. Companies like Avazu are targeting to help Chinese companies to go global. For media, we are expecting to see the emergence of new media platforms focused on different verticals such as real estate and auto. The new generation doesn't like the old platforms. They are looking for new niche products mostly in mobile formats. Every ten years, there are great opportunities for new media platforms. Q: How are the old and new platforms different, aside from one being viewed on the computer and the other on a phone? A: For example, Soufang.com was an "old" real estate information platform. Autohome.com was an "old" auto platform. These portals are transforming themselves by providing online and offline services, transactional services and other new offerings. Despite their efforts, there are still a lot of new mobile apps emerging, offering new experiences to the young consumers. There will definitely be some new firms that will win the heart of new consumers in this process. Q: Does Lightspeed have other investments in the media sector? A: We have invested in a video producer called iEver Makeup Room. They are building video content in new and innovative ways, and have attracted a lot of eyeballs in a short period of time. We believe video, especially live online streaming and short video, will continue to experience explosive growth going forward. Q: How does this type of company make money? A: As long as there is traffic, we can monetize it by ways including advertising, gaming and lead generation. Q: Lighstspeed also invested in BTCChina, now named BTCC. Can you share with us the rational behind this Bitcoin investment? A: BTCC is sort of a "wild" bet on the future digital currency. We invested in the company in a series A round and in an experienced entrepreneur. This is not a typical investment for us, as nobody can say if digital currency will be the direction of the future or not. We made our bet thinking that if this trend realizes itself, we are invested in the top player in the sector. Digital currency is something so big that we feel like we cannot miss. Q: Which type of mobile healthcare firms will have a better chance to succeed? A: We invested in a company called Trusted Doctors in 2012 as a seed investment. Our observation is that the entry point to mobile healthcare in China is still the doctors. If a company can acquire the top doctors in China, it will win the whole healthcare sector. Trusted Doctors have over 400,000 top doctors on its platform. In China, patients will not pay for services digitally unless they know the identities of the doctors. So as these doctors invite their patients onto the Trusted Doctors platform, it will allow the company to monetize. Other type of mobile health companies we like are those that focus on big data. Q: Are there similar start-ups in the U.S. that do the same thing as Trusted Doctors? A: I think so. There are some U.S.
In this episode of China Money Podcast, guest Roger Wu, a partner at consumer-oriented private equity firm Maison Capital, spoke to our host Nina Xiang on China's O2O (online-to-offline) bubble and the firm's investment in a Chinese healthcare device maker. Don't forget to subscribe to China Money Podcast for free in the iTunes store, or subscribe to China Money Network weekly newsletters. You can also subscribe to China Money Podcast’s Youtube channel or Youku channel. Q: Give us some background of Maison Capital? A: We are a boutique private equity fund founded in 2004 based in Shenzhen, with a focus on the broader consumer sectors in China, including consumer technology, consumer services and lifestyle, as well as the healthcare sector from a consumer angle. Q: Are your funds all RMB denominated? A: We manage three RMB funds, and are raising a U.S. dollar fund now. By the end of this year, we are expecting our assets-under-management to reach over US$500 million. Q: As Chinese consumers become more sophisticated, how do you invest to capture new demands? Take the healthcare sector as an example, why did you back BMC Medical? A: We target consumer sub-segment leaders, those medical device makers producing products specific to one sub-segment. BMC Medical is the largest home-grown brand in respiratory devices in China, focusing on the OTC market selling to individual patients. When we invested in 2010, the market was dominated by foreign brands with very few local producers. MBC Medical was able to produce substitute products targeted to consumers at more attractive prices, and has been growing steadily over the years. Q: How do BMC Medical compete with foreign brands, which Chinese consumers trust and love? A: First, we have to believe that their product quality gets improved consistently. They can also provide customer services better as they are local. Their prices are sometimes half or a third of the foreign branded products. We see the trend of domestic substitution across the board in medical devices. As some of these domestic producers get better, they also start to export their products. Q: How did you get to know DJI, the Shenzhen-based drone maker? A: We met them early on in a trade show back in 2012. We were actually the first institutional investor in the company. Even though it's a technology company, we believed that it would succeed in the consumer market. We try to spot companies early on in an emerging sector trend. For example, we recently invested in an insurance brokerage firm, China Jiang Tai Insurance Brokers Ltd., as the first institutional investor backing the company. Q: You also invested in Helijia, a consumer service O2O (online-to-offline) start-up. The valuation of this company was pretty high when it raised US$49.5 million series C round last April? A: We have looked at some two hundred O2O companies, and we invested in one. Helijia is an O2O channel providing beauty services (manicure, pedicure, hair, makeup) that we believe will only be adopted by more consumers in the future. What we liked is that the beauty space is quite consolidated. The second player in this market is not even one tenth the size of Helijia. Q: Some people don't believe that beauty services O2O firms can achieve steady growth, as users like to have a fixed person to do their nails or their hair? A: But the platform provides a support system. The manicurist depends on the platform to protect herself. The commentary and rating systems are also key in maintaining service quality. Q: What's your outlook of the O2O sector in China? A: We don't think O2O works for every sector, such as nanny or home chef services. We don't see scalability in these types of services. There is probably a bubble in the space currently. Many of these O2O companies will eventually fade away. Only select sectors will see the emergence of successful companies. Q: Lastly,
