I spent a summer in Taiwan, half learning Chinese and half working on a startup.<p>I highly recommend that any entrepreneur spend <i>at least</i> a couple months in a Chinese country. There are billions of consumers, all eager to spend money, and only 42% of them are on the Internet so far. Clearly Asia is an attractive market, but if you've never experienced Chinese culture then you will have no idea what the context of it looks like. You need to go see for yourself.<p>Much of this post resonated with me. Still, if you've only read the post, and not seen the culture, you are missing a lot. After a few weeks in Taiwan, a few things were very clear. Most notably, LINE is incredibly popular. It's the dominant messaging app, ahead of even iMessage, MMS. People <i>love</i> the stickers, btw, and they pay for them!<p>Also, Taipei has a 7/11 on every corner, no joke. You can do all sorts of useful things at 7/11. You can pay your bills, pickup packages, order meals, and more. You can also use a refillable "EZCard" which is an RFID chip that works at many retail outlets as well as subway stations. In general, the 7/11's in Taiwan make an effort to integrate as many products as they can into their economy. You'll see a lot of offline (hah) LINE promotions, e.g. partnered with drink companies and 7/11.<p>It seems like in general, once users in Asia are entrenched in a service/network, they are fiercely loyal to it. That's why you don't see users switching from LINE to other apps, and why certain Asian countries might prefer one paritcular messaging app over another.<p>What I miss most, though, is the unlimited 20mbps tethering with my $40/mo pay-as-you-go plan...<p>Oh, and here's a prime example of how crazy loyal Chinese consumers are for their products. Watch this video of a Xiaomi product launch, f<i></i>*ing crazy. [0]<p>[0] <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O89M3CYd8RU" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O89M3CYd8RU</a>