Today's episode is a collaboration between Evolving for the Next Billion and The Wharton FinTech Podcast. Hosted by Josh Benadiva, Hans shares the turning points in his career, how he makes difficult decisions, and how GGV approaches FinTech.

Today on the show, we have Desmond Lim. Desmond is the CEO and co-founder of Workstream, a tech space hiring platform that helps business to hire faster, cutting half the time to engage, hire and onboard hourly workers. Workstream is in GGV's portfolio. Before workstream, Desmond is a graduate of Harvard University and MIT Media Lab, and a former Product Manager at WeChat and an investor for Dorm Room Fund. He's from Singapore. He splits his time between San Francisco and Utah. He also used to represent the Singapore National Youth team in basketball.

Today's episode is a recording of a virtual fireside chat with Tony Fadell-iPod inventor, iPhone co-inventor, Nest founder, and now New York Times best-selling author of "Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making". It is hosted by GGV's managing partners Jeff Richards and Hans Tung.

Today's episode is a live recording of a panel discussion at GGV's 7th annual Evolving Economy conference in NYC last year. It is moderated by Hans, featuring four exceptional operators in the FinTech space: Bradley Riss, Chief Commercial Officer at Checkout.com Huey Lin, Founding COO at Affirm; Venture Partner at GGV Capital Michael Rangel, Founder & CEO at Novo Rares Crisan, VP of Technology at GGV Capital

In this crossover episode between Evolving for the Next Billion and Founder Real Talk, co-hosted by Glenn Solomon, we chat with Dani Grant, the co-founder and CEO of Jam.dev. Jam is a developer tool that streamlines communication between product engineering teams about bugs and fixes. Founded in 2020, Jam has helped nearly 15,000 product, QA, engineering, and design leaders ship bug-free software to customers including Unilever, Staples, T-Mobile, and Dell. Prior to founding Jam, Dani worked as a product manager for Cloudflare and Union Square Ventures. Jam raised $3.5M in a seed round led by Union Square Ventures and Version One Ventures, with participation from angels including GitHub CTO Jason Warner and Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince. Jam is a GGV portfolio.

It's not the first time we are in what the media called a "crypto winter". In the last crypto winter of 2018, Emilie, the guest of today's show, made the unconventional choice to join Coinbase from her senior role at LinkedIn. She is now the President and Chief Operating Officer of Coinbase. What was her journey like? How do you navigate through a crypto winter? You'll hear it from her in today's episode. The episode is recorded in July 2022. Enjoy!

To commemorate International Women's Day this year, we are thrilled to introduce a special series featuring some of the inspiring female founders in GGV's portfolio. Kicking off the series is Carolyn Childers, co-founder and CEO of Chief, a network designed exclusively for high-achieving women in leadership positions. Chief membership provides a private networking platform to connect and support women executives from all industries. Currently, Chief has over 20,000 paid members across 12,000 organizations, including Apple, Google, Amazon, Disney, IBM, Nike, Goldman Sachs, Netflix, Pfizer, Walmart, HBO, Lyft, and New York Times. That's a long and distinguished list. Chief is a GGV portfolio company. Prior to founding Chief, Carolyn was the SVP Senior Vice President of Operations at Handy, a home services marketplace. Previously, Childers led the launch of Soap.com, where she was the general manager through its acquisition by Amazon. She has also held strategy and business development roles at Victoria's Secret and Avon Products. Carolyn began her career in finance, working in investment banking at Deutsche Bank.

Today we have a bonus episode in which GGV’s managing partner Jenny Lee shared why she invested in BUD, existing companies in her game tech portfolio, and her take on NFT. For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community

In this episode, we asked Hans about his 2021, in which he shared his view on Web3, investing at an unprecedented pace, ESG, and the global capital market in 2021. Stay tuned till the end for some proudest moments shared by our listeners over the past 2 years! For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community

Today on the show, we have the cofounders of BUD - Risa and Shawn. BUD is a global virtual platform for Gen Z and Gen Alpha to create and share 3D interactive experiences. It is also one of the world's largest 3D item markets. Before founding BUD, Risa and Shawn were colleagues at Snapchat where they worked as interactive and software engineers. Risa graduated from Cornell in 2017 with a degree in Computer science and math. With a deep interest in computer graphics, she started building her own indie game since college. After graduation, she joined the Snapchat AR team as an interactive engineer working on frontier AR experience and the developer community Snapchat’s AR engine.  Shawn graduated from Rutgers with a major in Computer Science. He interned at Meta in 2015 as a software engineer working on video-ads recommendation in the news feed. In early 2016, he joined Snapchat full-time, where he worked on Android performance optimization, rewrite, and friending recommendation. For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community

Happy New Year, everyone! For the 1st episode of 2022, we brought you the yearly reflection from our global managing partner Jixun Foo, in which he shared how he experienced 2021, the new norm for global venture capitalists, and some of the most exciting startups he has seen. Enjoy! For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community

Today’s episode is a live recording from the recent BayBrazil LatAm Summit, where Hans did a fireside chat moderated by its founder and CEO Margarise Correa.  BayBrazil is a Silicon Valley-based not-for-profit organization dedicated to bringing together the Brazilian-American ecosystem of professionals & businesses in the Bay Area.  For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community

Hi, everyone. Today’s show is a rerun as our portfolio company Grab is officially listed on Nasdaq today. We thought it would be cool to bring back the interview we recorded with GGV’s managing partner Jixun Foo back in 2019. He shared how he first met Grab’s founder Anthony, the parallel between Grab and Didi and why he decided to lead Grab’s Series B while it was still GrabTaxi. Enjoy!  For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community

Hi, listeners! Our podcast Evolving for the Next Billion has passed the 1 million downloads milestone, thanks to your continuing support from all over the world! And we’re approaching the 100th episode for the show. To celebrate this humble but exciting achievement with our listeners, we would love to feature you in the upcoming episode 100!  Tell us your name, where you live and your proudest achievement over the past 2 years! Describe that pivotal moment when you realize you’ve grown - as a founder, a friend, or as a person.  You can submit by emailing the recording directly to nextbn@ggvc.com.  A mobile phone recording would do but make sure you record in a quiet place.  Looking forward to hearing from you!

Today on the show, we have Ralf Wenzel, founder and CEO of JOKR. JOKR is a global platform for instant grocery and retail delivery at a hyperlocal scale. It delivers all sorts of product within 15 minutes of purchase, including groceries, drugs, pharmaceuticals, and exclusive local products that are not available in regular supermarkets. JOKR is a GGV portfolio. Previously, Ralf was a managing partner for SoftBank Group, where he spent a lot of time in LatAM. Before that, Ralf was the Chief Strategy Officer and Board Member at Delivery Hero, one of the leading global online food delivery and ordering platform across more than 30 countries. Ralf sold his last startup, Foodpanda to Delivery Hero. He was the founder and CEO of Foodpanda, which contributes to the book of food delivery businesses globally today. Furthermore, Ralf built out Skrill or Paysafe, which is one of the leading global online payment companies in Europe and served as the Chief Operating Officer before. Lastly, Ralf has been supporting the other founders over the last 15 years and has been an active angel investor through his own vehicle, Tocororo ventures. For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community

Today on the show, we have Dane Atkinson, CEO, and Founder of Odeko. Odeko is a hidden platform supporting thousands of Coffee shops with the technology once only held by the public giants. It uses AI and automation to provide a single source of supplies that is loaded into stores in the closed hours, and consumer apps making all cafes easily discoverable and accessible and soon a host of other building bricks. Odeko is a GGV portflio. Dane is a serial entrepreneur who started his first company at the age of 18. Since then, he has built a successful career running tech companies, mostly in the SMB tech space, such as Squarespace, SumAll, and Odeko. Dane was the CEO of Squarespace from 2007 to 2011. He also serves as a board member, mentor, and advisor to numerous other companies. For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community

Today on the show we have Stephen Kalb. Stefan Kalb is the CEO and co-founder of Shelf Engine. Kalb co-founded Shelf Engine in 2016 to address the global food waste pandemic he experienced first-hand with grocers. Prior to Shelf Engine, Kalb spent 7 years as the CEO of Molly’s, a healthy grab-and-go food company he started in 2009. While Kalb grew the company to more than 400 regional retail locations, food waste was eating into Molly’s bottom line. Hungry for a solution, Stefan and Shelf Engine co-founder Bede Jordan developed a model to considerably improve perishable food forecasting. After successfully cutting Molly’s food waste in half, Kalb and Jordan quit their day jobs to launch Shelf Engine with a mission of transforming the food supply chain by helping grocery stores reduce waste and increase sales through intelligent forecasting. Today, Shelf Engine has nearly 200 employees and manages orders for leading grocers at thousands of locations nationwide. Shelf Engine is a GGV portfolio. For opportunities at Shelf Engine: https://www.shelfengine.com/careers/ For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community  

Today on the show we have Timo Recker and Andre Menezes, co-founders of Next Gen Foods, a Singapore-based food tech company that's harnessing the power of plant proteins to create the most delicious and satisfying food imaginable. Next Gen Foods is a GGV portfolio. A serial entrepreneur, Timo comes from a life-time background in the food space. Before Next Gen Foods, Timo founded German-based LikeMeat, where he was responsible for the successful conceptualization, growth, and expansion of the brand into ten European countries, with products sold through 15,000 supermarkets. A Brazilian native, Andre has lived and worked in many countries. He served as General Manager of Country Foods Singapore, the largest meat distributor and processor in the country, as well as the company responsible for scaling Impossible Foods from a newcomer on the scene, to a household name in the region. For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community

Today on the show we have Fabián Gómez Gutiérrez, CEO and Founder of Frubana. Frubana is a one-stop operating platform for restaurants – with B2B ecommerce and fintech offerings. It aims to make food in Latin America more accessible and currently operates in Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia. Before founding Frubana, Fabian is the expansion leader and an early employee of Rappi, Latin America's 1st Super App. Fabian receives his bachelor of engineering from The University of the Andes in Colombia. Frubana is a GGV portfolio. For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community

Today on the show, we have le Hong Minh, founder and CEO of VNG. VNG is one of the largest internet companies in Vietnam, founded in 2004, VNG began as a gaming company. Today, its digital services span across several verticals including social media, which is Zalo; digital content, which is Zing mp3; financial Services, which is Zalo pay; cloud services, which is VNG Cloud. Minh got his bachelor's degree in finance from Monash University. Before starting VNG, he has been doing investment banking for many years, and honored as one of the 10 most influential people on the internet in Vietnam for the last decades. For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community

Today on the show we have Irving Fain. Irving is the founder & CEO of Bowery Farming, the largest vertical farming company in the US. Based in New York City, Bowery’s smart farms are powered by their proprietary operating system the BoweryOS. Their produce is available in almost 800 grocery stores and many e-commerce platforms. Bowery is a GGV portfolio. Before founding Bowery in 2015, Irving was the co-founder and CEO of CrowdTwist, a loyalty marketing SaaS business later acquired by Oracle. Prior to that, he launched iHeartMedia at Clear Channel and began his career helping early-stage companies raise capital as an investment banker at Citigroup. This is a crossover episode with Unscripted, a video series hosted by GGV managing partner Jeff Richards. Jeff and Hans host this episode. You can check out the video on GGV’s YouTube channel. For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community

Today’s episode is a rerun of our conversation with Grab’ President Ming almost 2 years ago. If you have been following the news, you probably know that Grab recently announced its plan to go public in the US via SPAC. It is the world’s largest SPAC merger deal up to date and is expected to be the largest IPO by a Southeast Asian company in the US. We’re very fortunate to be part of Grab’s journey since 2014 and it’s truly inspiring to see how consistent the team has been in pursuing its mission.  For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community

Today on the show we have Binny Bansal. Binny cofounded Flipkart in 2007 and played a pivotal role in scaling it to a market leading e-commerce space which still has so many fundamental customer and supply problems along the way. From a small beginning, Binny along with his friend Sachin Bansal turned Flipkart into a massive online commerce venture that was bought over by Walmart in 2018, for a whopping $16 billion. He's also a prolific angel investor and mentor, with over 30 investments in startups ecosystem in India. This episode is co-hosted by GGV Colleague Madhu Yalamarthi.  For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community

Today we have our first ever husband and wife duos on the show, Sonny Vu and Christy Trang Le from Arevo. Arevo develops technology to enable direct digital additive manufacturing parts for end-use applications in high volume. It makes advances in materials science, 3D printing software, and robotics to automate the production of carbon fiber reinforced polymer structures, otherwise known as CFRP.  Sonny is a serial entrepreneur, currently the CEO of Arevo. Previously, Sonny founded various startups including Misfit which was bought by Fossil for $260 million. Before that, he worked at Microsoft Research NLP, under Kai-Fu Lee, and worked on a Ph.D. in linguistics at MIT under Professor Noam Chomsky. Both Arevo and Misfit are GGV portfolio. Christy is the CFO and president of the Vietnam operations for Arevo. Previously, Christy was a country director for Vietnam at Facebook, and before Facebook, she built Misfit along with Sonny. Prior to Misfit, Christy was a consultant at McKinsey and an investment banker at HSBC. She graduated Double First in Economics at Oxford (BA & MPhil) and an MBA from MIT Sloan.  This episode is co-hosted by GGV Colleague Dimitra Taslim.  For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community

Today on the show, we have Allon Bloch, CEO and co-founder of K Health. K Health is America's number one most downloaded medical app with over 4 million users. It uses AI and advanced technology to provide better and more affordable health care. Unlike other symptom checkers that rely on static rules or protocols to give you the best guess at a diagnosis, K was trained on millions of real anonymized medical records to give you more accurate results that are personalized to your situation. K Health is a GGV portfolio.Since this episode was recorded, K Health has expanded into Pediatrics to help the whole family access high quality care, 24/7. Allon is also a board member and former co-CEO of Wix, and has served as the co-founder and CEO of Vroom. Allon is a partner at Jerusalem venture partners, and spent time as a consultant at McKinsey&Company. He holds a BS in biology from Tel Aviv University, and an MBA from Columbia University. He was born and raised in Israel and moved to the US in 1995. For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community

Today's episode was recorded back in 2019, way before Affirm became a 27 billion dollar public company, and the BNPL (that is buy now pay later) won over young consumers across the world. Before Affirm, Max was known as the co-founder of PayPal, where he designed the company's system to detect fraud. A "fintech nerd", as he called himself and serial entrepreneur, Max shared how Affirm was a product of his guiding principle in life, and how his wife was the voice of reason when defining what was fun for him. This episode is co-hosted by GGV managing partner Glenn Soloman and first appeared on Glenn's podcast Founder Real Talk. For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community Disclaimer: This content is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should consult your own advisers as to those matters. References to any securities or assets are for illustrative purposes only; such references do not constitute any recommendation to either buy or sell such securities or assets and are not intended to serve as the basis for any investment decision, nor do they constitute an offer to provide investment advisory services. Any information provided by third parties in this content does not reflect the views of GGV Capital and its subsidiaries or affiliates. Furthermore, this content is not directed at nor intended for use by any investors or prospective investors, and may not under any circumstances be relied upon, when making a decision to invest in any fund managed by GGV Capital. Any investment or portfolio company mentioned, referred to, or described is not representative of all investments in vehicles managed by GGV Capital, and there can be no assurance that the investments will be profitable or that other investments made in the future will have similar characteristics or results.

