Can’t-miss Talks from TechCrunch Shanghai Conference

TechCrunch Shanghai is the first show since TechNode announced partnership with TechCrunch and launched TechCrunch China. The show gathered 3000 attendees in Shanghai on Nov. 19 – 20. Eighty speakers and panelists shared with us their insights on building tech businesses in China, the China tech market in general, among other topics.

Ned Desmond, COO of TechCrunch and General Manager of AOL Tech, and Dr. Gang Lu, founder of TechNode, opened the two-day conference.

Mr. Xu Xiaoping, a well respected angel investor and founder of early-stage investment fund ZhenFund, thinks China has entered another ten-year golden age for startups and gave entrepreneurs some advises. Kevin Day, founder of Discuz! turned angel investor, shared his philosophy on angel investment.

Qihoo VP Mr. Li Tao, in a Chat with TechCrunch writer Catherine Shu, gave some color on Qihoo’s international strategy for the first time since an English version of the company’s flagship security product was launched a couple of months ago.

Peter Zheng, VP of Tencent and head of the company’s social network Qzone, shared experience in building hugely popular Internet services or content in the company’s history.

Dianping co-founder Long Wei shared their long-term goal for the ten-year-old, most popular ratings&reviews service in China, saying there’s no plan for IPO or to sell Dianping in the near future.

Ms. Gong Haiyan, founder of US-listed online dating service Jiayuan and now founder of an online education service, told the story how she built the service, met her husband on her own service and became successful.

Baidu, known as the search giant in China, talked about their strategy on the smart hardware and how to take advantage of the emerging trend in China. As hardware has also been such a hot topic in China, we gathered several panelists to chat about it. Also we cannot miss other hot topics, online finance and Bitcoin.  

Several uprising Chinese startup stars were invited to present their products and share backstage stories. They include Changba, the massively popular Karaoke app in China that had had 100 million registered users in little more than one year since debut; Camera 360, a photo app that has 180 million users in 203 countries, launched a new product at our event; Bangcle, mobile security solution for developers.

VCs from Sequoia China, Lightspeed China Partners, Highland Capital Partner China and Gobi Partners discussed about what sectors they are looking at and the China tech market in general. A panel of early-stage investment funds shared their insights on differences they found in early-stage tech companies and deals between China and the US.

Gaming has been one of the most important players in China’s Internet market in terms of popularity and revenue. In the mobile Internet age, unsurprisingly mobile gaming immediately became a hot topic. We had representatives from top mobile game distributors discuss about how to successfully run mobile games in China. iDreamsky, one of the major players in importing games from outside China, gave tips to developers around the world on how to successfully ran mobile games in China. Fruit Ninja, a popular mobile game in China and around the world, shared their next moves.

App Annie, the China-based mobile data analysis service, shared data and trends in Chinese and global app markets.

Tech entrepreneurs and industry insiders from Taiwan and Hong Kong shared their thoughts on tech markets outside the mainland China and cross-border business opportunities.

For the increasingly more apps and developers in China market, business-to-developer services discussed about how to better serve them and add values to them.

Keith Teare , co-founder of TechCrunch and founder of Just.me, introduced with Chinese developers some trends in the Silicon Valley. 

It’s interesting to have professionals from fashion industry to talk about how to go digital. Shauna Mei, founder of design good e-commerce platform AHALife, said she planned to expand the US-based business to China where she was born and spent childhood.

Uber, the US-based car rental service that is aggressively expanding around the world, disclosed their plan for China market.