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SAN FRANCISCO: Kai-Fu Lee is looking for people who want to grow information technology in China. His fledgling company, Innovation Works (IW), will back businesses it believes show promise.
IW is a matchmaker, Lee told China Daily during a recent conference held by the Asia America MultiTechnology Association near San Francisco. “We’re looking for great engineers willing to work very hard and entrepreneurs with leadership, charisma, judgment and a strong desire to build our company,” he said.
One of IW’s stated aims is to help enterprises become viable enough to be spun off. Lee stepped down as president of Google China to launch IW in September. The company has gotten off to a strong start. “We’re busy recruiting,” Lee said. “We’ve just gone on a campus recruiting tour, and found some really great people.”
Based in Beijing, IW is currently focusing on e-commerce, mobile Internet and so-called cloud computing in China. He declined to speculate on whether the company would try to expand its market reach.
“Our presence is just (in) Beijing right now, but it is possible to develop worldwide markets by developing the iPhone, Facebook and Android platforms,” he said.
Lee said he decided to venture out on his own, because “e-commerce and the mobile Internet were taking off. A new crop of entrepreneurs was emerging and early-stage funding was lacking”.
IW was able to attract $115 million in seed money because of Lee’s already-established reputation, he said. The backers “all know me. They know my track record of doing things about which other people were skeptical, and my ability to attract talent,” he said.
Christopher Runckel, who runs a business consulting firm focusing on Asian markets, with a strong emphasis on China, said he believes Lee “has a valid business concept and … is in tune with today’s market”.
“The challenge for him will be in seeing if he can make the jump from working for large, dominant companies like Microsoft and Google to hopefully, in the case of IW, a smaller, more nimble, strategic and innovative company,” said Runckel, who is president of Runckel & Associates in Portland, Ore.
Another China-watcher in the US business community said there was “no reason to believe that (Lee) won’t be successful”, as long as IW’s goals are in line with those of the Chinese government. The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he was familiar with Lee’s accomplishments at Google and Microsoft. “He is bright, he has incredible experience and he has built a strong network,” the source said.
While cloud computing — known as a reliance on web-based servers for programming, communications and other computer functions — has its critics, Lee sees its growth as “inevitable and irreversible”. E-commerce has grown from 7 percent to 25 percent as the method of choice for business communication in China, while in the US it is 75 percent, he said.
Runckel said the China market is “maturing”, and pointed to Lee’s efforts as only one example of the work being done to expand e-commerce.
“China is now on every boardroom’s radar screen and is in a growing position.”