Today on the show, we have Jim Miller, CTO of Wayfair. Wayfair is one of the world's largest e-commerce companies that sells furniture and home-goods. Wayfair is not onlyWayfair.com. It also owns Joss & Main, AllModern, Perigold, and Birch Lane. All dedicated to help shoppers quickly and easily find exactly what they want from a selection of more than 18 million items across home furnishings, décor, home improvement, housewares and more. The company generated $9.1 billion in net revenue for full year 2019. It recently turned a profit for the first time since its IPO in 2014. Before joining Wayfair, Jim served as the Vice President of Worldwide Operations at Google for almost 8 years. He also spent 7 years as a senior executive at Cisco leading supply chain and logistics, Asia operations, new product introduction, advanced technology, and global operations while the company ramped from $18B to over $40B in annual revenue. Prior to Cisco, Miller was the Vice President of Supply Chain at Amazon and was a key contributor to Amazon's rapid growth into a global company. Jim received his bachelor's degree from Purdue University, an M.S. from MIT, and an MBA from the Sloan School of Management at MIT. For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community Disclaimer: This content is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should consult your own advisers as to those matters. References to any securities or assets are for illustrative purposes only; such references do not constitute any recommendation to either buy or sell such securities or assets and are not intended to serve as the basis for any investment decision, nor do they constitute an offer to provide investment advisory services. Any information provided by third parties in this content does not reflect the views of GGV Capital and its subsidiaries or affiliates. Furthermore, this content is not directed at nor intended for use by any investors or prospective investors, and may not under any circumstances be relied upon, when making a decision to invest in any fund managed by GGV Capital. Any investment or portfolio company mentioned, referred to, or described is not representative of all investments in vehicles managed by GGV Capital, and there can be no assurance that the investments will be profitable or that other investments made in the future will have similar characteristics or results.

The conversation was recorded at the end of 2020. We sit down with GGV Capital managing partner Jenny to get her take on memorable moments, new habits developed during lockdown and her hope for 2021. For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community

Today on the show, we have Josh Silverman, CEO of Etsy since 2017. Etsy is an innovative online marketplace that connects millions of passionate creative sellers and buyers around the world. With the mission "keep commerce human", the global destination for unique and creative goods has 3.1 million active sellers and 60.3 million active buyers from nearly around every country on our planet. In 2019, 40% of Etsy sellers were located outside the US, 83%of sellers were women. Josh has two decades of leadership experience include growing consumer technology companies and scaling global marketplaces. Before Etsy, he served as president of consumer products and service at AmEx, CEO of Skype, and CEO of shopping.com. And he has held various executive roles at eBay. Earlier in his career, Josh co-founded Evite 20 years ago, where he was also served as the company's first CEO until sale to IAC. This is a cross episode with Founders Real Talk, our sister podcast hosted by GGV Managing Partner Glenn Solomon. For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community Disclaimer: This content is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should consult your own advisers as to those matters. References to any securities or assets are for illustrative purposes only; such references do not constitute any recommendation to either buy or sell such securities or assets and are not intended to serve as the basis for any investment decision, nor do they constitute an offer to provide investment advisory services. Any information provided by third parties in this content does not reflect the views of GGV Capital and its subsidiaries or affiliates. Furthermore, this content is not directed at nor intended for use by any investors or prospective investors, and may not under any circumstances be relied upon, when making a decision to invest in any fund managed by GGV Capital. Any investment or portfolio company mentioned, referred to, or described is not representative of all investments in vehicles managed by GGV Capital, and there can be no assurance that the investments will be profitable or that other investments made in the future will have similar characteristics or results.

Today on the show, we have Harley Finkelstein, the President of Shopify. Shopify is a leading global e-commerce company, providing trusted tools to start, grow, market and manage a retail business of any size. Headquartered in Ottawa, Canada, Shopify powers over 1 million businesses and more than 175 countries and is trusted by brands such as AllBirds, GymSharks, PepsiCo, Staples, and many more. Harley has been with the company since 2010. Prior to his current role, Harley founded numerous startups and ecommerce companies. He is currently an advisor to Felicis Ventures. Harley holds a Bachelor degree in Economics from Concordia University and a J.D./M.B.A. joint degree in Law and Business from the University of Ottawa. This episode is co-hosted by GGV colleague Robin Li. Based in New York, Robin invests in eCommerce, social, consumer internet, and digital economy. For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community Disclaimer: This content is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should consult your own advisers as to those matters. References to any securities or assets are for illustrative purposes only; such references do not constitute any recommendation to either buy or sell such securities or assets and are not intended to serve as the basis for any investment decision, nor do they constitute an offer to provide investment advisory services. Any information provided by third parties in this content does not reflect the views of GGV Capital and its subsidiaries or affiliates. Furthermore, this content is not directed at nor intended for use by any investors or prospective investors, and may not under any circumstances be relied upon, when making a decision to invest in any fund managed by GGV Capital. Any investment or portfolio company mentioned, referred to, or described is not representative of all investments in vehicles managed by GGV Capital, and there can be no assurance that the investments will be profitable or that other investments made in the future will have similar characteristics or results.

For our last episode in this special year, we bring you Hans's perspective on 2020. To our listeners across the world, thank you for being with us. We look forward to bringing you more insights and inspirations next year! See you in 2021! For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community

2020 will be one for the history books. In this 3-part series, we sit down with GGV Capital's managing partners to get their take on memorable moments of 2020, new habits developed during lockdown and their hopes for 2021. First guest for today is Jixun Foo. For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community

Today on the show, we have Son Tran, founder, and CEO of Tiki. Tiki (short for "Tìm kiếm & Tiết kiệm", which means "Search & Save") is a top all-in-one commerce platform in Vietnam, including an e-commerce marketplace, TikiNOW Smart Logistics - an integrated supply chain platform, and Tiki Trading, a retail subsidiary. Starting Tiki as an online bookstore in 2010, Son has turned Tiki into a top trusted multi-selection e-commerce platform for millions of Vietnamese customers. He held a double degree in software engineering and commerce in Vietnam and Australia. After graduating with a Master's degree at the University of New South Wales (Australia) in 2007. Before Tiki, Son also helped starting Clip.vn - a.k.a YouTube of Vietnam. For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community

For the last episode of our EdTech series, we have GGV managing partner Jenny Lee. Jenny has been investing in the space for almost a decade now. So we thought a conversation with her would be the best way to conclude this series. If you or your friend is in the EdTech space, this is an episode that you don't want to miss. Jenny shared how she started to invest in EdTech, getting to a product-market fit, growth with different business models, and one big bet she is currently making in the space. For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community

Today on the show we have Mark Luo. Mark Luo is the founder and CEO of Huohua Siwei (Spark Education). It is a learning app that develops logical thinking, concentration, and other cognitive skills for children aged between 3-12. It offers small live classes in the form of interactive games, with real time guidance from a teacher. The company currently has over 280,000 paid students and boasts a referral rate of 80%. Huohua Siwei is a GGV portfolio company. Mark has extensive entrepreneurial experience. Before Spark, he was part of the founding team at China's earliest classified website Ganji.com and served as the CTO. The company was acquired by 58.com in 2015 with 2.6 billion USD. Mark graduated from Singapore National University with master's degree in computer science. We also talked to GGV managing partner Jenny Lee on why she led our investment into Huohua. For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community

Making learning fun is hard, especially in this day and age where you have to compete with social media and games for students' attention. What's even harder is to do so and get a better learning outcome. The hardest is to make it into a scalable business. This is what Michael and his co-founder Mads are trying to do with their startup Labster, a leading virtual science lab provider based in Copenhagen. Their vision is to radically improve science education so future scientists can solve big problems that we cannot solve. The startup world is never short of grand vision like this. What's rare is the passion and patience to follow through, which you will hear from Michael's story in this episode. You will also hear Hans and Michael discuss the role Covid played in the company's growth, why science education is actually a global challenge, and what separates a platform business from a content one. Labster is GGV's first investment in Europe. The deal happened during Covid-19 entirely online. Jenny and Hans led GGV's investment into the company. For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community

For the first episode of our EdTech series, you will be hearing from the founder of Zuoyebang Hou Jianbin, whose personal belief about education significantly shaped the way he built this company. Born and raised in a small town in China, He was a straight-A student and had his life completely changed by the national college entrance exam. Got into China's top university and a job offer from China's search engine giant Baidu, where he built the product that eventually became one of the world's most valued EdTech startups. Zuoyebang was spun off from Baidu in 2015. For the second part of this episode, you will also be hearing from GGV managing partner Jenny Lee. Jenny led GGV's investment into Zuoyebang in 2016. She shared what made Zuoyebang stood out among all the photo search apps that were out there, and what keeps Zuoyebang competitive as Covid-19 pushed a lot of new capital flowing into the market. For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community

2020 is a defining year for many of us. This is a year when 85% of the countries in the world mandated school closure, leaving 1.5 billion students out of school. A year when valuation of EdTech companies are at record high with new money continuously flowing into it. For the EdTech founders, it is the opportunity of a lifetime, also an ultimate stress test for their companies. As a global fund with a handful of EdTech portfolios across the world, we created this special series for EdTech founders to share their stories. Also included in this series is a chat with GGV Partner Jenny Lee on why she first decided to go into EdTech back in 2013 despite all the skepticism, key things she looks for, and what excites her most about the future of learning. For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community

Today on the show, we have Peter De Caluwe, the Executive Chairman and CEO of Thunes. Thunes is a B2B cross-border payments network for emerging markets. It provides transfer of funds between payment systems, including mobile wallet providers, money transfer operators and banks, in more than 100 countries and 60 currencies. We recorded this interview a while back, the company recently announced its $60 million Series B, which GGV Capital also participated as an existing investor. With more than 25 years of experience in FinTech, Peter is a specialist in electronic payments, e-commerce, credit cards in emerging markets. He was previously the CEO of Ogone, Naspers Payments and PayU. Having graduated with a Bachelor's in Marketing from Group T Leuven, a Belgium-based college, he has risen through the ranks to become a serial entrepreneur and investor. For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/engage

Interviewed by Hans Tung and Madhu Yalamarthi. On today's episode, we have Siddharth Shah, co-founder and CEO of PharmEasy, India's largest digital health platform. Start with a vision to make health care accessible and affordable to all farmers who supplies medicines to more than 1000 cities and towns in India. The company recently proposed a merger deal with its rival MedLife, creating now India's newest unicorn. Siddharth is focused on bringing radical reforms in the healthcare industry with the help of digital technologies. A graduated from DJ Sanghavi College in Mumbai in computer engineering, and he is an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/engage

This episode is co-hosted by GGV Colleague Dimitra Taslim. It was recorded a while back, so we also caught up with Hendra for an covid update in the second part of the podcast. Today on the show we have Hendra Kwik, Co-founder and CEO of Payfazz, a fintech platform that aims to build a network of distributed banking agents to enable a fully-digital mobile banking & payment solution for 440 million unbanked in Southeast Asia. Their network of agents acts as an intermediary between unbanked users and financial institutions and has served around 10 million people since its founding. The company, which has raised a total $21.3 million in funding, is the first Indonesian company to make it into the Y Combinator, a seed accelerator in the U.S. Prior to starting Payfazz, Hendra worked for Schlumberger as a Wireline Field Engineer in Brazil for two years. He also spent 3 months traveling across the region to learn about the startup ecosystem across Latin America. He holds a bachelor degree of Chemical Engineering from Bandung Institute of Technology. For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community

Today's episode is a recording of a founders' dinner we hosted in Jakarta last year. In a short Q&A part of the night, Hans answered a wide range of questions, including absolutes, trade-offs, the power of the mass market, patterns recognition across markets, and more. The dinner was hosted by GGV colleague Dimitra Taslim. Enjoy! For the full transcript of the show, go tonextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go tonextbn.ggvc.com/community

If you have followed our show close enough, you probably know that we have a thesis around backing startups that help small retailers to do better. Better supply chains, operation efficiency, payment infrastructures, bookkeeping, etc. This was reflected through the episodes we did with Udaan from India, Telio from Vietnam, and Shihuituan from China. On today's episode, you will hear a conversation we had with one of the startups that are doing this in Indonesia. The first half of the show was recorded in September last year. But we also caught up with the founder a few weeks earlier on how COVID has changed how he saw the business, enjoy! The guest for today is Agung Bezharie Hadinego, Co-Founder and CEO at Warung Pintar. The name literally means smart kiosk in Indonesian. It is a micro-retail tech startup aimed to digitalize the street vendors in Indonesia. Launched in January 2018, it currently empowers 32,000 warungs in Jakarta and Banyuwangi, whose income has increased by 41% since adopting the system. Agung started Warung Pintar as a special project when he was an investment analyst in a VC firm called East Ventures. He holds a bachelor degree in Intermedia and an MBA from Bandung Institute of Technology. For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community

Today's episode originally aired on our previous guest Garry Tan's YouTube Channel. Garry turned the table and interviewed Hans on being a global investor in this day and age, what great founders have in common, and 1 thing he wants to tell his younger self. For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community

This episode is co-hosted by GGV Colleague Dimitra Taslim. It was recorded a while back, so we also caught up with George and Gaery for an covid update in the second part of the podcast. In this episode, we have George Hendrata and Gaery Undarsa from Tiket.com. Tiket.com is the fastest growing Online Travel Agency platform in Indonesia. The site offers travel and entertainment related products, including flight tickets, hotel booking, train tickets, car renting and events services. Since August 2011, Tiket.com has become the top agent for Indonesian Airlines and an online partner of Indonesian Railways Company. In 2017, Tiket was acquired by Blibli, an ecommerce site backed by Indonesia's conglomerate Djarum. George Hendrata is the CEO of Tiket.com. Prior to joining Tiket.com, he was a business development director at Djarum and chairman of BMJ, one of the world's largest specialty paper companies. George has a Bachelor degree from Columbia University and an MBA from the Harvard Business School. Gaery Undarsa is a Co-Founder of Tiket.com. He is currently operating as the Chief Marketing Officer. Before founding Tiket.com, He worked at IBM Canada as an IT Analyst & Developer for 4 years. He graduated from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada with a dual degree in Computing Science and Business. For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to https://nextbn.ggvc.com/engage/

Today on the show we have Garry Tan, the managing partner of Initialized Capital, a venture firm based in San Francisco he started with the Reddit Co-founder Alexis Ohanian. Garry is a designer/engineer turned early-stage investor. He was a partner at Y Combinator for nearly five years where he advised and funded over 600 companies and more than a thousand founders. He was a cofounder of YC-backed blog platform Posterous (Top 200 Quantcast site, acquired by Twitter in 2012). Before that he was employee #10 at Palantir, where he was a founding member of the engineering team for Palantir's financial analysis product, and also designed Palantir's logo. He has a Bachelor Degree in Computer Systems Engineering from Stanford. Garry regularly shares his insights and advice for founders on his Youtube Channel.  This episode is cohosted by GGV Colleague Christine Hinton. For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community

On this episode, we have Achmad Zaky, the founder and former CEO of Bukalapak, one of Indonesia's largest eCommerce site and the newest unicorn in Indonesia. The name Bukalapak means "open a market stall" in Indonesian. It reflects the company's vision of building an online marketplace for SMEs in Indonesia. We covered his founder journey as a fresh graduate, empowering small business owners in Indonesia with technology and his view on the evolution of the tech scene in Indonesia for the past 10 years. *The conversation was recorded last year when Zaky was still the CEO of Bukalapak. Since January. 2020, he has left the CEO role and started his investment fund Init 6. For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community

As a bonus episode, we also caught up with Jenny, who led GGV's investment in Agora. We covered how she first met Tony, the future GGV was betting on and advice for technical founders. For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community.

