This week, TechNode got a chance to interview with Hans Tung, a veteran venture capitalist who has become the darling of China’s VC industry after making a successful early bet on Xiaomi Tech. After leaving Qiming Ventures in August last year, Tung joined GGV Capital, a cross-border venture capital firm that focuses on China and U.S., two months later in seek of an international platform.
When talking about Xiaomi’s case, Tung said one main reason that driving him to made the investment is Xiaomi’ founder Lei Jun, He said “Lei Jun is a person with logical thinking and reasoning capabilities, and he pays attention to every single detail.”
Tung led investment and serves on the board of Wish, a fast growing cross border mobile commerce company that GGV joined a US$20 million Series B financing this April. Two months later, Wish announced another US$50 million Series C funding led by Founders Fund with the participation of Legend Capital. He is also actively involved with GGV portfolio companies Flipboard and Yodo1.
Born into a Taiwan military family, Hans has grown up under the influence different cultures with 16 years of life experience in the U.S, during which he received his B.S. in Industrial Engineering from Stanford University, and 8 years in Chinese mainland.
Lots of Chinese business and entrepreneurial models can be transplanted to the U.S. market in the future 10 years, he said, adding that one distinctive thinking model of Chinese entrepreneurs is to find a breakthrough point and this thinking pattern is going to help them to find more opportunities in the global market. In addition, most American entrepreneurs are social elites who pay more attentions to demands of talents living in first-tier cities. Globally, it is the common customers who form the mainstream market and Chinese entrepreneurs has amassed abound experiences in this field.
Tung said he prefers teams with cross-cultural backgrounds. For example, Zhang Sheng, co-founder of Wish, is a Chinese who once studied in the U.S., while another co-founder of the company Peter Szulczewski is a Jew from east Europe. He explained that Americans tend to focus on domestic market and ignore overseas opportunities. But teams with multinational backgrounds are more likely to set their eyes on global market. For example, around 50% of Wish’s revenue comes from overseas market.
Tung thinks three kinds of Internet companies may have more opportunities in overseas market.
1. Tools. (eg, 3G.CN, Cheetah Mobile, Qihoo 360, UCweb). Starting their business as tools, these companies transformed to platforms, and then to browsers, entertainment or e-commerce services.
2 Virtual products. Very few foreign companies commercialize their services by selling virtual currencies, a business model which is quite popular in South Korean, Japanese and Chinese markets. ZYNGA has approved that this model is feasible in the U.S. market. The global market size for “fans” economy, which the model is based on, is going to triple or quadruple that in China.
3. M-commerce companies. Tung thinks Chinese m-commerce companies are on the verge of launching IPOs. The market is huge enough, since there are more than 1 billion smartphones in the U.S. and China. Community economy and m-commerce are going to create huge opportunities for entrepreneurs.
Tung disclosed that all of the three projects he has invested during the past six months are related to these three models. Wish is a mobile commerce company targeting at users coming from second- and third-tier cities in the U.S., like Austin, Huston, Waco (Texas) and Encino (California). He joined a US$10 million Series B funding in online gaming service Curse and the third undisclosed program is on affiliate product of Xiaomi hardware.
Originally from: http://cn.technode.com/post/2014-07-09/mobile-online-sales/
Leave a comment