In this episode we talk about the all new Shanghai Disneyland and the new attractions we have seen so far on video. We also talk about Frozen Live at the Hyperion, $1 popcorn, and babies. News Frozen Live at the Hyperion Opens Annual Passholders Enjoy a Limited - Time Offer for $1.00 and $1.00 Sipper refills Mad T has been replaced with Jammin' in the Backlot. The Skyway Chalet to be removed according to a permit. Turtle Talk with Crush now features characters from Finding Dory. Disney to Stop Printing Disney Dollars Main Topic Shanghai Disneyland soft opens A few interesting stories that came out about shanghai. Shanghai Disneyland etiquette guide Wanda Group vows to stop disney Food is to expensive Map https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/lmowjmlsceopujdhowkf.jpg Attractions Videos First Look Soft Opening - This video was originally on YouKu, a chinese YouTube. It looks like it got taken down but luckily this guy took it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAC3xum58PY Pirates of the Caribbean https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TIklXtMDGk Sorin' Around the World - Taken from the above First Look Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1dBfyqnvy8 Tron Light Cycle Power Run https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdBjrURwg-Q Peter Pan https://youtu.be/oLUSi0bLFsk Mickey's Storybook Express https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuSeOyNJlTk Shanghai Disneyland Once Upon A Time Adventure https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WP-eZIt8s7U
In this episode of China Money Podcast, guest Sachin Doshi, managing director and head of private real estate investments Asia Pacific at Dutch pension fund asset manager APG, speaks to our host Nina Xiang about investing in China's private real estate sector. Doshi shared stories behind APG's big bet in Chinese logistics real estate company e-Shang Redwood and its investment in Shanghai commercial property firm Chongbang. He said senior housing is a sector that the €430 billion-under-management institution may invest in China in the future. Don't forget to subscribe to China Money Podcast for free in the iTunes store, or subscribe to China Money Network weekly newsletters. You can also subscribe to China Money Podcast’s Youtube channel or Youku channel. Q: How has APG's Asian investments changed over the past three years since I last spoke with your colleagues? A: Our fundamental investment strategy has changed significantly in the past three years. Three years ago, a lot of our investments were focused on investing in funds or programs on a pan-Asian basis. We have moved away from the co-mingled pan-Asian strategies and moved towards country and city specific investment platforms with local partners in each of our key markets. Q: What are some main drivers for this change? A: As long-term investors, we want to build scale in our investments. When you go into a co-mingled multi-sector or multi-country strategy, you don't necessarily get the best local partners in each of the specific countries or sectors you invest in. Our current approach enables us to get access to the best local partners, and makes it easier for us to commit more and repeated capital to build scale. Q: What is the asset allocation of APG's Asian investment portfolio now? A: Real estate is about 9% of our global total asset-under-management (AUM), and about a quarter of that is in Asia Pacific. Our total AUM in Asia Pacific real estate is around €8 billion, about half of that is in private real estate investments. Q: I remember the Asia Pacific real estate AUM was €6 billion three years ago, and the private real estate investments took a smaller share of the total? A: Yes, we've seen a lot of growth, especially on the private real estate side, partially because the net asset value of our exiting investments has grown, and we've struck new partnerships in order to achieve scale. Q: When you look across the Asia Pacific real estate landscape, where do you see the best investment opportunities right now? A: Australia and China are obviously very important to us. We are increasingly allocating capital into India as well, but India is never going to be a big part of our portfolio. We also have exposure to other places like Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea. Q: In China, APG has made big bets on logistics real estate with investment in e-Shang Redwood, as well as Shanghai commercial real estate firm Chongbang. How did you single out these two segments? A: We wanted to invest in sectors that will benefit from China's economic transition from an investment-led model to one focused on consumers. Retail and e-commerce will continue to grow over a long period of time, and that's why we invested in e-Shanghai Redwood. The investment in Chongbang is a much more targeted strategy. We believe Shanghai will continue to become a major metropolitan urban center in the world, and retail commercial is critical in building a city. Chongbang creates malls, not really as malls, but as indoor and outdoor space that attract people and make them want to spend the whole day there. Q: I've been to their Life Hub Jinqiao in Pudong, Shanghai. Share some details on how the deal came together for APG and Ivanhoe Cambridge to lead a US$920 million investment in Chongbang last June? A: We have been speaking to Chongbang for three years. Initially, we couldn't put together a structure that worked for both partie...
