Hi folks, welcome back! Today Sandy Diao (Director of Growth at Descript) joins us to guest host and interview Adam Bao, founder of The Harbinger and COO at Metatheory. Since 2017, Adam took the path less traveled to explore business model innovation and venture deals across China, Taiwan, and SEA. Adam double clicks into startups he evaluated alon…

Today we have joining us Peter Cheng, who is founding partner at Eminence Ventures. Eminence just raised $120m for its second fund focused on backing Chinese enterprise software and cloud start-ups. After a decade of torrid start-up growth driven by mobile and consumer internet, China’s enterprise software market is poised for a breakout and expect…

Today we have a special episode with Hong Lu, founder of UT Starcom, one of the pioneering telecom companies in China. Hong is widely respected not only as a tech entrepreneur, but also as founding chairman at SoftBank China Venture Capital (which wrote an initial $18m check for Alibaba), and for his close friendship and successful collaboration wi…

Hi folks, welcome back to the Harbinger VC podcast. Today we have a conversation with my old friend from college, Jeff Zirlin, who is one of the founding members of Axie Infinity and runs their global growth efforts. In short, Axie Infinity created a Pokémon-inspired universe where players can earn tokens through gameplay, and in a just few years h…

Hi everyone, welcome back to the Harbinger VC podcast. Today we have joining us Edmond Ng, who is a founding partner at Axiom Asia, one of the top performing private equity fund-of-funds (FoF) that invests across venture, growth equity, and buyouts in the greater Asia region. Axiom has had a stellar run since 2006, recently closing $1.8 bn for thei…

Today we’re recording at the KKBOX studio in Taiwan, big thanks to the Firstory team for setting this up. We have joining us Phil Chen, founding partner of Race Capital and product executive at HTC, whom I can only describe as a basketball loving, deep tech investing, future building nerd of a modern Renaissance man. While at HTC, Phil led product …

Raymond Yang is founding partner of WestSummit Capital, a leading technology growth equity fund that primarily invests in the US and China. Since 2010, the team has led investments into defining unicorns including Unity (~$41bn mobile game and real-time 3D development engine), Segway-Ninebot (~$8bn mobility + robotics platform), Twitch (gaming live…

Joseph (Jo) Phua is non-executive chairman of 17LIVE Inc, a company he cofounded and ran as CEO until June 2020. 17LIVE operates the largest live streaming platform in Asia (ex-China) with over 50m global users, led by its flagship app 17LIVE, as well as Meme Live and live stream eCommerce solutions HandsUP and FBBuy. Today, Jo shares with us his f…

Today we have joining us Faisal Galaria, CEO of Blippar, a pioneer in augmented reality (AR). Now Blippar has a roller coaster of a story… the one-time unicorn raised $100m+ in venture funding but struggled to find a sustainable business model, burned through its cash and entered bankruptcy proceedings, before returning as a new business based on i…

The Harbinger interviews Chee-We Ng, founding partner of Oak Seed Ventures. Chee-we invests solely in early-stage enterprise and core technology startups, and offers strategic advice and his network in order to help them succeed. Chee-We studied Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT and has been programming in C and C++ since he was fo…

The Harbinger interviews Tiger Fang, cofounder and CEO at Kargo Technologies, a Jakarta-based startup that aims to digitize trucking and freight logistics in Indonesia before expanding to other markets in Southeast Asia. Kargo counts among its investors Sequoia Capital, ZhenFund, Intudo Ventures, ATM Capital, Coca-Cola, as well as Uber cofounder Tr…

Zac (Xiang) Pan is Associate Partner at Lightspeed China Partners (LCP), one of China’s top early stage VCs managing $2 billion USD. Zac joined LCP in January 2013, after having worked at Steamboat Ventures (Disney corporate VC) and China Renaissance. Since then, Zac has invested in some of Lightspeed’s top deals, including QingCloud, Spark Educati…

Jacky Wang is COO of SHAREit, a platform that provides global users with high-quality digital content simply and quickly. Its basic file transferring function is over 200x faster than Bluetooth and enables sharing of files, photos, videos and music of any format. SHAREit has served emerging markets since 2015 and now has 1.8 billion installs and 60…

Zou Jia is CTO of OYO JiuDian (OYO China), a Chinese hotel chain operator that since November 2017 has scaled to over 500,000 rooms on its platform by February 2019 and raised over $800 million from Softbank’s Vision Fund. OYO JiuDian partners with fragmented hotel owners in China by aggregating them onto its platform through leases or franchises a…

