The Negotiation

Today on The Negotiation, we speak with Gen Kanai, Director of Strategic Partnerships at Animoca Brands and Mentor at Chinaccelerator.

Regarding the challenges of entering the Japanese market, Gen says that Japanese customers generally do not pirate software and content. Japan “can be a very profitable market if you can crack the market.” At the same time, it is a challenging market, with many non-Japanese companies having failed in Japan. eBay is a prime example of a failure, while Google, Twitter, and Snapchat fared better due to a number of factors that Gen enumerates.

Sales cycles and establishing stakeholder trust are generally much longer processes in Japan, but the payoff is the incredible loyalty that Japanese consumers have for successful companies in the country. On the other hand, during his five years working in China, Gen has found that it is particularly difficult for foreign entities to enter the consumer segment “for a whole host of reasons”.

Asked about his experience working with Mozilla and expanding to other markets, Gen says that the best part about his involvement was interacting with users. Community is incredibly important for Mozilla since it is a non-profit organization with a fraction of the budgets of Google, Apple, Microsoft, and other companies that provide competing browsers. Mozilla enjoys a user base made up of Firefox fans who not only love the product, but also the company’s non-profit mission and the fact that Mozilla does not make money off of its users directly.

On the other hand, the most challenging part of Gen’s job was dealing with countries that were completely closed to Firefox such as South Korea, thanks to technical decisions made by the Korean government around internet banking, stock trading, and any other kinds of secure transactions. During Gen’s time, online technologies in Korea only worked with Internet Explorer.

Mozilla’s open-source, non-profit business model can still be emulated today, with some caveats. Mozilla rose “out of the ashes of Netscape” when the latter company failed. Sergey Brin struck a deal to feature Google as the default search engine with a fraction of the ads from its search results being paid to Mozilla. Things changed when Google opted for more ownership with the creation of Chrome, but Firefox remains a lucrative product that is able to make “north of $100 million a year” for as long as it can navigate the ever-evolving trends and standards established by the top internet companies of the day.

Today on The Negotiation, we speak with Benjamin Qiu, Partner at Loeb & Loeb LLP. Benjamin is an “attorney focused on the capital market, venture financing, corporate governance, IP asset development, and technology protection & licensing.” He discusses the legal side of startup financing in China, of which he first developed expertise during his time at Innovation Works (China’s answer to Y Combinator), where he served as both fund director and a key member of its legal team.

Benjamin had the opportunity to join Innovation Works in 2009, an interesting time in the startup world. With his background in international property law, this was his first time stepping into the venture capital space. 2009-2010 saw quite a bit of liquidity due to a lot of government stimulus around the world at the time. The first iPhone came out in 2007 and mobile was on the rise exponentially. Early-stage funding was focused on mobile startups.

While Y Combinator used a more “cookie-cutter” deal structure, Innovation Works created the groundwork for new technologies before scouting the market for visionary entrepreneurs to lead innovation and form a startup based on the fresh technology.

The legal framework in China, as drawn up by the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), essentially borrows from that of Silicon Valley. In the past, it heavily favored the investor, but with the high number of options startup entrepreneurs have today, the law has approached a “middle ground” structure that protects both investors and entrepreneurs.

Asked about similarities between the discovery process in China versus that of Silicon Valley, Benjamin says that “80%-90%” of startup investors look for the same things in a founder, the most important being a firm grasp of industry knowledge. The biggest difference is that local entrepreneurs are the preferred choice, as opposed to Silicon Valley whose many resident founders hail from different cultural backgrounds.

A foreign tech startup looking to get funding in China would “find it useful to have outside investors who, on top of the money, also provide local knowledge and guidance.” They can also potentially help the founder in finding the best staff and leadership for the company, and even facilitate deals. Benjamin notes that startups that deal with content such as Google and Facebook will have a significantly tougher time getting off the ground in China compared to an Uber or an Airbnb.

M&A and IPO opportunities in China have seen a lot of convergence with Silicon Valley’s own realities. Until several years ago, a lot of the large tech companies (i.e. Alibaba, Tencent, etc.) were not known to willingly acquire younger startups. But, as is characteristic of the Chinese market, things drastically changed. In more recent years, many acquisitions took place. Also, in spite of current tensions between the U.S. and China, the U.S. is still the number one place that publicly lists rising Chinese companies.

Today on The Negotiation, we speak with Shanshan Tang, Global Business Lead for Canada at Alibaba. Alibaba’s Vancouver office was opened in 2018 with two main goals: to help Canadian brands (especially smaller ones) sell to China using their eCommerce platform, and to promote cross-border tourism and online and in-store enablement of Alipay.

