Introducing the Shunwei China Venture Capital Podcast

China is clearly a hot topic these days. After decades of growth driven by infrastructural development and cheap exports, its growth engine has turned to the tech sector, and already with some fabulous results. Innovation in China is very real, much of it driven by unique market conditions, genuine consumer needs, and some of the fiercest competition in the world.

And at Shunwei, a $2bn VC founded by Tuck Lye Koh and Lei Jun (also founder and CEO of Xiaomi), we’ve been following these developments closely. Every day, we analyze top tech trends and meet with promising early stage companies across sectors in order to find the next big opportunity. Increasingly, we receive request after request from a global audience interested in getting our take on the China market. And so we’ve decided to launch the first ever English language podcast (link here) with the goal of sharing insights on key developments, highlighting US vs. China differences, and putting the spotlight on top VCs and start ups in China.

We explore these developments with our host, Adam Bao, who has accumulated start up and VC experience across both markets since graduating from Yale in 2012, and who most recently helped manage corporate development at augmented reality company Blippar (#9 on CNBC Top 50 Disruptors’ list). There are currently 7 episodes available, including a session with Shunwei partner Cheng Tian, who invested in top companies including Alibaba, Xiaomi, Youku, Momo, Didi, and OFO; as well as with successful entrepreneur Dan Hu, who was previously VP at Sequoia Capital China and helped establish ZhenFund (China’s leading seed fund) before founding leading consumer credit company Omni Prime.

In our very first episode, Adam sit downs 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)?

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.

You may access the podcast here.

Hope you enjoy, and look forward to catching you on the podcast!