Archive for April, 2008

Tudou.com closes USD 57 million round

Today Tudou announced the closing of a new round of funding, an investment of USD 57 million. As far as we know, this the largest round of funding ever for a Chinese internet company. In total Tudou has raised USD 85 million over the past 3 years.Below the English version of the press release that was sent out to the media today:Recently there have been lots of rumors in the media about our funding. Originally we didn’t plan on making a big announcement, but it seems our silence only...
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First Tudou Film Festival at Moganshan

This weekend the 1st Tudou Film Festival was held on the Moganshan in Zheijiang province, a 3-hour drive from downtown Shanghai. Moganshan is the total opposite of Shanghai: a quiet mountain resort surrounded by bamboo forests. Clean air, no traffic jams, and a very peaceful atmosphere. Well, normally at least, because last night I think we kept the whole mountain awake with our celebrations!Already during the first year of Tudou we had the idea to organize a film festival. Originally we...
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Lost on Moganshan

On Saturday morning Gary and I decided to go for a hike, as a training for our Kilimanjaro trip in late May. We started off with a full English breakfast at Mark Kitto's The Lodge (coffee, OJ, toast, bacon, eggs, mushrooms, tomato - all served on their terrace overlooking the valley) so we would have enough energy. They also gave us a basic map with a 3 hour hike that we decided to do. That the map was really basic we found out quickly: after 30 minutes we figured that we had missed a path,...
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Himalaya bike ride video on YouTube

This week one year ago we arrived in Lhasa for our mountain bike ride through the Himalaya. For that occasion I uploaded a short English-language version of the documentary that was made during our trip on YouTube. In total there are 12 episodes, each between 4 to 8 minutes. I also made a playlist of the episodes, so you can watch them all at once. The episodes cover the whole trip, from the preparations in Shanghai, the arrival in Lhasa, the beautiful nature in Tibet, Mount Everest Base Camp...
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Kilimanjaro preparations

In just over one month, Gary Wang, my dad and I will arrive in Tanzania. Not for a safari like most tourists, but to climb Africa's highest mountain, the Kilimanjaro. Today I faxed all documents to the organizer and now there is no way back anymore. That feels pretty good actually, until now we were not completely sure if we would be able to get all documents together on time and whether it would work with flights and work arrangements. But suddenly everything started to fall into place and we...
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Chinese mob attacking a foreigner (UPDATED)

UPDATE: On May 24 Shanghaiist corrected its earlier story. Things were not as bad as described in the original email that they received. Although one person unsuccessfully tried to attack the volunteer and the crowd indeed surrounded his taxi (quite scary experience, I think), he was not physically harmed in the incident. I sincerely hope that this was an isolated incident and that things will calm down soon in China.In order to avoid other media from using this story I have decided to delete...
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Taking some time off on Twitter

In case you follow me on Twitter you know I have been posting there more and more over the past months. It's a great tool to always keep in touch with real-life friends, people with similar interests and fellow entrepreneurs. I shared most of my life on Twitter, and got a lot back as a result as well. Try it for yourself, hard to explain in a blog post - but the social Internet basically works because the more you give the more you get. The same as with traffic on your site: the more you send...
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Tudou 3-Year Anniversary Party

Last Friday Tudou celebrated its 3rd anniversary party in the Tudou Warehouse in Shanghai. About 200-300 people attended the party, that already started at 8 PM (parties in China always start a lot earlier than in Europe). The entrance lane to the Warehouse was decorated with lights, and the new Tudou logo was projected in several colors on the outside walls. Inside, part of the first floor was redecorated as a club with a small stage and professional DJ's. As usual during our parties there was...
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It can do what…???

A friend of mine just sent me this picture. Not sure where it was taken, but the claims the product makes are so impressive that I just have to post it...
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Happy birthday Tudou!

Today it is exactly three years ago that Tudou.com went live! (See also this blog post that I wrote about Toodou - the former name of Tudou- on April 15, 2005 on my old weblog). "Only" three years I should probably say, because more has happened in these 36 months than what happens to most companies in 10-15 years. It was a great 3 years though, something like a big roller coaster that started to go faster and faster once it was set in motion. A roller coaster with ups and downs, like every...
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China Business Network interview

A couple of weeks ago Christine Lu from the China Business Network visited Shanghai and Beijing, and during that visit I met her for the first time. First during the geek dinner at Moon River Diner in the New Factories, and two days later for lunch and an interview. The interview was used for a Harvard conference that took place in late March, and she now also posted it on the China Business Network.During the interview I talk a bit about Spill Group Asia (how it started, my strategy for the...
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New Chinese visa regulations

Last Friday the Chinese embassy in The Netherlands announced new visa regulations, regulations that took effect immediately and should take effect in the rest of the world tomorrow. The biggest changes are that a tourist visa has a maximum validity of 30 days (or according to some sources 20 days) instead of maximum 3 months before. Furthermore, much more information than before is needed (hotel reservations, flight details). Also for a business visa much more information is needed. For both...
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3G with Chinese characteristics

Last week 3G connections finally became available in some cities in China. However, not the regular 3G standard that works on my Nokia phone, but the home-grown TD-SCDMA standard. This means I need to buy a new phone in order to have a high-speed mobile internet connection, which is a bit of a hassle. But that's not all, because for some reason China Mobile decided that you also need to buy a new telephone number starting with 157. Great... Then I would need to have two phones and two numbers...
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Crackdown on satellite dishes in Shanghai

I hardly ever watch TV, I find it a waste of time and prefer to spend that time doing more productive things. One reason for this is that Chinese TV sucks, it's low quality mass entertainment that does not really fit what I would like to watch. The few times a year that I do watch TV I normally turn on our illegal satellite receiver, to watch one of the 50+ satellite channels (mainly Philippine, Japanese or Hong Kong stations, but also Deutsche Welle, BBC, CNN and some documentary channels)....
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Dutch Chinareis Delegation – Shanghai & Chengdu (March 30 – April 5, 2008)

The past week I spent with a senior Dutch delegation of IT and new media executives that visited China. I organized most of the company visits in Shanghai and Chengdu, and of course I also made sure that we had a good evening program. Already a year ago Marco Derksen (Marketingfacts.nl) had talked to me about organizing a trip to China, and last September during the PICNIC conference in Amsterdam the topic came up again. Marco, Vincent Everts and myself then started to develop the idea and in...
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