Ask YC: Are any of you interested in China / international business?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=67584

by h34t • 19 years ago

16 28 19 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Are any of you interested or involved in international business-related startups?

This week I am in Guangzhou, China for the Canton Fair, a huge exhibition for Chinese manufacturers. These are the folks who actually make the stuff we all see in Walmart (think: obscenely low prices, and just-as-obscene minimum order quantities). Walking through these isles is kind of like walking through your grandmother's garden and seeing where everything you eat (/consume) actually comes from. It's the biggest show of its kind in China.

Have any of you thought about anything along the lines of Alibaba.com (which Yahoo paid $1 billion for 40% of)? Connecting international buyers/sellers? Related services? Importing/branding/product-design?

I've been living in China for 10 months. Just interested in whether any of the community here has dabbled in stuff like this (or wants to).

cstejerean• 19 years ago

i've been considering international business for a while, particularly with China. It doesn't fit well with what I am currently working on but I'm keeping an eye on developments in China for future ventures.

rms2• 19 years ago

I went to China (Beijing) on a two week program with Pitt's School of Engineering after my freshman year and it was really eye opening. If I didn't have startup things going on here, I would love to take a year to go to China and learn Mandarin.

buss• 19 years ago

I'm in my third year of Mandarin study, and I spent last summer in China. I'm not very good at speaking the language (but I do try). I've thought about business in China, but I have so many problems with their government that I'm not sure if I could actually do any business which resulted in a benefit to it (taxes). It is certainly an interesting place, and I'm going to keep learning the language, though.

jsmcgd• 19 years ago

If you did do business in China you would be supporting the government with taxes but on the other hand you would be providing a portal through to the west through which new thinking and opportunities could flow. This 'western portal' isn't as squeaky clean as it might once have been but on the whole its still probably a good thing.

alaskamiller• 19 years ago

That's pretty naive thinking. Almost as useful as thinking a war in Iraq can stabilize the Middle East.

ced• 19 years ago

That's an interesting perspective. I'd be curious to know if anyone has a problem with moving to the US, and "supporting the war" through taxes.

Personally, I'm pretty ambivalent about it, but in the end, I would probably do whatever I think is best for the startup.

trevelyan• 19 years ago

Check out ChinesePod.com if you haven't. Blows everything else away.

rms2• 19 years ago

You say this like the United States doesn't engage in its own brand of evil. China is certainly quantitatively worse in terms of executions and human rights abuses but both governments commit atrocities as part of a very rational attempt to maintain power.

In China, this requires the government to be somewhat authoritarian because the government and the people (except for the people of Tibet and Taiwan) want One China. It is only a very recent thing that all of China has been united and in the long term China will be incredibly powerful just by virtue of being one prosperous, populous nation. If China were to convert to democracy and allow free thought overnight, the economy is likely to collapse just like the Soviet Union. This is the model of sudden ideological change that China looks to.

In the long run, China will become more free. Hu Jintao has made a lot of progress and will only do more now that his power base is completely solidified at the current People's 5 Yearly Conference. His Tsinghua Clique (graduates of China's preeminent engineering university, their equivalent of MIT) might even be more competent leaders than the businessmen and lawyers that run America.

h34t2• 19 years ago

This only makes sense if you believe the negative impact of your contribution to the country's tax revenues (some of which is misspent or supports things you disagree with) is going to be stronger than the positive impact you'll make through the way you live your life and run your company.

I think you'd have to be pretty pessimistic about yourself and your company to think that your net contribution to the country would be a negative.

davidw• 19 years ago

I'd be interested in importing/exporting things to Italy, because I speak the language fluently, but it's not something I've really pursued, because I don't think simply speaking the language is enough to really get into that kind of business. I do have some ideas for Italian things I'd like to import to the US, but that will have to wait for when/if we return there.

SwellJoe• 19 years ago

We're doing some business with Chinese companies. We recently added Chinese translations to a pretty big chunk of our product, but it's still a long way from being a comprehensive answer for Chinese customers--so it's only a few technically savvy hosting providers that are using our stuff.

But, after the US and Europe (French being the most popular non-English language, so far), it's where we spend most of our internationalization efforts.

I'd be curious how folks reach the Chinese market in a reasonable way and on a small scale. Our current Chinese customers found us, but since we don't speak Mandarin, we have no capacity to reach out and find new ones.

staunch2• 19 years ago

I had such a surprising response to my recent project outside the US. It definitely opened my eyes. I've decided every one of my new projects will have an internationalized interface from the beginning. It's so easy to do if you start early and such a pain if you don't. I can't recommend it highly enough. It's a huge competitive advantage for a such small investment.

tocomment• 19 years ago

How do you make an internationalized interface?

staunch2• 19 years ago

All I mean by this is that the user interface is available in multiple languages. In my case this consists of creating a different lexicon file for each language and allowing users to switch between them (based on their Accept-Language header or manual overriding).

