As regular readers know, I’m working on a book about global entrepreneurship and taking TechCrunch readers along with me. By that I mean, I’ll be blogging about cool companies I find, not that I’m actually chartering a plane for all of you. Sorry, but, you know, it’s a recession.
Up next: China. I’ll be in Shanghai and Bejing May 9-22.
It’s my first trip to China, and I have a long list of potential companies and investors to meet, but I want to make sure I’m not missing any gems. So if you know any such gems, local venture capitalists, angel investors or anyone with an interesting entrepreneurial story please email me at sarah(at)techcrunch(dot)com or leave it in the comments.
I now return you to your regularly scheduled Friday flood of news about MySpace and Twitter.
(PS: This has to be the shortest post I’ve ever written.)
Now you are coming to China. Then also come to India. It’s not far away. They both are neighboring countries. So are you coming? :0
http://www.smartbloggerz.com
avoid india. Personal experience a team of programmers stole my money and never delivered on my project. I do not like just for that. Better yet
Go to Pakistan 
, apart from security issues I suspect they may be more honest.
Hello people get mugged in US also. Does this make US a crappy place ? Please make comments after knowing the country. And have the f&*^ing daring to put your real name in there.
Hope china does something that is useful than to keep defending their communism???
Yes. And, he stated that he “knew” the country, and is free to state his opinion. “What is your real name? Do you have the f*ing daring?”
Your comment is pointless, quit crying.
@Anti Matter,
Yea, go to Pakistan. You either get killed there or you get circumcised.
She will come when you stop spamming every comment by signing with that shitty blog of yours.
It’s my first trip to China, and I have a long list of potential companies and investors to meet, but I want to make sure I’m not missing any gems. So if you know any such gems, local venture capitalists
Hey, will you also visit the owner of techcrunch.cn and techcrunch.com.cn?
When r u happening to India, Sarah?
marvin
http://yousuggest.us
probably building a tech crunch there, too http://iamned.com/blog/ no recession
I’d chat up @christinelu – she’s a china tech expert, is there all the time, and is always mentioning cool companies and things happening. I’d imagine she’d be an incredible resource for you.
As a side note, just wanted to say thanks for coming out to the GIT event a couple weeks ago down @nextspace in Santa Cruz.
Hi Sarah, I’m a reporter at Global Entrepreneur Magazine, the best business magazine in China.
Also I’m personally very interested in Web2.0 especially Google (I have a blog about Google and I translated your post “Google Dethroned?” into Chinese). I read TechCrunch and your blog regularly.
Is it possible that I can meet with you and have a little discussion? Or maybe I can provide you information about cool Chinese internet start-ups which I personally have contact with.
Looking forward to your reply! Thank you!
chuuur la mah. Looking forward to the book.
Please check Silicon Valley China Entrepreneurship Forum(SVCEF), a group with members in Silicon Valley as well as in Beijing, Shanghai, etc.
Website is: http://www.svcef.org,
Daily activites are on
http://groups.y...com/group/svcef
Silicon Valley China Entrepreneurship Forum
(硅谷华人创业论坛)
Sarah – I sent you an email with a list of LinkediIn links – like? –Edu
I have few connections in Shanghai but first I have to figure out which ones could be useful and see whether they will be there in that time.
I will come back to you with this.
I would like to kow the ratio of “I per words” in Sarah’s posts. The amount of time Sarah is writing about herself (I do this, I think that) is by far the highest of the blogosphere. Is this a personal diary or what ?
Can you tell us how the Chinese natural gas market for automobiles is?
Thaaanks.
By the way, can’t believe no one is yelling at you for visiting China, a totalitarian communist country, like they yelled at you about visiting Israel.
You can be the first.
That would be pretty funny.
BTW I’m chinese myself, fellow chinamen, don’t hate on me.
You could also check out HYSTA (Hua Yuan Science and Technology Association).
It is one of the largest, leading entrepreneurship community for Chinese professionals in both the Silicon Valley and China.
Website: http://hysta.org/
shawty got mad jokes..LOL
Welcome to Beijing!
More folks from TC should join
The irony is that the real “entrepreneurship” in China isn’t taking place in Shanghai and Beijing.
If you’re looking for real money, cities like Shenzhen or Guiyi beat Shanghai and Beijing anyday.
Of course, don’t expect Sarah Lacy to do anything more in China than scratch the surface. Typical tourist.
Will there be TC Meetups?
Hey Sarah,
Beijing — look up Kaiser Kuo @kaiserkuo
Shanghai — look up George Godula of @Web2Asia
Between these two guys, they’ll hook you up with the entire network there.
I’m sure you’ll catch the first day of the CHINICT tech conference and if you’re looking for VC info, there’s the Asian VC Journal conference taking place same days in Beijing. May 21-22
Have a great time,
Christine
at your service!
There are all types and blends of entrepreneurs in China. In many cases ideas are worth little as speed in development, marketing and financial acumen are of the essence. I hope you’ll meet a nice cross-section
– btw we might have a mobile event in Beijing around the time of your visit (www.mobilemondaybeijing.com)
Hm, interesting. Some usual suspects there.
