Former CCTV star gives up her career to become a pioneer Net entrepreneur

BEIJING - Writing in a blog two months ago, Wang Lifen announced the launch of her independent Internet television platform and said farewell to a 15-year career as a journalist with CCTV, the largest national television network.

Wang, founder and host of the well-known Chinese version of the Apprentice reality show, Win in China, as well as founding executive producer of a series of star television programs such as Chinese Dialogue, made a decisive move to become a startup entrepreneur in her mid-40s.

"It's easier to share the cool under a big tree," as an old Chinese proverb relates, she said. "I know what it means, but I prefer to venture along a road less traveled rather than following the conventional ways of life."

Her new adventure is a website called Umiwi, a play on the English words "you", "me" and "we". It is aimed at creating an interactive channel between social elites and the younger generation through a series of online talk shows.

The site provides a live talk show at 8 pm from Monday to Saturday, in which celebrities, entrepreneurs and specialists are invited to discuss various topics that young people are facing in their careers and life, ranging from skills for job-hopping to so-called leftover girls.

Her team posted a list of potential topics on the Internet and solicited users' feedback. The most popular subjects will be discussed in the TV studio, which is part of a loft office on the 19th floor of a building in Soho New Town, in Beijing's Central Business District. It has bright orange curtains and is home to more than 1,000 plants in typical female executive style.

Another show called Clinic for Would-be Entrepreneurs, a sequel to Win in China, involves chief executive officers or private equity investors to provide suggestions and solutions for problems that promising businessmen and women encounter on starting a new business.

A charity auction similar to the Power Lunch with Warren Buffett is also taking place on the website. Its rising bidding prices have attracted big audiences.

By May 4, an anonymous bidder had agreed to pay 1.89 million yuan for three hours with Shi Yuzhu, a Chinese billionaire. The auction opened in March and will last until June 15.

The concept of the luncheon auction is familiar to Chinese people but has never been tried before on the mainland. In 2008, Hong Kong-based investor Zhao Danyang paid $2,110,100 for a steak lunch with billionaire US investor Buffett.

The three hours with Shi provides more scope for interaction between the auction winner and Shi. The winning bidder can invite Shi to deliver a speech to his employees or make other reasonable requests on spending the time together. Whether the meeting will be broadcast or not will be up to the bidder, Wang said.

The website is conducting an online survey about which celebrity people would like to meet next. Jack Ma, the chairman of the dominant business-to-business e-commerce site Alibaba and customer-to-customer (C2C) site Taobao currently ranks first.

Surprisingly, Xi Li Ge, or Brother Sharp, a homeless man who recently became an unwitting celebrity on the Internet because of his sense of fashion, ranks second after Ma.

"We will listen to the views of our users on whether Xi Li Ge's time should be auctioned. If he is in high demand, why not?" Wang said.

All auction proceeds will be given to charity. Money from the first auction with Shi will be donated to efforts in combating the drought in Southwest China, she said.

There is, of course, a serious profit motive with the business. Wang and he fellow TV professionals have the not insignificant challenge of making it succeed financially.

Her time spent exploring Internet business models prompted some anxious feelings.

In recent years, Wang noticed cable channels were losing dominance as audiences scattered to social media such as Facebook and Youtube and TV ratings began to fall worldwide.

"I started paying close attention to the Internet in 2006 and was thinking about creating an Internet television network in 2007 but the Internet and media environment was too immature at that time," Wang said.

She planned to begin her Internet venture by creating a C2C experience-sharing platform. People with abundant life experience can monetize their knowledge on the site. The inspiration for the idea came to her when she studied at Harvard Kennedy School last spring.

However, she closed the site two weeks after it was launched because she found very few users were willing to pay for knowledge online. Although the niche market is there, it's impossible to monetize it, she said. "The biggest mistake we made was we assumed there would be user demand," she said.

Shortly after, she shifted to her area of expertise and focused on her long-awaited dream, a platform synthesizing television and the Internet.

"Although the environment has yet to mature, it's ready for the things I'm doing," Wang said. Her talk shows are mainly themed on creating jobs and innovation so the company's application for government approval was granted without a problem..

Revenues will mainly be generated from advertising and the distribution of audio and video products, Wang said.

She is exploring new business models and talking with investors but said, "I'll be very prudent in introducing investment, and the precondition for outside funds will be no interference in management and content."

The operational costs are under control because the website doesn't support expensive wide band upload functions, Wang said.

"As an entrepreneur I have to make a profit but I've positioned myself as a media person first. What I expect is that we can produce a series of influential products that can benefit younger people," Wang said.

The company has signed agreements with 30 local channels that allow them to broadcast the programs, and they could also be watched through terminals such as cell phones, Wang said.

"We will put in a great efforts to build and unitize the terminal network. What we are constructing is more than a video website," she said. When she embarked on that C2C site, her friend Jack Ma of Alibaba told her: "Things you are doing today will go through great changes in the future, just as Today's Alibaba never occurred to me 10 years ago when I started."

Ma's prediction turned out to be true. Wang switched her C2C site to the television network after several months. She believes more changes will happen in the future that will be "decided by the market, of course as well as your values and the social changes".

She says she always welcomes change and even called her first book Eternity in Changes. It was published 15 years ago when she gained a PhD from Peking University.

Ha Xuesheng, an executive at CCTV's Financial News Department and a former colleague of Wang's, said the presenter possessed incredible power in putting her thoughts into practice.

When Wang had an idea to create a new program during the time she worked for CCTV, she would run to the biggest boss and convince him to accept her idea. She always got her way.

"I dislike others dominating my destiny and actually no one can do that. I always follow my own heart," Wang said.

Wang was named one of 238 young global leaders by the World Economic Forum in 2005 and attended the Davos forum seven times. She also studied at Yale University and at the Brookings Institution for one year.

She said each time she returned refreshed and benefited a lot from the overseas experience.

China is the best place for starting new entrepreneurial ventures, she said. In a mature and stable environment such as the United States, success for a venture requires a breakthrough in technique, but a changing society such as China will generate lots of business opportunities itself.

"My core competence doesn't lie in how many celebrities I know, but I strive to build a platform to help solve the puzzles that the young generation are facing in their businesses or careers in such a changing age and then turn what emerges into cultural products and put on channels that young people prefer," she said

China Daily

(China Daily 05/31/2010 page16)