Allan Zeman is a tough interview. That is not only because the chairman of Lan Kwai Fong Group has been interviewed so many times that it's tough to find a new angle, but also because he's an expert in circling a question back to promote his business. As you listen to Zeman talk and see how his mind works, you understand how this man turned three short Chinese words into a formidable brand. If you are familiar with the father of Lan Kwai Fong, you know the self-made business tycoon has been a China bull forever. He is planning to open ten or even twenty (depending on which interview you read) Lan Kwai Fong centers in China over the next decade. That's a risky bet, considering the slowing Chinese economy and a decline of high-end spending. But Zeman believes his projects will be unique enough to stand out and attract consumers, even as most malls in China are likely to suffer in the coming years. We will wait to see how well Zeman's ambitious plans in China turn out. But I would advise on taking his success as a fact, because like he says, "I have always been a winner." Please read a Q&A of the interview, and don't forget to subscribe to China Money Podcast for free in the iTunes store, or subscribe to China Money Network weekly newsletters. You can also subscribe to China Money Podcast’s Youtube channel or Youku channel. Q: China's first tier cities have seen housing prices increase dramatically in the past few months. Does this concern you? A: Those cities have been going against the grain of the other (smaller) cities in China. But as we have seen in Hong Kong, New York, London, if prices get too high, eventually there must be a correction. Beijing is looking at instituting some measures to slow down the rise, which I think will happen. Beijing understands that if prices get too far out of whack, they have to do something to look after everyone. Q: Do you see a price correction this year? A: Within a year, I would predict there could be (a correction), but it won't be a dramatic correction. Perhaps a correction of around 5%. Long term, (housing prices in) first tier cities will continue to be strong. To me, I look at (owning a property in those cities) as putting money into the bank. You don't have to worry for the long term. Q: For smaller cities in China, the so-called second and third or fourth tier cities, how bad is the oversupply problem? My own brother and sister live in a third tier city in China, and each of them own three to four apartments. It can't be sustainable? A: The oversupply problem is very serious. But this is not limited to real estate. There is oversupply in probably every commodity, as the previous administration kept people working to support employment. It will take a number of years for oversupply to work its way down. We were just visiting our Wuxi project, meeting with the Party Secretary there, who told us the area we are focusing on has seen housing prices escalating lately. So, certain areas will manage to attract people as urbanization in China continues. Also, Beijing has implemented policies to slow down the construction of new property projects. Q: For places that can't attract people, a famous Chinese real estate tycoon Ren Zhiqiang has suggested that they should be demolished? A: No, that's not the answer. Potentially, the government can buy some of the property to lease out as low-cost housing, or the government can buy it as long-term investments and slowly sell them off. The Chinese government still have a lot of reserves and resources to manage the problem. Q: Now let's move onto commercial property. I read when you first saw the design of the LKF Haikou project, you didn't really like it and made some changes. What did you change? A: We had our in-house architecture team work with the project to improve on many things. You must think from the customer's perspective: How do you get them to the second floor,
In this episode of China Money Podcast, guest Chang Sun, founder and chairman of Black Soil Group Ltd., speaks to our host Nina Xiang about why he left private equity to start up his own agricultural business in Heilongjiang province. The former Asia head of Warburg Pincus also shares his plans to create social impact and make money by improving grain production. He also shares the challenges he faces transitioning from a high-flying dealmaker to a businessman with a passion for soil. Don't forget to subscribe to China Money Podcast for free in the iTunes store, or subscribe to China Money Network weekly newsletters. You can also subscribe to China Money Podcast’s Youtube channel or Youku channel. Q：You have been working at Warburg Pincus for 20 years. You left last year as its chairman of North Asia and head of China. Why did you decide to leave at this particular time? A: Last year was my 20-year anniversary at Warburg Pincus. It was also the first time that the Chinese government started a new policy to encourage private capital to move into agriculture reform. These two things coincided and made me realize that I wanted to do something that has impact. Q: So after 20 years, it was time to do something new? A: Yes, one of my concerns during my 25-year investment career, if you add my previous experience at Goldman Sachs, was the lack of impact. Yes, we make investments in businesses. Yes, we make substantial returns. But as soon as you invest, you are thinking about exits. So you leave the business that you think you have contributed to, but they become one of the milestones of your past history. I wanted to do something that's more lasting and has more impact on both society and on my own career. I researched different industries, and felt that agriculture is so backward (in China) compared to the West. You can count with one hand the number of any finance people who are doing anything about it. I feel that I can bring my financial knowledge and resources to bring positive change. Q: Have you done any agriculture investment deals while at Warburg? A: No, which is why it's exciting and challenging. It's a complete 180-degree turn for me. So far so good. I really love it. Q: Were there any particular incidents that prompted your decision for this drastic change? A: Well, the food safety and scandals you all know about, everything from gut oil, diary products, dead pigs... A lot of my business friends go out and try to lease land from the villages to grow their own vegetables and raise their own chickens and pigs. But nobody can do anything about staple food, such as rice, wheat and corn, because it needs scale, labor and capital. China today imports about 15% of its grain needs, mainly soybeans. China was a net export of soybeans 10 years ago. Now 95% of its soybean needs are being met by imports. If you open the sectors of corn and rice, it will go the same way, because Chinese corn and rice are double the international price. Which means the yield is half. With that kind of dynamic, Chinese agriculture is not sustainable. You look at the land size, 1.8 billion mu (one mu of land equals 667 square meters) of land is available for agriculture use, but a lot is not productive and the yield is very low. On top of that, around major cities in places such as Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shandong province, too much industrial development has caused widespread pollution. Heavy metal and sewage gets discharged into the soil, and then sits there. I shudder to think that our future generations will grow up with the kind of heavy metal pollutants in their system. There is also a depletion of resources. China hasn't had enough rainfall in much of central China. As a result, much of the irrigation water was drawn from ground water, which is not replaceable. This has led to land subsiding, causing collapses of bridges and buildings.
