Greg is the founder of Pillar Legal, a boutique international law firm across Shanghai and San Francisco that specializes in the video game industry. Before founding his own law firm, Greg served as General Counsel for Shanda (盛大网络), which was the largest Chinese gaming company at one point with a very successful game Chuanqi (传奇 The Legend of Mir), and completed an IPO at NASDAQ listing in 2004. Hear about: What was the regulatory environment like back then vs now?

What was a game approval process like? Are Chinese sensors actual gamers themselves?

What challenges did bureaucratic rivals cause for game companies? What happened after the March 2018 reorganization?

Why does the Party always have a love and hate relationship with the gaming industry? Is the Chinese government’s stance now going more towards the fear side?

Why are Chinese gaming companies looking for a global audience from day one?

Has the IP situation in China improved over time?

Finally, hear Greg's recommendations for foreign companies to anticipate in China, especially after the new Personal Information Protection Law was passed on November 1st.

Find Greg at http://www.pillarlegalpc.com/en/

Liqian Ren 任丽倩, Ph.D., is the Director of Modern Alpha at WisdomTree Investments where she manages, among other things, an ETF focused on non-state-owned companies in China using quantitative strategies.  She was a quantitative portfolio manager at Vanguard for 11 years, worked for the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, and has an MBA and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago. Hear about:

Why macro is usually not the main or only factor when it comes to investment research;

Why investors should be more discernible to headlines and rumors when investing in China;

How much the demographic slowing down, the decline in birth rates actually affects Chinese equities;

The risk of the VIE, the variable interest entity, and potential de-listings of Chinese equities from US exchanges; 

The overall regulatory environment and regulations that were impacting tech in particular;

Why Liqian believes the Evergrande crisis is not contagious;

Liqian’s predictions on sectors that will have great opportunities;

Follow Liqian on Twitter and her company blog at wisdomtree.com/blog

Richard (Rich) Turrin is the international best-selling author of “Cashless - China’s Digital Currency Revolution” and “Innovation Lab Excellence.” He is an Onalytica Top 100 Fintech Influencer and an award-winning executive previously heading fintech teams at IBM following a twenty-year career in investment banking.  Living in Shanghai for the last decade, Rich experienced China going cashless first-hand. Hear about:

  What is the Chinese digital yuan, and why it is different from cryptocurrencies; What are the different levels of anonymity the digital yuan offers; Will the Chinese digital yuan help break the duopoly of the Alibaba and Wechat mobile payments in China;
How will the Chinese digital yuan impact the world; Rich's personal experience using the digital yuan in Shanghai; How does PBOC enable the digital yuan to be used without internet access? Find Rich on LinkedIn, Twitter, and check out his book Cashless on apple books, Amazon, and any other digital bookstores across the planet.

Raymond Huang was most recently the Chief Strategy Officer of MOGU (蘑菇街), a publicly listed Chinese eCommerce company, and the FIRST one to launch livestreaming eCommerce or live shopping in China, which accounted for an estimated $150Bn USD in GMV last year.

He used to be an investment banker in Hong Kong, and worked closely with Chinese tech firms e.g. JD, Bilibili. In 2018, he decided to join Mogu as Chief Strategy Officer. Learn about:

Why Mogu began experimenting with livestreaming eCommerce back in 2016;

What is Mogu's technology lab and how it helps beginner influencers to start;

Why is the 24x7 supply chain throughout China essential to the rapid growth of livestreaming eCommerce;

What is the difference between QVC (TV shopping) and livestreaming shopping, and why livestreaming eCommerce hasn't taken off in the west;

What are the major differences between western influencers and Chinese influencers;

What niche business models, special products are a good fit in livestreaming eCommerce;

What are the strengths of each of the major livestreaming eCommerce firms such as Douyin, Kuaishou, Alibaba and Wechat, and their challenges;

Why DTC brands are fond of building private traffic, and why Ray is skeptical about it.

Andy Tian is the founder of Asia innovations group, a company that has a suite of live social apps, e.g. Uplive, Lamour, SupreFans with more than 410 million registered users located in over 150 countries and regions worldwide.

Andy has strong opinions about what's the best way to take the most interesting things he has seen in China and throughout Asia, and export them to the rest of the world. Hear about:

How China's uniquely firewalled off environment created a different ecosystem, thus resulted in different revenue models of social apps in China;

What is Operation aka Yunying (运营) in China, and how it works differently in western countries;

The twin trends of globalization & localization in social apps;

Why Andy implemented multi-regional operations from the start;

What he believes are the unique catalysts for the explosion of livestreaming eCommerce in China, and why it hasn't taken off just yet in the U.S. or anywhere else.

William Li is the CEO of Akulaku,  the largest consumer finance company in Indonesia, and a very fast-growing digital bank. Akulaku is a Southeast Asian tech company that has both Chinese and Southeast Asian management, and investors from China.

William used to work in the legal and financing industry for over 10 years. He founded the Akulaku with his co-founder Gordon, a senior developer in late 2014 and received funding from IDG. Hear William explain:

How they identified the opportunity in SEA, and pivot the business from Bitcoin to a digital bank;

Why they started with eCommerce, and how it helped with the rapid growth of their digital bank business;

The difference in the banking system among Hong Kong, mainland China, and Indonesia;

How Akulaku is structured and resources are allocated to optimize the efficiency, as well as balanced between the eCommerce and digital bank business;

What the SEA market looks like today, and why they decided to expand to Europe next;

Richard is the co-founder of Grandview Capital, a VC fund focused on investing in Chinese entrepreneurs who do business outside of China (AKA go overseas or "chuhai" in Chinese). He's based in Silicon Valley and his co-founder is in China. Hear Richard explain:

Why he started to look at Chinese entrepreneurs who are attacking overseas markets back in 2015;

How the nature of the manufacturing & technology industry makes it easier for these companies to globalize;

How he believes in applying the "time machine" paradigm to his investments

How it's no longer about copying but localizing

Why Chinese companies favor Southeast Asia and Latin American markets

What he's investing in these days.   Find Richard on LinkedIn!

Albus Yu works for China Growth Capital, a venture capital fund that manages about 1.4 billion dollars. He specializes in consumer internet, consumer brands, and services investment. Hear Albus explain:
The reason that he  had started to invest in consumer internet and e-commerce marketplaces;
What the growth of DTC brands in China looks like these days;
The differences that the DTC brands are growing between the US versus in China right now, and Why it is a better opportunity from both the consumer side and supply & manufacturing side; and he gave the Chinese "Lululemon" as an example;

The reason that Albus recommend brands to start off online and build offline presence as well;

He perceives the potential for some Chinese new brands to expand internationally as positive.  

Ray Hu is the founder of Blue Lake Capital, an early stage VC fund in China with about $700mm under management. Blue Lake specializes in SaaS investments. Hear Ray explain:

The current state of Chinese SaaS, enabling factors and requirements for success

Case study: Jushuitan (JST), an ecommerce SaaS and their sales strategy

Enterprises' willingness to pay and other differences in the Chinese market

Internationalizing

Jordan Berke spent fifteen years transforming the world's largest retailer into a truly digital organization by leading strategic alliances with JD and Tencent. He's now the founder of Tomorrow Retail, a consulting company. Hear about:

How does Walmart China outstrip the US in four major categories?

What are retailers in the U.S. focusing on right now?

How do retailers turn their business into a platform?

What are the differences in the China and U.S. business ecosystems?

What myths persist in the industry?

And finally, what's the future outlook?