Page 165 - How China Is Winning the Tech Race

for a $2.5 million investment in May 2006 and approximately 10 percent
to WI Harper for the initial $500,000 in 2005 and subsequent financing.
Google has a minority stake in Maxthon from a $1 million investment in
spring 2007.
Could the next step be an acquisition by Google? Maybe, but that
probably won’t happen too soon. Chen tells me that he has received one
“serious offer” to acquire Maxthon. He turned it down because, “It is too
early to sell the company.” Chen confides, “I don’t want to be a rich guy. I
just want to make my product and use it. If the money comes, okay.” He
doesn’t really need it. “My life is very simple. I work and rest.” I’ve heard the
same thing from most of the Chinese entrepreneurs I’ve interviewed.

Fortune cookie

Maxthon’s business model is a work in progress. Chen claims that his young
start-up has been breaking even since 2003, largely because of donations. He
prefers not to pinpoint revenues, instead hinting that big things are to come.
“Since change always happens, we
cannot really predict a number. And
we don’t want the public to have a
number in mind to limit their imag-
“We don’t want the public to have a number
inations. So we’d rather not to say
in mind to limit their imaginations.”
any number,” he tells me.
And talk about luck. Chen has Jeff Chen,
it. Besides hooking up with one of founder and CEO, Maxthon
the world’s most famous tech
investors and getting free devel-
opment help and financial support
from programmers online, he has what every entrepreneur desires more than
anything else: a supportive and hip-looking wife, Carol, who works alongside
him in the growing business and makes sure he remembers to eat and sleep.
Carol lives in Hong Kong but comes often to Beijing to fill in as chief financial
officer and human resources manager for the 30-employee firm. They met
through a mutual friend in Beijing and haven’t taken a vacation together yet.
Carol is so wrapped up in the business that she is recording her husband’s
progress in a diary she set up on MySpace.

Maxthon—The W ay China Surfs the W orld 139