Page 104 - How China Is Winning the Tech Race

start-ups through Chinalabs than he was in Bokee. This time, he confides, he’s
on the case. As proof, he tells me he was up until 4 a.m. the night before
talking with his wife about what he should do about Bokee. His wife, who
runs her own public relations firm in Beijing, encouraged him to turn up the
heat on sales and “go get deals.” Fang says he is reinvigorated by the dis-
cussions. “I am starting with that today for the long-term future. I want to
make my company an influential company in China,” he says. “We can
survive if the team can work together.”
Fang has turned over the management of his pet project Chinalabs to
cofounder and new media expert Junxiu Wang. He’s cut back his blogging to
twice a week. I ask if he’s hired a new CTO yet. No, he hasn’t. Who’s taking
the place of former COO Tan? Fang says that Tan has turned his job over to
business development manager Wen.
If Bokee is going to make it, what are the revenue-generating ideas? Fang
says Bokee can eke out a profit this year. He is looking to online advertising
and partnership deals with telecom companies for revenue streams. Wen clues
me in with two examples. He points to Bokee partnerships in several local
provinces with two Chinese phone companies—China Telecom and China
Netcom—where subscription-based services such as photo sharing are
bundled with the two Chinese phone companies for fees ranging from $1 to
$3 monthly. He also cites a major deal in the works in which Bokee’s blogging
platform will be embedded in the operating system in China for a multina-
tional cell phone maker. I notice that this time Fang has not brought up the
prospect of going public. That scenario is highly doubtful now.
Such drama in entrepreneurial circles in Silicon Valley was common
during the dot-com period: Passionate, committed, charismatic founder starts
leading-edge business, needs money to expand, brings in an experienced
group of venture capitalists, and soon inherits a board of directors that
doesn’t share his vision for taking the business forward. The fact that this is
happening in China says much about how far the economy has progressed
toward making entrepreneurship a central driving force. It is also is a valuable
lesson for other Chinese entrepreneurs who are considering taking on outside
investment: Make sure everyone is in agreement about the vision and the
strategy so that budgets can be set accordingly.
To make sure I have the full story, I set up a follow-up interview with
former COO Yongquan Tan, who used to be my key source at Bokee. Tan

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