Mobile Monday Beijing | The mobile CEO’s way

Judging from stock prices of NASDAQ-listed SPs such as KongZhong or Linktone, life of mobile content and service providers in China is far from easy.Is the main guarantee against market ups and downs having an uncle work at China Mobile?Though our panelists on Monday did not answer this specific question, they provided what felt like the best 70-minutes crash course on how to get started and navigate a mobile SP in China’s tumultuous waters.

Our distinguished panelists were Xin Ye from Casee.cn, Richard Robinson from Dada Asia, Marcus Xiang from PDX.cn and Alex Kummerman from ClicMobile. Inspired by Thomas Cole’s Voyage of Life paintings, our panel covered the different phases a company goes through: childhood, youth, manhood and, in a likely distant future, old age.

As panelists were very straightforward, some of the quotes are unattributed.

Childhood

A company usually starts with an in idea. While some find it in the Silicon Valley, others look at trends in the market, for instance the rise of free content and all-you-can-eat data plans.

• All panelists mentioned they hired former colleagues to create the core team and share the dream. Some were available due to the previous company’s restructuring or sale.

• When asked what to do when you cannot go this way, Richard advised to find the right local partner, while Marcus suggested to not rush to hire but get to know the market and the people first.

Youth

The next stage is usually to develop the service itself, grow the team, find the first clients or partners.

• Alex managed to sign a corporate client at the start of the company, which solved numerous problems – your best investors are your clients!

• Marcus has been running operations with a lean team, almost unchanged since start, waiting for the market to pick up. Xin has been growing the team while signing clients and looking for investors.

Manhood

This is time where the enthusiasm will be all the more necessary to build building presence and differentiate, face ups and downs in management and market policies.

Among the key ideas put forward were:

• Listen and understand your users. Marcus identified this way interesting demographics such as soldiers with no access to Internet as among the most active, and gets direct feedback from users regularly.
• You can also see the impact of pricing such as data packages in the number of users and their usage of services. Very affordable pricing in Guangzhou supported strong usage.
• Market policies can be fought against when unjust! PDX.cn has been coordinating efforts to negotiate better policies with China Mobile and had them updated on a fairer ground for off-portal content.
• In some cases, breaking even seems like a distant idea while others see B2B and B2C sales opportunities as a way to support their business and fuel growth.

Old age

Defining old age in the mobile space in China is certainly challenging, as no WVAS provider is really strongly established in terms of users or revenues, and certainly not impervious to market changes.

• In terms of wisdom gained, working off-portal seems to be the strong trend, while efforts in traditional paid-for content such as ringtones, screensavers and games are seen as adding sail surface to a sinking ship.
• Most panelists are waiting for the market to validate new business models, supported by better networks and better pricing for data by operators.

See you in November for our next event!
Benjamin Joffe | +8* | Mobile Monday Beijing