Page 93 - How China Is Winning the Tech Race

teens called Dudu.com, modeled on
a popular site called Cyworld.com “In China, we just chunk it out. We just do it.”
in South Korea, a market with a
highly advanced Internet and mo- Joe Chen,
chairman and CEO, Oak Pacific Interactive
bile phone culture. At Dudu, which
sounds like a horn honking but can
be translated as “really fat” or even
“running dog,” adolescents can
chat, e-mail, and make up fake personas with fashions, hairstyles, and makeup
they choose online. They also can get dating tips. Chen says the site was
developed in-house in less than two months. “In China, we just chunk it out.
We just do it,” he says.

Getting big fast

When DuDu couldn’t grow fast enough to compete, Chen picked up the pace
in early 2004. He acquired an entertainment portal called Mop.com for $2
million in cash and stock, putting up $1 million himself from earnings and
sales of his remaining shares in Sohu.com, which by then was trading at $30.
Run by one guy, Tian Zhe, and 12 servers, Mop.com (“running cat”) was an
addiction among young teens for its chat, music, video sharing, and person-
alized Web pages. Chen immediately put 100 employees to work adding new
features to the site. Users on Mop.com, which features a stylized cat logo,
shot up from 9 million to 30 million.
As more Chinese Web sites entered the game, Chen upped the ante in late
2005 by acquiring an online dating site, UUMe.com. Founded by a close friend
of Chen’s, fellow Stanford MBA James Liu, UUMe.com had raised $5 million
the year before from top-notch Silicon Valley players DCM and Accel, plus
China’s Legend Capital (notable for its investment in Lenovo) and Itochu
Capital, a venture capital offshoot of the large Japanese trading conglomerate.
Struggling to upgrade and attract more ads as a site for relationship advice
rather than casual dating or sex, UUMe was repositioned as a YouTube-like
video-sharing service. The video-sharing space is increasingly crowded, but
Chen says he intends to “tough it out with a small team and small burn rate.”
Using the $5 million, Chen acquired the tech blogging network
DoNews.com (like Techcrunch in the United States), which is well known for

Oak Pacific Interactive—W eb 2.0 on Steroids 67