In this episode of China Money Podcast, guest Fritz Demopoulos, founder of Queen's Road Capital and co-founder of Qunar Inc, speaks with our host Nina Xiang. He explains his investment thesis of investing in "platforms", who he sees as the future disrupters of the established Chinese Internet giants, and what he learned from a failed start-up that he invested in. Don't forget to subscribe to China Money Podcast for free in the iTunes store, or subscribe to China Money Network weekly newsletters. You can also subscribe to China Money Podcast’s Youtube channel or Youku channel. Q: Last time when we talked, you forecasted industry consolidations in China's tech space. This year, it really happened in a large scale with multiple major mergers. What are the driving forces behind these deals? A: First of all, some large conglomerates decided to "buy", instead of "make" certain businesses on their own. Historically, a lot of Chinese companies have decided to make and build things themselves. Moving forward, we will see more buying as they realize they can't do everything. Also, it used to be that every Chinese technology company was fighting each other for a long time. But now people realize you don't have to fight to win. You can actually partner and combine with others to win. Many experienced entrepreneurs in China has developed an acute sense of responsibility to shareholders, a stronger sense of managing different viewpoints, which is leading to some of these deals as well. These deals should have happened earlier, but never did because of interpersonal issues. Q: The mergers will continue? A: I think so. The cost of capital will continue to inch up. Valuation will probably be flat except for one or two super hot companies. Entrepreneurs may have to think twice before they burn a lot of money on margin initiatives. They need to be disciplined on how they achieve their objectives. Q: Which sectors will this wave of merger deals impact? A: It's going to be in every sector. One joke goes like this: If there are four or five competitors in a category, there will be a hundred competitors in China. Naturally, this will lead to more combinations. Just to name a few, online gaming, medical technology, financial technology, and P2P lending could all see more merger deals. Q: Let's focus on the online travel sector, an area where you have had lots of experience. Queen's Road Capital has backed two start-ups in online travel, Tripping.com and GetYourGuide. What is your investment thesis here? A: Both start-ups are in two of the hottest categories of the travel business: vacation rentals and local activities. Tripping.com aggregates vacation home rentals globally. It works like a Qunar for Airbnb type of accommodation offerings. Most of the travel distribution companies today focus on air tickets and hotels, but there is another massive category where travelers spend a lot of money, which are local tours and activities, such as buying a ticket to the Eiffel Tower or the Colosseum. GetYourGuide aggregates the information and deliver to consumers in a timely fashion. There are three categories in the travel business that offer the best opportunities: China, vacation rentals and local activities. These two start-ups are in the most promising sectors. Q: What are the challenges you see in these two start-ups trying to scale up? A: On the demand side, getting customers to use your services is always a challenge. The travel sector is very competitive. Many companies are fighting for the same customers, so it's very expensive to acquire users. On the supply side, working with this disparate pool of homeowners and local activity providers is also a challenge. For example, GetYourGuide are dealing with thousands of local activity providers. It must make sure the services are consistent with its brand and deliver availability information to users in a timely fashion.
In this episode of China Money Podcast, guest Andrew Teoh, founding partner of Ameba Capital, spoke to our host Nina Xiang. Teoh shared his views on potential mergers among Chinese tech companies that could take place in 2016, what start-ups China's BAT (Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent) are looking to acquire right now, and if Chinese venture capital investments will cool further next year. Don't forget to subscribe to China Money Podcast for free in the iTunes store, or subscribe to China Money Network weekly newsletters. You can also subscribe to China Money Podcast’s Youtube channel or Youku channel. Q: Give us a brief introduction of Ameba Capital? A: We were founded in 2011 by three partners, former Kingsoft chief financial officer Kevin Wang, Koubei.com's founder Frank Lee, and myself. We focus on making early-stage investments in the technology sector in China, and have invested in numerous companies. Some of our more well known portfolio companies include Kuaidi, or now Didi Kuaidi, Mogujie, and the merged Meituan Dianping. Q: That's three unicorns right there, but we will talk about that later. You also had an interesting career before co-founding Ameba. Can you tell us a bit more? A: I was born and grew up in Malaysia, but also worked and lived in Australia, Hong Kong and Beijing. I joined Alibaba in 2005, when the company had slightly over 1,000 employees. By the time I left, Alibaba had over 20,000 employees. I was involved in Yahoo's investment in Alibaba, Alibaba.com's Hong Kong initial public offering in 2007, and Alipay's restructuring, during a period of the company's rapid growth. Q: What did that experience teach you about investing as a venture investor? A: I realized that a company is very much like any other living form. It grows and changes. I was dealing with issues and transactions signifying the stage of growth the company was in. Now as an investor in small start-ups, I'm dealing with early-stage growth similar to a child's growth. I was able to use my experience at Alibaba to help start-ups enter their next phase of expansion, and help them solve the challenges in that process. Q: Ameba Capital closed a second fund, bringing total asset-under-management to RMB1 billion (US$160 million). How was the fundraising process? A: It didn't take that long. The fund was filled up just from commitments from existing investors to our first fund. My partners and I are still the single largest group of investors in the fund. Q: Would you consider raising a U.S. dollar fund? A: I will never rule that out, but the capital markets in China have changed a lot during the past year. RMB as a form of investment currency will become more important, especially in the tech world. When I started Ameba, it was rare to see RMB-denominated institutions investing in technologies because a lot of capital was from U.S. dollar funds, and exits were all overseas. But that is changing rapidly. There are more exits domestically, also more M&A happening among domestic firms. Q: So you see more RMB funds to be raised, more domestic listings and deals happening in the future? A: Yes, we will see that both in early-stage and late-stage investments. I think that's very healthy, and it shows that our format has worked. Q: How much do you invest per deal, and how many companies have you invested in total? A: For our second fund, we invest in pre-A and series A rounds, so from a few million RMB to tens of millions RMB. Cumulatively, we have backed around 60 companies. Q: In terms of strategy, will there be any changes from your previous focus on e-commerce, corporate services, advertising, etc.? A: We will continue our strategy to focus on the data aspect of e-commerce, a very niche market of advertising. We also like a few verticals such as healthcare and education. Our sector focus hasn't really changed, but the companies operating in these areas have changed...
