5 Lessons from China's Internet Companies

Group-centric community marketing experiments were popularized in China in 2019. Around that time, China’s online population growth was hitting a natural ceiling with 1 billion people online, or about 70% of the country. Meanwhile, Tencent, Alibaba, and Baidu had each captured more than 90% of existing internet users. As room for user growth start ... See more

Shopping? A slam dunk, Douyin and Toutiao already enable a ton of commerce in China. Job marketplace? A bit of a stretch, but not impossible. If Microsoft buys TikTok, I’d certainly give the TikTok team a crack at improving my LinkedIn feed, which, to be clear, is horrifying. What about personalized reading, from books to newsletters to blogs? Musi... See more

Livestreaming as a medium is a conflation of a product as well as as a distribution channel. It exists on a spectrum of being pure entertainment on one-side and a new go-to-market strategies on the other, with different kinds of monetisation models for each side. While western startups have centred around the 'livestreaming as product' theme, China... See more

有一个问题，我反复跟你们科普，结果我发现不仅普通人不懂，连一些VC都不懂，好像只有高晓松跟我能达成共识： 中国互联网的本质，是吃硅谷的技术剩饭， 但是无论是阿里、拼多多还是抖音，巨头们在对社会和商业革命的角度上，吃的是百年发达的美国消费零售的剩饭，是沃尔玛、costco、bestbuy的剩饭。 一个显而易见的例子是，YouTube在美国靠卖电话卡、保险、大学等等服务行业广告为生，Netflix和HBO靠收会员费为生， 而无论是B站、爱奇艺、腾讯视频等等，靠收会员费都被证明是一条不赚钱的路——人均GDP刚刚1万刀，月薪3000的14亿人口国家，交你妈的会员费呢。 而抖音能成功的原因，是因为它变成了中国四大电商之一，抖音最成功的商业化，就是卖货， 而无论是阿里系，京东，拼多多，抖音，... See more

China’s online and offline world would begin rubbing shoulders in a way not seen anywhere else in the world. They were refashioning China’s urban landscape and the world’s richest real-world datascape. But building an alternate internet universe that reaches into every corner of the Chinese economy couldn’t be done without the country’s most import

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