China Herald: Crisis has little effect on startups

William Bao Bean

The recent downturn in the financial markets is not going to have too much impact on the booming scene of startups in China, says ChinaAccelerator managing director William Bao Bean in Tech in Asia. Although the second half of 2015 would have been anyway tougher.

Tech in Asia:

“Fundamentally, I don’t think there’s a huge change that happened,” said SOSV partner and Chinaccelerator managing director William Bao Bean. “The market was overbought and now it’s selling off; it’s a natural correction.”

William says that he doesn’t see the market crash as directly affecting startups – he sees no connection between the punters who lost their shirts betting on an overly-inflated market and the early-stage venture capitalists fueling China’s startup boom. But he does think things are going to change. “I’ve been telling our companies since the beginning of the year that in the second half it’s probably going to be a bit tougher to raise [funds],” he told Tech in Asia. “In the last year and a half we’ve seen valuations on the angel side quadruple […] so you’ll probably see things slow down a little bit.”

More in Tech in Asia.

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