The purchase of the Oslo-based Opera browser by a conglomerate of Chinese companies for US$1.2 billion took many by surprise. Not Shanghai-based VC William Bao Bean, who sees the purchase as a logical step in the fierce competition in China, he tells in Quartz.Read More →
Chinese companies have often been blamed for copying Western innovation and patents. But now China takes the lead in mobile innovations, the argument seems to go the other way. Many of the features we know from WeChat we see now popping up at Facebook. Innovator William Bao Bean discusses whether Facebook has become a WeChat clone.Read More →
Many foreign companies fail when they try to enter the China market. According to William Bao Bean, a partner at Shanghai venture capital firm SOSV, dealing with over 120 startups per year, that is because they follow too often the instincts they take along from their home market. Wrong, he tells in the South China Morning Post.Read More →
Erasing the middle management and organizing competition internally: those are two features in new revolutionary corporate structures in China. Haier and Tencent have made big inroads. Innovation expert William Bao Bean discusses Tencent and how their organization works.Read More →
Looking back at the demand from our clients at the China Speakers Bureau over the past few years, we see a distinct development into the future, into the year of the ape.Read More →
In Taipei the Mobile Only Accelerator (MOX) has launched and SOSV partner William Bao Bean has jumped over from Shanghai to support the operation, in PRunderground he explains what it takes to develop the next mobile apps for 4 million users.Read More →
Startups should not expect to find the Promised Land in China, told VC-veteran William Bao Bean an investment conference on China in Tel Aviv last month. 95 percent of you should not be here, he told according to the Times of Israel. With one exceptions: Chinese internet companies cannot deal with algorithms. They urgently need mathematicians.Read More →
“Should I bother to come to China, people ask often, The answer generally is: No.” William Bao Bean talks to a group of Israeli startups in Tel Aviv. “When you use your gut feeling in China, you are mostly wrong. In China technology is not important, its about cash, friends or both.” Lessons from a seasoned investor, who says you can only succeed if you have an “unfair advantage”.Read More →
Getting your product into the market could be a costly adventure in the past. But Tencent´s WeChat is offering a cheap alternative for startup companies, says William Bao Bean managing director of Chinaccelerator in Technode at the Chinaccelerator Demo Day, presenting new startups.Read More →
Is China lagging in innovations? Certainly not when it comes to ecommerce, says William Bao Bean, managing director of Chinaccelerator, in TechinAsia. “If you can get ahold of Facebook’s product roadmap, it’s a giant WeChat clone,” he says.Read More →
China closed a US$2 billion deal with Russia to purchase 24 Su-35 fighters. Question, looking at the rather small amount, according to defense analyst Wendell Minnick in Defense News: will China reverse engineer the planes, like it did before.Read More →
Alibaba, and its competitor JD.com made a record sales (or gross merchandise volume, GMV, as it is called) during Single´s Day. But retail specialist Ben Cavender also looks at the little print in the contract, and wonders in CNN Money if the record sales contribute to the profits.Read More →