Page 163 - How China Is Winning the Tech Race

downloads by the split second. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer owns a
dominant 81 percent share of the browser market worldwide. The only major
alternative is Firefox, which trailed Maxthon in developing tab browsing,
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with a 13 percent share globally. The once-dominant Netscape has tumbled
to less than 1 percent of the global market after losing the late-1990s browser
war with Microsoft.
In China, Maxthon has muscled into second place after Internet Explorer
and has an estimated 30 percent market share. “There’s always one brand
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that dominates worldwide, like Coke,” says Maxthon investor Lund. “But
in local markets, there’s a local drink that beats Coke because it delivers a
local flavor.”
No single start-up has the perfect formula: technology, business model,
management, financials, and funding. Maxthon is no exception. It has the
perennial problem that plagues nearly all young Chinese companies: lack of
experience and thin management. A generation of managers who would be in
their forties and fifties now was stymied by the Cultural Revolution. The
innovators who are emerging today are among the first to test their skills in
starting businesses. They have no older role models in private enterprise in
China the way Americans have Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, who are now in
their early fifties.
At Maxthon, Lund pumped up the management team in 2005 by
recruiting the Swedish tech entrepreneur and former AOL executive Netanel
Jacobsson. But in September 2007 Jacobsson resigned as senior vice president
of business development and became the director of international devel-
opment at networking site Facebook, the hottest start-up around. From his
home in Israel, he traveled to Silicon Valley to build Maxthon’s presence
outside China. Now Jacobsson is moving his family to Palo Alto, something
Maxthon did not have the resources to handle. Going forward, Maxthon’s
China team and a possible part-time U.S. representative will handle any
potential projects with American companies, such as a strategic deal with
Google that was made in spring 2007. From China, these deals are a stretch.
Besides that, Chen is a geek first and a manager by happenstance. Says Lund,
“I’d be lying if I said Jeff is a good manager.”
Nevertheless, Jacobsson’s skip to Facebook is symbolic. He is one of the
first tech entrepreneurs to leap from a Chinese to an American start-up, a sign
of the growing stature of made-in-China technology.

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