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Silicon Dragon: How China Is Winning the Tech Race

A year ago I was interviewed by Rebecca Fannin, international editor of the Hong Kong weekly Asian Venture Capital Journal and former International News Editor at Red Herring for her upcoming book: Silicon Dragon: How China Is Winning the Tech Race". The books message is that we shouldn't be surprised if the next Steve Jobs or Bill Gates will be coming form China. Through an in-depth account of the new generation of Chinese entrepreneurs that is challenging the U.S. for global high-tech leadership, Rebecca is trying to take the reader behind the scenes to provide an up-to-the-minute account of a phenomenon that is just now breaking the surface in mainstream media and business press. I was one of the entrepreneurs interviewed through my involvement in Maxthon as was Jeff Chen, Maxthon's founder. Rebecca just let me know that the book will be hitting the shelfs anytime soon and you can pre-order it already from Amazon (see link above). I have not yet read the book, but for anybody interested in how the Silicon Dragon is taking on the U.S for global high-tech leadership I think it will be very interesting reading.

My Soul Is Craving Culture

Lately I have had an over-dose of blogs and media covering the Web, social networks, start-ups and technology. To cure this I have come up with my own prescription:

• Classical Music Podcasts
• Jazz Podcasts
• MP3 Podcasts
• Ideas & Culture Podcasts
• Science Podcasts
• Free University Courses

NPR and watching interesting videos on the free-open source video platform Miro. Offline line reading: Umberto Eco's: The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana. The only technical/ web related blog I read follow regularly is Lifehacker. While we are on the subject of reading. What are your life changing books?

Guy Kawasaki "The Art of the Start"

Here's a great video with Guy Kawasaki talking about The Art of the Start at TiECon, May 13, 2006. I read his book and I can warmly recommend it for any entrepreneur or entrepreneurs to be. Filled with a lot of truths, killing many illusions (probably based on learning a lot from his mistakes) about how to run a start-up. I met with Guy 1 1/2 year ago when he recently got into blogging. I remember how he told me that he really invests a lot of time and thinking behind every blogpost that he writes. You can definately see that. He loves the "10" points format which is reflected in many of his posts. This video is a nice summary of the book.

Tales From The Jungle: Carlos Castaneda

Gladwell, Business and Tomato sauce

Paul Kedrosky reminded me of this great video with Malcom Gladwell from TED2004.  Malcom talks about what business can learn from tomato sauce. It is very good and actually funny. Malcom Gladwell is a staff write for The New Yorker and the best selling author of “Blink” and “The Tipping Point” - both brilliant books. I like what Malcom writes about although I am fully aware fo that a lot of people think that its just a lot of nonsense. I guess it is my background in psychology and martial arts that makes them tick' for me.

My World is Flat

I just started to read The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman , NY Times "Foreign Affairs" columnist. Friedman explains how the flattening of the world happened at the beginning of the twentieth century and is (so far) an excellent essay of the global village we are living in.

As I started to read the book, I realized that I am actually really living what Friedman is describing in this book. I am a Swede, living in Israel, running the business and global expansion of a Chinese company based in Beijing while spending a lot of time in the US...For me this is very so natural and self-evident that I don't even give it that much thought. That is, until I try to explain what I do to other people. Just take this trip as an example, I am actually circulating the globe totally on this trip. I flew in from Tel Aviv to LA (BTW, on EL AL’s first direct flight to LA), I will then continue to Beijing after a week and then return from Beijing to Tel Aviv a few days later just for the weekend before I take my family on vacation to New York 3 days later…Now, how global is that?

The world is definitely flattening more and more for every day that goes by, we see this in the media world, in the music industry, in retail, in product development etc. As I write this, I just saw that Nicklas & Janus has leaked a bit about their "Project Venice" to BusinessWeek. Once more, these guys - a Swede and an Estonian are at it again, leading a team of top software developers from a half a dozen cities around the world including New York, London and Venice. 

I think innovation got flat too...

Tags: Flat World Tags: Thomas Friedman Tags: Sweden Tags: Israel Tags: China Tags: Maxthon Tags: Globalization Tags: US Tags: Innovation Tags: Skype Tags: Project Venice

A Drive Down To Monterey

Yesterday I cultivated my literal side and drove down to Monterey, the home town of John Steinbeck. Monterey is where the famous Cannery Row lies - where people for ages where stuffing cans with sardines. Now, the town is more or less living on its old history and its amazing aquarium. Only two houses are left that Steinbeck wrote about in his book. Steinbecks own house (below) is where he wrote The Pearl and lived when Cannery Row was published.

More pictures here.

Riya - The Story

Riya's founder and CEO Munjal Shah, has written a fantastic account for the launch of Riya. The first post "Episode 1: March 21 6am PST to March 28 6am" is a great account of all the ups and downs a start-up goes through during its launch. I think that many of us really can identify ourselves with his story. No sleep, a lot of nervs, stress and satisfaction. Shel thinks he should write a book about it. Why not? It's really good. Waiting for Episode 2..

