D Network

Chao Zhang is a feminist, a writer, and an entrepreneur. She co-founded Lean In China 6 years ago and has been dedicated to female empowerment ever since. She is a published author and a popular blogger on women issues in China. Her first book, "We Need To Talk", was published in 2013 and reached millions of young Chinese people.

From management consultant at Hay Group, to the first local employee at Airbnb China, to Group Director at a leading global branding agency Labbrand, Chao has a decade of experience in helping global brands and tech start-ups succeed creatively and commercially in China's digital age. Her past work has won top awards, including Spikes Asia, Cannes Lions (shortlisted), and NYFA.

Her business acumen and contributions to social impact led to her nomination as "Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia" and "Beijing's Perfect 10" - ten individuals who will define the next decade in Beijing, as well as many interviews from publications and institutions such as China National Radio and the BBC.

Chao's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cloverzhang/

Lean In China: www.leaninchina.com.cn

Labbrand: http://www.labbrand.com/shanghai

Jaeson Ma is a media executive, artist, and serial entrepreneur. He is a co-owner of popular social music video app Triller, co-founded premium production studio Stampede Ventures, digital music label 88rising, and east-west brand strategy & investment firm East West Ventures. Jaeson is a Senior Advisor to Tencent Music Entertainment & KKBox fund KKFarm and a Network Partner for consumer tech fund GoodWater Capital. He is also a senior advisor to private equity funds advised by Courage Capital Management, LLC that invests in catalogs of music rights. Jaeson is considered one of the leading financiers to companies, institutions, and individuals investing in Asian media, entertainment, & tech. His investments include Triller, Musical.ly (now TikTok), Grab, Slock.it, Brain, Oursong, Proxima Media, Kind Heaven, & MAUM.

Jaeson's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jaesonma/ Jaeson's Twitter: https://twitter.com/jaesonma Jaeson's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaesonma/

East West Ventures is an entertainment and lifestyle fund, focusing on celebrity backed enterprises.

Website: www.ewventures.co

Triller is an entertainment platform built for creators. A social video community where you can show the world who you are by capturing flawless videos and sharing them in seconds Website: https://www.triller.co/

Stampede is a premium content company focused on creating the next generation of blockbuster franchises for the world. Website: http://stampedeventures.com/

88rising is an American mass media company and digital music platform. Website: https://88rising.com/

Anthony Chen was the first full-time employee at Flexport. He helped build many of their internal processes and tooling as well as design their customer experience. He also led their expansion into Asia in 2016 starting with their Greater China offices.

Prior to Flexport, Anthony spent some time as a venture capitalist and investment banker, but his love has always been more entrepreneurial. Anthony recently left Flexport and is looking forward to starting his next endeavor.

Anthony's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chenac/

Anthony's Twitter: https://twitter.com/accrossd/

Flexport is a software-focused freight forwarding and customs brokerage company that helps businesses transport their goods to their point of sale. It is currently valued at more than $3 billion after a $1 billion funding round led by SoftBank's Vision Fund with existing investors Founders Fund, DST Global, SF Express and others also participating.

Its freight service includes an online dashboard for businesses to easily understand, purchase, manage, and track the services required for global trade. Flexport's mission is to fix the user experience in global trade and bring the world free trade through technology. The company was founded in 2013 and is based in San Francisco, California.

Flexport's website: https://www.flexport.com/

Lucy Liu is Co-founder and President of Airwallex. She is responsible for the company's branding and operations and has been involved with the company since its early days. Before establishing Airwallex, she was an investment consultant in CICC (China International Capital Corporation) and also served as a board director of Hong Stone Investment Development Limited, a Hong Kong based investment company. With her outstanding entrepreneurial achievements, Lucy has won a series of awards including 2020 EY Entrepreneurial Winning Women Asia-Pacific, 2019 SmartCompany "30 Under 30", 2018 Fintech Australia Female Leader of the Year, and 2017 Forbes "30 Young Entrepreneurs in Asia".

Lucy's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/awxlucy/ Airwallex's website: http://airwallex.com/

Airwallex is a technology company that revolutionises the way businesses operate globally. Businesses use Airwallex as their end-to-end global financial services platform. Whether it's making or receiving payments from customers, domestically or internationally, Airwallex saves businesses time and money by offering real-time, reliable and cost-effective financial solutions.

Founded in 2015, Airwallex has since grown to over 400 employees across ten offices around the world. Airwallex has raised over US$360 million in venture capital funding, supported by top-tier investors including Tencent, Sequoia Capital China, DST Global, Hillhouse Capital, Horizons Ventures, ANZi Ventures, Square Peg Capital, Mastercard and Salesforce Ventures. In March 2019, Airwallex was valued over US$1 billion after its Series C financing, and became one of the fintech unicorns in APAC. The company was also named one of the world's top 50 fintechs in KPMG's 2019 and 2018 Fintech100 lists.

Nathan Resnick is the CEO of Sourcify, the fastest growing sourcing platform backed by YCombinator that helps hundreds of companies manufacture products around the world.

In the past, Nathan has brought dozens of products to market, ran three e-commerce companies (sold one), and been a part of projects on Kickstarter raising over seven figures.

He writes for media outlets like Entrepreneur, The Next Web and Business.com, just to name a few. Nathan also frequently appears on television networks like CNBC and CNN to comment on the China-US trade war, tariffs, COVID-19 and other current affairs that have a huge impact on global sourcing and manufacturing.

Nathan also used to live in China and speaks Mandarin fluently. When he's not in a factory or selling software, he can be found mountain biking, sailing, skiing, fishing, or hiking.

Nathan's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanresnick/

Nathan's Twitter: https://twitter.com/naterez94

Nathan's company: https://www.sourcify.com/

Product Sourcing School: https://www.sourcify.com/programs/

Companies Nathan mentioned in our conversation:

https://italic.com/ - Luxury without labels

https://cutsclothing.com/ - Fashion

https://www.freightos.com/ - Freight forwarding

https://www.flexport.com/ - Freight forwarding

https://www.v-trust.com/ - Quality control in China

https://www.qima.com/ - Quality control in Asia

Jordan Berke led e-commerce activities for Walmart in China for almost ten years, based out of Shenzhen, China. He helped to negotiate Walmart's $4bn investment in JD and led implementation of the strategic alliance formed post-investment, oversaw $400m investment and partnership with Dada/JD Daojia, China's largest crowdsourced delivery platform / #2 largest online grocery platform (behind Meituan), and built Walmart's one-hour fresh delivery business that now serves 50m customers annually across 180 cities. This business became key driver of Walmart's growth in China and benchmark for company's global e-commerce development. After he left Walmart, Jordan started Tomorrow Retail, a strategic consultancy that enables global retailers and brands to accelerate their digital transformation, with specific focus on e-commerce channel strategy, in-store digitization and customer data management. In our conversation we discussed Jordan's China experience, what made Walmart unique in terms of business strategy as well as company culture, and how should companies around the world approach learning from Chinese tech giants such as Tencent, Alibaba, and others. Jordan's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordan-berke-tomorrow/ Jordan's company: Tomorrow Retail Consulting / https://tomorrowretail.com/