Last week I caught up with James Tong, a seasoned entrepreneur and venture fund partner, just before he went onstage for a discussion at our Startups in Asia event in Singapore. Knowing that he’d be talking about his background and entrepreneurial story during his ‘coffee chat’ on the stage, I thought I’d use our time instead to pick his brains on what startups need to do to succeed in China – and how the kind of agencies that he also works for can help them out.
James – a Singaporean who now lives in China – is the president of Asia operations at Dextrys, and a venture partner at Gobi Ventures. But when he handed me his business card, it declared him a member of the board at IDA, a Singaporean government agency that invests in startups and aims to build up the nation state’s IT industry. And so his reason for being at our event was to network, meet with young entrepreneurs, and be an evangelist for the Southeast Asian startups with the potential to expand and prosper in China.
Overcoming Cultural Obstacles
“China is an exciting place,” notes James, “and one of the few countries that’s still growing. The rising middle class is huge for startups – they’re your customers.” His role at both Gobi and IDA is to help small tech firms “to expand and leverage in China.” So Gobi Ventures will invest in Southeast Asian startups “and supersize the market for them in China.” The expertise that he and the other board members and venture partners bring can help these entrepreneurs in the region to avoid the many pitfalls that come with operating in China – “we build a platform to help them overcome cultural obstacles.”
But that takes some serious commitment. “It takes effort on both sides to succeed in China,” says James. “Maybe some of the startup’s managers need to go there.” He adds that China is certainly not a market that can be won by remote control. He cites the example of a Facebook developer who received just this kind of assistance and advice in making a move into China, complete with some of the team relocating there. Plus, that developer had to change strategy since Facebook is blocked in the PRC, and instead got his games onto Renren (NYSE:RENN) and Kaixin.
When actually operating in China, James encourages a healthy assortment of skills in the startup’s team, blending the right amount of local and imported talent. In many tech firms that move to the PRC “most engineers are mainland Chinese, while the project management tends to be from overseas.” And that, he suggests, works pretty well because “although mainlanders are high-achievers, project management needs diversity,” and essentially some different skill-sets.
I Get By With a Little Help…
Singaporean startups are well-placed to make this move, points out James, as many are likely to have Chinese speakers already on-board, and because the country’s size means that they “must be cross border” to some extent to survive in the first place. Plus, entrepreneurs in the country can get help from the likes of Gobi and IDA, and possibly even more funding, in the form of guiding and mentorship. So, says James, startups in the area “can leverage those – even sharing office space” and numerous other forms of assistance.
“Get all the help you can,” James encourages the youngsters at our Startup Arena competition, “from both the Singaporean and Chinese governments.” And, as he discussed during his coffee chat, that last part is not as difficult as it might sound.