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Itunes + PDF Subscriptions

The disruptive revolution keeps on rocking. Now you can subscribe to PDF's via Itunes. Perhaps it does not sounds like music to your ears but it can be quite useful. Wikinews is already available this way and we can expect many more to come. I find this PDF-casting interesting in many ways:

• Authors and Journalist can distribute their materials directly via RSS - cutting off, or being less dependent on the middle-man
• Anybody can become a publisher (just as with Blogging and Podcasting) no barrier for entry
• Services like NPR can offer transcripts of their programs together with the Podcast
• Artists can bundle their music with lyrics & transcriptions etc

Tags: Itunes Tags: PDF's Tags: Wikinews Tags: Publishing Tags: iPods Tags: Apple Tags: NPR Tags: Disruptive Media

The Art of the Start

This morning I stepped by Guy Kawasaki's offices at Garage Technology Ventures, to say hello. Guy is a managing director of  an early-stage venture capital firm and a columnist for Forbes.com. Guys is perhaps mostly known for being one of the responsible for the success of the Macintosh computer. One of the reasons why I wanted to meet up with Guy is his latest book "The Art of the Start", a must read for any entrepreneur, filled with very down to earth advice on what to do, what not to do and how. In fact, its the single best book I've read on entrepreurship (and there are hundreds of them..) I can really recommend it!

Guy is also has writes one of my favorite blogs, "Let the good times roll", this too full of great advice for anyone in the start-up business or business in general. When you read Guy's blog, you realize how much time and thought he has put into each post, not just rants, raves and news clippings. Food for thought...

Tags: Guy Kawasaki Tags: Garage Technology Ventures Tags: The Art of the Start Tags: Let the good times roll Tags: Apple Tags: Start-up Tags: Entrepreneurship Tags: Blogs

China Internet & Techology Key Take Aways

Piper Jaffray held their third Annual China Internet & Technology Conference in Beijing last week. From the discussions & presentations held at the conference, the following key take aways emerged:

1. The economy is less of a risk, compared with last year
2. Leaders are emerging within the sector
3. Companies are more realistic about market opportunity and margin leverage
4. Regulation is helping moderate growth rate, preventing potential bubbles
5. New areas are emerging in blogs, social networking, etc.
6. Adoption of advertising and online medium by small businesses is increasing
7. Local companies enjoy home-grown advantage

Focus Media and Ctrip are emerging as leaders, Baidu and TOM Group as well. Baidu is dominating search and Google will have a difficult and uphill struggle in challenging Baidus domination. Online advertising is expecting to grow 35-40% during 2006 (an amazing oppertunity here). What I find particulariy interesting is the new areas that are emerging in blogs and social networking. According to Piper Jaffray, blogging is the big new trend catching on very rapidly. They also believe that it will continue to grow, and the existing players such as Bokee, Blog CN, Sina and surprise: MSN Spaces are likely to be market leaders. Other rapidly growing companies are: online match making, phone agencies and travel search engines.

Against this background I must say that Maxthon is very well positioned in China, we are already driving a huge percentage of Baidu's search traffic, we are the second biggest browser in China and our user growth in China (as well as outside of) are just exploading.

Tags: Piper Jaffray Tags: China Tags: Internet Tags: Technology Tags: Focus Media Tags: Ctrip Tags: Baidu Tags: Tom Online Tags: Advertising Tags: BlogsTags: Social networks Tags: Bokee Tags: Blog CN Tags: Sina Tags: MSN Spaces Tags: Maxthon

China: Strength in Advertising Suggests A Stable Year Ahead

According to a fresh Industry Note from Piper Jaffray, strength in advertising suggest a robus year ahead in China. Although both online as well as other channels of advertsing appears to be strong, online seems to be gainging share from traditional media such as print. Piper Jaffray, also reports that although Beijing Olympics is still two years away, the buzz is already taking place, and this might serve as a catalyst for increased advertiser spending. The most important factor will be increased consumer spending on FMCG (fast moving consumer goods). Search will be another strong beneficiary of the growth as more online content and transaction based companies turn to search. (guess if Maxthon will benefit from this....). I attached some key China Statistics from 2005, that might be of interest.

Tags: China Tags: Advertising Tags: Piper Jaffray Tags: Online Tags: Search Tags: Maxthon Tags: Beijing Olympics

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Douban - A Chinese Book, Music and Movie Recommendation Thing

Douban in Chinese

Douban is a Chinese book, music and movie recommendation community. It was born in fall of 2004 by Bo Yang, a bilingual book worm, partly out of frustration that he could not find anyone in Beijing to talk about his new English books with. It was decided that a pilot version should be made in Chinese. Douban.com (alpha of course) went live on March 6, 2005, from a $800 home-made server hosted in the cheapest datacenter in Shanghai - quite amazing.

 

By December douban.com has attracted over sixty thousands registrations from Chinese speakers all over the world, over a million collections and ratings, and over 13,000 full-length reviews. The almost identical English version, douban.net, went on public testing on December 6, 2005. Douban also has a blog.

 

Related posts: Chinese Will be Major Players in Web 2.0 China's WangYou Media

 

Technorati Tags: Maxthon, Internet, Media, China, Blogs, Recommendations, Movies, Books, Music, web2.0, Chinese

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

One of the best things with travelling is that I have time to read books. Just finished Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking", a great book exploring what Gladwell calls "thin-slicing", instinctive gut-feeling based decisions. The book is more descriptive rather than conclusive, but full of interesting cases on how the most important decisions we make are often made in a split-second, in a blink by thin'slicing. There are the examples from War Games, an emergency room, marriage, speed-dating to criminal investigations. The list is long. Since I have a background in Psychology and in martial arts, I just love these type of stories. The book is very engaging and also written in a way that makes the reading flow. Warmly recommended to anybody interested in what makes us all tick'.