In this episode of China Money Podcast, guest Stuart Leckie, chairman of Stirling Finance, spoke to our host Nina Xiang. Leckie shared his views on how China's provincial pension funds should diversify their investments, and the possibility of China establishing more national level funds to manage its pension assets. Don't forget to subscribe to China Money Podcast for free in the iTunes store, or subscribe to China Money Network weekly newsletters. You can also subscribe to China Money Podcast’s Youtube channel or Youku channel. Q: You have done a lot of work with the Chinese central government on reforming and restructuring the pension systems. Can you first give us a brief introduction on China's current pension system? A: You have to differentiate between people with urban and rural residence cards. The rural part is very tiny and backward in terms of pension provision. But the urban system is becoming more sophisticated. Part of it is unfunded. It's pay-as-you-go. The other part is funded, but very conservatively funded, typically in government bonds and cash deposits. Its returns have been equal or a bit ahead of price inflation, but have been way behind salary increases because salaries have been growing very rapidly in China in the past 20 years. Q: The government realizes this and is seeking to change the situation... Q: Yes, actually during the stock market crash in the summer, the government said that it would allow some provincial pensions to invest in the stock market. But back to China's urban pension system, all urban employees, whether employed by state-owned enterprises, private companies, joint ventures or foreign companies, should pay 8% of their monthly salary as contributions. Employers will pay around 20%. They are very high contribution rates, which is to pay off the "legacy" pensions from the old state-owned enterprise pension system. The so-called enterprise annuity in China is indeed a kind of corporate pension plan. They can invest up to 30% in equities. So they have much more flexible investment parameters than the state benefits have. Q: How big is the enterprise annuity plans now? A: It has been growing reasonably quickly. There are over 20 million people in China with enterprise annuity plans, but as a proportion of China's total work population, it's still very small. Q: The biggest pension fund in China, the pension fund of last-resort, is the National Social Security Fund (NSSF)... A: Well, the NSSF is generally classified as a sovereign wealth fund, not a pension fund. A pension fund should know who are the beneficiaries, but we don't know who will be the beneficiaries and how will NSSF's money be used. Sometimes, I am asked to comment on the diversification of the NSSF. My answer is that if you can tell me exactly the nature and duration of its liabilities, I will tell you if the diversification is good. But we don't know much about NSSF's liabilities. Q: The NSSF was able to achieve a 11.69% return for 2014, really not bad? A: Yes, the NSSF is able to hire Chinese returnees who have worked overseas for decades. But still, I remember a few years after it was established, it sent out a request for proposals, all in Chinese, to the international fund management community on the day before Christmas. But the document spelled out everything it requested, including the tracking error. At that time, nobody knew that the NSSF knew what a tracking error was. But they did end up awarding eight international investment managers for different international equity mandates. They went for the big names, understandably. Q: It's pretty impossible for any small alternative investment manager to get in the door with NSSF or China Investment Corp (CIC)? A: Yes, because these are monster funds. Their minimum investment will be perhaps hundreds of millions U.S. dollars. But the Chinese funds also bargain hard for fees.
In this episode of China Money Podcast, guest Xia Mingchen, a Hong Kong-based principal at Hamilton Lane's fund investment team, spoke to our host Nina Xiang. Xia says as the Chinese economy re-balances, private equity fund managers need to focus more on sector expertise and post-investment management of their portfolios. Don't forget to subscribe to China Money Podcast for free in the iTunes store, or subscribe to China Money Network weekly newsletters. You can also subscribe to China Money Podcast’s Youtube channel or Youku channel.
In this episode of China Money Podcast, guest Xia Mingchen, a Hong Kong-based principal at Hamilton Lane's fund investment team, spoke to our host Nina Xiang. Xia says he prefers country-specific private equity funds over pan-Asian vehicles, because local expertise is critical in achieving success in the region. Don't forget to subscribe to China Money Podcast for free in the iTunes store, or subscribe to China Money Network weekly newsletters. You can also subscribe to China Money Podcast’s Youtube channel or Youku channel.
In this episode of China Money Podcast, guest Xia Mingchen, a Hong Kong-based principal at Hamilton Lane's fund investment team, spoke to our host Nina Xiang. Xia says Hamilton Lane likes distressed debt and special situations strategies in China. They will likely outperform as the Chinese economic transition provides plenty of opportunities for corporate restructuring. Don't forget to subscribe to China Money Podcast for free in the iTunes store, or subscribe to China Money Network weekly newsletters. You can also subscribe to China Money Podcast’s Youtube channel or Youku channel.
We interview Kaiser Kuo, the host of Sinica Podcast to discuss China. With a background in East Asian studies and corporate experience from Oilgvy China, Youku to Baidu, Kaiser discussed the challenges of China and how the country has evolved from 1995 to 2015. Sharing the story of the Sinica podcast which he co-host with The post Episode 73: On China with Kaiser Kuo appeared first on Analyse Asia.