For this episode, we have Tony Zhao, founder, and CEO of Agora.io. Agora is the only real-time engagement platform designed to cross borders and reach users on low-bandwidth networks and lower-powered devices. It currently serves over 40 billion minutes of voice and video on its network, supporting a wide range of industries including social, gaming, education, IoT, finance, healthcare, enterprise training, and much more. As a response to the recent outbreak of the coronavirus, Agora.io teamed up with New Oriental, one of the largest providers of private educational services in the world to launch the "New Oriental Cloud Classroom," bringing more than one million students into virtual classrooms in just seven days' time. Tony is a serial entrepreneur. He founded Agora.io in 2014, with a vision to provide high-quality voice and video as a ubiquitous platform to developers and businesses around the world. Before Agora, he was CTO and board director at http://YY.com/ (NASDAQ: YY), one of the world's first video-based social network and live streaming apps with over 300 million users. He was also a founding engineer at WebEx, which was acquired by Cisco in 2007 for $3.2 billion.  For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community.

This episode is the recording of a private webinar we recently organized for GGV portfolio companies working to improve the supply chain of food in different markets. Online grocery is one of the most throat-cutting sectors in China. A study shows that with over 4,000 online grocery companies, only 1% is profitable, 4% can break even, and the overwhelming majority is burning money. Miss Fresh is among the rare ones that have survived and thrived after waves of competition. Miss Fresh is China's leading online grocery retailer that offers 1-hour instant delivery services across 16 cities in China, including first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen. The company has 1,000 distributed micro warehouses that fulfill up to 2,000 orders per day with over 3,000 SKUs. Its GMV tripled during the height of COVID-19 in China. Cecilia is a partner and the COO at Miss Fresh. She joined the firm in 2015. Prior to Miss Fresh, she was a private equity investor at Baring Asia, an investment banker at Deutsche Bank. She holds dual bachelor's degrees in economics and statistics, a master's degree in finance from Peking University, and is a member of Forbes 30 under 30 list. On the show, we covered the impact of COVID-19 had on the eGrocer business, the innovative model Miss Fresh came up with, and how it competes and collaborates with tech giants in the grocery delivery business. For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community.

This episode is the last of our 3-part-webinar series on how founders and leaders are dealing with the current global crisis. It was hosted by GGV's Head of Talent Jennifer Holmstrom and featured Dylan Tey, Senior VP of HelloBike, one of China's biggest mobility service platforms, which manages a 30,000 flexible ground operators and Jeff Harper, Chief People Officer at HashiCorp, an enterprise software company that has its entire engineer team distributed across the world. We covered 3 key decisions each company made in the wake of COVID-19, the systems put in place to mobilize a big team in crisis, and the long-term impact this virus have on their industries. *HelloBike and HashiCorp are both GGV portfolio companies For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community for future webinars, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community.

When the SARS pandemic struck in 2003, Savio was working as president and COO of an internet startup named Alibaba. Not only did the startup survive SARS, it launched a new business called Taobao and emerged as one of the most valuable companies in the world. On a special live podcast session, former President and COO of Alibaba (from 2001-2003) Savio Kwan joined GGV Capital Managing Partner Hans Tung to share the key learnings from Alibaba's SARS experience and answered live questions from founders in GGV's global network. Savio Kwan - Former President and COO of Alibaba Savio Kwan is best known for his time as president and COO of Alibaba from 2001 to 2003. He later took on the chief people officer role in 2004. He has more than 30 years' global management experience, including 17 years at the medical systems division of General Electric, where he was responsible for sales, marketing, operations, business development and establishing joint venture companies in Asia. For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community for future webinars, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community.

With the escalated spread of the coronavirus, GGV Capital is running a 3-session-webinar series with founders around the world to help them navigate the radical uncertainty ahead. Today's episode is the recording of the first webinar on managing cash flow at this special time, joined by Dr. Brian Gu, President and Vice Chairman from XPeng, and GGV's managing partner Jixun Foo. We covered everything from best practices of cash flow management during an external crisis, tips on alternative funding, to macroeconomic shifts startups must pay attention to in the post-virus world. Jixun Foo is a Managing Partner at GGV Capital and joined the firm in 2006. He is consistently recognized among the top VCs in China and counts 13 of his investments as mega-unicorns or unicorns, including Baidu, Boss Zhipin, Didi, Grab, Hello, Manbang, Meicai, Qunar/Ctrip, Tujia, Mogu, UCWeb, Youku Tudou, and Xpeng Motors. Brian Gu is the vice chairman and president of XPENG Motors, also known as Xiaopeng Motors, a Chinese electric vehicle company and a GGV portfolio company. At XPENG, Brian leads the company's global strategy, finance, fundraising, investments and international partnerships. Prior to joining XPENG Motors in March 2018, Brian was the Chairman of Asia Pacific Investment Banking at J.P. Morgan. He holds an MBA from Yale University, a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Washington Medical School and a bachelor's degree in Chemistry from the University of Oregon. For the full transcript of the show, go tonextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community for future webinars, go tonextbn.ggvc.com/community.

For all of our listeners whose life has been disrupted by the coronavirus, we want to let you know that we stand in solidarity with you. We will get through this together. If you are a startup founder, we put together some operational tactics so you can take care of your team and adapt to change and cause the least disruption in the long run. Today's episode was recorded during the GGV Fellows program in Beijing. It is a week-long intensive learning experience for aspiring entrepreneurs who want to get into China's startup ecosystem. This year's 35 fellows came from top institutions around the world. With an amazingly diverse set of backgrounds, we got everything ranging from PH.D. in machine learning to a real estate startup founder who's also a pilot. For this episode, we sat down with 4 GGV fellows on their life stories, takeaways from the GGV Fellows programs, and their experiences of doing startups in China. Wenyou Tan head of Corporate Finance @ OVO, a Fintech Unicorn in Indonesia kuma.nijigen.recruit@gmail.com founder of a gaming startup in Beijing, who used to work on wall street. Get in contact with Raven for his startup at kuma.nijigen.recruit@gmail.com Sophie Luo a Wharton MBA who built a SaaS company in China Yuchen Jiang ex-software engineer at Facebook For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community.

Today on the show, we have Amit Gupta and RK Misra, co-founders of Yulu. Yulu is India's ride-sharing startup launched in December 2017. It provides a network of over 10,000 shared vehicles, including bicycles and lightweight electric scooters, in Bengaluru, Pune, Mumbai, and Bhubaneswar. Yulu's vision is to reduce traffic congestion by providing a scalable, affordable, efficient, and clean solution for the short-distance commute. In this episode, we covered why Amit and RK decided to start Yulu after having some successful exits, how shared mobility works in urban India and working with the government to draft India's first micro-mobility policy. Before Yulu, Amit co-founded India's profitable unicorn InMobi - an online mobile marketing and advertising platform. During his 12 years there, he grew the company's business into other markets like China, US, and Western Europe. Amit has a bachelor's degree in engineering from India's top university India Institute of Technology, Kanpur. RK is a serial entrepreneur and a public figure known for his expertise in the nation's urban planning policy. He is an undergraduate from IIT with a Master's Degree from Tokyo University, also an alum of Harvard Kennedy School of Government. For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community.

Today's episode originally aired in July 2018. The guest is Eric Yuan, the founder and CEO of Zoom. Known for its easy-to-use and reliable video conferencing product, Zoom became a listed company in April 2019 and soon became one of the largest public SaaS companies in the world. The recent outbreak of the coronavirus has made remote working part of many people's new realities. It also puts remote working tools like Zoom under a stress test with the surging needs, which Zoom did incredibly well. It always works. GGV has been a happy customer of Zoom for a really long time and we hope this conversation can give you a hint on how it became successful in the first place. Zoom is used by a third of Fortune 500 companies and 90% of the top 200 universities in the US. Eric was recently named the Top CEO on Glassdoor, with an approval rating of 99%, and was the first person of color to win the award. Eric grew up and went to college in China, arrived in Silicon Valley in 1997 and joined WebEx when it was still a small company. In 2007 WebEx was acquired by Cisco and Eric became Cisco's Corporate VP of engineering in charge of collaboration software. Eric spent 14 years in total at WebEx and grew its engineering team from 10 to 800, and increased its revenue from zero to over $800 million. Eric holds 11 patents, plus 20 pending patents in the pipeline. In this episode, Eric shared his story of being rejected a US visa for 8 times while in China, getting its first paid customer, balancing the needs of SMB and enterprise, and what makes Zoom different from its competitors. For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community.

This episode is co-hosted by GGV's investment colleague Madhu Yalarmathi. In this episode, we have Vamsi Krishna, CEO & Co-Founder of Vedantu. Vedantu is India's leading online tutoring company that enables students to learn LIVE with some of India's best-curated teachers. The name Vedantu is formed by two Sanskrit words Veda (Knowledge) + Tantu (Network), signifying a 'Knowledge Network' where any student can tap into and learn from a teacher, anytime-anywhere. In our conversations, Vamsi shared his experience in moving into online after building a successful offline tutoring center, getting his early users and his definition of an "EdTech" company. Before starting Vedantu, he has been a teacher for 13 years and founded a test prep company Lakshya, which was sold to a listed education company in 2012. You can watch Vamsi's TedTalk in which he made the argument against the standard curriculum. 03:14 Trained as an engineer, how did you become a teacher? 05:03 In your TED Talk, you argued that standard curriculums and standard delivery mechanisms won't work. Share with us more on that. 08:40 Back in early 2012, when you started the company, it was way before JIO and 4G came out in India. Internet users were growing but not as fast as the rest of the world. 13:24 How did you gain the confidence that the right way to build your second startup should be online education? 16:18 What are the scalability aspect of the business model to make it easier for new students to get acclimated to the online learning environment? 21:13 Many of your early users took a leap of faith and moved towards a fully online institution to prepare for the most important exam in their educational life. How did you get them to do that? How are you going about it now? 29:02 As an EdTech company, what do you look for from your tech team? 37:50 It's not hard to imagine that given the large talent pool of Indian teachers here, that the business could exponentially expand beyond India at some point in the future. Share with us how you think about that. For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community.

This episode is co-hosted by GGV's investment team colleague Madhu Yalamarthi. On this episode we have Rajesh Yabaji, co-founder and CEO at BlackBuck. BlackBuck is India's largest trucking logistics company, often referred to as "Uber for Trucks". In the episode, we covered creating a full-stack logistics marketplace in India, the conviction and rigor it takes to create a new category, building an agile company culture, and the choice of living in the same building with his co-founder. Prior to starting BlackBuck, Rajesh worked in the Indian multinational conglomerate ITC Limited for four years as a manager in supply chain and category management. He holds a bachelor's degree from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Kharagpur. For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community.

Today on the show we have Chen Ying. Ying is the founder and CEO of Shihuituan, the leading community commerce company in China. The literal meaning of Shihuituan means plenty of things. It's also a pun for value for money. With its network of 80,000 community influencers, the company currently serves 20 million households in 60 cities in China. For November of 2019, it recorded a monthly GMV of 500 million RMB （roughly 71 million dollars). Shihuituan is a GGV portfolio. Before launching Shihuituan, Ying founded an NGO aimed at helping farmers selling their goods online and another eCommerce company called "The Good Stuff". Ying worked in Bain Consulting and Bain Capital for 5 years before he got his MBA from Harvard Business School. Calling himself an intellectual cowboy, Ying has always been fascinated by the next frontier, which in his mind is the space, Africa and rural China. We discussed the ins and outs of how the community group buy model works, including how he found the product market fit, the role social apps play in this business model, the multi-layer delivery system, and the replicability of this model in other markets. If you have more questions for Ying, please submit them here. For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community.

For this bonus episode, we have Jixun Foo, managing partner of GGV Capital. Jixun recently led GGV's investment in Telio's Series A. Jixun shared with us why he chose to invest in the B2B eCommerce model vs B2C, his advice for founders who are solving the fragmentation of supply chain in different markets, the metrics he tracks for startups in that space and his outlook for Vietnam as a startup ecosystem. For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community.

This episode is co-hosted by Dimitra Taslim. Dimi is on the investment team at GGV Capital.  Today on the show, we have SyPhong Bui and My Linh from Telio. Founded in 2018, Telio is already Vietnam's largest b2b eCommerce platform. It connects small traditional retailers with brands and wholesalers on a centralized platform using technology and data. Telio is a GGV portfolio. On the show, we discussed how SyPhong got his idea for Telio because of Jack Ma from Alibaba, the lessons he learned from 2 previous failed startup he founded, the challenges facing mom and pop shops in Vietnam and how the tech ecosystem in the market has evolved in the market. For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community.

On the show today, we have Ankiti Bose, the founder and CEO of Zilingo, one of the largest fashion & lifestyle marketplaces in Southeast Asia. According to Bloomberg, the latest financing valued Zilingo is at $970 million. Ankiti is among the youngest female chief executives to lead a multi-million-dollar startup in Asia. Ankiti reveals how she thinks about the nature of Zilingo's business, the growth drivers of a 12x track in a short span of 4 years, being a first-time entrepreneur at 23, building localized teams in different countries and the staples in her wardrobe. Prior to launching Zilingo, Ankiti worked at McKinsey as a management consultant and Sequoia as an investment analyst. She holds a bachelor's degree in mathematics and economics from St. Xavier's College in Mumbai. For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community.

This episode is co-hosted by Dimitra Taslim. Dimi is on the investment team at GGV Capital. In today's episode for Southeast Asia, we have GGV's managing partners Jenny Lee and Jixun Foo. They shared one thing that excites them as investors about the region, what we learned from being an early investor of Grab, the role of China's tech giants for this fast-growing market, and the implications it has for local founders. We've been getting a lot of questions about Southeast Asia. While we believe the talent to build great companies can come from anywhere, this episode is about Southeast Asia, home to 360 million internet users. Much has been written on the growth potential of the region. If you don't have the time to dig deeper, here're some quick facts. A third of the population is under 30, 90% of the internet users are primarily on mobile. They are young, connected, and madly in love with social media. The average users in China and the US spend 6.5 hours online per day. The average Indonesian and Filipinos are online for 9 hours per day. Some say if you missed the China train ten years ago, you could not miss this one. Others are more skeptical given the different stages of socio-economic development among various countries in the region. As a firm, we have done ten deals in the region. More than half of that comes in the last 2.5 years. We are an early investor of Southeast's leading Super App Grab. We reopened our Singapore office early this year and started spending more time on the ground. My colleague Dimi, who's also the co-host for this episode, is from Indonesia and looks at investments in Southeast Asia. For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community.

This episode is co-hosted by Dimitra Taslim. Dimi is on the investment team at GGV Capital.  In this episode, we have William Tanuwijaya and Patrick Cao from Tokopedia. Tokopedia is an Indonesian technology company with the largest online marketplace business and its mission is to democratize commerce through technology. The name 'Tokopedia' is a combination of Toko (shop) and encyclopedia. It was founded in 2009 by William Tanuwijaya and his best friend Leontinus Alpha Edison. According to the company, the firm’s annual run-rate GMV has reached 222 trillion IDR (15.8 billion in USD), which would be equivalent to 1.5% of Indonesia's GDP. It has significantly impacted the fate of many small-scale entrepreneurs since its launch 10 years ago. 89% of sellers on Tokopedia do not own a physical store and 86% of merchants are first-time entrepreneurs. In this hour-long conversation, we covered William's founding journey from working in the internet cafe to meeting Daniel Zhang and Joe Tsai from Alibaba, how to get a great executive team as an Indonesian company, Tokopedia's ambition for the next 10 years, and what it means to achieve work-life harmony while running a big company. William Tanuwijaya is the founder and CEO of Tokopedia. He was born and raised in Pematangsiantar, North Sumatera. William has a bachelor's degree in Information Technology from Bina Nusantara University, during which period he worked as an internet café keeper and saw the potential of technology. Patrick Cao is the President of Tokopedia, Indonesia's largest online marketplace, a position he has held since October 2016. Previously, Patrick worked at Formation 8 in Singapore and UBS Investment Bank in Indonesia, specializing in M&A and capital markets advisory in the TMT, consumer and industrials sectors. He received a B.S. in Business Administration from Carnegie Mellon University and currently doing his MBA program at Tsinghua University. For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com  Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community.

