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Shanghai-based MOX (Mobile Only Accelerator) works from different places in the world, including Taipei. Taiwan offers an excellent launching platform for ventures who look for international expansion into the rest of Asia, says MOX managing director William Bao Bean, according to the News Lens.
The News Lens:
By partnering with promotion partners such as mobile operators in each country, MOX enables the strongest mobile startups from around the world expand into new markets without spending money on customer acquisition.
“The first billion internet users accessed the Internet using their PCs, but the next 4 billion users — Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, and South America — are mobile-only. Hundreds of millions of users are getting on the Internet with smartphones,” said William Bao Bean, the managing director of MOX.
MOX is operated by the Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm SOSV with US$650 million assets under management. SOSV operates six vertically-focused accelerator programs in different cities around the world, and MOX is the first international accelerator in Taiwan.
“The cost of living and staffing resources [in Taiwan] are relatively low, and there’s a large pool of highly educated professionals suitable for startups. Additionally, for companies looking to expand into Southeast Asia, South Asia, China, and other emerging markets, Taiwan provides an excellent launchpad for international growth," Bean said.
A market of four billion users is waiting to be tapped into and William Bao Bean, managing director of the Shanghai-based SOSV, explains how his MOX is helping startups to do so. With a solid background in banking, telecom and the internet, William saw how mobile applications disrupted traditional industries, and offer new possibilities for companies to enter developing markets. Here his take on his current day job. William Bao Bean is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference?Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form. Are you looking for more experts on innovation at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.
MOX member companies can tap support that includes financing from SOSV, the US$300 million VC fund that oversees MOX, and access to audience that sidesteps the life-sapping expenses involved in acquiring users through Facebook and Google. Founding teams can also tap the advice and knowhow of 270 global mentors.
MOX founder William Bao Bean summed it up: “It doesn’t matter how good your app is – no one will ever see your app or platform unless you pay Google, Facebook or a bunch of Chinese guys [Alibaba, Tencent, etc.]. They charge 20 to 30 cents per app launch, and it’s impossible to make that back in emerging markets.”
SOSV is regularly ranked among the most active seed investors in the world by Crunchbase, the data-driven company analytics service, and 60 percent of the companies in MOX’s previous three batches have either raised money or broken even (or both), with 30 percent closing or about to close US$1-3 million in the last year, according to Bao Bean.
In return for offering up a share of their revenue and equity, MOX companies are provided with up to 150,000 users to help localization and optimization as they enter each of the markets in MOX’s coverage, which spans Southeast Asia, India, Eastern Europe and South America.
Making money on mobile apps is - despite their popularity - almost impossible. Taiwan-based MOX and Shanghai-based Chinaccelator try to break the stranglehold of Google and Facebook on this industry, says William Bao Bean, managing director of both, to Tech in Asia.
Tech in Asia:
MOX works with startups that make mobile apps and services, and focuses on Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, and South America.
As it targets mobile app makers, the accelerator has found it has to throw down with Google and Facebook, the two main forces that determine what content floats to the top.
“In the US you have the 99 percent and the 1 percent, on the internet you have the 99.9 percent and the 0.1 percent,” says William Bao Bean, MOX managing director and SOSV partner. The latter are the people who make any money on mobile, he adds.
“We don’t even see venture capital backing apps so much anymore because it’s just a money transfer from the VC to the startup and from the startup to Google and Facebook,” William laments.
To break this distribution stranglehold on mobile, MOX is trying to put together a consortium of companies that are feeling the same pressures. This includes companies like mobile phone brands, TV networks, and independent app stores. William isn’t ready to provide more details or name any participating companies at this point.
The accelerator was originally meant to have one more startup batch during summer 2016 but chose to take a break and iron out some kinks.
One key lesson it learned during that process? “When we say low-end phones, they’re really low-end phones,” he laughs. For its first batch, the accelerator wanted to find apps and services that worked on cheaper smartphones – ones more likely to be found in emerging markets, where MOX claims to offer startups access to a user pool of 130 million.
Turns out, they overestimated even those devices. So now, participating startups need to make their apps under 10MB in size, able to work in unstable networks, and more data-friendly.
MOX comes from a lot of money — it is one of six global accelerators run by SOSV, a US-based US$250 million (NT$8 billion) venture fund. Each accelerator is sector-based. The companies they choose must spend at least two months in MOX’s Taipei office, working closely with Bean and other staff who “accelerate” their progress by linking them to a variety of crucial resources or helping them localize their product.
“We look at the team and traction,” MOX Managing Director William Bao Bean (賓威廉) says. “We look at users and whether they come back. We don’t care about how much money they have because they’re not paying.”
With local advertising and internet services platform General Mobile Corporation (GMobi, 通用移動) as a partner, MOX’s companies receive free advertising to Gmobi’s 100 million users in Southeast Asia.