This is NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. Here is the news.China says it advocates peace, cooperation, justice, and a win-win approach in expanding international relations in the 21st century.Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi made the remarks recently at an open debate of the UN Security Council.Wang presided over the debate, entitled "Maintaining International Peace and Security: Reflecting on History, Reaffirming the Strong Commitment to the Purposes and the Principles of the Charter of the United Nations".The debate was initiated by China which serves in the position of the rotating presidency of the Council for the month of February.The Chinese Foreign Minister said China opposes conflict, confrontation, hegemony and the zero-sum approach in developing international relations in the 21st century, stressing that China should uphold peace and prevent conflict.Noting that some regions in the world today are still plagued with turbulence and conflicts, Wang said the fundamental way out of it is to strictly abide by the purposes and principles of the UN Charter, as well as to safeguard the sanctity of the United Nations and the Security Council.He said that "in China's view, any unilateral move that may bypass the Security Council is illegal and illegitimate"; and "the Security Council needs to take more precautionary measures to forestall conflict and act in a timely manner to stop warfare so as to restore peace and promote reconstruction as early as possible".This is NEWS Plus Special English.Three online animations themed around China's anti-corruption campaign and featuring President Xi Jinping have been a hit over the Spring Festival, or the Lunar New Year, with web users delighting in what is apparently a relaxing of attitudes to depicting Chinese leaders in cartoons. The animations, each around two minutes long, compare the situation before and after the 'Mass Line' campaign, an initiative aimed at strengthening ties between Communist Party officials and the public.They are entitled "Is the 'Mass Line' campaign for real?", "Is it easier for the public to get stuff done with the government?" and "Are officials really scared?"The cartoon character Xi eats and talks with members of the public, waving a flag bearing the characters of "Mass Line campaign", and wields a stick to hit a tiger, a reference to his targeting of high-ranking corrupt officials.The videos were uploaded to popular Chinese video streaming website Youku and were picked up by other major video websites as well as social media forums Weibo and WeChat the following day. They have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times.As with the October 2013 animation "How do they become state leaders?" which was the first to feature Chinese leaders, the producer is a mystery.The clips are credited to the unknown producer "Chaoyang Studio" and no other information is provided.Observers have speculated that the cartoons are designed to break the conventional mystery surrounding Chinese leaders and publicize government policies in a more attractive, easily-digestible way. This is NEWS Plus Special English.A Chinese man, dubbed "Brother Orange", has become a celebrity in China lately after his selfies made their way to the mobile phone of an American more than 13,000 kilometers away.The American man, Matt Stopera, was browsing through the photo stream on his iPhone, when he found lots of photos he didn't take.He saw menus with Chinese characters, girls with black hair, and a bald man posing by an orange tree, who he referred to jokingly on Twitter as Bro Orange.Stopera lost an iPhone early last year. Someone guessed that the phone might be brought to China and sold in the second-hand market. The photos were taken and reached him through iCloud. He had signed into iCloud with the old phone before it was missing.After the odd news was reported in the United States, a web user Hereinuk posted it on microblog Sina Weibo, a Chinese version of Twitter. He said that should Brother Orange see this, he will send him a new iPhone, and put him in touch with the American.Chinese web users soon succeeded in locating Brother Orange in Meizhou in south China's Guangdong province.On Saturday, Brother Orange opened an account on Weibo. He doesn't sell oranges, and a relative gave him the phone.He then invited Stopera to China and said he is looking forward to seeing him and inviting him to try the renowned Meizhou cuisine.You are listening to NEWS Plus Special English. I'm Nark Griffiths in Beijing.China's C919 large passenger aircraft will roll off the assembly lines this year.The Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China has completed basic assembly of the aircraft.Earlier last month, the C919's vertical fin and the back end of the rear fuselage were delivered to the state-owned aircraft manufacturers from domestic builders.The company has secured orders for 450 C919 planes from 18 customers.With 168-seats and 156-seat layouts, the C919 will compete with Boeing and Airbus in the medium-range aircraft sector.The C919's first test flight is planned for this year.An Airbus forecast said China will become the world's largest domestic aviation market in the next decade. China will need more than 5,300 new passenger aircraft and freighters in the next two decades, with a total market value of 820 billion U.S. dollars, or 17 percent of total global demand, in the next 20 years.
Tourism Tweetup the Podcast Chatting with Greg Mikkelsen Founder and General Manager of 3mandarins a consultancy helping Australian businesses work in the China market. We chat with Greg about China, current insights and trends and what tourism business need to consider if they are looking to attract Chinese travellers. We touch on branding, marketing and of course social media. Episode #11 of Tourism Tweetup the Podcast we talk to Greg Mikkelsen of 3mandarins a consultancy helping Australian businesses looking to work with China. Highlights & Links We Mention in this Episode Chinese are the biggest travellers globally and they are spending the most. Australia and the US attract a large number of Chinese travellers. There is no one way to describe the 'typical' Chinese traveller as there are a range of segments including the wealthy upmarket travellers, the emerging middle class, as well as students. Two key characteristics of a Chinese travellers are: one, the love of shopping and two, the love of taking photos of key icons and experiences. Three areas are recommended and discussed by Greg for businesses with a suitable product who want to dive in further and these three areas are China Market Strategy (including research and customer profiling), Branding Strategy (getting your messages right) and Marketing Strategy including websites and social media tools. Names of Chinese social media platforms: Wechat (Weixin) - the key social media platform for China Weibo - similar to twitter Renrenwang - similar to facebook Youku - similar to Youtube Famous Chinese actress with 71million followers - Yao Chen Several blogs and websites showcasing food and attractions in Australia to the Chinese speaking market - ZaiAu - Sydney Today - City Walker - Aubang The post Episode #11: Tourism marketing and China appeared first on Holly G.
Over the weekend, a post titled 少年不可欺 or "The Youth will not Be Bullied" swept through several social media platforms including Weibo and WeChat. The post claimed that video website YouKu and social website Momo stole their idea and experience. The 19-year-old writer and his team used a weather balloon to take aerial photos of the earth, and he claimed youku recreated an advertising video for Momo using the same name, story, and aerial photos with the content of the students' project, without getting authorization from the team. Yesterday, YouKu released the inspection result to the public, admitting that the story adopted by the adverting video is similar to the students' experience and apologized to those students publicly. The advertising video is removed from YouKu website. But the discussion online did not quiet down. What happened exactly? Was Youku guilty of stealing?
