[rgrieselhuber]

Nice to see someone addressing the problem of early stage companies in China. As I was reading through the differences in China vs. the US, I was struck by the similarities to Japan as well. People are much more risk-adverse here and having a startup, to put it mildly, is not usually a source of pride, at least until you have serious funding. This also makes it difficult for B2B startups to gain traction.

A friend of mine told me that Japanese companies look for the following in vendors: 1. have they IPO'd? if not then, are they 2. funded by a big VC? and, failing that, have they at least 3. won some award?

It all comes back to a lack of desire to reward innovation despite its obvious risks and wanting to play it safe by requiring external validation.

This can be good, in a way, because it forces entrepreneurs who still decide to operate in this environment figure out the needs of what we in the US would call the "late-majority" on the technology adoption curve (which is also usually about half of the largest part of any given addressable market).

I'm guessing (though only guessing) that some of these things are also true in China. Perhaps it's very different in B2C.

[ulugbek]

I am not familiar with B2B, but I had the impression that the B2C companies in the area of technology and manufacturing have been mostly founded by high-net worth individuals, and scalability has been a function of enlisting the help of provincial leaders and state-owned banks.