Listen to the Same Speech Twice in A Day

I don’t believe I have ever done this before: I went to the same speech twice in a day. Dr. Kaifu Lee (李开复), the former head of Google China, visited the Silicon Valley last Friday. He gave the keynote at the A(sian)A(merican)M(ulti-Tech)A(ssociation) Annual Conference in the morning, and then gave the same speech (albeit in a less formal setting and more Q&A) at Stanford in the afternoon. Eric and I were at the AAMA conference at Computer History Museum in Mountain View. Later that day, we felt bored with the meeting. So we decided to drive to Stanford and listen to Kaifu Lee’s talk again. Both speeches were excellent, insightful and well worth the time we spent.

As the former head of Google China, Kaifu knows something about the internet in China that most of the people in the world don’t. I was lucky to hear him sharing his insights. The four area he identified, as the next big (internet) things in China:

• E-Commerce. 50x potential if China were to reach the same E-Commerce penetration level as U.S. now (in terms of percentage of internet user and per user spending). As E-Commerce takes off, so will online advertising (which is only 1/10 of U.S. currently)
• Mobile internet. 600M mobile users, and 150M mobile internet users. The potential is huge given that smart phones are getting smarter, more wide-spread and many Chinese mobile internet users don’t even own a computer (think of those migrant workers)
• Cloud computing, Software as a Service. Because of the piracy, there is no traditional software industry in China. But Software as a Service in the Cloud will definitely be the way to go. An early proof is China’s online gaming market, which is at the forefront of the world in terms of business success. Online gaming will continue to grow, but so will other services in the cloud.
• P2P is leading the world in technical maturity because of the absence of legal issues

These are the four main prospects Dr. Lee highlighted, and his new incubator company Innovation Works will focus on. I have to wholehearted agree. Mobile internet and online advertising, are something Hoodbook has been trying to do in China for the last year. Many proven business models in U.S. can be readily transported to China, with more focus on mobile experience and localized UI.

Euwyn Poon has some details of the talk at his blog http://euwyn.com