Yuan Liu is a managing director at ZhenFund, one of China’s top seed funds founded by Xu Xiaoping (Bob Xu) and Wang Qiang (Victor Wang), cofounders at NYSE listed New Oriental Education, along with Sequoia Capital China. While at ZhenFund, Yuan has invested in some of their top deals, including autonomous driving unicorn Momenta, Yi23, Castbox, 12 …

The Harbinger interviews Dr. Fan Ling, founder and CEO of Tezign. We had our initial conversation with Dr. Fan back in fall 2017, and his company has since grown from 30 to nearly 200 people, so we’re quite excited to dig in and understand what’s changed at Tezign and in the broader China market since that time. As a refresher – Tezign is a digital…

We interview Ben Hu, Cofounder and CTO at Liulishuo, an AI-powered English learning solution with nearly 100 million registered users that IPOed in September 2018 (as LAIX). On Liulishuo’s platform, AI technologies are integrated with learning content, well-established language learning pedagogies, gamified features and social elements to deliver a…

Today we have the pleasure of interviewing Howard Chao, an active cross-border investor and advisor to entrepreneurs. Howard began his career as a corporate lawyer with O’Melveny & Myers, helped found the firm’s offices in Tokyo, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Beijing, practiced law for many years as a cross-border investment specialist, and was chair of…

Rapid fire Q&A with Tina He and Adam Bao. Covers China VC trends and opportunities across consumer internet, education, enterprise, AI, China <> US, and more. Full transcription at: http://www.theharbingerchina.com/blog/where-are-the-most-promising-vc-investment-opportunities-in-chinaTL;DR 👇🏻- Wechat's ecosystem offers a new playground where custom…

We recently visited the Xiaomi office to chat with Donovan Sung, Director of Product Management and Marketing at Xiaomi Global. Over the past few years, Donovan has led not only product development, but also helped build the global team at Xiaomi responsible for launching in dozens of new markets around the world and turning Xiaomi into a truly glo…

The Harbinger recently spoke with Sandy Diao, Head of Global Growth for Indiegogo, a leading crowdfunding platform that has raised over $1b for makers. In this interview, Sandy shares her insights on how Indiegogo differentiates in building up a suite of services that addresses the entire lifecycle for hardware companies, how to leverage Indiegogo …

The Harbinger recently spoke with Ayden Ye, Co-Founder & CEO of VeeR, which connects creators and users of VR content though a combination of social-following and algorithm-based recommendation. In this interview, Ayden shared his insights on the rapidly changing landscape of VR, and the unique position of Veer that allows it to participate in the …

Today we are joined by Alan Jiang, Head of Southeast Asian business for ofo, the world’s leading station-free bike sharing company. Alan oversees the company’s strategy and operations in Southeast Asia. Previously, Alan worked at Uber for four years, helping to launch Uber’s business in China, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Indonesia. Today, Alan starts by…

The Harbinger recently interviewed Dr. Fan Ling, founder and CEO of Tezign. Tezign is a Sequoia-backed startup that creates platform-based design and creative talent solutions. In this interview Dr. Fan shares insights on what led him to start his company, the unique cloud-based solution Tezign offers and the role of AI, different trends in the “On…

Edward (Ed) Huang developed a keen interest in engineering at the age of 12. After college, he worked for Netease and Wandou Labs, two large Internet companies in China, as an infrastructure engineer. After working for Wandou Labs for about 3 years and witnessing first-hand the difficulty in scaling the database manually as data grew, Ed saw the hu…

We sit down with Stella Zhou, Principal at Qiming Venture Partners in Shanghai. Since joining Qiming from GE Capital in 2010, Stella has focused on “Inter-sumer” - Internet and consumer - companies like Musical.ly and Mogujie. We'll start today's episode by first talking a little more about Qiming's investment coverage by geography and by sector. T…

Harry Wang is the founding partner of Linear Venture, a $100m VC fund that specializes in early-stage technology investments related to China and greater Asia area. Harry has led investments into more than 40 technology companies, mainly focusing on data and AI-related firms. Harry has served as a CEO advisor to Baixing, Dianping & CSDN. Prior to f…

William Bao Bean is General Partner at SOSV, a $300m venture capital fund known as “the Accelerator VC” with a >30% net realized IRR. He is also the Managing Director of Chinaccelerator, SOSV’s global Internet accelerator and the first accelerator in China, as well as MOX, the mobile only accelerator platform with 130m smartphone users in SE Asia. …