You should stop by Hong Kong for a few days. There are some weekly techtalk type meetups where you could meet a few people. Some are more formalized with speakers, or which I prefer, just beers and discussions of each others projects or other industry trends.
Sarah, you should meet with Northern Light Venture Capital whiel you are in Beijing. http://www.nlightvc.com
A top tier VC firm in China focusing on early stage and growth stage in TMT and more founded by ex-Netscreen founders and backed by some of the best VCs from Sillicon Valley such as NEA. They are investors of Kaixin001 the hottest SNS service in China and many more. They are also investors in my company and I can make the intro.
You’re welcome to visit Hangzhou!
————–
Last year, we (http://www.cnties.com/) passed TechCrunch50 10 minute demo overview and got DemoPit Invitee finally.
– 2008 TechCrunch50> Invitation to Schedule Round I Demo
– Dear TechCrunch50 DemoPit Invitee:
The founders of http://www.ChineseTeachers.com will be in Shanghai from May 23rd (landing in Pudong airport around 11am) – any chance you can extend your stay one day?
See more at http://www.crun...eseteachers-com
Hi Sarah,
Please let us know if May 23rd in Shanghai works for you?
We would love to tell you how we mashed different technologies to create a very advanced education platform for learning a complex language like Mandarin Chinese.
We provide a flexible no-booking-needed & pay-per-second Chinese lessons with strictly assessed native Chinese teachers, by removing unnecessary barriers that make learning a foreign language a hassle: travel to go to a language class, rigid booking and cancellation rules, significant upfront fees, boring learning topics, software to download, dependency over a public & shared VoIP like Skype, etc. In short we developed over two years a robust dedicated proprietary VoIP & billing platform that enables our members to login from any computer, directly from their browsers to access their teachers.
We hope to see you on the 23rd!
Please check out Storybrush.com
If you visit Shanghai and you are hungry, I’d highly recommend Citydeli.cn
=)
Enjoy China.
Henry
Dear Sarah,
Before you leave for Shanghai have a look at (the Chinese only) http://www.holaba.com.cn. We are launching the site right now in China. The first marketing-pros who heard about it think it’s a unique way for brands to better understand and immediately communicate with the oh so important group of recommenders.
See you in Shanghai
伴随金融危机，Techcrunch越来越像一个垃圾博客了，现在来China做什么？
Hi Sarah, welcome to China!
HTE (Help Trading Engine) is a fresh Internet concept created and commercialized by a dream team of entrepreneurs from Canada, China and Hong Kong. We look forward to meeting you during your stay in China.
BangYiBang (http://www.BangYiBang.com), the first HTE for global interneters to trade their personal resources, in another word, intangible assets.
Everybody needs help, even the Mr. President of US does.
Everybody can help, even a kid can.
Everybody is fair, as long as he is an Interneter.
Help exists any where any time.
A help can be a professional service valued at thousands of $$$, and a help can be as trivial as 1 penny only as well.
We have to say, every help has value. So, help can be goods for trading, no doubt!
BangYiBang commercializes help over the Internet, to let everybody trade their intangible personal resources, such as $1 for a game tips, $10 for a quick Java issue fix, $100 for a 7-digit-length QQ account, $1000 for her 1-week time, and etc., on Internet freely, creatively, fairly, safely, efficiently, and seamlessly.
P.S. Bang means Help in Chinese.
Hong Kong is a hot bed for tech startups as well.
There’s meetups almost every week.
http://www.rexc...h-meetup-index/
If you can stop by, we can get everyone out.
Hi Sarah,
You might want to check out iphone app startup in Beijing like Team iBokan.
We at Team iBokan (www.iBokan.com) has developed over 15 apps and there’re 2 more to come this week, focusing on education-entertainment for kids from preK to 12. Among them,
1). “Eye Test” & “Cute Math” have been featured on iTunes as “New & Noteworthy” during Jan 29 – Mar 3, 2009.
2). “Cute Math” was ranked No 2 on “Top Paid Apps” in Education from Jan 29 to Feb 17, 2009.
3). “Eye Test” was ranked No 1 on “Top Paid Apps” in Medical from Feb 3 to Mar 10, 2009, and once ranked as No 29 on “Top Paid Apps” overall.
4). Our first app, “Galaxy Impact” was once ranked No 10 on “Top Free Apps” in Game, and No 20 on “Top Free Apps” overall!
5). I’ve wrote a guess post on Techcrunch: http://www.tech...act-case-study/, which leaded to heated discussion on pricing strategy on iphone apps.
6). We’re about to release our own toolkit to track & analyze iphone apps downloads, popularity, and milestones in mid May.
Also, iBokan has become the Core Developer for Samsung, the only one in China and one of the three worldwide in the category of Lifestyle and Healthcare in Samsung A-Store (to-be-released on June 30th)
Looking forward to seeing you in Beijing!
–Bo Wang
http://www.iBokan.com