This show is previously known as 996 with a specific focus on tech in China. You can access all the previous 996 episodes in this same feed. Today on the show we have, Ming Maa, President of Grab, Southeast Asia's leading super app, providing the everyday services that matter most to consumers. The conversation covered a wide range of topics; how Grab thinks about expansion (markets vs verticals), the tension between product development and scaling, what are the right kinds of high frequency use cases for a Super App, the Uber deal, best piece of advice he's ever been given and what it is like to work with Masayoshi Son from Softbank. This episode also features a bonus interview with GGV Managing Partner, Jixun Foo, who led GGV's investment into Grab in 2014. Jixun shared how he met Grab's founder Anthony, the reason behind the different growing paths of Didi and Grab, and what he looks for in mobility startups. Grab offers transport, food and package delivery, mobile payments and financial services to over 36 million users across eight countries in the region. Launched in 2011, it is now reportedly valued at $14 billion, making it Singapore's first "decacorn", and a GGV portfolio company. Ming has over 12 years of finance and investment experience across the U.S. and Asia. He joins Grab from SoftBank, one of Grab's key strategic investors, where he played a key role in overseeing SoftBank's investments in SoftBank's Series D and F investment in Grab. Ming received his Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community.

This show is previously known as 996 with a specific focus on tech in China. You can access all the previous 996 episodes in this same feed. This episode is a recording of the fireside chat we hosted in Bangalore on September 19th. In the chat moderated by Madhu Yalamarthi, a member of GGV's investment team for India, we talked about what does evolving for the next billion means for each of the panelists, the evolution of India's startup ecosystems and what keeps the panelists going. We were overwhelmed by the enthusiasm and brilliance of the audience that night and everyone we met during this India trip. We want to express our gratitude towards everyone who showed up that night despite Bangalore traffic. Thank you! For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community.

This show is previously known as 996 with a specific focus on tech in China. You can access all the previous 996 episodes in this same feed. On this episode, we have Manu Kumar Jain, the global vice president at Xiaomi and the managing director of Xiaomi India. Xiaomi is currently the world's fourth-largest smartphone brand. Besides smartphones, the company also makes other smart devices connected to its IoT platform. It is the youngest company on the Fortune Global 500 List for 2019. In the wide-ranging conversation, we discussed the biggest success factor of Xiaomi in India, how he goes about hiring, working with Xiaomi's founder Lei Jun, and his advice for foreign brands who want to make inroads into India. Manu joined Xiaomi in 2014 as the first employee and managing director of Xiaomi India, where he has grown Xiaomi to India's NO.1 smartphone brand for 6th consecutive quarter. Before joining Xiaomi, Manu co-founded the fashion eCommerce company Jabong and worked as a consultant at McKinsey. He holds a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi and a post-graduate diploma in management from Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta. For the full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com Join our listeners' community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community.

Today on the show, we have Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal, co-founders of Snapdeal. Snapdeal is India's leading online marketplace. The company started out as a flash deal website in 2010, soon evolved into a leader of India's e-Commerce sectors. In early 2017, it was on the verge of being merged to its biggest rival Flipkart, then upgraded itself to Snapdeal 2.0, with a focus on the value-conscious buyers in India. Over the last couple of years, with this focus, the company has seen a significant and positive transformation. As of July 2019, the month this interview is conducted, the company has increased its annual revenue by 70% and cut its loss by 70% comparing to last year. The two co-founders of Snapdeal are high school friends bonded over food and math. Kunal graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with two bachelor's degrees in Business and Engineering. While studying in the United States, he also started a detergent company and worked to sell his product at Walmart stores. Rohit graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology New Delhi with a bachelor and a master's degree in computer science, India's top engineering school. On this episode, we covered the behind the scene story of their decision in saying No to Flipkart, focusing on the 400 million value-conscious buyers in India, navigating substantial change in high transaction velocity business, building a culture of acute intellectual honesty, and going through the best and worst of doing business alongside of your best friends in high school. - For full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com - Join our listeners'community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community.

For the first episode of the Evolving for the Next Billion podcast, we have Vaibhav Gupta, co-founder of Udaan, India's top B2B eCommerce. The company connects manufacturers, wholesalers with retailers online, often referred to as India's fastest unicorn, having achieved over $1 billion valuations in a short period of 26months. Udaan is a GGV portfolio. Prior to starting Udaan, VG was the senior vice president in Business Finance and Analytics at Flipkart, one of the most successful e-commerce platforms out of India, sold to Walmart in a $16 billion deal last year. His other two co-founders for Udaan were the former president of operations and CTO at Flipkart. VG holds a bachelor's degree in Computer Science and Engineer from the Indian Institute of Technology and an MBA from the University of Virginia. Welcome to the show, VG. On the show, VG shared how his time at Flipkart, the eCommerce giant of India sold to Walmart in a 16-billion-dollar deal, helped him launching Udaan, why distribution is a much bigger business in India than retail, India's second generation of founders, and the most frequent item he buys online. - For full transcript of the show, go to nextbn.ggvc.com - Join our listeners'community, go to nextbn.ggvc.com/community.

GGV Fellows is accepting applicants for its 2020 cohort. The program, which is a week-long intensive learning experience in Beijing, provides a fast track for aspiring entrepreneurs who want to become part of China’s startup ecosystem. On top of hearing from some of the biggest names in China’s tech industry, fellows will be equipped with essential skill sets to survive and thrive in their entrepreneurial endeavor and get plugged into the supportive network GGV provides. The deadline for applications is Sept 30th. The program will be in Beijing from Jan.2nd to the 6th, 2020.  Note that the program will be conducted in Mandarin, so the applicants need to be fully proficient in the language.   Apply at http://ggvcommunity.mikecrm.com/cEkWZYw. Read on why we organized GGV Fellows here https://hans.vc/why-we-organized-ggv-fellows/  After 20 months and 42 episodes, we are taking a moment to reflect and celebrate on this podcast. You will hear from Hans and Zara on the behind the scene story of how this podcast was started, why an English podcast about tech in China and what people can expect for the next season. You will also hear from our listeners’ community asking Hans and Zara a wide spectrum of questions, from how to spot a good CEO to how to break into VC if you are a fresh undergraduate.  Special thanks to Kenny Chan, Jacky Shen, Jun Zhang, Huang Zexin, Jenny Niu, Jonas Wolf and Barbara dos Santos, who recorded their questions for us.  The new season of this podcast will be launched in late September. Stay tuned to hear from some of the most exciting founders from India, Indonesia, Singapore and more.

Today on the show we have Josh Luber, the co-founder of StockX. StockX is the world’s first online stock market for high-demand consumer goods, namely sneakers, handbags, streetwear, and watches. On the platform, buyers place bids, sellers place asks and when a bid and ask meet, the transaction happens automatically. The Detroit-based startup was launched in 2016 and has expanded to Europe by launching its first authentication center in London. StockX is a GGV portfolio.   Before launching StockX, Josh has built 3 other companies and worked at IBM as a strategy consultant for almost 5 years. He holds a dual degree in law and MBA from Emory University. None of this is as impressive as the fact that he started collecting sneakers from 10 years old and has more than 350 pairs of sneakers in his home.   On the show, Josh shared with us how his online price guide for sneakers became a stock market for things, why the obsession for streetwear and sneakers is a global phenomenon, his definition of global company being a collection of local companies, having celebrities like Eminem as investors and how he found StockX’s new CEO Scott Cutler, who used to be the CEO of StubHub, eBay’s online ticket exchange platform. We also asked about StockX’s plan for entering China and some pro tip for buying sneakers on StockX. 

In this episode, GGV Capital’s Hans Tung and Rita Yang interviewed Renee Wang (王小雨), the founder and CEO of CastBox, a global podcast platform often referred to as the "Netflix for podcasting". It uses natural language processing and machine learning to power unique features like personalized recommendations and in-audio search. According to a report from Sensor tower in April 2019, Castbox is now the biggest 3rd-party pure-play podcast app.   Before launching CastBox in 2016, Renee worked for Google in China, Japan, and Ireland. She holds a bachelor's degree in Peking University in psychology and mathematical statistics. While in college, she taught herself coding and became one of the earliest Android developers in China.    On the show, Renee discussed user acquisition in international markets with a cross-cultural team, integrating Chinese social app features into its global podcasting platform, the landscape of consumer-facing audio apps in China and her strategic decision for not entering the Chinese market. She also shared her journey of landing a job at Google without speaking a word of English, selling her apartment in Beijing to fund her startup and leading a diverse team spread across the US and China.   Join our listeners' community via WeChat/Slack at 996.ggvc.com/community.  The 996 Podcast is brought to you by GGV Capital, a global venture capital firm that invests in local founders. As a multi-stage, sector-focused firm, GGV focuses on seed-to-growth stage investments across Consumer/New Retail, Social/Digital & Internet, Enterprise/Cloud and Frontier Tech sectors. The firm was founded in 2000 and manages $6.2 billion in capital across 13 funds. Past and present portfolio companies include Affirm, Airbnb, Alibaba, Bitsight, ByteDance, Ctrip, Didi Chuxing, Grab, Gladly, Hello Chuxing, HashiCorp, Houzz, Keep, LingoChamp, Namely, Niu, Nozomi Networks, Opendoor, Peloton, Poshmark, Slack, Square, Wish, Xauto, Xiaohongshu, Yellow, YY, Zhaoyou and more. The firm has offices in Beijing, San Francisco, Shanghai and Silicon Valley. Learn more at ggvc.com, or “GGVCapital” on WeChat.

On this episode, we interviewed Brian Gu (顾宏地), the vice chairman and president of XPENG Motors, also known as Xiaopeng Motors, a Chinese electric vehicle company and a GGV portfolio company. The company designs and manufactures what it calls "Internet cars" which has AI technology integrated into the vehicles. Prior to joining XPENG Motors in March 2018, Brian was the Chairman of Asia Pacific Investment Banking at J.P. Morgan. He holds an MBA from Yale University, a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Washington Medical School and a bachelor's degree in Chemistry from the University of Oregon. At XPENG, Brian leads the company's global strategy, finance, fundraising, investments and international partnerships. Brian discussed his journey from an investment banker to a tech company executive, why China's EV market excites him, and how XPENG differentiates itself from its competitors. This episode also features a bonus interview with GGV Managing Partner, Jixun Foo, on why we invested in XPENG Motors. Join our listeners' community via WeChat/Slack at 996.ggvc.com/community. The 996 Podcast is brought to you by GGV Capital, a global venture capital firm that invests in local founders. As a multi-stage, sector-focused firm, GGV focuses on seed-to-growth stage investments across Consumer/New Retail, Social/Digital & Internet, Enterprise/Cloud and Frontier Tech sectors. The firm was founded in 2000 and manages $6.2 billion in capital across 13 funds. Past and present portfolio companies include Affirm, Airbnb, Alibaba, Bitsight, ByteDance, Ctrip, Didi Chuxing, Grab, Gladly, Hello Chuxing, HashiCorp, Houzz, Keep, LingoChamp, Namely, Niu, Nozomi Networks, Opendoor, Peloton, Poshmark, Slack, Square, Wish, Xauto, Xiaohongshu, Yellow, YY, Zhaoyou and more. The firm has offices in Beijing, San Francisco, Shanghai and Silicon Valley. Learn more at http://ggvc.com/, or "GGVCapital" on WeChat.

On a special "AMA" (Ask Me Anything) episode, GGV Managing Partner Hans Tung answers questions posed by our listeners on a wide range of topics. How did Hans break into the VC world? What made he move to China and then come back to Silicon Valley afterwards? How does he deal with failures as an investor? What does it take for non-Chinese entrepreneurs to succeed in China? What motivates him to wake up and work hard every day? Join our listeners' community via WeChat/Slack at 996.ggvc.com/community. The 996 Podcast is brought to you by GGV Capital, a global venture capital firm that invests in local founders. As a multi-stage, sector-focused firm, GGV focuses on seed-to-growth stage investments across Consumer/New Retail, Social/Digital & Internet, Enterprise/Cloud and Frontier Tech sectors. The firm was founded in 2000 and manages $6.2 billion in capital across 13 funds. Past and present portfolio companies include Affirm, Airbnb, Alibaba, Bitsight, ByteDance, Ctrip, Didi Chuxing, Grab, Gladly, Hello Chuxing, HashiCorp, Houzz, Keep, LingoChamp, Namely, Niu, Nozomi Networks, Opendoor, Peloton, Poshmark, Slack, Square, Wish, Xauto, Xiaohongshu, Yellow, YY, Zhaoyou and more. The firm has offices in Beijing, San Francisco, Shanghai and Silicon Valley. Learn more at ggvc.com, or "GGVCapital" on WeChat.

We interviewed Hao Wu, a Chinese American film director, producer and writer to discuss his recent work "People's Republic of Desire", a documentary about the live streaming industry in China. Originally trained as a molecular biologist, Hao worked in tech before becoming a full-time filmmaker. He held various management positions at technology companies including Excite@Home, Yahoo China and Alibaba. From 2008-2011, he was the China Country Manager for TripAdvisor. As his career progressed, so did his passion in more artistic and creative endeavors. In 2012 he decided to pursue documentary filmmaking full time. His latest work, which is the subject of this episode, is a documentary called "People's Republic of Desire", a journey into the live streaming industry in China, where Hao follows a few top streamers on YY to document their lives behind the screen. The film has won the Grand Jury Award at the 2018 South By South West, among many other awards, and has screened at over 40 film festivals worldwide. The New York Times calls the film "hypercharged," while The Los Angeles Times says it's "invariably surprising and never less than compelling." If you haven't watched the film, we highly recommend doing so. It is available on Vimeo, iTunes, Amazon and Google Play; just visit desire.film for the links. Hao has produced two other documentaries, The Road to Fame, and Nowhere to Call Home. Hao holds a bachelor's degree in biology from the University of Science and Technology of China, a master's degree in molecular and cell biology from Brandeis University, and an MBA from the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business. Join our listeners' community via WeChat/Slack at 996.ggvc.com/community. The 996 Podcast is brought to you by GGV Capital, a global venture capital firm that invests in local founders. As a multi-stage, sector-focused firm, GGV focuses on seed-to-growth stage investments across Consumer/New Retail, Social/Digital & Internet, Enterprise/Cloud and Frontier Tech sectors. The firm was founded in 2000 and manages $6.2 billion in capital across 13 funds. Past and present portfolio companies include Affirm, Airbnb, Alibaba, Bitsight, ByteDance, Ctrip, Didi Chuxing, Grab, Gladly, Hello Chuxing, HashiCorp, Houzz, Keep, LingoChamp, Namely, Niu, Nozomi Networks, Opendoor, Peloton, Poshmark, Slack, Square, Wish, Xauto, Xiaohongshu, Yellow, YY, Zhaoyou and more. The firm has offices in Beijing, San Francisco, Shanghai and Silicon Valley. Learn more at ggvc.com, or "GGVCapital" on WeChat.

