Showing posts with label VC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label VC. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 29, 2023

How tech transfers can curb carbon emissions in food production – William Bao Bean

 

William Bao Bean

VC William Bao Bean, managing director of Orbit startups, explains how tech transfers can limit – for example – carbon emissions in food production at COMEUP 2023. His 20-year experience in China helps other Asian startups to avoid mistakes China has made.

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 innovation experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.

Thursday, May 18, 2023

How the Chinaccelerator exported its China strategy to other emerging economies – William Bao Bean

 

William Bao Bean

The SOSV Chinaccelerator has been a successful Shanghai-based VC in China for a decade. Managing director William Bao Beanexplains to Russel Flannery of Forbes how they re-invented themselves and started to export their China strategy to other emerging economies as Orbit startups and stopped investing in China.

Forbes:

Flannery: What was behind the change with Chinaaccelerator and Orbit?

Bean: Orbit Startups is a rebranding and re-focusing of Chinaccelerator and MOX, which was another program based in Taiwan. Our parent organization SOSV is very much focused on a sustainability mission, which includes global emerging frontier markets where we can leverage our know-how and capital to drive economic independence. As part of sustainability, SOSV is also centered on health and climate, which of course also have lots of applications in emerging markets.

We’re a lot different than VCs that break up the world by geography, such as Europe or India. We think tech is global, and view the world in terms of vertical strengths. We all invest through our fund SOSV, but we have Orbit, which focuses on the Internet and software, HAX for hardware and IndieBio for biotech. We want the best innovation from all around the world. Often times, that’s in Silicon Valley or London, but sometimes it’s in Jakarta or Lagos.

More in Forbes.

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 strategic experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.

Thursday, August 05, 2021

VC helping startups to fight the big internet – William Bao Bean

 

William Bao Bean (left)

Shanghai-based VC William Bao Bean explains how his global SOSV fund helps startups to fight against the big internet, and bring innovation into the traditional VC world, at the Asian Investors podcast.

William Bao Bean is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your (online) meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers’ request form.

Are you looking for more innovation experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.

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Monday, November 11, 2019

Local VC's got hit by another China winter - William Bao Bean

William Bao Bean
China's economic slowdown has mainly hit local VC's, says William Bao Bean, managing director of the Chinaccelerator, at OZY.com. A government crackdown on risky investments and the fallout from the trade war is hitting the industry after the 2017-2018 boom.

OZY.com:
Local venture capital firms that raise money and invest in renminbi have been hit hardest, says William Bao Bean, a partner at SOSV Investments in Shanghai. 
“Almost all those VCs didn’t get a return … and a lot of funds have gone out of business,” Bean says, noting that while dollar investment from traditional VC funds has cooled, it hasn’t been hit to the same extent... 
Hurun Report noted that even though the pace of creation of unicorns has slowed, China still leads the world, with 206 unicorns to the United States’ 203. 
But the Chinese economy is now growing at its slowest pace in three decades, a worrisome trend that is twinned with a rocky stock market and concerns about the sky-high valuations for startups. “It’s another Chinese winter, since basically last September everyone on the local side, investing renminbi has been on vacation,” says Bean.
More at OZY.com

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 strategic experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.

Monday, July 30, 2018

Too much capital hurts the quality of China startups - William Bao Bean

William Bao Bean
A massive inflow of capital for startups has a negative influence on the market in China, says William Bao Bean, managing director of the Chinaccelarator in US News. VC's are under pressure to deliver to their shareholders, and that makes them less picking in selecting startups.

US News:
"You have like $70 (billion)-$80 billion a year going into venture (capital), but you are getting funded not just the good companies but also the bad companies," says William Bao Bean, managing director of Chinaccelerator, a Shanghai-based startup accelerator for software companies in China. That's happening, Bao Bean says, because of the pressure put on VCs to invest from shareholders and owners.
A bad company is not necessarily one that is unprofitable, experts say. Entities that are poorly conceived and put together present a much higher risk of never being successful. Such companies, although having the potential to temporarily create jobs, might ultimately hurt investors and damage consumer confidence...
Money also ends up being used as a "weapon," experts say, with the richest companies more easily attracting talent and destabilizing competitors.
"So if one company gets more funding than the others, the others just go in and steal all the competing company's employees or they'll take out the key employees," Bao Bean says. "And most people have an impression of China (as being all about) cheap labor, but compensations at (the) senior level are similar to Silicon Valley, and at the middle level maybe slightly below."
More in US News.

