What's Different About China's Tech Scene and How Are They Innovating? - with Shunwei VP Meng Xing

The Harbinger - China Tech & VC Podcast

In our first episode, we sit down with Shunwei VP/EIR Meng Xing to explore a broad range of socioeconomic, institutional, and financial factors that shape the Chinese tech environment. For example, why are the Chinese typically fast followers and excel at 1-100 over 0-1? What are primary founder incentives, and why is there a lack of talent in middle management? Why are there so many unicorns in seemingly niche markets, and how come there are so many humongous, diversified platform plays such as the BAT (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent)? Additionally, we examine frontier technologies such as AI, AR / VR, and provide examples of the Chinese successfully productizing these technologies via innovative business models that we haven't yet seen in the US. Meng Xing is VP/EIR at Shunwei Capital covering frontier-tech, AI, robotics, AR/VR, and more. In the past ten years prior, he also founded two AI start-ups that were acquired by Amazon and a listed Chinese company. In between, he worked as an investment banker at J.P. Morgan Hong Kong and casino giant Caesars Entertainment, on top of getting an MBA from the Sloan School of Management at MIT. Link to write-up here: https://www.theharbingerchina.com/blog/what-s-different-about-china-s-tech-scene-and-how-are-they-innovating-with