Page 103 - How China Is Winning the Tech Race

Check-up and diagnosis

It’s spring 2007, and I’m at Bokee to get the latest update. Fang is once again
in charge even though my Bokee venture sources told me they would like to
bring in an outsider to run the service. Fang spent the intervening time fin-
ishing his Ph.D. at Tsinghua University and running Chinalabs.
Two members of his core management team have resigned. Gone are chief
operating officer Yongquan Tan, a Wharton MBA graduate who was re-
cruited from Legend Capital in 2005, and chief technology officer Liang Lu,
a Ph.D. from Texas A&M University who had been at Bokee for nearly three
years after BlogDriver was snatched up.
On the plus side, in May 2007 Bokee survived a regulatory scare that
would have required bloggers to register their real names. That could have
destroyed the appeal of blogging in a country just beginning to get a taste of
the power of personal expression. 8

Start-ups mean suffering

Clearing his throat before answering, Fang puts an emotional spin on the
management shake-up. “The bad timing made people stronger, but not strong
enough for the tough times. Doing a start-up can mean a lot of suffering,” he
says. “The only happy moment was in 2005, when we hired people.” I ask
Fang how much money Bokee lost in 2006. I don’t expect him to answer, but
he does: $4 million. Revenues
could not keep up with the high
cost of running the place, but it “The bad timing made people stronger, but
remains to be seen if Fang has not strong enough for the tough times. Doing
learned his lesson. a start-up can mean a lot of suffering.”
With any start-up, the best
Fang Xingdong,
indicator of success is the com-
founder and CEO, Bokee.com
mitment of the CEO. Fang wants
to make sure that I understand that
he is on the job and ready to put his
heart and soul into getting Bokee back in action. Six months earlier, he
acknowledged that he was more interested in fostering the development of

Bokee.com—Growing Pains 77