CINACON 2007

CINACON 2007
Originally uploaded by YiShuiHan.

I went to CINACON 2007 yesterday. It was a great event and worth my whole afternoon.

The most impressive comments are from Ann Winblad , who is a partner from Hummer Winblad Venture Partners investing in the software companies. As she mentioned, the core for the entrepreneur is the capability to attract the excellence. VCs want to invest on the team/company which can attract the best talents - it is all about intellectual capital. Also for the software company, actionability - how to turn the massive federated data into action - is the hotspot of the investments.

During the break, I talked with Lyle Fong about how to start the company and how to raise the money. A few good points from him:
- Unless you are very famous, you will not get money just by idea
- Always focus on what you are good at, such as technology or engineering.
- Build the prototype first, then get the reporters/bloggers to talk about it.

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Here is the complete memos I took during the conference:

9/22/07

CINACON2007 - Change the world

Ricky Ma - HKSTP

Innovation:

How to enter the market
- Low-cost Disruptive innovation
- New Market Disruptive innovation

How to grow?
- Simplicity
- Collaboration

Industry Leader Session

Scott Chou, Lyle Fong, Karl Jacob, John Lily, Dion Lim, Tami Zhu

Lithium Technologies
- Enterprise Social Networking on Demand
- $8M Recurring Revenue
- Billions Pageview /month

Social Networking Discussion:
- Social Graph (GuanXi)
- Use social network to spread it
- Make money through transaction (sell wallpaper, etc. like the ringtone) - Wallop
- Charge customer based on Page Views (Lithum)
- Chinese Users care about the design and personalized their pages while US users care about the information on their page (Wallop)
- Video Advertising (Tami Zhu) (Behavioral)
- Widget Advertising (Tami Zhu)
- Building a community is hard. (With hardcore technology is much better) (Tami Zhu)

***** Find the applications on Facebook (Tami Zhu, VC)
*** Mobile Picture Uploaders

Firefox - $65M revenue through Ads
Mobile - 25 SMS/day 2 calls/day from the survey of teenagers
- Mobile Application Usage is slim, people just use mobile for communication

When go to VCs?
- Unless you are really famous, you won't get money just by idea
- So build the prototype first, then get the reporters to report it to get the exposure. (you can get to know the reporters on the event, bloggers are another good exposure.)

My Thoughts:
- User Rated Advertising

Money in Media - Ms. Priscilla M. Lu CE), Videoonline Communication, Inc.

- New medie (internet) grows very fast 50% - 60%
- Licensing requirement in China is very restricted. (This can bring the unfair advantage)
- IPTV (3 licensed), Digital TV, WEb TV, UGC (setup box costs $40 - $60)
- Unauthorized Portals Users are huge (PPLive, or UGC)
- New Media Advertisement (all inclusive) from 25B RMB to 100B RMB by 2010 (gorwing at 70% per annum on average)

Visionary Session: Tim Wilson, Dixon Doll, Ann Winblad, Dag Syrrist

1943 Maslow (Tim Wilson)
- Cleantech (Energy) - 55% Returned
- Health - $9B (2005) $9.9b (2006) $22M (china, 2006)
16% Of GDP in US goes into Health
4% of GDP in China only
- Social Networking
- $110M (2005) - $325M (2006) - $500M (07)
- Security
- software pirated in China: 92% (03) 82% (05)

Software Model (in China) - Ann Winblad
- SaaS. Open Source, etc. are old schools. (VCs won't buy it)
- Hosted Services are a must
- Predictable revenue model

What Entrepreuer to invest.
natual athletes.
- 2 -10 people company
- Intellectual Capital, a great team (It hasn't changed) (Ann)
- can attract excellence, the war for the talent is the biggest issue for the world
- Compititions for the best talents (Separate the good company from OK company)
- Global View
- focus on the IP
- Are they clear about what they want and what they can do?


Social Networking
- There are no such market, it is a technology component

What area they are going to invest.
- Actionability of the software company. Turn data into Action, how to turn the federated data into action (Ann)
- Mobility

The entrepreneur in China

Why China? (Songbo Li)
- Huge market
What entrepreneur should do in China?
- Build Team
- Get customer first
- Soft landing strategy (such as work for a local company first)

Hot Sectors in China:
- Entertainment
- Mobile Solution
- Financial Sector

Entrepreneur in China should: (Miao Fu)
- Be patient
- Be humble
- Be confident