Alibaba was founded as an eCommerce company 20 years ago. Today, it has evolved well beyond that. According to Shanshan, today the platform provides “a marketplace, logistics, payment services, marketing, call computing, big data, lifestyle, entertainment, and health.”

With the many unique challenges presented by COVID-19 in 2020, some interesting trends have emerged on Tmall’s platform. For one, online tools such as live streaming have become much more popular. In line with this, there has been a closer integration of Tmall’s online and offline stores. Shanshan shares that amid the complete shutdown in China during the pandemic, department store associates took advantage of their tools by live streaming promotional videos right “from their counters”.

The future of Alibaba’s eCommerce ecosystem sees the ever-closer integration of online and offline resources. There will also be an increase in the implementation of AI to Alibaba’s online tools to help merchants better customize the buying experience for individual consumers. Tmall has also put a focus on improving its brand loyalty forums in order to foster a greater sense of community among its customers.

As the first step for companies looking to capitalize on Alibaba’s many sales and marketing channels, Shanshan recommends that they enter the platform with their hero products initially, using content marketing via social media to promote their brand and value proposition.

Today on The Negotiation, we speak with Barbara Finamore, Senior Strategic Director for Asia at the Natural Resources Defense Council and the author of Will China Save the Planet (2018). She started her career with the NRDC as an environmental litigator, a position she left after getting married to a U.S. diplomat in the 1980s. Her husband took her to China in 1990, when the country was considering its earliest initiatives for sustainable development.

Barbara was there to witness first-hand the country’s signing of the Framework Convention on Climate Change, as well as the drafting of the world’s first sustainable development blueprint for the 21st century, known as Agenda 21. Since the mid-1990s, Barbara has been heading the NRDC’s energy program in China.

Says Barbara: “I got hooked on the challenges that China faced and getting to know the people who were working to address those challenges, many of whom became leaders in China’s energy and climate policy.”

China’s environmental problems took off alongside its rapid economic growth in 2001 when the country joined the WTO. Its performance during that decade would earn China the moniker of being the world’s “economic miracle”.

China’s most valuable commodity during this period? Coal: the world’s dirtiest fossil fuel and the leading source of CO2 emissions in the world, as well as the source of China’s devastating air pollution. Coal was the cause of 2013’s “airpocalypse”, during which time the Chinese citizens were breathing in an equivalent of one-and-a-half cigarettes per hour every day. In 2018, China launched its Air Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan which intends to cut down coal use.

COVID-19 has had a tremendous impact on China’s energy and environmental sectors. Chinese citizens have become less willing to take public transit due to crowding. There is a greater interest in private vehicles (which will have negative effects on climate change in the long run). The government has increased its focus on electric vehicles as essential to its long-term industrial transformation—a major element in its “new infrastructure” initiative (other elements include 5G and artificial intelligence).

In the short-term, the Chinese government is taking steps to ease its environmental controls on gasoline-powered engines since the automotive industry as a whole is a pillar industry in China, being responsible for some 10% of jobs and nearly 10% of all retail sales.

Today on The Negotiation, we speak with Xin Yi Lim, Senior Director of Corporate Development at Pinduoduo and former Technology Analyst for GIC in Singapore and New York.

Xin Yi discusses interactive eCommerce, a relatively new term that aims to reproduce the experience of offline shopping by “trying to understand human needs through the community that surrounds each and every one of us.” Pinduoduo has created a team purchase model on a mobile-first, mobile-only platform where, if you buy something with a friend or anybody else in your social network, you enjoy lower prices.

According to Xin Yi, traditional eCommerce is “a targeted, solitary shopping behavior that is also ultimately efficiency-driven.” When we shop offline (i.e. at a mall), we typically have conversations with our companions when considering a purchase. This type of interaction and feedback is essentially absent when we shop online on a conventional eCommerce platform—no algorithm can match this element of human touch.

Pinduoduo differentiates itself from other eCommerce platforms with their fundamental understanding that “people’s needs can be very dynamic, and they can be influenced by those around them.” The company’s goal is to create true value for money, both for consumers and merchants, by creating a platform that mimics the offline experience and quite literally takes the term “sharing economy” to a new level.

Using data gathered from Pinduoduo’s interactive eCommerce platform, certain trends emerged. There is now a tendency towards “rational consumption”, which means that consumers are ultimately looking for value-for-money goods. Xin Yi discusses the trend known as C2M or Consumer to Manufacturer. China, known for decades as having an export-driven economy, is now beginning to focus on manufacturing products that appeal to an increasingly savvy domestic market. Pinduoduo allows its brands to collect anonymous consumer feedback, and from this create better, more marketable products that expand existing markets, and even create new markets.

