Net

The9 Invests in AuroraFeint

 The Chinese Gaming company The9 has invested in AuroraFeint - makers of the OpenFeint platform to bring OpenFeint to China & Android. Very exciting times for Jason & the team. I first got involved with OpenFeint as and advisor last year after I left Facebook & have been very impressed by the speed Jason Citron & his team have executed on their vision under the guiding star of Peter Relan, founder of YouWeb who incubated the company. OpenFeint has over 2,200 live games for the iPhone, and will soon have publishers such as Astraware, Digital Chocolate, Glu Mobile, Hudson Soft and others onboard. With both Chinese and Japanese investors onboard (the Japanese gaming giant DeNA invested in the company last year) AuroraFeint is set up for a strong future presence  in Asia. Very excited to see how the how the story unfolds. 

Disclaimer: I'm a former advisor & a small shareholder in AuroraFeint.

CrowdStar's Happy Aquarium & Happy Pets

Big congratulations to the CrowdStar team on the successfully launch of Happy Pets, yet another great social game on Facebook. In just a week Happy Pets went from 0 to 890,000 Monthly active users. Amazing.  Following Happy Aquarium's tremendous success not long ago, this is just shows that it wasn't a one off only. Keep a close eye on these guys - they are going to go far. Social gaming have just started to take off, and it is definitely not the-winner-takes-it-all market. There is plenty of room for new companies in this space. The key thing for all social games though, is to convert active users to active paying users. My advice: focus on optimizing mobile payments to a more salient place in the UI. 

Disclaimer: I sit on CrowdStar's advisory board.

WEF Summer Davos China 2009 Facts & Figures

WEF Summer Davos (China 2009) Facts and Figures See you there!

Summer Davos, Dalian next week

Next week I'm off to Beijing for my first board meeting with P1 which shall be really exciting and then I'm straight off to the Annual Meeting of the Champions 2009 also called "Summer Davos" in Dalian, China. If you're going to be at the event and want to meet up please ping me.

Screenjelly on CNN

Wow, Screenjelly is on a roll. Thanks to the fabulous Chris Pirillo.

Joined the Board of Chinese P1.cn

I'm very happy to announce that I joined the Board of Directors of P1.cn. P1.cn is a private (by invitation only) social network for young affluent Chinese, a target group that is expected to grow from 20 million to 80 million over the next decade.  I've been impressed by the different approach they have taken to social networking and the high quality brands and advertisers they have managed to attract. Looking forward to start working with the Swedish/Chinese founders & the board on this exciting venture!

Consumer Web Panel at TiECON 2009

• What are the pros and cons of an apps only strategy?
• What are the best practices around a hybrid website/app approach?
• And, is there still such a thing as a website only strategy?

This and many other questions will be discussed at the Consumer Web - User Acquisition in the Era of App Platforms panel  that David Hornik, August Capital, Jason Oberfest, MySpace, Rashmi Sinha, Slide and myself will participate in moderated by Dave McClure, Founders Fond this Friday at TieCon 2009.

What do you think? What is your take on the above questions?

Interviewed in Asian Venture Capital Journal

I was recently interviewed by Rebbecca Fanning for Asian Venture Capital Journal about VC's facing global challenges. The cover story describes how VC's are spending more time (than money) huddling in conference rooms with CEO's and entrepreneurs, revising business plans, bugets and strategies. Some interesting data points:

• Asian fund-raising peaked in 2008, with a jump of 8% to $20 billion in new funds. In the first quarter of 2009, Asian venture fundraising plummeted to $1.7 billion. The first quarter 2008 comparable was $6.9 billion.

• In Asia, investment declined 22% to $22.3 billion in 2008. The first quarter of 2009 recorded 114 deals totaling $1 billion, compared to 375 deals totaling $8.2 billion for the same period in 2008

My advice to entrepreneurs struggling in these tough times (by no means meant to be comprehensive) can be found at the end of the article.

Left Facebook

Dear friends, I am no longer with Facebook and am now going to spend the near future exploring new ventures. I you are interested to talk to me, please contact me using the contact details to the left. You may also leave a voice mail on: 650 488 7688.

Stay tuned for more.

Silicon Dragon

Rebecca Fannin have just published her book "Silicon Dragon - How China is winning the tech race". I was interview by Rebecca a year ago on my role in Maxthon. Now the story is out - with some great quotes from my buddies Morten Lund and Bill Tai as well as Maxthon founder Jeff Chen. The book is a very interesting and entertaining read on Chinese entrepreneurship - believe me it is like nothing else...My claim to fame in this book is :

Jacobsson's skip to Facebook is symbolic. He is one of the first tech entrepreneurs to leap from a Chinese to an American start-up, as sign of the growing stature of made-in-China technology..