本演讲为中国驻英大使刘晓明在英国48Group Club上的新年讲话。 It is always a great pleasure for me to join you at the 'Icebreakers' Chinese New Year dinner. I want to thank the 48 Group Club for being such generous hosts. It is especially pleasurable to gather at this time of year in celebration of the most important traditional festival in China. This is the fourth 'Icebreakers' Annual Chinese New Year Dinner I have attended. This dinner is of special significance, because this year marks the 60th anniversary of the 48 Group Club. Like the ancient Babylonian sexagesimal system, the Chinese lunar calendar records sexagenary cycles. For this reason, 60 years have a very special meaning in China. It concludes an old historical period and starts a new one. It means building on the past and looking ahead to the future. To celebrate this milestone, Premier Li Keqiang has sent a message of congratulations to Chairman Stephen Perry. In the message Premier Li said: Six decades ago, with outstanding courage and exceptional foresight, Mr. Jack Perry and other 'Icebreakers' of the older generation overcame obstacles of all sorts and opened the door of trade links between China and Britain and even the entire Western world. Inspired by the 'icebreaker spirit', later generations of our countries have been fully committed to China-UK economic cooperation and cultural exchanges. These endeavors have greatly advanced overall China-UK relations. I met with the Young Icebreakers during my UK visit in 2011. I was deeply impressed with their vigor and energy as well as their determination to increase British people's understanding of China and strengthen China-UK cooperation. This year also marks the 10th anniversary of China-UK comprehensive strategic partnership. Thanks to the support of the 48 Group Club and various social sectors of both countries, China-UK relationship has made encouraging progress. Not long ago, I had a successful meeting with Prime Minister David Cameron in Beijing. We reached broad consensus on pushing forward bilateral relationships and expanding practical cooperation. We have agreed to further enhance political mutual trust and increase cultural and people-to-people exchanges. We also identified the priority areas for our cooperation. These include nuclear energy, high-speed railways, finance and high technology. I am confident that all these will provide strong support to the long-term sound development of China-UK relations. China and the UK working together will benefit our two peoples and contribute to global peace and development. Ladies and Gentlemen, The above is the message from Premier Li. The 48 Group Club's six decades is only one chapter in the annals of China-UK relations. But it is undoubtedly the most splendid chapter. In the six decades, the 48 Group Club and its prototype the 48 Group witnessed all the key landmarks in our relations: · The upgrade from Charge d'Affaires to Ambassadorial relationship. · The resolution of the Hong Kong question. · And the launch of comprehensive strategic partnership Over these years, the 48 Group Club has been deeply involved in China-UK cooperation in political, economic, cultural and educational sectors. It is fair to say that over the past six decades, you have weathered through both 'rain and shine' in China-UK relations. As Shakespeare said, 'What's past is prologue.' Our relations have now come to a fresh start. We face great opportunities never seen before. Let me give you some examples: · Last year our bilateral trade hit a new record high and for the first time passed 70 billion US dollars. · Chinese investments in Britain in recent two years reached 13 billion US dollars. This figure exceeded the total of previous three decades. 2014 has got off to a 'flying start.' The first weeks of this year have already seen several highlights in China-UK economic and trade links: · Our two countries have signed a number of contracts with a combined value of nearly one billion pounds. · The first RQFII fund has been launched in the London Stock Exchange. · The Bank of China's London branch issued 2.5 billion RMB bonds in Britain, the largest of any such issue. · The CBBC hosted its very successful and high profile 2014 China Business Conference. Financial Times described this conference as a pep rally for British business contingents to march into the Chinese market. China-UK cooperation is not limited to economics. Remarkable advances have also been made in cultural and people-to-people exchanges. This first month of 2014 has set a 'cracking pace': · The First China-UK Media Forum was held in London · And the classic Chinese dance drama Silk Road was performed in London. Then the long-awaited season III of the BBC drama 'Sherlock' was broadcast simultaneously in China and the UK in response to the enthusiasm of millions of Chinese fans and thanks to Prime Minister Cameron's kind offer to pass the message. On New Year's day 'Sherlock' was broadcast with Chinese subtitles on Youku and other online video websites. This is the very first time that a British TV drama had been shown in Britain and China at the same time. I can tell you that really thrilled Chinese viewers! Cultural exchanges as such have not only increased mutual understanding of our people, but also secured stronger public support for our bilateral relations. According to Chinese lunar calendar, we will usher in the 'Year of the Horse' in just a few days. In Chinese language, there are many auspicious idioms with the word 'horse'. For example, 'yi ma dang xian' means taking the lead like the winner horse in a race. 'kuai ma yang bian' means riding whip and spur.
Youku, one of the most popular Chinese video hosting services, recently announced that China Mobile 4G users in Beijing and Guangdong can watch videos on Youku without spending internet data flow during this spring festival holiday. What's more, Sina Weibo users in Beijing, Guangdong and Jiangsu can enjoy free service on the day of the lunar New Year's Eve. Chinese Internet security software provider 360 also announced that China Telecom users in Jiangsu can download some apps free of wireless data. By far, data free apps include Plants vs Zombie 2, Pocket Ninja, Master Sword, a movie and TV play app produced by 360 and a mobile phone security app produced by 360. Free always sound good. But exactly how does it work?
