Page 147 - How China Is Winning the Tech Race

customer phone numbers—to advertisers. It needs the customers’ permission
first. Most financial institutions in China don’t have their own sales
databases.
Over coffee with investor Tina Ju at Shanghai’s Marriott Hotel, a popular
place with expatriate business executives, she tells me how she was won over
by Liu. The apartment fire survival tale did it. “I was immediately persuaded
that this was a team I could back,”
she says. Before she went with her
instincts, her team checked out
Liu’s company thoroughly and “King is dealing with very large companies,
talked to his customers. During the and they have high expectations. He promises
due diligence, Liu signed up three a lot, and they think, ‘Great, but can he help
of the six biggest insurance com- us launch a nationwide campaign?’”
panies in China. In 2004, Venture Tina Ju,
TDF—Ju’s first venture stop— managing partner,
invested a small sum in Oriental KPCB China and TDF Capital
Wisdom. “I was pretty impressed
with his ability to sign contracts at
large institutions,” she says.
In any fast-growing business, the challenge is to deliver on promised
services once contracts have been signed. “King is dealing with very large
companies, and they have high expectations. He promises a lot, and they
think, ‘Great, but can he help us launch a nationwide campaign? Can we get
all the insurance agents in the organizations to sign in?’ That becomes a huge
challenge for a small company like Oriental Wisdom,” she says.
Liu has a tendency to drive his people very hard, Ju says. She tells me how
Liu makes his salespeople copy the material in the firm’s 300-page training
manual so that they will learn and remember it.
But high energy and commitment can’t substitute for managerial finesse.
She confides, “At some point, we do need to help him find a very capable
COO and expand the company a little more aggressively.” She notes that Liu
recognizes the importance of building the best team. “Each time we see him
at a board meeting, we try to preach to him about recruiting the best team
members. He is gradually doing that and is much more open to that,” she
says. “He has done an excellent job of recruiting dedicated and capable
engineers.”

Oriental Wisdom—Confucian Capitalism 121