“When you start out, the most amount of money is acquiring the customer,” Gift on the Go CEO Alok Singh says.
“With us, all you have to do is make your app awesome,” Bean says. “We’re trying to flip the model [of having to pay for advertising first].”
Bean says a big part of the work is helping these companies localize to their new target market.
“Southeast Asia is mobile first and mobile only,” he says. “You have to change your product, your user experience, how you make money.”
For example, one company had to downsize its app from 40mb to 10mb to accommodate local internet resources.
Bean hopes to involve some Taiwanese companies in future batches as the company recruits its second batch later this year.
“The future of Taiwan tech is Internet,” Bean, who started his technology investment career in Taiwan, says, adding that he can help new local companies move into emerging markets.
As a mentor at Taiwan Startup Stadium, Bean had already been working with some of these locals. But when MOX made offers to several Taiwanese companies for the first batch, Bean says he found that investors were wary of this new model that required sharing equity, which isn’t popular here but is the norm in Silicon Valley.
As a global company, MOX could theoretically be based anywhere, and Bean’s answer is simple.
“It’s nice here,” he says, referring to the convenience, good food, reasonable weather and so on.
He adds that it is also a good balance of infrastructure and rent costs — falling somewhere between Hong Kong and Bangkok. Plus, Bean says you can recruit talented staff who mostly speak English for a lower cost.
Bean also hopes to foster somewhat of a local mobile startup community. For example, every week when the companies are in Taiwan and every month otherwise, MOX flies in international experts for a happy hour event that is open to the public, with free drinks and a barbecue afterward — which Bean calls a “Silicon Valley style get-together.”
Finally, he hopes to attract more people like Roncori who also find that Taiwan is a great place for an Internet startup.
“They’re moving here, they’re creating jobs,” he says. “You’re bringing international expertise from around the world and actually living here as opposed to visiting a few times. It helps create that community.”
MOX comes from a lot of money — it is one of six global accelerators run by SOSV, a US-based US$250 million (NT$8 billion) venture fund. Each accelerator is sector-based. The companies they choose must spend at least two months in MOX’s Taipei office, working closely with Bean and other staff who “accelerate” their progress by linking them to a variety of crucial resources or helping them localize their product.
“We look at the team and traction,” MOX Managing Director William Bao Bean (賓威廉) says. “We look at users and whether they come back. We don’t care about how much money they have because they’re not paying.”...
“With us, all you have to do is make your app awesome,” Bean says. “We’re trying to flip the model [of having to pay for advertising first].”
Bean says a big part of the work is helping these companies localize to their new target market.
“Southeast Asia is mobile first and mobile only,” he says. “You have to change your product, your user experience, how you make money.”
For example, one company had to downsize its app from 40mb to 10mb to accommodate local internet resources.
Bean hopes to involve some Taiwanese companies in future batches as the company recruits its second batch later this year.
“The future of Taiwan tech is Internet,” Bean, who started his technology investment career in Taiwan, says, adding that he can help new local companies move into emerging markets.
As a mentor at Taiwan Startup Stadium, Bean had already been working with some of these locals. But when MOX made offers to several Taiwanese companies for the first batch, Bean says he found that investors were wary of this new model that required sharing equity, which isn’t popular here but is the norm in Silicon Valley.
As a global company, MOX could theoretically be based anywhere, and Bean’s answer is simple.
“It’s nice here,” he says, referring to the convenience, good food, reasonable weather and so on.
He adds that it is also a good balance of infrastructure and rent costs — falling somewhere between Hong Kong and Bangkok. Plus,
Bean says you can recruit talented staff who mostly speak English for a lower cost.
Bean also hopes to foster somewhat of a local mobile startup community. For example, every week when the companies are in Taiwan and every month otherwise, MOX flies in international experts for a happy hour event that is open to the public, with free drinks and a barbecue afterward — which Bean calls a “Silicon Valley style get-together.”
In Taipei the Mobile Only Accelerator (MOX) has launched and SOSV partner William Bao Bean has jumped over from Shanghai to support the operation, in PRunderground he explains what it takes to develop the next mobile apps for 4 million users.
PRunderground:
Traditionally, early stage companies struggle to expand beyond their home markets and especially into emerging markets where monetization can be difficult.
“Mobile startups depend on rapid user growth and a viable revenue model to be successful. This is why we created MOX, where we can deliver both automatically to our batches. No other accelerator can help startups ramp revenue and users around the world the way we can,” says William Bao Bean, Investment Partner, SOSV. “We are also fortunate to have Alvin, a seasoned mobile-industry entrepreneur, as the program director. I’m confident he will lead MOX to become the leading accelerator targeting mobile-only markets globally.”
William last week at MOX in Taiwan