COVID-19 has caused the sale of agricultural goods to skyrocket. These goods have always been available through Chinese eCommerce platforms, but they were “rediscovered” through necessity, by consumers. To further encourage and comfort online shoppers of agricultural goods, Pinduoduo began to conduct livestreams with farmers and other stakeholders demonstrating the quality of their products. Other newly popular verticals include fitness and culinary brands.

Today on The Negotiation, we speak with TR Harrington, Co-Program Director at Mobile Only Accelerator and Program Director at SOSV. He is also a Startup Mentor at Antler, Mucker Capital, and Chinaccelerator.

TR discusses the mindset and strategies he used to run a Shanghai-based marketing agency in China, and gracefully enact an exit strategy after over a decade of serving as CEO. He says that the key to his success as a foreigner was his ability to adapt to the culture and expectations of the local market.

By extension, TR encouraged foreign brands, who approached him for his services, to adopt that same attitude if they expected to maximize their investment in China. In addition to being willing to do their marketing the way the Chinese do, they should also be prepared to move at the speed that the Chinese are known for. Finally, foreign brands should not underestimate the power of utilizing social media to reach customers and clients—such as tapping into WeChat’s customer service capabilities.

TR believes that continuous process improvement is a big factor in helping foreign brands stand out in the vast and turbulent sea that is the Chinese market. The key is to go big or go home: TR says that a relatively small company that only makes a 3x improvement will have almost zero impact on their revenue and bottom line. He also says that it is possible to go “too far” or “too deep” with metrics that do not count. Instead, brands should make it a point to prioritize the “500-foot view” metrics.

Asked about which behavioral traits startup founders must have, TR says that it is not enough to follow through with the advice given by investors and mentors. It is equally as important for them to ask why they are being given that advice in order to learn how to make consistently sound decisions in the long-term.

Today on The Negotiation, Todd speaks with author, speaker, university professor, and serial entrepreneur James Lalonde. He shares decades of experiences working in Asia, comparing and contrasting the social, cultural, and political characteristics of Japan, China, and North America to illustrate how these similarities and differences impact each country’s influence on the world stage.

James believes that building a business in China as a foreigner does not present any more challenges than building a business anywhere else does. Having worked in multiple countries, James does not see any particularly unique barriers for outsiders looking to start a business in China. “It’s really about how you approach getting your idea to market, and those things are really not specific to any culture. Being a successful entrepreneur is not necessarily a cultural thing.”

Different startup ecosystems exist in different regions of China. According to James, “Beijing is not really good at marketing itself” to foreign investors and entrepreneurs by virtue of having more than enough internal demand. Regardless, if your company specializes in software, IT, or AI, it is best to have a base in Beijing. If you are a manufacturer, Shenzhen is the place to be. Places like Shanghai and the surrounding areas deal best with consumer brands, which include lifestyle and fashion products. Other provinces may specialize in data centers or medical tourism. It all depends on what industry the government wishes to promote in the particular locale.

James asserts that the higher education system does not prepare students for the future of work. Advanced degrees are not often earned through practical experience, which means that the primary endeavor young people are preparing for while taking these courses is, in fact, the rat race. “You do not get credit for what you know, in a lot of organizations,” James reminds us. For his own companies, he prefers to hire individuals with a thirst for knowledge and an aptitude for creativity, rather than those who are “book smart” in business.

Asked his opinion on the Belt and Road Initiative, James questions the long-term ramifications of connecting several dozen countries with this particular infrastructure network. For instance, once the “bridge” is built, China has minimal, if any, control over how individual countries will make use of it. Will these countries truly use the network to improve trade relations with China, or take advantage of this resource and leave China in the dust?

Today on The Negotiation, Todd speaks with Justin Mallen, Founder, and CEO of Silk Road Telecommunication. He shares what it is like being one of the few successful foreign entrepreneurs in China, having entered the market during a time when it was far from the economic powerhouse that it is today.

Justin says, “China’s telecom infrastructure is owned and operated by three incredibly large, state-owned enterprises: China Telecom, China Unicom, and China Mobile. Back then, they had the one key resource which you needed: networking; and they did not want people in their space.”

Justin defines success, at least in the early days, simply as “being able to create a business that had staying power”. SRT is a capital intensive venture that was founded in 2000. It is a  thriving operation today, but the road to get to this point was fraught with scores of challenges in the beginning. Primarily, it was a matter of turning these carriers—and other gatekeepers—from competitors into partners. Justin’s prediction that the internet would take the world by storm in the near future was a driving force that paid off in spades.

