Page 80 - How China Is Winning the Tech Race

colleagues. Zhang might not have had the nerve to take the gigantic leap of
starting Chinacars if it had not been for the support and encouragement of his
wife and parents, who were all superstar achievers. His wife is a physician.
His parents both worked at China’s Ministry of Petroleum Industry, and his
mother later became a doctor specializing in Chinese medicine.
Zhang’s original concept for his start-up came from a service business
modeled after the British company Virgin Telecom. He liked the fact that
Virgin Telecom did not own a network but relied on mobile phone operators
to resell its services under the Virgin brand name. Zhang realized that the key
to this model was owning a customer base, providing services, and then
getting recurring revenues. “I saw the opportunity to create this type of
service in China, where I knew the market,” he says.
He chose the AAA as his gold standard. “When I lived in the United
States, I paid my AAA membership every year. I didn’t think twice about it,”
Zhang says. He’s still an AAA member and on a recent visit to the United
States bought a pair of sunglasses at a 40 percent AAA discount. For myself.
I gladly pay $60 annual dues for my AAA membership, which came in handy
when I was stranded with a flat tire on my former VW, carburetor troubles on
my Honda, and a dead battery on my Saab.

Passion plus

More than anything else, the critical factor for success in any start-up is
passion, and Zhang has plenty. “Chinacars is what I really love to do,” he
says. “It is a tough job, but if you work hard and have a passion for what you
do, you have a good chance of success.”
Of course, it helps to keep the brain stimulated and the heart pumping
when you are writing history the way Zhang is. Never again will he have the
opportunity to create an entirely new service in a huge, newly opening mar-
ketplace. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime mission for all of us at Chinacars,” he
says with pride.
Judging from the revenues and profits Chinacars is generating and the
creativity of its business model, it is likely that Zhang’s start-up will be a
household word in China the way AAA is in the United States. The site, with
its blend of blogs, e-commerce, news, and membership services, might even be
the model for a snazzier AAA. Chinacars has the most essential ingredient for

54 SILICON DRAGON