Nice to see someone addressing the problem of early stage companies in China. As I was reading through the differences in China vs. the US, I was struck by the similarities to Japan as well. People are much more risk-adverse here and having a startup, to put it mildly, is not usually a source of pride, at least until you have serious funding. This also makes it difficult for B2B startups to gain traction.<p>A friend of mine told me that Japanese companies look for the following in vendors: 1. have they IPO'd? if not then, are they 2. funded by a big VC? and, failing that, have they at least 3. won some award?<p>It all comes back to a lack of desire to reward innovation despite its obvious risks and wanting to play it safe by requiring external validation.<p>This can be good, in a way, because it forces entrepreneurs who still decide to operate in this environment figure out the needs of what we in the US would call the "late-majority" on the technology adoption curve (which is also usually about half of the largest part of any given addressable market).<p>I'm guessing (though only guessing) that some of these things are also true in China. Perhaps it's very different in B2C.
> It’s like Y Combinator<p>....<p>> a $115 million fund in order to create five successful Chinese startups a year<p>The funding levels imply it is less like YC and more like a standard VC. With those numbers -- even assuming 50% overhead, and five years of five startups each -- that's over $2 million per startup. YC starts at $17k to $20k per startup.
I'd like to say that all these points are valid for India as well particularly the 3rd point about Failure not being an option. I started an ecommerce startup (bad decision) with a friend of mine (again bad decision) whose parents were keep pressuring him to pursue "MBA" instead of doing business. Parents in these societies have lot of say in the future of their children and thus are very apprehensive about risky career options.
Venture Beat should try visiting the links they publish in their articles.<p>Kai-Fu Lee's Innovation Works is www.innovation-works.com not www.innovationworks.org