As a data center business, SRT began with infrastructure as a service as its sole focus: they build, operate, maintain, and own the buildings that house all the servers for the internet. Today, these sites serve as the “heartbeat” for tech companies such as Alibaba, Tencent, and JD.com. Because of recent, rapid advancements in technology, today, SRT also offers platforms as a service (cloud, data, and big data analytics vendors) as a necessary additional layer atop infrastructure.

Information traveled incredibly slowly in the early 1990s China. Justin’s initial goal was to simply speed things up. The biggest strength he saw in the country’s carriers was that they were very eager to invest in building up the infrastructure and capabilities of the internet. The goal of SRT was to develop the infrastructure so that the cost of delivery to consumers could be minimized. Over time, this grew the number of internet users in China to over 900 million in the first quarter of 2020.

5G takes the latency—the time it takes for data to move between a device and the servers—down to zero. It makes connectivity much smoother and effectively instant. Driverless cars are incredibly prone to accidents if they use 4G, with its latency of 40 milliseconds. 5G removes this barrier, as well as those of many other industries, which allows for further innovations such as telemedicine and remote surgery.

Today on The Negotiation, Todd speaks with Andrea Fenn, a sinologist and journalist who regularly publishes articles and conducts lectures on China’s fast-paced, ever-evolving digital ecosystem. Andrea is also the founder and CEO at Fireworks, which he refers to as a “post-digital agency”. This is due to his belief that brand growth in today’s digital landscape should go beyond vanity metrics such as likes and followers. Instead, Fireworks focuses on actual conversions.

Andrea sheds light on how luxury fashion marketing has changed dramatically in China when the advent of the “new rich” coincided with the rise of social media and eCommerce solutions. Now that there is less exclusivity in the market and more transparency among buyers, improving one’s sense of style is less about showing off one’s status and more about expressing one’s unique personality.

Much like in other parts of the world, influencer marketing is also on the rise. Todd points out a few outrageous internet personalities who sell millions of dollars worth of product on a daily basis by the sheer power of their personal brands. Andrea replies that “there is a constant need for reassurance; a constant need for establishing trust in Chinese consumers.” He goes on to quote a certain Chinese scholar who said that “the Chinese are suspicious yet gullible.” This attitude, says Andrea, applies to both published news and consumption choices among the Chinese.

There is no “standard marketing protocol” in China. Digital trends are always changing depending on whichever direction the largest eCommerce companies (ex. Alibaba, Tencent, etc.) choose to take. In the West, brands build their audiences from scratch using their unique, individual platforms, Chinese businesses, on the other hand, are beholden to established third-party platforms.

Today on The Negotiation, Todd speaks with author and educator Mark Greeven. He is a former Associate Professor at Zhejiang University’s School of Management in Hangzhou, China. Today, Mark serves as Professor of Innovation and Strategy at IMD Business School in Lausanne, Switzerland.

The biggest difference between teaching at Zhejiang and at IMD is that the former “has all the features of a bureaucracy that you could imagine when it comes to state-run public institutions.” Despite the limitations imposed on Mark during his time at Zhejiang, he found it refreshing that the students were nevertheless eager to learn anything that Mark was willing to teach.

If a foreigner is considering doing business in China, it pays to know the culture and the ecosystems that are unique to the country. Mark says that it will help greatly to familiarize oneself with all the eCommerce and social media platforms that essentially run the modern Chinese economy.

In China, Mark classifies four types of innovators who help shape the country’s business landscape on a cyclical basis. The first type is the pioneers: usually large, well-known business entities who kickstart or capitalize on new systems or technologies that will continue to evolve, such as manufacturing (in the 1980s) and the internet (in the 2000s). The second group is the hidden champions: lesser-known companies who are proficient when it comes to one specific technology, application, or industrial product. The third type is the technology underdogs: mostly younger companies founded by overseas returnees with newfound prestigious academic accolades. The fourth and final group is the changemakers: digital-driven ventures who believe in rapid iterations and offer disruptive new ideas for traditional industries.

Everything in China is always moving. In fact, Mark considers 2015 as having occurred “eons ago”. Countless waves of creativity and innovation have come and gone since. The Chinese, in times past, were not known to be inventors of new technologies as much as they were known to be able to adapt and mass-produce products that come from these technologies. Today, things have changed. When it comes to software engineering, AI, and biotechnology, China is now at the forefront of many breakthrough technologies.