I use Catalyst for Perl, so I do this with Catalyst::Plugin::I18N http://search.cpan.org/~bricas/Catalyst-Plugin-I18N-0.06/lib...

btw0• 19 years ago

I am a long time reader of hacker news and reddit, Chinese is my mother tongue, I think there are so many opportunities here, like "Go West" days in USA.

Harj• 19 years ago

We're building e-commerce tools and would be very interested in talking with these chinese manufacturers - please get in touch, harj AT auctomatic DOT com

OSM• 19 years ago

Hi, we are also building international manufacturing tools. How long will you be in china? I would like to discuss. best, matt thenewbrooklyn@yahoo.com

gibsonf1• 19 years ago

I speak German (as well as a bit of Japanese) and plan to have our app available in German soon after we publicly launch. Since I also am doing an architectural project in Romania with help on the project from Poland, those languages also may be possibilities.

toisanji• 19 years ago

My partner and I are planning to do a Chinese version of our product sometime next year.

pageman• 19 years ago

if anyone here is interested in C2C, B2C, C2B or B2B secure online payment solutions - we actually power AliPay (http://www.asiapay.com/press_e.html) via our PayDollar system.

swhnorton• 19 years ago

Absolutely. China is a fantastic place to learn about how value is created, copied, and consumed. Especially in the internet space: look at TaoBao, China's response to Ebay, where buyers haggle down rather than bid up.

I met with an engineer from a Tsinghua spin-off company about creating a social network based around QR codes, technology big in Japan which has not taken off in the US. Webapps, or any product for that matter, will evolve to meet the cultural nuances specific to China. That's an interesting problem to solve.

h34t: In Guangzhou, be sure to visit the African trading community near Yuexiu park at Xiaobei lu and Huanshi lu. That will teach you a ton about commerce in China.

runner293• 19 years ago

swhnorton, how big is the use of QR in China?

altafr• 19 years ago

we are based in hongkong and recently launched an online marketplace to buy and sell(http://www.ushops.com). right now we have opened it up for any type of products to see what would work here. payment systems to facilitate P2P payments and raising funding are two of our initial challenges. any pointers in these areas appreciated. contact: altafr@ushops.com

ALee• 19 years ago

My family is originally fron Guangzhou, my uncle is a VC in Hong Kong/China (middle-growth, not early stage, sorry guys), while my father is a struggling entrepreneur in Beijing (we follow in each other's footsteps...)

For those interested in China, I think the holy grail will probably be getting the internet to be a more accurate reflection of the robust Chinese economy. Moreover, how the Chinese tap into mobile in China to the ring of traffic like QQ and Alibaba will be huge (although the strong Korean and Japanese firms will be strong competition).

Another is thinking about maybe setting up a Chinese presence for your company (on the web and an actual office). One of our friends just sold their company (mezzimedia- specializing in Chinese comparison shopping) and they have an office in Pasadena and in China (the one in China is 3x larger). Their model is working really well.

nickb• 19 years ago

I will be in China in January. I've been there twice before and was always amazed by the progress since the last time I went there. I'm definitely interested in bizdev in China. If anyone wants to contact me & tag along or meet there, email's in the profile!

runner293• 19 years ago

h43t, are those goods identified uniquely - do they have barcodes already or they are generics that are shipped and repackaged later on? (I presume latter)

h34t2• 19 years ago

Some of both.

A lot of this trade is on a large enough scale (Minimum orders are often 1 container) that the buyer wants to define the packaging to match his brand, but it's usually a lot cheaper to have them to custom packaging here in China before shipment, rather than repackage later on.

The sellers are often flexible. They offer some packaging options based on what they've done before and the vendors they know, but if you want custom packaging they'll be happy to 'do it your way'.

runner293• 19 years ago

What I am curious about is how many of them have already distribution channels and established brands so that there is a possibility to trace them through the supply chain based on the barcode (pure FMCG/CPG market). My believe is that 90% of them are "white label goods" or are re-branded as the reception point. My hope is however that 10% are becoming more and more integrated into "integrated" supply chain with no repackaging taking place, so that China/India goods are produced and immediately sold worldwide (through a wholesaler step). I would love to have a system like alibaba but more enforcing from barcoding perspective: each barcode has manufacturer prefix, based on the barcode you should be able to trace back to the manufacturer - also there might be a need to list all the resellers, wholesalers etc that are importing particular goods from the particular manufacturer in the particular target market, etc ...

Anyone who is willing to exchange thoughts on the subject feel free to contact me through email in my profile.

Ask YC: Are any of you interested in China / international business?

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