Bertrand Schmitt | App Annie & The Rise of Mobile in China

The Negotiation

Today on The Negotiation, we speak with Bertrand Schmitt, tech entrepreneur, Co-Founder, and Chairman of App Annie, and co-host of the Tech DECIPHERED podcast alongside Strive Capital’s Nuno Goncalves Pedro.

Bertrand has been involved in the mobile industry in China since 1999, through what he refers to as its period of “growing pains”. When the iPhone and the App Store came out in 2007 and 2008, respectively, Bertrand quickly saw that they solved, in one go, three big issues in China’s mobile world: discovery, distribution, and monetization. Bertrand was inspired to bring something to market that could contribute to the industry. This led to the creation of App Annie, which aimed to provide tools to business developers to better understand developments in the mobile space via data and analytics.

Mobile-only recently boomed as an industry in the Chinese market following the release of the iPhone (considered a luxury item when it first came out). Up until that point, the Chinese communicated through text, and tech giant Tencent was known for its online gaming services. The past decade has seen much innovation and the rise of new giants like Pinduoduo and ByteDance that were built on a mobile-first foundation.

Bertrand shares his experience working as a French entrepreneur in China, how the VC “culture” in China has evolved and how it differs from that of America or Europe, China’s unique mobile-related innovations, and what to expect from Bertrand’s podcast, Tech DECIPHERED.