Weblog with daily updates of the news on a frugal, fair and beautiful China, from the perspective of internet entrepreneur, new media advisor and president of the China Speakers Bureau Fons Tuinstra
Showing posts with label William Bao Bean. Show all posts
Showing posts with label William Bao Bean. Show all posts
VC William Bao Bean, managing director of Orbit Startups explains how Asian companies can learn from the example from Chinese companies. Not by simply copying the China models, but by learning the lessons and applying them in a new situation, he tells the Future Investment Initiative Hong Kong.
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.
Investor William Bao Bean, Managing Director of Orbit startups, explains how he helped artists make money from their music at All That Matters 2023, introducing three successful investments from his portefeuille. Explaining the fast-changing models to generate money, using for example Tiktok/Douyin, and many more new tech models.
The SOSV Chinaccelerator has been a successful Shanghai-based VC in China for a decade. Managing director William Bao Bean, explains 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.
Flannery: What happened in China?
Bean: By 2018 and 2019, Alibaba and Tencent controlled a lot of the startup ecosystem, which is why we diversified out of China. The Orbit program hasn’t invested in China in three years.
What we’re doing today is applying to startups outside of China what we learned during China’s incredible 20-year ramp up. We started in 2017-18 in Southeast Asia, and then India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Two years ago it was sub-Saharan Africa, and then last year we had the Middle East and Latin America. So we’re bringing what we learned in China, Indonesia and India to global emerging markets and tech entrepreneurs eager to an economic transformation similar to what happened in China. A lot of what raised 800 million people out of poverty in China was driven by technology. We’re bringing the best practices, the tips and tricks, and the models that we learned in China to entrepreneurs all across the world…
Flannery: What’ve you applied from your China experience?
Bean: Digitizing mom and pop shops is a big area, and a common theme in Pakistan, Sub- Saharan Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. The challenge that you see across all of those regions is that they have many little shops — many with a history of three-four generations. There’s not much logistics, supply or financing. There’s a lot of walking, We’ve invested in Dastgyr in Pakistan, MarketForce in sub saharan africa, Suplio in Latin America. First, we fix their physical supply chain and cut middlemen. They get 30 to 70% more cash in their pocket at the end of every month.
After we fix their physical supply chain, there’s some real opportunities in digital services. The person in the local neighborhood knows the local community and customers have a sense of trust. And we’ve seen that in China and Indonesia. It’s the same opportunity. You bring technology that’s putting much more money into people’s pockets by bringing efficiency. It’s almost like water. It’s impossible to stop. In Pakistan, for instance, we invested in 24SEVEN , which is bringing digitalization to retail.
Tech investor William Bao Bean, managing director of Orbit startups, shares the major stories he learned from the tech revolution in China, at a Pakistan conference. “The government chooses to go out of the way of change,” he tells his audience. Why startups do not need to be squeezed between China and the US.
Leading VC William Bao Bean, partner at SOSV and managing director of Orbit Startups explains how he started to develop startups in Pakistan, using his Shanghai experience as a stepping stone.
Serial startup investor William Bao Bean, general partner of SOSV in Shanghai, started in 2021 to invest in his first startup ventures in Africa. In Disrupt-Africa he explains how his experience in China helps him to make his first investments in Africa.
Disrupt-Africa:
Heading up SOSV’s efforts in Africa is general partner William Bao Bean, who has previous VC experience with SingTel Innov8 Ventures and Softbank China & India Holdings, having been a research analyst previously. He says the firm backed its first eight African startups in 2021, including MarketForce and Treepz, and makes comparisons between what is happening on the continent now and what he has seen in Asia over the last few years.
“Africa shares a lot of similarities with other mobile-first markets such as India, Southeast Asia and China, where I have been investing for two decades – 300 million in Africa will get online for the first time using a smartphone, having leapfrogged the use of PCs entirely,” he said.
“The availability of low-cost smartphones, easy access to the internet, and ubiquitous digital payments make Africa a fertile ground for breakthrough technology startups.”
That said, customer acquisition is still a pain for early-stage startups, he said.
“Under the stranglehold of Facebook and Google, companies are forced to spend venture capital money on ads, effectively selling equity to acquire customers,” Bean said.
To address this, he founded SOSV MOX, an SOSV programme that invests in mobile-first, mobile-only startups, and helps them acquire users through partnership models instead of advertising.
“We have over 100 million daily active users in our internet portfolio as of August 2021. Any African tech startup backed by SOSV can take advantage of this ecosystem,” said Bean.
SOSV’s approach may be quite different, but it seems to work. Among its investments globally are crypto-product trading platform BitMEX, the first unicorn to go through an accelerator programme in Asia, and AI English pronunciation assistant ELSA, the first investment in Asia by Google’s AI venture arm Gradient Ventures. Its limited partners are corporates, financial institutions, family offices, and high-net worth individuals from around the world, including Credit Suisse, Tiedemann Advisors, Davy Group, Nan Fung Group, ZX Ventures, HP Ventures and Sumitomo Corp. Its fourth fund raised a whopping US$277 million.
