Kai-Fu Lee Introduces Innovation Works to Silicon Valley
October 9, 2009
Mountain View, California - “We received 7,000 resumes on our first day,” said Kai-Fu Lee, founder of Innovation Works and former president of Google China, to over 400 audience members at the annual conference of the Asian American MulitiTechnology Association (AAMA) in Silicon Valley’s Computer History Museum on Oct. 2.
Lee, the first keynote speaker of the conference, analyzed the Chinese Internet market and explained why he had recently left Google China to create Innovation Works. He pointed to the frequent emergence of talented entrepreneurs and the dire scarcity of early stage funding in China as what inspired him to create a company that combines recruiting, Internet software, and a venture capital firm in one.
Lee discussed China’s tremendous response to Innovation Works with his past experiences. He said he received 1,000 resumes on the first day of Microsoft Research Asia and 3,000 resumes on his first day at Google China. He attributed the unprecedented popularity of Innovation Works to the innovative way it approaches the Chinese Internet market.
“We are a match maker,” Lee said. “We bring great ideas, great engineers, great entrepreneurs and great venture capitalists together.”
According to Lee, the founding of Innovation Works was a fairly recent decision. He didn’t have it in mind when AAMA invited him to speak at the conference, which marked the 30th anniversary of the largest nonprofit high tech organization in Silicon Valley’s Asian American community.
For his career change made before the conference, Lee arrived in Silicon Valley with one more mission to accomplish. He was meeting investors for his newly founded company, which had obtained $1.5 million for establishment and had half of the $100 million investment fund committed.
Lee said he wouldn’t just take anyone’s investment. Innovation Works can afford to select investors.
One of the confirmed investors was WI Harper Group, which sponsored Lee’s keynote speech at the AAMA conference.
Peter Liu, founder and chairman of WI Harper Group, introduced Lee to the conference attendees. Liu emphasized Lee’s Asian American background in the introduction speech.
Lee was born in Taiwan in 1961 and immigrated to the United States with his family in 1973. He was classmates with current U.S. president Barrack Obama when going to Columbia University. He went to graduate school at Carnegie Mellon University, where he earned a Ph.D. in computer science and developed the world’s first speaker independent continuous speech recognition system.
Lee is a prominent example of success among Asian Americans who have moved to China for career advancement. With his in-depth knowledge of the China market, he told those of the AAMA conference attendees who originally came from China that Chinese Americans might lose their elite status in China due to local people’s continuous efforts to catch up.
“If you want to go back, go back soon,” said Lee. “Your advantage is about to run out!”
Lee described local Chinese entrepreneurs as creative innovators. He said the average PC in China must have windows reinstalled every four months to keep up with the rapid changes on the Chinese Internet, which is more entertainment oriented and shows higher IM usage than the American Internet.
“The main reason for the difference is not cultural,” Lee said, quoting statistics that the average Internet user is 42 years old in America but only 25 in China.
Because young people in China often can’t afford to have their own computers, Internet cafes take about 30% of all Internet usage in China, according to Lee. These cafes are usually where teenagers learn how to use the Internet. To cater to the young crowd, some of the cafes have private rooms with just two seats and two computers in each for dating couples.
It’s not only young people who frequently surf on line and enjoy gaming websites in China. Lee said many middle-aged businessmen in China play virtual games to satisfy their egos, as they can become bigger winners in the cyber space than they are in real life. Some of them also try to meet attractive young women at the gaming sites.
Currently, six of the 10 largest Internet companies in China do gaming.
Lee said the Chinese Internet inherited the global Internet and injected local characteristics. Besides gaming, he brought up e-commerce as another example. He said E-Bay had a tough time entering China because the Chinese customarily wouldn’t pay before receiving the product, given the lack of trust between seller and buyer in Chinese culture. But local e-commerce companies have overcome this problem by letting customers order on line and then pay cash upon delivery.
Lee praised Chinese entrepreneurs for their abilities to turn imitation into innovation, naming the Chinese versions of Youtube and Facebook as more examples. But he acknowledged pirating as a serious problem in China’s unregulated environment.
After his speech, Lee continued commenting on the nature of the Chinese Internet market in his answers to reporters’ questions.
“You can’t stop people copying,” he said. “So you have to continuously move faster than others.”
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a billion people and still can’t copy it right, you’re lost cause. i didn’t say this, the europeans did
Dr Kai-Fu Lee is now blazing a new trail in China after heading Microsoft and Google China.
We know he is enormously popular amongst young techies in China since he had spent very large amount of time to stimulate, educate and encourage them.
We need someone like him for Vietnam as well.