GGV Capital’s Hans Tung and Zara Zhang interview Tao Peng (彭韬), the president of Airbnb China. Prior to joining Airbnb in Sept 2018, Tao has founded a number of companies in the travel space including Breadtrip, a social app for recording and sharing trips, and more recently, CityHome, a management platform for short-terms rentals across China. Before founding Breadtrip, Tao has worked at the network security provider IntelliGuard and has also worked for McKinsey for two years as a management consultant. Tao graduated from the University of Melbourne with Ph.D degree in computer networks and the Huazhong University of Science and Technology with a bachelor’s degree in communication engineering. He is also an avid traveler and has been to over 50 countries across seven continents. Earlier on the 996 Podcast, we have interviewed Nathan Blecharczyk, Airbnb’s co-founder and chief strategy officer as well as the chairman of Airbnb China. If you haven’t listened to that episode, we highly recommend checking it out; it was released around exactly a year ago on April 11th, 2018. Airbnb is a GGV portfolio company and our managing partners Hans Tung and Glenn Solomon actively works with the company especially with regards to its China strategy. Join our listeners' community via WeChat/Slack at 996.ggvc.com/community. The 996 Podcast is brought to you by GGV Capital, a global venture capital firm that invests in local founders. As a multi-stage, sector-focused firm, GGV focuses on seed-to-growth stage investments across Consumer/New Retail, Social/Digital & Internet, Enterprise/Cloud and Frontier Tech sectors. The firm was founded in 2000 and manages $6.2 billion in capital across 13 funds. Past and present portfolio companies include Affirm, Airbnb, Alibaba, Bitsight, ByteDance, Ctrip, Didi Chuxing, Grab, Gladly, Hello Chuxing, HashiCorp, Houzz, Keep, LingoChamp, Namely, Niu, Nozomi Networks, Opendoor, Peloton, Poshmark, Slack, Square, Wish, Xauto, Xiaohongshu, Yellow, YY, Zhaoyou and more. The firm has offices in Beijing, San Francisco, Shanghai and Silicon Valley. Learn more at ggvc.com, or “GGVCapital” on WeChat.

GGV Capital’s Hans Tung and Zara Zhang interview Jane Sun (孙洁), the CEO of Ctrip, the largest online travel platform in China which is listed on the NASDAQ. It’s current market cap (at time of recording) is around $23 billion. Jane has been at Ctrip for 13 years. Prior to becoming CEO in Nov 2016, Jane served as COO of Ctrip for four years and CFO for seven years. Before joining Ctrip, Jane worked at Applied Materials in the US as the head of SEC and External Reporting Division. Prior to that, she worked with KPMG as an audit manager in Silicon Valley for five years. Jane received her bachelor's degree from the business school of the University of Florida, and LLM degree from the Peking University Law School. Jane discussed her journey from studying abroad in the US to one of the one of the top female leaders in Chinese tech, her daily routine as the CEO of a New York-listed Chinese tech company, and her advice for young people with cross-cultural backgrounds. This episode also features a bonus interview with GGV managing partner Jixun Foo, who led the firm’s investment in the online travel search company Qunar, which merged with Ctrip in 2015. Join our listeners' community via WeChat/Slack at 996.ggvc.com/community. The 996 Podcast is brought to you by GGV Capital, a global venture capital firm that invests in local founders. As a multi-stage, sector-focused firm, GGV focuses on seed-to-growth stage investments across Consumer/New Retail, Social/Digital & Internet, Enterprise/Cloud and Frontier Tech sectors. The firm was founded in 2000 and manages $6.2 billion in capital across 13 funds. Past and present portfolio companies include Affirm, Airbnb, Alibaba, Bitsight, ByteDance, Ctrip, Didi Chuxing, Grab, Gladly, Hello Chuxing, HashiCorp, Houzz, Keep, LingoChamp, Namely, Niu, Nozomi Networks, Opendoor, Peloton, Poshmark, Slack, Square, Wish, Xauto, Xiaohongshu, Yellow, YY, Zhaoyou and more. The firm has offices in Beijing, San Francisco, Shanghai and Silicon Valley. Learn more at ggvc.com, or “GGVCapital” on WeChat.

GGV Capital’s Hans Tung and Zara Zhang interview two “GGV Fellows,” David Sun (a data scientist on Apple’s Siri team) and Bo Ning Han (a recent Harvard grad working on a startup in Beijing), on their life stories and their takeaways from the GGV Fellows program. What is the GGV Fellows program? Read this blog post to find out more: https://hans.vc/why-we-organized-ggv-fellows/ If you are interested in applying to future batches of GGV Fellows or our other events, please join our listeners' community via WeChat/Slack at 996.ggvc.com/community, where all related announcements will be posted. The 996 Podcast is brought to you by GGV Capital, a global venture capital firm that invests in local founders. As a multi-stage, sector-focused firm, GGV focuses on seed-to-growth stage investments across Consumer/New Retail, Social/Digital & Internet, Enterprise/Cloud and Frontier Tech sectors. The firm was founded in 2000 and manages $6.2 billion in capital across 13 funds. Past and present portfolio companies include Affirm, Airbnb, Alibaba, Bitsight, ByteDance, Ctrip, Didi Chuxing, Grab, Gladly, Hello Chuxing, HashiCorp, Houzz, Keep, LingoChamp, Namely, Niu, Nozomi Networks, Opendoor, Peloton, Poshmark, Slack, Square, Wish, Xauto, Xiaohongshu, Yellow, YY, Zhaoyou and more. The firm has offices in Beijing, San Francisco, Shanghai and Silicon Valley. Learn more at ggvc.com, or “GGVCapital” on WeChat.

GGV Capital’s Hans Tung and Zara Zhang discuss the opportunities and challenges faced by Chinese overseas returnees (“sea turtles”, or 海归) who are interested in working in China’s tech industry. These are people who were born and raised in China, completed their high education outside of China or have worked overseas, and then have returned to China for opportunities. There has been a growing number of sea turtles in recent year as China’s tech economy boomed and the US immigration policies became less friendly to foreign talent. We addressed questions including: What are the common pitfalls that sea turtle entrepreneurs run into? In an age where the premium of an overseas education is arguably declining in China, how can sea turtles make the most of their global experience? For aspiring sea turtle entrepreneurs, which verticals should they spend time on? If you're an aspiring or current Chinese overseas returnee, we have a special resource for you: we recently compiled a list of 10 Chinese books on tech & entrepreneurship in China that we recommend all sea turtles read before going back to China. These include books on China's tech giants Tencent, Alibaba, JD, and Meituan, books on practical aspects of running a startup in China such as growth and marketing, as well as books on general Chinese business history. To read the book list, please follow GGV's WeChat official account by searching "GGVCapital" in WeChat, and then message the word "sea turtle" to that account. We also have a lucky draw for you: If you comment on that article with your story of coming back to China as a sea turtle before April 10th, you can enter a lottery to win a bundle of these 10 books, which will be mailed to you. We look forward to hearing your story. And, here’s a list of news outlets and resources that can help you stay in touch with what's going on in tech in China: https://zarazhang.com/2018/03/25/how-to-keep-up-with-whats-happening-china/ Join our listeners' community via WeChat/Slack at 996.ggvc.com/community. The 996 Podcast is brought to you by GGV Capital, a global venture capital firm that invests in local founders. As a multi-stage, sector-focused firm, GGV focuses on seed-to-growth stage investments across Consumer/New Retail, Social/Digital & Internet, Enterprise/Cloud and Frontier Tech sectors. The firm was founded in 2000 and manages $6.2 billion in capital across 13 funds. Past and present portfolio companies include Affirm, Airbnb, Alibaba, Bitsight, ByteDance, Ctrip, Didi Chuxing, Grab, Gladly, Hello Chuxing, HashiCorp, Houzz, Keep, LingoChamp, Namely, Niu, Nozomi Networks, Opendoor, Peloton, Poshmark, Slack, Square, Wish, Xauto, Xiaohongshu, Yellow, YY, Zhaoyou and more. The firm has offices in Beijing, San Francisco, Shanghai and Silicon Valley. Learn more at ggvc.com, or “GGVCapital” on WeChat.

GGV Capital’s Hans Tung and Zara Zhang interview Wang Yu (王宇), the co-founder and CEO of Tantan (探探), China’s leading dating app. Tantan is social app that help young people in China connect with one another. It has a slide-left slide-right interface. Only when two users both slide right on each other can they start a conversation. The company was founded in 2014 and has helped users make over 10 billion matches to date. In 2018, Tantan was acquired by Momo (陌陌) for $735 million. Momo is a top location-based social networking platform in China that help people meet strangers around them. It is also one of the leading live streaming platforms in China. It is a public company on the NASDAQ and its current market cap is around $6.8 billion. Wang Yu was born in Beijing and grew up in Sweden. He holds two master’s degrees, one on computer science and one in industrial economics. In 2007, he moved back to China and started his first business P1, a fashion community, before founding Tantan in 2014. During this episode, Yu discussed how the failure of his first startup P1 proved crucial to the success of Tantan, why flawless execution is more important than flawless product in China, whether any social apps in China will be able to challenge WeChat, and the advantages and disadvantages of being an overseas Chinese returnee entrepreneur. Join our listeners' community via WeChat/Slack at 996.ggvc.com/community. The 996 Podcast is brought to you by GGV Capital, a global venture capital firm that invests in local founders. As a multi-stage, sector-focused firm, GGV focuses on seed-to-growth stage investments across Consumer/New Retail, Social/Digital & Internet, Enterprise/Cloud and Frontier Tech sectors. The firm was founded in 2000 and manages $6.2 billion in capital across 13 funds. Past and present portfolio companies include Affirm, Airbnb, Alibaba, Bitsight, ByteDance, Ctrip, Didi Chuxing, Grab, Gladly, Hello Chuxing, HashiCorp, Houzz, Keep, LingoChamp, Namely, Niu, Nozomi Networks, Opendoor, Peloton, Poshmark, Slack, Square, Wish, Xauto, Xiaohongshu, Yellow, YY, Zhaoyou and more. The firm has offices in Beijing, San Francisco, Shanghai and Silicon Valley. Learn more at ggvc.com, or “GGVCapital” on WeChat.

Join GGV 996’s anniversary party in San Francisco on Friday, March 8! The event will take the form of a Trivia Night on Chinese tech. Come test your knowledge of China's tech industry, compete to win prizes, and enjoy a great night with friends. RSVP at 996.ggvc.com/sf. Join our listeners' community via WeChat/Slack at 996.ggvc.com/community.   GGV Capital’s Hans Tung and Zara Zhang interview Simon Zhang, (张溪梦), the founder and CEO of GrowingIO, a data analytics startup in China that helps product managers and marketers analyze mobile apps and websites without adding manual tracking codes. GrowingIO now counts over 6000 companies as its customers, including the likes of Didi, Momo, Tujia, and others. Previously, Simon was senior director of business analytics at LinkedIn in its Silicon Valley headquarters, and before that, worked as a senior manager of site analytics at eBay. In 2015, he left a decade-long career in Silicon Valley to return to China and started his current startup, GrowingIO. But prior to all of this, Simon worked as a brain surgeon in China, and attended medical school in Tianjin. He also obtained an MBA from Baldwin-Wallace College in Ohio. Simon is also the author of the Chinese book 《首席增长官》 (“Chief Growth Officer”) and is a thought leader in the field of data-driven growth in China. Simon discussed how Chinese engineers in Silicon Valley can crack the “bamboo ceiling”, how Chinese-style growth differs from Silicon Valley-style growth, and why “raising too much money” could create challenges for a startup. The 996 Podcast is brought to you by GGV Capital, a global venture capital firm that invests in local founders. As a multi-stage, sector-focused firm, GGV focuses on seed-to-growth stage investments across Consumer/New Retail, Social/Digital & Internet, Enterprise/Cloud and Frontier Tech sectors. The firm was founded in 2000 and manages $6.2 billion in capital across 13 funds. Past and present portfolio companies include Affirm, Airbnb, Alibaba, Bitsight, ByteDance, Ctrip, Didi Chuxing, Grab, Gladly, Hello Chuxing, HashiCorp, Houzz, Keep, LingoChamp, Namely, Niu, Nozomi Networks, Opendoor, Peloton, Poshmark, Slack, Square, Wish, Xauto, Xiaohongshu, Yellow, YY, Zhaoyou and more. The firm has offices in Beijing, San Francisco, Shanghai and Silicon Valley. Learn more at ggvc.com, or “GGVCapital” on WeChat.

GGV Capital’s Hans Tung and Zara Zhang interview Doris Ke, a marketer and writer who has had an interesting career across the US and China. Doris grew up in China and went to the US for college, where she attended Bard College in New York. She started her career at Unilever where she worked on brand development, and then joined Michael Kors in New York where she was the social communications manager for APAC. In 2015, she left Michael Kors to become the head of marketing operations at Alipay US, based in Silicon Valley. In 2017, she returned to China to become the CMO of the Chinese startup YCloset (衣二三), which is often referred to as “the Chinese version of Rent the Runway”. She recently left YCloset to start her own marketing startup. Throughout all of this, she has also been running a WeChat official account with around 100K followers called “doriskeke”, where she blogs about the cultural differences between US and China. During this lively episode, Doris discussed the cultural differences between working at Chinese vs. American companies, lessons from her viral yet controversial marketing campaign at YCloset, what it is like to live in Beijing as a Shanghainese, and how she used the “growth mindset” to find her boyfriend (now husband).

This is a cross-over episode between 996 and Founder RealTalk, which is a biweekly podcast hosted by GGV managing partner Glenn Solomon.  Glenn and Zara interview Orion Zhao (赵欧伦), the co-founder and CEO of Moka, a fast-growing HR SaaS startup in China. Moka helps companies increase the efficiency of their hiring process by providing a CRM software solution. It currently has hundreds of customers in China, including the likes of Xiaomi, Sougou, Burger King, and Levi's. Moka has completed its Series A+ fundraising round and is a GGV portfolio company.   Orion is originally from China and graduated from Berkeley in 2013. He then spent close to two years working as a software engineer at Turo before returning to China in 2015 to start Moka with his co-founder Li Guoxing who is also a Chinese overseas returnee from Stanford.  Orion discussed the challenges he faced as a “sea turtle” (海归) entrepreneur, why his experience joining a business fraternity at Berkeley came in handy in China, how he manages employees who are older than him, and the status quo of China’s SaaS market. 

GGV Capital’s Hans Tung and Zara Zhang discuss the trend known as “Chuhai” (出海), or Chinese founders targeting emerging markets outside of China, such as Southeast Asia, India, Latin America, and more. As the mobile Internet market in China reaches saturation, an increasing number of Chinese entrepreneurs are now eyeing other developing markets where mobile Internet is just starting to take off; in fact, many of these countries are seeing their Internet sector dominated by Chinese companies. Factor Daily recently reported that 44 out of the 100 top apps in India (Google Play) are made by Chinese companies. What are the reasons behind the “Chuhai” wave? How can they best recruit local talents and bridge the cultural gaps? How can they avoid the same mistakes that the US Internet companies made when then came to China?

GGV Capital’s Hans Tung and Zara Zhang interview George Yan (严治庆), the founder and CEO of Clobotics, (扩博智能). Founded in 2016, Clobotics is a computer vision startup that seeks to make traditional industries more intelligent. It is headquartered in Shanghai and Seattle with offices in Beijing, Dalian, and Singapore. It currently serves two industries: traditional retail and wind energy. Clobotics owns over 40 patents and has raised $21 million in VC funding. GGV was an early investor in Clobotics in 2017, and our managing partner Jenny Lee is on the board. Prior to founding Clobotics, George spent 16 years at Microsoft in the US and in China. As the vice president and general manager of marketing and operations for Microsoft Greater China, he contributed to the double-digit growth for the region's $3 billion business. He was also responsible for the inception of Microsoft Cloud business in China, and led a massive team in landing Microsoft Azure and Office365 in China within less than 10 months, making Microsoft the first world-wide cloud service provider to land its service in mainland China. Before Microsoft, George worked at Goldman Sachs and McKinsey in the US. He holds a master's degree in financial engineering from Columbia. George discussed how to find the “right timing” to leave big tech companies to become entrepreneurs, the lessons he drew from helping Microsoft land in China, and what it’s like to run a startup that is global from Day One.