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.  

How Alibaba, Tencent destroy the VC market for startups - Shaun Rein

Shaun Rein
Venture capitalist firms have set the rules for investments in startups for a long time in China, but now Alibaba and Tencent moved into the industry, those rules have changed dramatically. And not for the better, says business analyst Shaun Rein, author of The War for China's Wallet: Profiting from the New World Order, to US News.

US News:
"At the end of the day (even if those startups don't make money), they can always fold it in," says Shaun Rein, managing director of China Market Research Group, a Shanghai-based strategic market intelligence firm, and author of a book on Chinese innovation. "It's not like in venture capital firms where you have to be a lot more thoughtful on valuation because that is your only source of revenue. (Alibaba and Tencent) approach pretty much anything that comes out and hope that 1 of the 100 investments makes money."
Public officials in China have also created investment funds for startups, a result of Beijing's priority to create well-paying jobs for China's growing middle class. Premier Li Keqiang frequently boasts of the country's "mass entrepreneurship and innovation initiative," but rarely acknowledges the failures along the way...
These days, China's big tech companies appear willing to overpay for the development of new products that look good in the eyes of their shareholders, Rein says. This is bad, he adds, because new companies might need to struggle less with developing a workable business plan and simply focus on the concept they put forward.
"Tencent and Alibaba are not just throttling the market, but in many ways they are hurting innovation," Rein says. "Because right now basically people are saying, 'Let’s start a company. Let’s create something that sounds innovative, even if it’s not. Let’s not necessarily plan on research and development for five years, let’s instead create something that sounds good and then sell it to Tencent or Alibaba.'"... "If you are a tech startup you either have to get money from Tencent or Alibaba or you won’t be able to grow because these two companies control the tech ecosystem," Rein says. "Basically, any new idea is getting funded by one of the two and its major competitor is funded by the other one of the two."... Competition exists among investors in China's startups, as well. If "you come up with something cool, very soon there's going to be investors hanging around your doorstep because there's just so much money here and there's so few investments that investors in many ways have to beg to get in on deals," Rein says. To compete against the wealthy tech giants – namely, AliBaba and Tencent – experts say VCs need to do a better job at selling their services and expertise. This can prove challenging, Rein adds, because many venture capitalists in China lack entrepreneurial experience: "Most of them are deal-makers," he says.
More in US News.

Shaun Rein 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 other experts who give their take on China's digital transformation? Do check out this list.

Tuesday, September 19, 2017

Try to solve a problem, not sell your product - William Bao Bean

William Bao Bean
Try to solve a problem, do not focus too much on your own product, tells Chinaccelerator managing director William Bao Bean at a CNBC tech talk panel in Singapore entrepreneurs looking for VC money. He saw too many entrepreneur trying to enter China and Asia without asking themselves whether it was needed.

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. 

Sunday, November 14, 2010

William Bao Bean joins Singtel Innov8

1_2-1-13-428_20030828183333William Bao Bean via Flickr
William Bao Bean has joined Singtel Innov8, a US$ 150 million venture capitalist firm as managing director in Shanghai.  Singtel Innov8 has been established in September. Singtel Innov8 is focused on investing in and driving innovative services and technology from around the world, especially China, to its 350m subscribers in Asia and Africa.
Before this William Bao Bean was for three years partner at Softbank China & India Holdings, an early stage venture capital firm that is backed by Softbank of Japan and Cisco and focused on the technology, media and telecom sector.
The China Speakers Bureau congratulates William with this new step in his VC career.

Commercial
William Bao Bean is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. When you need him at your meeting or conference, do get in touch.