Today’s guest Steve Mushero is the co-founder and CEO of ChinaNetCloud - China's largest internet managed services company. Steve moved to China in 2005 after spending over a decade in Silicon Valley, where he worked as the CTO of a variety of technology startups. Before founding ChinaNetCloud, Steve was the CTO of Tudou, one of China’s largest video sharing websites. In this episode, Steve discusses some of the challenges of running a tech startup in Shanghai, as well as the overall environment for tech startups in China, compared to that of Silicon Valley. Episode Content:Challenges of running a tech startup in ChinaHuman resources and salaries in the modern Chinese economyThe environment for tech startups in China versus Silicon ValleyEpisode Mentions:500 Startups – a Silicon Valley based global venture firm and startup acceleratorToudou – One of China’s largest online video companies, which merged with Youku, another video sharing website, in 2012Light in the Box – China based eCommerce website Qunar – Chinese online travel booking websiteYou can follow both Steve and Rui on Twitter:@stevemushero@ruimaDownload and SubscribeDownload this episode: right click on this link and choose "save as"Subscribe to China Business Cast on iTunesOr check out the full list on subscription options
In just three years China's main microblogging site, Sina Weibo, has surpassed Twitter's entire global membership. More than 300 million Chinese are now tweeting, with millions more joining the national conversation every month. Shanghai-based journalist Duncan Hewitt finds out how microblogging is changing China. Thanks to social media China is witnessing the emergence of a civil society of activists and justice-seekers. These 'netizens' are using Sina Weibo and other services to publicise miscarriages of justice, instances of corruption and environmental issues and force local and central government to act. The victim of a horrific attack shows Duncan how her desperate plea for redress on Sina Weibo led to a nationwide outcry. In Beijing he meets the dogs saved from a grisly death in the dog-eating South thanks to flashmob rescuers organised on Sina Weibo. And a group of mothers who met on Sina Weibo tell him about their campaign to promote breastfeeding across China. None of this was possible before the internet - but where will it all lead? While some subjects are banned, Sina Weibo has also given Chinese people a new freedom to voice opinions on the news, their lives and their country. Duncan meets the young people of Chengdu in Western China who are now part of a small but growing graffiti, hip-hop and dance scene. Just 15 years ago there was no way they could communicate with fellow fans, never mind the outside world. He'll visit Youku, China's YouTube, to watch their online X-Factor-style competition as it is filmed. And he'll meet the famous cartoonist using animation to ask questions about the materialism of the young and the detention of his fellow artist and friend, Ai Weiwei.
Born in the U. S. to Chinese parents, Kuo lives in China and identifies equally as American and Chinese. Formerly director of digital strategy for the Beijing office of a global advertising agency, Kuo has worked as a technology and business writer for publications such as Time, TimeAsia, China Economic Review, Asia Inc., and the South China Morning Post, and currently serves as an advisor for Youku.com, a leading video sharing company in China. Kuo co-founded China's most famous rock band, Tang Dynasty, and continues to be active in the Chinese music scene.
This week on Wrestling Omakase we talk one of the greatest AND one of the worst matches of all time plus a whole hell of a lot more! If you haven't listened to a 5 Matches episode yet, every week John and the guest each choose 2 matches to watch and talk about on the episode. Then we each choose a third match, which is put up to a vote on the @wrestleomakase Twitter account, letting the listeners choose our fifth and final match of the week. It's a fun retro format featuring all sorts of different wrestling!John is joined by Bryan Quinby from Street Fight Radio, making his first appearance on the show in a number of years. Before they get into the five match selections today John & Bryan catch up on a ton of topics, including how they're hanging in during this whole pandemic thing, wondering if you should even plan any live shows at all for the rest of 2020, what life might be like after this passes and whether or not John should go to Vegas, arcades, and some more talk on empty arena wrestling. Then we finally get into our 5 matches for the week, and it's honestly a pretty incredible list:1. WALTER & Timothy Thatcher vs. Dominic Garrini & Tracy Williams, EVOLVE 1/13/18 (Youku, match starts around 20:30)2. Sabu vs. The Sandman, ECW 11/30/97 (WWE Network)3. Brock Lesnar vs. Dean Ambrose, WWE 4/3/16 (WWE Network)4. Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Kohei Sato, Z1MAX 3/2/08 (Google Drive, match starts around 1:30:47)5. Kazuchika Okada vs. Katsuyori Shibata, NJPW 4/9/17 (NJPW World: English or Japanese)Topics that come up along the way include: where we wish US wrestling could have gone vs. where it ended up going, Timothy Thatcher rules actually, John didn't know who Dominic Garrini was and feels bad because he was great, setting up elaborate spots and botching every single one, Sandman's flips (are good), Brock Lesnar destroying WWE, interpromotional feuds and why they rule, and finally a detailed breakdown of one of the best matches of all time (and maybe it's more okay to love it now that things turned out a little better with Shibata at the LA Dojo). It's a really packed episode!Support Wrestling Omakase with a donation through Red Circle! All donations are split with that week's guest. We really appreciate it!Wrestling Omakase has dedicated channels on TWO Discords! Come join either one where you can chat with John and show guests and submit questions for future episodes!Super J-Cast DiscordVOW Network DiscordMissed any of the 5 Matches episodes or just want to revisit one of the matches discussed previously but aren't sure what episode it took place on? Here's a handy Google Doc with links to every single match we've discussed on this series so far, which will continue to be updated every week!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/wrestling-omakase/donationsWant to advertise on this podcast? Go to https://redcircle.com/brands and sign up.
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