GGV Capital’s Hans Tung and Zara Zhang interview Yan Li and Token Hu, the cofounders of NIU, or 牛电科技 (a.k.a 小牛电动车) in Chinese. NIU designs and manufactures smart and high-performance electric scooters. It is currently the largest lithium-ion battery-powered e-scooters company in China and a leader in Europe in terms of sales volume in 2017. As of June 30, 2018, NIU had sold more than 430,000 smart e-scooters in China, Europe and other countries.  NIU's vision is to become the number one brand for urban mobility, powered by design and technology. Before NIU, smart electric two-wheeled vehicles did not exist in China, and two-wheeled vehicles were perceived low-end. The company has changed that perception with their smart e-scooters and premium brand. NIU just went public on the NASDAQ in mid-October. GGV led NIU's series A back in 2015 and has backed the company in every round since then, all the way through its IPO. Our managing partner Jenny Lee is on the board. We are very excited to have Yan and Token with us on this episode, almost fresh off the plane from New York. Yan and Token discussed how NIU became a lifestyle brand in China, the ups and downs during their amazing startup journey, and what it was like to take a Chinese company public on the NASDAQ.

GGV Capital’s Hans Tung, Jenny Lee, and Zara Zhang interview Tony Fadell, the inventor of the iPod, co-inventor of the iPhone, founder and former CEO of Nest, the company that pioneered the “Internet of Things,” and currently the Principal at Future Shape, an investment and advisory firm coaching deep tech startups. Tony was the SVP of Apple’s iPod Division and led the team that created the first 18 generations of the iPod and the first three generations of the iPhone. Throughout his career Tony has authored more than 300 patents. In May 2016, TIME named the Nest Learning Thermostat, the iPod and the iPhone as three of the “50 Most Influential Gadgets of All Time.” Tony has been a long-time friend of GGV and of our managing partner Jenny Lee, who we have as a guest host on the show today. Tony discusses why China might have a “last-mover advantage”, the qualities he look for in entrepreneurs, and how to discover the next game-changing technology.

GGV Capital’s Hans Tung and Zara Zhang interview Ashley Peng (彭琳琳), the founder and CEO of Xiaobu (小步), a mobile platform for young parents in China with kids aged 0-6 years old. By providing high-quality content and tools, Xiaobu helps their users navigate parenthood, which is a confusing period for many millennial parents. Xiaobu literally means "little steps" in Chinese. On Xiaobu, parents can take courses on parenting, enter a "parenting university", browse activities to do with their children, and post updates and photos to record their parenting journey. Xiaobu now has over 2 million users and growing fast. Before starting Xiaobu last year, Ashley worked as a consultant at BCG China for 8 years, and then spent 2 years at Miya (蜜芽宝贝), a leading e-commerce company for mom-and-baby goods in China, where she was the VP of strategy and business assistant to the CEO. She holds a bachelor's and master's degree from Tsinghua University in journalism and public policy and obtained her MBA from the Stanford GSB in 2011. Xiaobu is a GGV portfolio company. Ashley how she was inspired to start Xiaobu by her own journey as the mother of a young child, why millennial parents in China need a lot of help, and how she went about designing a product that’s highly engaging to users.

GGV Capital’s Hans Tung and Zara Zhang interview David Li (李学凌), the founder and CEO of YY, one of the first live streaming platforms in China. YY went public on the NASDAQ in 2012 and is now a multi-billion dollar company. YY also owns Huya, the leading game streaming platform in China which went public on the NYSE this May. David is also the co-founder and CEO of the Singapore-based BIGO, which is the leading live streaming platform in Southeast Asia. Before founding YY in 2005, David served as the editor in chief at NetEase. David received a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Renmin University of China in 1997. GGV is lucky to count YY as a portfolio company, and our managing partner Jenny Lee was on the board of YY for seven years. David discussed his evolution from a philosophy major to a journalist to an Internet entrepreneur, what it’s like to take a Chinese company public in 2012, and how YY came to spearhead innovative features of modern live-streaming products such as in-app tipping and virtual gifts. Join our listeners' community via WeChat/Slack at 996.ggvc.com/community. GGV Capital also produces a biweekly email newsletter in English, also called “996,” which has a roundup of the week’s most important happenings in tech in China. Subscribe at 996.ggvc.com. The 996 Podcast is brought to you by GGV Capital, a multi-stage venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley, Shanghai, and Beijing. We have been partnering with leading technology entrepreneurs for the past 18 years from seed to pre-IPO. With $6.2 billion in capital under management across 13 funds, GGV invests in globally minded entrepreneurs in consumer internet, e-commerce, frontier tech, and enterprise. GGV has invested in over 280 companies, with 30 companies valued at over $1 billion. Portfolio companies include Airbnb, Alibaba, Bytedance (Toutiao), Ctrip, Didi Chuxing, DOMO, Hashicorp, Hellobike, Houzz, Keep, Musical.ly, Slack, Square, Wish, Xiaohongshu, YY, and others. Find out more at ggvc.com.

GGV Capital’s Hans Tung and Zara Zhang discuss the firm’s recent investment in Yellow, a leading micro-mobility startup based in Brazil, which recently raised $63 million in Series A led by GGV Capital. Yellow launched Brazil’s first dockless bike-sharing service in Sao Paulo in August 2018. It has also begun piloting e-scooters and developing e-bikes to provide a comprehensive micro-mobility solution to users in Brazil and beyond. Additionally, Yellow offers digital payments through its Yellow Pay platform. We discuss how the investment thesis came together, and what it means for emerging market countries to have founders who aspire to play on a global scale. Hans discusses the characteristics in the team and the market for Yellow that made the investment so compelling. We also discuss the similarities between Latin America and Southeast Asia, and why startups across the world are starting to take inspiration not just from Silicon Valley, but also from China.

GGV Capital’s Hans Tung and Zara Zhang interview Toby Sun, the co-founder of Lime, a GGV portfolio company that's disrupting last-mile transportation in the US. A few months ago, we had Brad Bao, the other co-founder, on the show, back when the company was still called "LimeBike." At that time, Lime's operation was still pedal bikes only. A lot has changed since then. In a short span of a few months, LimeBike has expanded into 20 markets in four countries, changed its name to “Lime”, added other transportation modes including e-bikes and e-scooters to its services, and announced a $335 million funding round led by GV with participation from Uber, which will become Lime's strategic partner in the electric scooter space. Lime is currently working with Uber to co-brand its scooters and make them available in the Uber app. In the episode, we discussed why scooters have a future in the US, how Lime envisions its partnership with Uber, and whether Lime sees itself as a “super app” going forward. Join our listeners' community via WeChat/Slack at 996.ggvc.com/community. You can view the full transcript of this episode at 996.ggvc.com. The 996 Podcast is brought to you by GGV Capital, a multi-stage venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley, Shanghai, and Beijing. We have been partnering with leading technology entrepreneurs for the past 18 years from seed to pre-IPO. With $3.8 billion in capital under management across eight funds, GGV invests in globally minded entrepreneurs in consumer internet, e-commerce, frontier tech, and enterprise. GGV has invested in over 290 companies, with 46 companies valued at over $1 billion. Portfolio companies include Airbnb, Alibaba, Bytedance (Toutiao), Ctrip, Didi Chuxing, DOMO, Hashicorp, Hellobike, Houzz, Keep, Musical.ly, Slack, Square, Wish, Xiaohongshu, YY, and others. Find out more at ggvc.com. We also recommend checking out our sister podcast, Founder Real Talk. It is a biweekly show that discusses challenges that founders and executives face and how they grow by dealing with them. The show is hosted by Glenn Solomon, managing partner at GGV Capital.

GGV Capital’s Hans Tung and Zara Zhang interview Jixun Foo (符绩勋), who is a Managing Partner at GGV Capital based in China. Jixun joined GGV in 2006 and has more than 20 years of experience in venture capital investing. He focuses on travel and transportation, social media and commerce as well as enterprise services in China. Jixun has led GGV’s investments in Qunar (去哪儿), Grab, Didi (滴滴出行), Youku-Tudou (优酷土豆), UCWeb, Mogujie-Meilishuo (美丽联合集团), MediaV, Full-Truck Alliance (formerly Yunmanman) (满帮集团), Meicai (美菜), and currently serves on the boards of XPeng (小鹏汽车), Hellobike (哈罗单车), Tujia (途家), Xiangwushuo (享物说), Zuiyou (最右) and Kujiale (酷家乐). Jixun played a critical role in many key strategic mergers and acquisitions, such as those of Youku-Tudou, Baidu/Qunar, Ctrip/Qunar, and Mogujie/Meilishuo. Jixun has been recognized by Forbes China as one of the “Best Venture Capitalists” every year since 2006, and frequently appears on the Forbes Midas list. Before GGV, Jixun was a Director at Draper Fisher Jurvetson ePlanet Ventures, where he led the firm’s investment in Baidu. Prior to DFJ ePlanet, Jixun led the Investment Group under the Finance & Investment Division of the National Science & Technology Board of Singapore (NSTB) and has also worked in the R&D division of Hewlett Packard. Jixun is from Singapore and graduated from the National University of Singapore with a First-Class Honors degree in Engineering, as well as a Master’s in Management of Technology from the university’s Graduate School of Business. In this episode, Jixun discusses how he started his career in venture capital, the insider story behind the merger between Youku and Tudou (the largest merger in Chinese tech history at the time), why he invested in the bike-sharing company HelloBike (which overtook Mobike and Ofo to become the top player in the country), and what sectors excite him today. Join our listeners' community via WeChat/Slack at 996.ggvc.com/community. You can view the full transcript of this episode at 996.ggvc.com. We are excited to announce a new program, "GGV Fellows", designed to help "sea turtles" or (海归) and Chinese students studying overseas to get to know the Chinese entrepreneurial landscape better. If you're a Chinese student/professional who is studying/working overseas (or have done so in the past), this is a program designed for you! It's a weeklong program in Jan 2019 in Beijing (during most US college's winter break). You will be able to learn from executives at some of China's most valuable tech companies, and visit some of their offices. You will also participate in mixers with students at top Chinese universities like Tsinghua and Beida to build a local network. Please visit fellows.ggvc.com for the application link and for more information. The 996 Podcast is brought to you by GGV Capital, a multi-stage venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley, Shanghai, and Beijing. We have been partnering with leading technology entrepreneurs for the past 18 years from seed to pre-IPO. With $3.8 billion in capital under management across eight funds, GGV invests in globally minded entrepreneurs in consumer internet, e-commerce, frontier tech, and enterprise. GGV has invested in over 280 companies, with 30 companies valued at over $1 billion. Portfolio companies include Airbnb, Alibaba, Bytedance (Toutiao), Ctrip, Didi Chuxing, DOMO, Hashicorp, Hellobike, Houzz, Keep, Musical.ly, Slack, Square, Wish, Xiaohongshu, YY, and others. Find out more at ggvc.com.

GGV Capital’s Hans Tung and Zara Zhang interview Grant Horsfield (高天成), a South African serial entrepreneur who came to China in 2005 and founded naked Group, which includes the coworking space naked Hub (裸心社) and the luxury resort brand naked Retreat (裸心谷). In 2007, Grant and his wife, Delphine Yip-Horsfield, opened the first naked resort – naked Home – in Moganshan (莫干山), a beautiful mountain 30-minute drive from Hangzhou. Following its success, Grant continued to expand the naked resort business into other high-end, eco-friendly resorts which prioritize sustainability development In 2016, Grant and Delphine launched the coworking space naked Hub, which seeks to combine hospitality, design, technology, and community. Naked Hub offers several services, include open office, private office, and hot desks. It now has 10,000 members across 24 office locations both in Shanghai and Beijing. It has expanded into Australia, Hong Kong, and Vietnam. In April 2018, Naked Hub and WeWork announced that they would join forces to support business in China and throughout Asia. In this episode, Grant explained why he moved to China from rural South Africa, how he earned the trust of local Chinese farmers in Moganshan, and what differentiates naked Hub from other coworking spaces. The full transcript of this episode is available at 996.ggvc.com. Join our listeners' community via WeChat/Slack at 996.ggvc.com/community. GGV Capital also produces a biweekly email newsletter in English, also called “996,” which has a roundup of the week’s most important happenings in tech in China. Subscribe at 996.ggvc.com. We are excited to announce a new program, "GGV Fellows", designed to help "sea turtles" or (海归) and Chinese students studying overseas to get to know the Chinese entrepreneurial landscape better. If you're a Chinese student/professional who is studying/working overseas (or have done so in the past), this is a program designed for you! It's a weeklong program in Jan 2019 in Beijing (during most US college's winter break). You will be able to learn from executives at some of China's most valuable tech companies, and visit some of their offices. You will also participate in mixers with students at top Chinese universities like Tsinghua and Beida to build a local network. Please visit fellows.ggvc.com for the application link and for more information. GGV Capital is a multi-stage venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley, Shanghai, and Beijing. We have been partnering with leading technology entrepreneurs for the last 18 years from seed to pre-IPO. With $3.8 billion in capital under management across eight funds, GGV invests in globally minded entrepreneurs in Consumer/New Retail, Social/Internet, Enterprise/Cloud and Frontier Tech. GGV has invested in over 290 companies with more than 45 companies valued at more than $1 billion. Portfolio companies include Airbnb, Alibaba, Ctrip, Didi, Grab, Hellobike, HashiCorp, Houzz, Keep, Opendoor, Peloton, Slack, Square, ByteDance (Toutiao), Wish, Xiaomi, Xiaohongshu, and YY. Find out more at ggvc.com. 

GGV Capital's Hans Tung and Zara Zhang interviewed Zilin Chen, founder and CEO of BingoBox, China's first scalable 24-hour cashier-free convenience store and a GGV portfolio company. BingoBox features a smart counter for a staffless check-out experience, and uses RFID and computer vision to keep track of items. Users scan a QR code to enter the store, and pay via Alipay or WeChat Pay. BingoBox is a pioneer in a phenomenon known as "new retail" in China, commonly understood as using technology to transform offline retail. BingoBox was launched to public in August 2016 and now has over 300 boxes in almost 30 cities in China. GGV led BingoBox's series A investment in July 2017. The company raised another $80 million in series B this January, which GGV also participated in. Zilin discussed how the idea for BingoBox came about, how BingoBox differs from Amazon Go, and the technology and unit economics behind the stores. The episode also features a bonus interview with Eric Xu, GGV Capital's managing partner based in China, who led our investment in BingoBox. Eric discussed the meaning of "new retail" and what made him want to invest in BingoBox. The full transcript of this episode is available at 996.ggvc.com/2018/08/15/episode-18-zilin-chen-of-bingobox-on-the-future-of-new-retail-in-china/. Join our listeners' community via WeChat/Slack at 996.ggvc.com/community. GGV Capital also produces a biweekly email newsletter in English, also called “996,” which has a roundup of the week’s most important happenings in tech in China. Subscribe at 996.ggvc.com. The 996 Podcast is brought to you by GGV Capital, a multi-stage venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley, Shanghai, and Beijing. We have been partnering with leading technology entrepreneurs for the past 18 years from seed to pre-IPO. With $3.8 billion in capital under management across eight funds, GGV invests in globally minded entrepreneurs in consumer internet, e-commerce, frontier tech, and enterprise. GGV has invested in over 290 companies, with more than 45 companies valued at over $1 billion. Portfolio companies include Airbnb, Alibaba, Bytedance (Toutiao), Ctrip, Didi Chuxing, DOMO, Hashicorp, Hellobike, Houzz, Keep, Musical.ly, Slack, Square, Wish, Xiaohongshu, YY, and others. Find out more at ggvc.com. Listen to past episodes of our sister podcast, Founder Real Talk. It is a biweekly show that discusses challenges that founders and executives face and how they grow by dealing with them. The show is hosted by Glenn Solomon, managing partner at GGV Capital.

