In this episode the tables are turned and Joseph Cooke, CoFounder and President of WPIC Marketing + Technologies, takes on the role of host and puts regular host Todd Embley on the hot seat. Todd talks about launching and growing Chinaccelerator, Asia’s first and most successful tech accelerator, what the startup landscape looked like in China from 2008 to 2016, why WeChat was the greatest tool that could have been invented to help startups scale quickly, and the massive difference in how a China-focused startup spends a series A versus those in the West.
Show Notes
In this episode I, Todd Embley the regular host, was put on the hot seat and interviewed by Joseph Cooke, CoFounder and President of WPIC Marketing + Technologies. We started the show discussing how I became involved with SOSV The Accelerator VC, Sean O’Sullivan, and my good buddy Cyril Ebersweiler, and how Chinaccelerator was born in a small North Eastern city named Dalian, and how we made the tough decision to choose Shanghai over Beijing for it’s new home in order to grow and take it to the level it is at today.
Joseph then asked me to talk about our formula for sifting through thousands of applications to our accelerator program each year and what we were looking for, and then move to a more broad look at the ecosystem as a whole and how Chinese startups and founders differed from their counterparts in the West. We also touched on how amazing it was to work in digital in China between 2009 and 2016, and how WeChat was responsible for WhatsApp getting a $19 billion dollar acquisition price from Facebook which dovetailed nicely into a discussion about startup valuations in China.
We then talked about the talent pool in China and how much it grew over the years as parent’s started to feel more comfortable understanding that there was indeed a path to success for their children striking out on their own and that they wouldn’t turn into “starving artists”. We also discussed how startups in China were prone to manipulating the amounts that they raised in the media but were using it to remain not only competitive for talent but to also stay relevant in the most competitive market in the world for customer and media attention.
We ended the podcast talking about one of our best investments ever through Chinaccelerator, BitMEX, the factors that helped them become the massive success they are today, and why China was the right place at the right time for them to be so.
What is The Negotiation?
Despite being the world’s most potent economic area, Asia can be one of the most challenging regions to navigate and manage well for foreign brands. However, plenty of positive stories exist and more are emerging every day as brands start to see success in engaging and deploying appropriate market growth strategies – with the help of specialists.
The Negotiation is an interview show that showcases those hard-to-find success stories and chats with the incredible leaders behind them, teasing out the nuances and digging into the details that can make market growth in APAC a winning proposition.