How LinkedIn Led To Maxthon

I often get the question of how I got involved with Maxthon. I mean how does a Swedish/Israeli guy becomes a partner in a Chinese company? The answer is, thorough LinkedIn. Belive it or not. Not directly, but in-directly. Here's the story:

It all started when I was working at ICQ (an AOL subsidary) and was trying to track down Nicklas Zennstrom from Skype for an idea I wanted to explore. I then found that the missing link between be and Niklas Zennstrom was a Danish fellow called Morten Lund (early Skype investor). To get to Morten I had to go through a contact I had at MTV in London, another Danish guy called Henrik Werdelin - now VP at Joost.

Morten was quick to respond, but said that Nicklas was just too busy those days (I doubt it has changed ) so why don't I come by Copenhagen and he would give me a bunch of more interesting deals... I accepted his invitation, went to Copenhagen and then spend a day with Morten discussing Bullguard (his main baby then) and a number of other ventures for ICQ.

Nothing really came out of this meeting, more due to the lack of action from ICQ and less from Morten. However, it was the beginnning of a friendship that led to countless hours of IM chats for over a year. Morten kept pitching me on behalf of all kinds of ventures he was involved in or was planning to get involved in. At that time, I was really fed up with the total incompetence and lack of understanding of what was going on on the Internet at ICQ (and AOL too for that matter) and had started to look around for the next challenge.

Of all the ventures Morten and I discussed, nothing really seemed attractive to me at that time. Partly because I didnt want to relocate from Israel and partly becasue it just didn't make me excited. But things changed.

One early morning in late November 2005 Morten Skyped me from the Arab Emirates and asked me to have a look at a new browser he had stumbled upon. He was quite excited. 20 Million download in a year! And it was created by a Chinese developer living in Hong Kong!

Since I just had downloaded and converted to Firefox, my inital reaction was" Who needs another browser" ? But Morten just said: "Just download it and you will see.." Said and done, I did. I was converted - again! Maxthon was so cool, and they story behind so fantastic that I agreed to take on the challenge.

Morten wanted me to become a business partner and take the company to the next level. How could I refuse? After I made up my mind I spend the 4 months in endless IM conversations with BloodChen - Mr. Maxthon himself a.k.a. Jeff Chen. It was my first experience in Chinese psychology and negotiations. It taught me a lot of patience..

Jeff and I finally reached an agreement and signed it off - without ever having met...Talking about an original start of a new venture. Two years has passed since I joined and I haven't regretted it for a second. Maxthon is an amazing piece of software, but more than that, Maxthon is more like a movement of passionate fans and co-developers all over the world. We have actually become the only Chinese Internet/Software company with a true global footprint. And we keep on growing like crazy.

That was my little LinkedIn story. Hope you liked it. What is yours?


Technorati Tags: Maxthon, China, LinkedIn, Morten Lund, Skype , China, Joost, icq

Comments

[Marc]

Just wondering, how can you help to run a Chinese company while living in Israel? Doing it on the ground is already difficult enough :-)

[Tangos]

Ha, that's interesting. In fact, that's also my question.

[Netanel Jacobsson]

Hey, ever heard of telepahty? :)

[Kaiser Kuo]

Morten found Maxthon (then still called MyIE2) while in Israel, he once told me: he said he noticed a bunch of hardcore tech geeks all using a tabbed browser that wasn't Firefox, and they all raved about it. I was first introduced to it by my father, then already into his 70s. I was at the family home in Beijing one evening for dinner doing a ritual cool-applications-swap with Dad and he put it on my flash drive. I didn't know anything about the developer(s)--just that it was basically an IE browser wrapper done in China--but I was impressed that the English interface was basically free of spelling/grammatical errors (long years spent as an editor and reporter does this to you).

[Net]

@Kaiser, thanks! I didn't even know that Morten found Maxthon in my home waters ;) Love the story about your father introducing Maxthon to you. Now that is a real word-of-mouth power story!

[Morten Lund]

I did find MyIE2 - 2004 and was chatting to Jeff for 3 months - just out of interest - and also to get him to give me his real name and tell me where he lived :) I got really convinced about Maxthon during a trip to Israel where a bunch of hardcore techies was using Maxthon during a presentation... And then I went on first plane to Hong Kong to talk to Jeff - and where he made fun about me being choppy and rejected to believe that i payed 75USD for my haircut - since he thought it was ugly - LOL - I fell instantly in love with his honesty :) - and started a friendship... Only thing missing in the loop is the Atre show in Beijing - where I got Jeff on stage for a meet the money session - and the moderator Alex Asked him on his way to the scene "Dont you have money to dress up" - and Kaiser gave me a secret helping hand by whispering in Alex Red Herring Vieux's ear that this IS COOL. And WUPTI - he was man of the show - and two hours later we where at the 10 mann VIP table with Peter WI Harper Liu + Alex + Ali 3i + Kaiser Kuo (all very goo friends today) - got pretty very drunk - and next morning we made handshake deal with Peter to invest... Only surprise that no one in the room ever tried before - was that Rev = Profit - and we had a bit of a hazzle cracking that one ;)

[Netanel Jacobsson]

Hey Morten, this is a great story! Love it.

[minik leydi]

Interesting and different.
Thanks.