“We’re interested in startups in all stages, focusing on software internet companies that are providing scalable solutions for e-commerce, education, fintech, SaaS and media,” said Bean.
“We’re committed to leveling the field for the best teams around the world: we are bullish on Southeast Asia, South Asia, MENA-Pakistan, Eastern Europe and Africa.”
Leading VC William Bao Bean, general manager of SOSV, has been funding startups over the past five years from Shanghai in Pakistan and explains why Pakistan startups do matter.
Bytedance, the mothership of both Douyin and Tiktok, has reorganized its leadership and its internal organization, including founder and CEO Zhang Yiming. A good sign at a maturing giant, says Shanghai-based VC William Bao Beanat the Asia Nikkei.
Asia Nikkei:
The leadership changes are a sign of the internet sector’s maturation, according to William Bao Bean, general partner of venture capital group SOSV and managing director of its Chinaccelator affiliate in Shanghai.
“The role of a leader of a large internet conglomerate, especially in China is twofold: It is investor relations and government relations,” he said. “So the skills of building an amazing product and making users super happy and then monetizing them through a creative business model are not the skills necessarily required to communicate on a quarterly basis to investors.”
Leading VC William Bao Bean explains how travel startups managed through the COVID-19 crisis at PhocusWire Pulse. In China, they survived by focusing on booming domestic travel, but the lack of international travel hit some severely. Some of the travel startups he guided to the market had to give up their efforts to enter the Asian market, while others adjusted to the difficult market conditions.
Some investors have been suggesting that the latest political changes in China have made India an easier place to invest. VC veteran William Bao Bean, with major experience in both countries, disagrees, he tells in the South China Morning Post. He believes the government’s efforts to break the duopoly of Tencent and Alibaba makes China for him even more attractive.
The South China Morning Post:
William Bao Bean, general partner at SOSV Chinaaccelerator, a Shanghai-based firm that helps investors in China and India, said India is not an easy place to access for foreign investors. “India is very hard to invest in for foreigners, in terms of tax rates and regulation,” Bean said. “In fact, it remains harder for foreigners to invest in India than it is to invest in China.”
Bean said his capital exposure in China accounted for roughly 25 per cent of his portfolio over the past three or four years. “Now, with the recent changes. I’m actually looking to increase my exposure to China,” said Bean, pointing out that China’s antitrust drive is breaking the duopoly of Alibaba and Tencent, opening the way to more competition and investment opportunities.
Bean said regulatory change has always been part of China’s market environment and investors need to adapt. The current change in China also comes as the market has matured, with 71 per cent of the population already connected to the internet compared with 50 per cent in India, according to government data.
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.
Until a few weeks ago, listing at US stock markets was a favorite way to raise capital for fast-growing Chinese companies. That venue is closed now, and VC veteran William Bao Bean sees still bears on the road for on-shore listing’s at China’s stock markets, he tells the South China Morning Post.
The South China Morning Post:
“For years, the biggest exit path for venture-back companies has been the US,” said William Bao Bean, general partner of New Jersey-based venture capital firm SOSV. “But now that has been closed off.”
Compared to going public overseas, Bean said listing in mainland China poses many more challenges for investors because of the country’s strict regulations in both the tech and capital markets.
“When it comes to an onshore listing, the timing is always uncertain [because] it’s hard to see when one can exit. In terms of both liquidity and the experience required, it is not as easy an exit as if it were in the US,” he added.
Scaling up your business without the big firms like Facebook, Google, Tencent, or Alibaba eating your lunch? Accelerator VC William Bao Bean explains how to survive in a very competitive industry post-Covid-19.
VC William Bao Bean, a general partner at SOSV (the most active global venture capital firm) explains how his global fund helps startups grow in Asia, with much attention to the pros and cons of working from Taiwan.
The US used to be a benchmark for many innovative companies and startups, but China is now leading the way, says VC William Bao Bean with a major portfolio in China, Asia in a webinar of NYU SPS Integrated Marketing and Communications. He explains what lessons can be learned from China.
Shanghai-based VC-veteran William Bao Bean prepares for a dynamic surge of digital consumption in 2021 after a booming 2020, he tells at the 10-year celebration of the Chinaccelerator. Keywords: virtual reality, blockchain and fintech.
The Chinaccelarator
In 2020, digital consumption surged like never before and 2021 will see companies build on that front. “We believe there will be an acceleration in online media and entertainment industry more engagingly and deeply where VR technology will play a critical role.”, says William Bao Bean. Alongside the acceleration of digital media consumption, William also believes that 2021 will see widespread adoption of collectible non-fungible tokens (NFTs), a concept very popular in the cryptocurrency and blockchain space. He adds, “crypto-fintech will accelerate the move from simply being traded on currency exchanges to widespread adoption of products, especially in the Decentralized Finance (DeFi) space.