GGV Capital’s Hans Tung and Zara Zhang have a conversation about Xiaomi’s IPO, which took place in Hong Kong on July 9. Hans is one of the early investors in Xiaomi and a former company board member of the company. Hans recounts the original pitch that Xiaomi’s founder Lei Jun gave him back in 2010, and what made him want to invest in a seemingly “crazy” idea. We also touched on frequently-asked questions like: Why can Xiaomi be thought of as an “Internet company” instead of a hardware company? Why should people stop comparing Xiaomi to Apple? Was Xiaomi’s IPO valuation justified? What does the “Xiaomi ecosystem” mean? Join our listeners' community via WeChat/Slack at 996.ggvc.com/community. GGV Capital also produces a biweekly email newsletter in English, also called “996,” which has a roundup of the week’s most important happenings in tech in China. Subscribe at 996.ggvc.com. We also recommend checking out GGV Capital’s sister podcast, Founder Real Talk. It is a biweekly show that discusses challenges that founders and executives face and how they grow by dealing with them. The show is hosted by Glenn Solomon, managing partner at GGV Capital. The 996 Podcast is brought to you by GGV Capital, a multi-stage venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley, Shanghai, and Beijing. We have been partnering with leading technology entrepreneurs for the past 18 years from seed to pre-IPO. With $3.8 billion in capital under management across eight funds, GGV invests in globally minded entrepreneurs in consumer internet, e-commerce, frontier tech, and enterprise. GGV has invested in over 280 companies, with 30 companies valued at over $1 billion. Portfolio companies include Airbnb, Alibaba, Bytedance (Toutiao), Ctrip, Didi Chuxing, DOMO, Hashicorp, Hellobike, Houzz, Keep, Musical.ly, Slack, Square, Wish, Xiaohongshu, YY, and others. Find out more at ggvc.com.  

GGV Capital’s Hans Tung and Zara Zhang interview serial entrepreneur Justin Kan. In 2007, he co-founded Justin.TV, a website that allowed anyone to broadcast video online. In 2011, Justin.tv spinned off its gaming division as Twitch, which went on to become the leading live streaming platform for video games in the US. Twitch was acquired by Amazon in 2014 for almost a billion dollars. More recently, Justin co-founded Atrium LTS—the “LTS” stands for “Legal Technology Services” - a startup that’s building technology to revolutionize the legal industry. GGV is an investor in Atrium. Justin is a true startup veteran—in addition to starting multiple companies of his own, he has worked with hundreds of startups as a partner at Y Combinator, and has also personally angel invested in over 65 companies. Justin grew up in Seattle as a second-generation Chinese American, and graduated from Yale in 2005 with degrees in physics and philosophy. In this episode, Justin recounted the story of how he started to live streaming his life before streaming became cool, the pitfalls he has gone through during his startup journey, whether it was the right decision to sell Twitch to Amazon in 2014, and what gets him excited about his new venture Atrium. Join our listeners' community via WeChat/Slack at 996.ggvc.com/community. GGV Capital also produces a biweekly email newsletter in English, also called “996,” which has a roundup of the week’s most important happenings in tech in China. Subscribe at 996.ggvc.com. The 996 Podcast is brought to you by GGV Capital, a multi-stage venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley, Shanghai, and Beijing. We have been partnering with leading technology entrepreneurs for the past 18 years from seed to pre-IPO. With $3.8 billion in capital under management across eight funds, GGV invests in globally minded entrepreneurs in consumer internet, e-commerce, frontier tech, and enterprise. GGV has invested in over 280 companies, with 30 companies valued at over $1 billion. Portfolio companies include Airbnb, Alibaba, Bytedance (Toutiao), Ctrip, Didi Chuxing, DOMO, Hashicorp, Hellobike, Houzz, Keep, Musical.ly, Slack, Square, Wish, Xiaohongshu, YY, and others. Find out more at ggvc.com. Tweets: "I always thought that 'management' was a dirty word. But we could have been much more effective if we had implemented actual management in the early days." - @JustinKan of @Twitch on the 996 Podcast with @hanstung & @zarazhangrui https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/996-podcast-with-ggv-capital/id1336107529?mt=2 "I think we [the US] take immigration of skilled labor for granted. We should be trying to get every single engineer from around the world to live here, to stay here." - @JustinKan of @Twitch on the 996 Podcast with @hanstung & @zarazhangrui https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/996-podcast-with-ggv-capital/id1336107529?mt=2 @GGVCapital   "The most common mistake I see in founders is that they are not focused enough." - @JustinKan of @Twitch on the 996 Podcast with @hanstung & @zarazhangrui https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/996-podcast-with-ggv-capital/id1336107529?mt=2 @GGVCapital

GGV Capital’s Hans Tung and Zara Zhang interview Eric Yuan, founder and CEO of Zoom, the leading video conferencing solution for enterprise. Zoom is used by a third of Fortune 500 companies and 90% of the top 200 universities in the US. Eric was recently named the Top CEO on Glassdoor, with an approval rating of 99%, and was the first person of color to win the award. Eric grew up and went to college in China, arrived in Silicon Valley in 1997 and joined WebEx when it was still a small company. In 2007 WebEx was acquired by Cisco and Eric became Cisco’s Corporate VP of engineering in charge of collaboration software. Eric spent 14 years in total at WebEx and grew its engineering team from 10 to 800, and increased its revenue from zero to over $800 million. Eric holds 11 patents, plus 20 pending patents in the pipeline. In this episode, Eric shared his story of being rejected a US visa for 8 times while in China, how to overcome the “bamboo ceiling” as a Chinese engineer in Silicon Valley, and what makes Zoom different from its competitors. Join our listeners' community via WeChat/Slack at 996.ggvc.com/community. GGV Capital also produces a biweekly email newsletter in English, also called “996,” which has a roundup of the week’s most important happenings in tech in China. Subscribe at 996.ggvc.com. The 996 Podcast is brought to you by GGV Capital, a multi-stage venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley, Shanghai, and Beijing. We have been partnering with leading technology entrepreneurs for the past 18 years from seed to pre-IPO. With $3.8 billion in capital under management across eight funds, GGV invests in globally minded entrepreneurs in consumer internet, e-commerce, frontier tech, and enterprise. GGV has invested in over 280 companies, with 30 companies valued at over $1 billion. Portfolio companies include Airbnb, Alibaba, Bytedance (Toutiao), Ctrip, Didi Chuxing, DOMO, Hashicorp, Hellobike, Houzz, Keep, Musical.ly, Slack, Square, Wish, Xiaohongshu, YY, and others. Find out more at ggvc.com.

Hans Tung and Zara Zhang interview Jenny Lee, a managing partner at GGV Capital based in Shanghai. Jenny joined GGV in 2005 and was instrumental in setting up GGV’s presence in China. Forbes recently ranked Jenny as the world’s 16th most powerful woman in tech. A self-professed geek who loves new technologies and products, Jenny has been involved with consumer internet, SaaS, and frontier technology companies at GGV, and has helped many go public. Since 2011, Jenny has been recognized by the Forbes Global 100 VC Midas List of top venture capitalists, ranking as the #1 woman and #10 overall in 2015. Jenny grew up in Singapore and was educated in the U.S., where she attended Cornell and Northwestern University. In this episode, we discussed how Jenny rose from a newcomer to one of the most respected VCs in China, how she set up the China presence of a U.S. venture capital firm, how venture deals are done in China, and how U.S. companies can better align themselves with Chinese government’s interests. Join our listeners' community via WeChat/Slack at 996.ggvc.com/community. GGV Capital also produces a biweekly email newsletter in English, also called "996," which has a roundup of the week's most important happenings in tech in China. Subscribe at 996.ggvc.com. The 996 Podcast is brought to you by GGV Capital, a multi-stage venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley, Shanghai, and Beijing. We have been partnering with leading technology entrepreneurs for the past 18 years from seed to pre-IPO. With $3.8 billion in capital under management across eight funds, GGV invests in globally minded entrepreneurs in consumer internet, e-commerce, frontier tech, and enterprise. GGV has invested in over 280 companies, with 30 companies valued at over $1 billion. Portfolio companies include Airbnb, Alibaba, Bytedance (Toutiao), Ctrip, Didi Chuxing, DOMO, Hashicorp, Hellobike, Houzz, Keep, Musical.ly, Slack, Square, Wish, Xiaohongshu, YY, and others. Find out more at ggvc.com.

In the first joint live session of GGV Capital’s 996 Podcast and the Sinica Podcast, we interviewed Yasheng Huang, a renowned economist and professor of global economics and management at the MIT Sloan School of Management. GGV Capital’s Hans Tung and Zara Zhang were joined by Kaiser Kuo, host of the Sinica Podcast and producer of the 996 Podcast. Huang founded and runs the China Lab and the India Lab, which aim to help entrepreneurs in those countries improve their management skills. He is an expert source on international business, political economy, and international management. In collaboration with other scholars, Huang conducts research on human capital formation in China and India, entrepreneurship, and ethnic and labor-intensive foreign direct investment. In this episode, we discussed the recent trade tensions between the U.S. and China, how geopolitical factors are affecting the global tech industry, and how China’s growth story compares with that of India and other developing countries. Join our listeners' community via WeChat/Slack at 996.ggvc.com/community. GGV Capital also produces a biweekly email newsletter in English, also called "996," which has a roundup of the week's most important happenings in tech in China. Subscribe at 996.ggvc.com. The 996 Podcast is brought to you by GGV Capital, a multi-stage venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley, Shanghai, and Beijing. We have been partnering with leading technology entrepreneurs for the past 18 years from seed to pre-IPO. With $3.8 billion in capital under management across eight funds, GGV invests in globally minded entrepreneurs in consumer internet, e-commerce, frontier tech, and enterprise. GGV has invested in over 280 companies, with 30 companies valued at over $1 billion. Portfolio companies include Airbnb, Alibaba, Bytedance (Toutiao), Ctrip, Didi Chuxing, DOMO, Hashicorp, Hellobike, Houzz, Keep, Musical.ly, Slack, Square, Wish, Xiaohongshu, YY, and others. Find out more at ggvc.com.

GGV Capital’s Hans Tung and Zara Zhang interview Yinglian Xie and Fang Yu, the co-founders of DataVisor, a fast-growing startup in Silicon Valley that provides big data security analytics for consumer-facing websites and apps. Its customers include some of the largest companies in the world, such as Alibaba, Dianping, Pinterest, Yelp, and Bytedance (a.k.a. Toutiao), among others. Both Yinglian and Fang have decades of experience in internet security, specifically on fighting large-scale attacks to online services, such as fraudulent online payments, spamming, user hijacking, search-result poisoning, etc. They were both senior researchers at Microsoft for many years before starting DataVisor in 2013, and have filed over 20 patents. Yinglian received her Ph.D. in computer science from CMU and a Bachelor’s degree from Peking University. Fang holds a Ph.D. in computer science from Berkeley and a Bachelor’s degree from Fudan University. Join our listeners' community via WeChat/Slack at 996.ggvc.com/community. GGV Capital also produces a biweekly email newsletter in English, also called "996," which has a roundup of the week's most important happenings in tech in China. Subscribe at 996.ggvc.com. The 996 Podcast is brought to you by GGV Capital, a multi-stage venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley, Shanghai, and Beijing. We have been partnering with leading technology entrepreneurs for the past 18 years from seed to pre-IPO. With $3.8 billion in capital under management across eight funds, GGV invests in globally minded entrepreneurs in consumer internet, e-commerce, frontier tech, and enterprise. GGV has invested in over 280 companies, with 30 companies valued at over $1 billion. Portfolio companies include Airbnb, Alibaba, Bytedance (Toutiao), Ctrip, Didi Chuxing, DOMO, Hashicorp, Hellobike, Houzz, Keep, Musical.ly, Slack, Square, Wish, Xiaohongshu, YY, and others. Find out more at ggvc.com.

GGV Capital’s Hans Tung and Zara Zhang interview Bertrand Schmitt, the CEO and co-founder of App Annie, the leading global provider of app market data. Bertrand started App Annie in Beijing in 2011 and has since then grown it into a truly global company, with 450 employees across 13 countries today. App Annie is now used by industry leaders all over the world. Customers include Google, Snapchat, and the New York Times as well as Chinese companies like Tencent, Bytedance, and Xiaomi. In this episode, we discuss why Bertrand, a native of France, chose to move to China despite the language and cultural barriers, how a non-Chinese entrepreneur can become successful in China, and why having a multicultural DNA can be the best asset for startup teams today. Join our listeners' community via WeChat/Slack at 996.ggvc.com/community. GGV Capital also produces a biweekly email newsletter in English, also called "996," which has a roundup of the week's most important happenings in tech in China. Subscribe at 996.ggvc.com. The 996 Podcast is brought to you by GGV Capital, a multi-stage venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley, Shanghai, and Beijing. We have been partnering with leading technology entrepreneurs for the past 18 years from seed to pre-IPO. With $3.8 billion in capital under management across eight funds, GGV invests in globally minded entrepreneurs in consumer internet, e-commerce, frontier tech, and enterprise. GGV has invested in over 280 companies, with 30 companies valued at over $1 billion. Portfolio companies include Airbnb, Alibaba, Bytedance (Toutiao), Ctrip, Didi Chuxing, DOMO, Hashicorp, Hellobike, Houzz, Keep, Musical.ly, Slack, Square, Wish, Xiaohongshu, YY, and others. Find out more at ggvc.com.

On the first live show of the 996 Podcast, GGV Capital’s Hans Tung and Zara Zhang interviewed Nathan Blecharczyk, the co-founder and chief strategy officer of Airbnb, and the chairman of Airbnb China. In front of 150 audience members gathered at Airbnb’s San Francisco headquarters, Nathan discussed Airbnb’s China strategy, how it has evolved over the years, and what lessons he has learned through working with China. He also explained how to build relationships in China, how the company thinks about local competitors, and why Chinese authorities might actually be more open-minded than those elsewhere. GGV Capital is an investor in Airbnb, and managing partner Hans Tung and Glenn Solomon have been advising the company’s China strategy. Join our listeners' community via WeChat/Slack at 996.ggvc.com/community. GGV Capital also produces a biweekly email newsletter in English, also called "996," which has a roundup of the week's most important happenings in tech in China. Subscribe at 996.ggvc.com. The 996 Podcast is brought to you by GGV Capital, a multi-stage venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley, Shanghai, and Beijing. We have been partnering with leading technology entrepreneurs for the past 18 years from seed to pre-IPO. With $3.8 billion in capital under management across eight funds, GGV invests in globally minded entrepreneurs in consumer internet, e-commerce, frontier tech, and enterprise. GGV has invested in over 280 companies, with 30 companies valued at over $1 billion. Portfolio companies include Airbnb, Alibaba, Bytedance (Toutiao), Ctrip, Didi Chuxing, DOMO, Hashicorp, Hellobike, Houzz, Keep, Musical.ly, Slack, Square, Wish, Xiaohongshu, YY, and others. Find out more at ggvc.com.