Today we sit down with Spencer King, who's a divisional head at Yixia Technology. Yixia is the maker of China’s most popular short video app Miaopai (秒拍) and live-streaming app Yizhibo (一直播).We start with Spencer's story and learn more about what it was like starting a company in China that was acquired in just eight months. Key lessons include a d…

Today we host a Skype call with Ariel Liu, who is the general manager of international growth at The ONE Smart Piano. The ONE develops smart musical instruments, including its flagship digital piano solution with a smart keyboard, associated mobile apps, and other services that can teach anyone to play the piano within minutes. We’ll learn more abo…

Following the broader trend of modularization, Strikingly abstracts away lower level code and design requirements, allowing any user to build gorgeous, mobile optimized websites in just minutes. On today’s podcast, we sit down with Strikingly’s CEO David Chen to learn more about his website builder product, how it works, and how it is enabling a ne…

These days it’s getting increasingly easy for people to build full featured products and companies. Why? Well, fundamental features are becoming modularized and can be readily incorporated into existing software. That way, companies can focus on developing their core capabilities while out-sourcing other requirements to 3rd party providers. For exa…

We sit down with Walker Wallace, managing partner of O’Melveny’s Shanghai office, to discuss how foreign tech companies should think about entering the China market. It’s worth noting that most tech start-ups should not even consider China entry in the early days, as building up tech and achieving a focused product-market fit should be the only pri…

Today we catch up with my good friend Michael Wang, who is currently COO of YCloset, an online clothing rental and subscription service that raised $20m Series B in March and has already scaled to 40 cities in China. Before YCloset, Michael was on the other side of the table, having spent a few years at KKR before joining IDG Capital, where he was …

Alvin's career to date has been an epic adventure, a journey that's taken him across epicenters of technology and the world's three largest internet markets: China, India, and the US. As a Stanford undergrad, he started ThinkBulbs, which developed 2 leading iOS photo apps and amassed over a million users before being acquired by Megatasty Labs. Aft…

Dun Xiao's pursuit of a quality education has taken him around the world, from Cambridge University to MIT and Harvard, where he studied electrical and information engineering. Armed with a lifelong passion for education and his technical background, Xiao Dun was inspired to found 17zuoye.com, (a.k.a. Homework Together), the largest online homework…

Dan Hu has seen it all. From leading multiple successful investments for Sequoia China during the 2010-2014 tech boom to helping found ZhenFund (China's top seed fund), Dan has always had an eye for finding the next big thing. That penchant for uncovering opportunities has led him to found Omni Prime, a mobile consumer finance service company that …

At Chinese unicorn Ninebot Inc, VP of Robotics Li Pu compares building the Loomo personal robot to that of Apple's first personal computer, with the vision of introducing a robot helper or companion into everyday life. By democratizing the underlying requirements for robotic function (e.g. computer vision, voice recognition, mobility, etc.), Li's r…

We sit down with Guy Sivan, who - immediately upon graduation from Columbia University - moved to Beijing in 2005 and has since started 4 different companies. In 2010, he sold his third startup’s core technology to a publicly listed company, and today he is CEO of Vericant, a Shunwei backed company that helps US schools better understand their inte…

Pollution is a real problem in China. So it should come as no surprise that the 13th Five Year Plan includes drastic policy measures, calling for a reduction of emissions from coal burning industries, while showing support for wind, solar and bio power. And beyond policy making or economic restructuring, there is also a call for domestic entreprene…

The sharing economy is one of the hottest sectors in China, with $250m of seed and Series A capital invested April-May '17, without accounting for the $1 billion+ poured into bike-sharing start ups Mobike and Ofo. While some of these start ups have the potential to create significant businesses (e.g. car hailing and bike sharing), the verdict is st…

We sit down with Cheng Tian (or as we call him "Tian Ge"), partner at Shunwei Capital covering TMT and consumer related industries. Previously he held senior positions at Goldman and Temasek, and he has participated in many investments including: Alibaba, Xiaomi, VANCL, Youku-Tudou, Tuniu, Shanda Literature, Mogujie, Momo, Didi, Rong360, Jiuxian, e…

In our first episode, we sit down with Shunwei VP/EIR Meng Xing to explore a broad range of socioeconomic, institutional, and financial factors that shape the Chinese tech environment. For example, why are the Chinese typically fast followers and excel at 1-100 over 0-1? What are primary founder incentives, and why is there a lack of talent in midd…