photo credit: Jakob Montrasio

Considering the recent world scenario, we think of China either when Copenhagen Climatic issues come up or its recent tiff with Google regarding hacking and censorship. And rightly I believe. Keeping all the issues behind, China still recorded a magnificent growth recently.

An American Entrepreneur in China (Calvin Chin) wrote a guest post in TechCrunch about the startup Culture in China. He recently also attended the World Economic Summit in Davos (Switzerland).

Calvin Chin talks about how the Chinese Government has put stability on the top – with the goal of lifting millions of people out of poverty (and yes at the cost of freedom of information). He believes that in China emphasis is laid on stability which allows big decisions to be made quickly.  

Many tech startups in China know that the stability of the government is paramount for economic growth (despite the freedom to operate is limited). As soon as the government legislation changes, they don’t sit and whine but work towards doing the best they can in the existing framework. For example; when the government decides to censure microblogging sites, startups use the existing infrastructure to set up a microblogging site that screen Tweets. The lesson here is that as a startup founder – you don’t have the time to sit and cry over spilled beans but instead react to the situation by taking full advantage of what you have.

There are many lessons a startup can learn from startups operating in china. The article on TechCrunch provides a great insight to this matter.

The thing is while the majority of Chinese netizens really don’t care that much about what’s going on outside of China, the ones who do care, people who would start companies, people who want international news, all know workarounds to use services they like or read about sensitive topics from other perspectives

When you’re starting up, you usually have a great idea or rather to say that you have a great idea and that is why you are starting up. This great idea of today will be the “killer product” for tomorrow and will turn out be an absolute blockbuster, or at least that is what you believe. Here is where the “Stealth” mentality comes in. You obviously want to protect your idea from the competitors and you think that being secretive is the key to success for your start up.

All is well except for the price that you will have to pay in the longer run for being locked up in your basement, talking to yourself for that ground breaking product you are working on. Products and services are made successful by adoption and adoption only happens after testing and feedback and iterations. Startups suffering the “stealth syndrome” lose out on great industry connections, PR opportunities, feedback from potential customers, and affluent investors.

What eventually makes a difference between success and failure of your startup isn’t your idea but your capability to create and dominate the market.

Truer words were never spoken before; ‘stealth’ startups need to open to reality. Vivek Wadhwa of UC Berkeley explains why: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/19/stealth-startupsget-over-yourselves-nobody-cares-about-your-secrets/

Learning what a customer needs is an iterative process.  You try something, get feedback.  Both you and your customer learn more and you try again. You keep doing this until you have something which is so compelling that the customer will pay money to have it—that’s when you know you have a killer product. But you can’t get feedback if you’re in stealth. You only have yourself to talk to.

Hope this information was informative and useful