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.