GGV Capital’s Hans Tung and Zara Zhang interview Brad Bao, the co-founder and chairman of LimeBike, a fast-growing dockless bike-sharing company in the U.S. based in San Mateo, California. Founded in January 2017, LimeBike is currently in more than 50 different markets in the U.S., and has helped users with more than 2 million trips since it launched. Before founding LimeBike, Brad was an investor at Fosun Kinzon Capital, and previously helped launch and build up Tencent’s U.S. operations as Tencent’s first employee outside of China. LimeBike is an example of a phenomenon known as “copy from China” — importing innovative business models from China into the U.S. In this episode, we discuss Brad’s “pivot” from an investor searching for a bike-sharing deal to the founder of a bike-sharing company, why bike sharing can work in the U.S., and why being cross-border is a crucial advantage in this space. Join our listeners' community via WeChat/Slack at 996.ggvc.com/community. GGV Capital also produces a biweekly email newsletter in English, also called "996," which has a roundup of the week's most important happenings in tech in China. Subscribe at 996.ggvc.com. The 996 Podcast is brought to you by GGV Capital, a multi-stage venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley, Shanghai, and Beijing. We have been partnering with leading technology entrepreneurs for the past 18 years from seed to pre-IPO. With $3.8 billion in capital under management across eight funds, GGV invests in globally minded entrepreneurs in consumer internet, e-commerce, frontier tech, and enterprise. GGV has invested in over 280 companies, with 30 companies valued at over $1 billion. Portfolio companies include Airbnb, Alibaba, Bytedance (Toutiao), Ctrip, Didi Chuxing, DOMO, Hashicorp, Hellobike, Houzz, Keep, Musical.ly, Slack, Square, Wish, Xiaohongshu, YY, and others. Find out more at ggvc.com.

Miranda Qu is the co-founder of Xiaohongshu (“Little Red Book” in Chinese), the world’s largest lifestyle platform that integrates community and content with ecommerce. Over 75 million users spend a total of over 100 million yuan per month on the app to buy fashion, cosmetics, and lifestyle products from both overseas and domestic brands. Xiaohongshu is a pioneer in integrating content, commerce, and community — the “3 Cs” that GGV managing partner Hans Tung thinks today’s ecommerce platforms must possess in order to stand out in “the age of Alibaba and Amazon.” Miranda graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University with a degree in journalism, and left her job in 2013 to start Xiaohongshu. In this episode, Miranda discusses how she met her cofounder, Charlwin Mao, in a shopping mall in Boston; Xiaohongshu’s journey from a “Lonely Planet for overseas shopping” to one of China’s most popular ecommerce platforms; and why young Chinese consumers increasingly prefer domestic brands over foreign ones. Join our listeners' community via WeChat/Slack at 996.ggvc.com/community. GGV Capital also produces a biweekly email newsletter in English, also called "996," which has a roundup of the week's most important happenings in tech in China. Subscribe at 996.ggvc.com. The 996 Podcast is brought to you by GGV Capital, a multi-stage venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley, Shanghai, and Beijing. We have been partnering with leading technology entrepreneurs for the past 18 years from seed to pre-IPO. With $3.8 billion in capital under management across eight funds, GGV invests in globally minded entrepreneurs in consumer internet, e-commerce, frontier tech, and enterprise. GGV has invested in over 280 companies, with 30 companies valued at over $1 billion. Portfolio companies include Airbnb, Alibaba, Bytedance (Toutiao), Ctrip, Didi Chuxing, DOMO, Hashicorp, Hellobike, Houzz, Keep, Musical.ly, Slack, Square, Wish, Xiaohongshu, YY, and others. Find out more at ggvc.com.

Yi Wang is the founder and CEO of Liulishuo (a.k.a. LingoChamp), China’s leading mobile learning platform for spoken English, with over 70 million users. It uses speech recognition technology to enhance the learning experience and provide learners with measurable and proven results. Within a few months of launching, Liulishuo rose to the top of the Apple app store in China, and was recently ranked by CB Insights as one of the 100 most promising artificial intelligence startups in the world in 2018. Yi is a “sea turtle” (海归, overseas returnee) who returned to China after studying and working in the U.S. He received his Ph.D. in computer science from Princeton University in 2009 and his M.S.E. and B.E. in electronic engineering from Tsinghua University. Before founding Liulishuo in 2012, Yi was a product manager at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California, from 2009 to 2011. Yi has also worked as a product director at AdChina, responsible for its performance ads platform. In this episode, we discuss questions such as: Why did Yi choose to leave his comfortable job in Silicon Valley to start a new venture in China? What challenges must “sea turtles” overcome to successfully start a company in China? What makes Liulishuo so engaging to its millions of users? Will AI ever replace human teachers? Join our listeners' community via WeChat/Slack at 996.ggvc.com/community. GGV Capital also produces a biweekly email newsletter in English, also called "996," which has a roundup of the week's most important happenings in tech in China. Subscribe at 996.ggvc.com. The 996 Podcast is brought to you by GGV Capital, a multi-stage venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley, Shanghai, and Beijing. We have been partnering with leading technology entrepreneurs for the past 18 years from seed to pre-IPO. With $3.8 billion in capital under management across eight funds, GGV invests in globally minded entrepreneurs in consumer internet, e-commerce, frontier tech, and enterprise. GGV has invested in over 280 companies, with 30 companies valued at over $1 billion. Portfolio companies include Airbnb, Alibaba, Bytedance (Toutiao), Ctrip, Didi Chuxing, DOMO, Hashicorp, Hellobike, Houzz, Keep, Musical.ly, Slack, Square, Wish, Xiaohongshu, YY, and others. Find out more at ggvc.com.

Lin Bin, the co-founder, president, and head of mobile for Xiaomi, reveals the secret sauce of one of the most valuable private companies in the world, which is reportedly going public later this year. Xiaomi had an unprecedented “comeback year” in 2017. In January 2018, Xiaomi was the third-largest smartphone seller in the world by shipment, the No. 1 smartphone seller in India, and one of the top five sellers in 12 other countries. Lin Bin, an engineer by training, recounts the founding story of Xiaomi, the uniqueness of the “Xiaomi ecosystem,” the phenomenon called “Mi Fans,” how he learned to fall in love with offline retail, and his takeaways from Xiaomi’s meteoric rise in 2017 following a sluggish 2016. Prior to Xiaomi, Bin worked at Microsoft for 11 years and Google for 4 years. He served as the engineering director of Microsoft Research Asia, the vice president of the Google China Institute of Engineering, and the engineering director of Google Global. Hans Tung, one of the earliest investors and a former board member of Xiaomi, discusses how he first met the team and why he believed in a company whose success was considered “almost impossible.” Join our listeners' community via WeChat/Slack at 996.ggvc.com/community. GGV Capital also produces a biweekly email newsletter in English, also called "996," which has a roundup of the week's most important happenings in tech in China. Subscribe at 996.ggvc.com. The 996 Podcast is brought to you by GGV Capital, a multi-stage venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley, Shanghai, and Beijing. We have been partnering with leading technology entrepreneurs for the past 18 years from seed to pre-IPO. With $3.8 billion in capital under management across eight funds, GGV invests in globally minded entrepreneurs in consumer internet, e-commerce, frontier tech, and enterprise. GGV has invested in over 280 companies, with 30 companies valued at over $1 billion. Portfolio companies include Airbnb, Alibaba, Bytedance (Toutiao), Ctrip, Didi Chuxing, DOMO, Hashicorp, Hellobike, Houzz, Keep, Musical.ly, Slack, Square, Wish, Xiaohongshu, YY, and others. Find out more at ggvc.com.

GGV Capital’s Hans Tung and Zara Zhang interview Tao Zhang, the founder of Dianping, a lifestyle services company that is often known as “the Yelp of China” but is much more than that. In 2015, Dianping merged with the group buying giant Meituan. The new company, Meituan-Dianping, is now worth $30 billion and is the fourth most valuable startup in the world. Why did Tao want to put restaurant reviews online, before Yelp was even started? How did Tao survive the “thousand-Groupon war” that seized China’s internet scene in the early 2010s? How do you approach a merger between two multi-billion dollar companies? How should startups in China think about strategic investments from giants like Tencent and Alibaba? Join our listeners' community via WeChat/Slack at 996.ggvc.com/community. GGV Capital also produces a biweekly email newsletter in English, also called "996," which has a roundup of the week's most important happenings in tech in China. Subscribe at 996.ggvc.com. The 996 Podcast is brought to you by GGV Capital, a multi-stage venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley, Shanghai, and Beijing. We have been partnering with leading technology entrepreneurs for the past 18 years from seed to pre-IPO. With $3.8 billion in capital under management across eight funds, GGV invests in globally minded entrepreneurs in consumer internet, e-commerce, frontier tech, and enterprise. GGV has invested in over 280 companies, with 30 companies valued at over $1 billion. Portfolio companies include Airbnb, Alibaba, Bytedance (Toutiao), Ctrip, Didi Chuxing, DOMO, Hashicorp, Hellobike, Houzz, Keep, Musical.ly, Slack, Square, Wish, Xiaohongshu, YY, and others. Find out more at ggvc.com.

GGV Capital’s Hans Tung and Zara Zhang interview Liu Zhen, the senior vice president of Bytedance (Toutiao), one of the fastest-growing Chinese tech startups that has made a lot of headlines. You may know Bytedance through its flagship product, Jinri Toutiao (今日头条), a content discovery and recommendation mobile app platform that uses artificial intelligence to recommend content to its users. What you may be less familiar with is that Bytedance also owns some of the most popular short video apps in China, and has demonstrated its global vision with its recent merger with Musical.ly, a top-ranking short video app in many countries with hundreds of millions of users, and a GGV portfolio company. Prior to Bytedance, Liu Zhen led Uber’s China team before it was acquired by Didi Chuxing (a GGV portfolio company) in 2016.   With a background that includes being a lawyer in Silicon Valley, helping Uber scale in China, and spearheading Bytedance’s global expansion, Zhen has had unique experiences that inform her views on the tech ecosystem in China and the U.S. Join our listeners' community via WeChat/Slack at 996.ggvc.com/community. GGV Capital also produces a biweekly email newsletter in English, also called "996," which has a roundup of the week's most important happenings in tech in China. Subscribe at 996.ggvc.com. The 996 Podcast is brought to you by GGV Capital, a multi-stage venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley, Shanghai, and Beijing. We have been partnering with leading technology entrepreneurs for the past 18 years from seed to pre-IPO. With $3.8 billion in capital under management across eight funds, GGV invests in globally minded entrepreneurs in consumer internet, e-commerce, frontier tech, and enterprise. GGV has invested in over 280 companies, with 30 companies valued at over $1 billion. Portfolio companies include Airbnb, Alibaba, Bytedance (Toutiao), Ctrip, Didi Chuxing, DOMO, Hashicorp, Hellobike, Houzz, Keep, Musical.ly, Slack, Square, Wish, Xiaohongshu, YY, and others. Find out more at ggvc.com.

GGV Capital’s Hans Tung and Zara Zhang interview Kai-Fu Lee, the founder and CEO of Sinovation Ventures (an early-stage VC fund in China) and a renowned computer scientist known for his work in artificial intelligence. He was the founding president of Google China and played a key role in establishing Microsoft Research Asia as well. In this episode, Kai-Fu recounts the journey that took him from Taiwan to Tennessee and then to prominence in the tech sector. At first a computer science student working on speech recognition, he became one of the world’s experts on artificial intelligence. He has helped U.S. giants like Google and Microsoft expand into China and assisted Chinese entrepreneurs as an investor, mentor, and thought leader. Join our listeners' community via WeChat/Slack at 996.ggvc.com/community. GGV Capital also produces a biweekly email newsletter in English, also called "996," which has a roundup of the week's most important happenings in tech in China. Subscribe at 996.ggvc.com. The 996 Podcast is brought to you by GGV Capital, a multi-stage venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley, Shanghai, and Beijing. We have been partnering with leading technology entrepreneurs for the past 18 years from seed to pre-IPO. With $3.8 billion in capital under management across eight funds, GGV invests in globally minded entrepreneurs in consumer internet, e-commerce, frontier tech, and enterprise. GGV has invested in over 280 companies, with 30 companies valued at over $1 billion. Portfolio companies include Airbnb, Alibaba, Bytedance (Toutiao), Ctrip, Didi Chuxing, DOMO, Hashicorp, Hellobike, Houzz, Keep, Musical.ly, Slack, Square, Wish, Xiaohongshu, YY, and others. Find out more at ggvc.com.

GGV Capital’s Hans Tung and Zara Zhang interview Andrew Ng, one of the world’s leading experts on artificial intelligence and deep learning, who was the chief scientist at Baidu from 2014 to 2017. Andrew is also the co-founder of Coursera and the Google Brain deep learning project. In this episode, Andrew discusses how the startup ecosystem in China compares with that of the U.S., his work at Baidu, and what he is most excited about in the field of artificial intelligence. Update: We recorded this episode in late 2017. As of January 2018, Andrew has announced his new project, Landing.ai, which will help bring AI to the manufacturing industry. Landing.ai’s first strategic partner is Foxconn, a Chinese manufacturing giant that builds iPhones, among many other products. Join our listeners' community via WeChat/Slack at 996.ggvc.com/community. GGV Capital also produces a biweekly email newsletter in English, also called "996," which has a roundup of the week's most important happenings in tech in China. Subscribe at 996.ggvc.com. The 996 Podcast is brought to you by GGV Capital, a multi-stage venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley, Shanghai, and Beijing. We have been partnering with leading technology entrepreneurs for the past 18 years from seed to pre-IPO. With $3.8 billion in capital under management across eight funds, GGV invests in globally minded entrepreneurs in consumer internet, e-commerce, frontier tech, and enterprise. GGV has invested in over 280 companies, with 30 companies valued at over $1 billion. Portfolio companies include Airbnb, Alibaba, Bytedance (Toutiao), Ctrip, Didi Chuxing, DOMO, Hashicorp, Hellobike, Houzz, Keep, Musical.ly, Slack, Square, Wish, Xiaohongshu, YY, and others. Find out more at ggvc.com.

GGV Capital’s Hans Tung and Zara Zhang interview Jerry Yang, the founder and former CEO of Yahoo, who orchestrated arguably the best deal in tech history: In 2005, he arranged for Yahoo to invest $1 billion for a 40 percent stake in fledgling Chinese ecommerce site Alibaba at a post-money valuation of $5 billion. Today, Alibaba is worth almost half a trillion dollars. During the interview, Jerry conducts a postmortem for Yahoo’s China strategy, and offers advice for U.S. tech companies looking to expand into China. Join our listeners' community via WeChat/Slack at 996.ggvc.com/community. GGV Capital also produces a biweekly email newsletter in English, also called "996," which has a roundup of the week's most important happenings in tech in China. Subscribe at 996.ggvc.com. The 996 Podcast is brought to you by GGV Capital, a multi-stage venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley, Shanghai, and Beijing. We have been partnering with leading technology entrepreneurs for the past 18 years from seed to pre-IPO. With $3.8 billion in capital under management across eight funds, GGV invests in globally minded entrepreneurs in consumer internet, e-commerce, frontier tech, and enterprise. GGV has invested in over 280 companies, with 30 companies valued at over $1 billion. Portfolio companies include Airbnb, Alibaba, Bytedance (Toutiao), Ctrip, Didi Chuxing, DOMO, Hashicorp, Hellobike, Houzz, Keep, Musical.ly, Slack, Square, Wish, Xiaohongshu, YY, and others. Find out more at ggvc.com.