Tudou.com today officially announced that it has closed its C-round of investment. Next to our current investors (IDG, Granite Global and Jafco Asia), three new venture capital firms have invested in this round. These are General Catalyst (USA), Capital Today (China) and the Korean VC fund KTB. Partners from General Catalyst and Capital Today will join the Tudou.com board.

Tudou started exactly 2 years ago, and had two other rounds: a 500,000 USD angel round in 2005 and a 8.5 million USD B-round early 2006. Currently Tudou streams about 25 million video’s per day, and users upload on average 20,000 video’s every day.

The video can also be streamed here: http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/6pxjtVKxoAU/%E3%80%82

In case you can read Chinese here today’s press release:

????? (2007?4?16?)— ??????????????????????????General Catalyst Partners??????KTB??????????????????????????????????????IDG?????????????

2005?4?15????????????????????????????????????????????2500?????????2?????????http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/6pxjtVKxoAU/?

“????????????????????” ????????CEO????“?????General Catalyst?KTB???????????????????????????????????????????????????????”
??????????????????????????????????????????????????????

????????????General Catalyst?David Orfao?????????????

Last night it suddenly started to rain, meaning that the Tudou party had to be an inside-only party instead of a rooftop event. Several people also SMS-ed me that they could not make it because of the rain (as usual hardly any taxi’s available when it rains in Shanghai). That was a pity, but it was still fun event with lots of friends.

I met among others two former colleagues from Mercedes-Benz Indonesia (Jorge and Evelyn), where I did a project in 1996. I had not seen them in 11 years, and it turned out that they are now working in Shanghai. Nice to get in touch again.

The party started with a short video of Tudou’s 2-year history and birthday wishes from Tudou colleagues, followed by a short speech by Gary. After that a Filipino band started to play both oldies (80’s and 90’s songs are called oldies now I was told) and some more recent songs. Robert Vicencio also did a short guest appearance (thanks Robert!). Tudou’s Wii was connected to a projector, and people played the whole evening. Thijs turned out to be the tennis champ: it was his first time to play on the Wii but he beat everyone else.

Lots of picture of the party can already by found on Flickr. Just click here to find them.

I have been doing lots of sports over the past 3 weeks to get in shape for the upcoming Tibet trip. We are leaving in 10 days to Lhasa already, so it is now really coming closer. I am looking very much forward to it, although to be honest I am also a bit scared. The distance, altitude and expected cold weather high up in the Himalaya are not going to make it an easy ride. But I am glad we made the decision to go. Some things you just have to do, and as most people who know me will probably confirm, I like a challenge.

There will actually be four people riding. Not just Gary and me, but also a reporter from Shanghai TV and now my dad also decided to join. My father is always in a pretty good shape, and although he did not train much specifically for the trip, I think he is likely the one who arrives first on the top of the mountain passes.

Not only did I do a lot of sports (over 1 hour per day on average), but I also live a much healthier life. I still put in as many hours at work, but I eat a healthy diet (no french fries or fast food, but mainly rice, noodles and vegetables) and I completely stopped drinking alcohol a few weeks ago. Well, almost completely. I had one beer during a dinner with Gary and Kaiser Kuo last week, and one with Gary this Thursday because we had something to celebrate. And tonight will probably be the first Tudou party that I will clearly remember the next day 🙂

I feel great actually, I sleep much better and feel I have even more energy at work. I am in a better shape than many years before. And I automatically lost quite some weight as well. I got some suits tailor made a few weeks ago, but the pants are suddenly all one or two inches too wide.

In fifteen minutes Gary and I are off to Sheshan to do some bike riding. One of the Tudou VC’s will join us, so I am looking forward to test how his shape is. He should be pretty jetlagged, because he just arrived from Boston with a long delay (his plane had to make an emergency landing). He therefore even missed our “Friday the 13th” board meeting yesterday, but at least he is in time for our big party tonight :-). And I just heard that one of China’s most famous bloggers Keso is also gonna join us to Sheshan, so it’s going to be a fun afternoon.

I saw an interesting job ad in the newspaper just now from Pioco. It reminds me a bit of the cryptic ads that Google used to have, although Pioco’s riddle is much easier to solve. They are looking to fill several positions, among others an account executive, a channel manager, an executive secretary and several engineers.

This Saturday the Tudou Tradition continues, with a party in our office and on our rooftop terrace. Expect among others a live band, lots of beer and soft drinks, a Wii with projection on the wall, and many great people to meet with.

If you did not get an invitation but want to come, send me an email. I sent out the invitations last night after 1 AM and might have forgotten some people…

Over the past weeks I have started to use Second Life a bit more again, after a one year pause. The main reason I left the community was because I just did not have time for it, and it became quite addictive. Nice if you’re bored, but not if you have hundreds of more important things to do.

However, now Zlong Games (a daughter company of Spill Group Asia) is building the virtual presence of several companies in Second Life. In order to follow the progress I fired up my avatar again, so I can now see real-time how the construction is going. Has managing staff ever been easier? You could literally do it from a tropical beach, and still watch all the people building the structures and interact with them as if you are sitting in the same room. Very cool.

Second Life has changed quite a bit over the past year, there is a lot more to see and do, and I enjoy flying around every now and then. But one thing has not changed, you still have to use a fictitious name. In my case that is Shanghai Ferraris, but I would have preferred to use my real one. Soon this will be possible: according to this article in the Sydney Morning Herald Second Life will start handing out real names by the end of 2007. But for a fee of course, about USD 100 upfront and USD 50 to keep it.

And of course this gives me a new business idea. Buy the names of some famous brands, and I am sure you can sell them for a much higher price to the multinationals that own the brands (and that will be too slow to act on this). It’s different from domain hacking, which is more like hacking a public good. SL names are part of a commercial virtual world, and if you buy and sell them you are just doing an online commercial transaction. I don’t think the brand owners could sue you for this – but I am not a lawyer of course.

For the past month or so blogspot weblogs have been blocked, unblocked and blocked again thanks to our friends running the Great Firewall. Nothing new there, and not worth blogging about anymore. The only reason I write about it here, is because a friend of mine in Beijing (with two blogspot blogs) said that she had not noticed any changes. She can still view her blog without a problem. Now I am just wondering whether the block is only in Shanghai, which is hard to believe. Or is she somehow on a different network with direct access to the world outside China?

For a while I tried to visit all new good restaurants in Shanghai. But because there are so many new restaurants each month, and I normally only have time on weekends plus I also want to revisit the best ones, I have given up on that goal. Another thing I gave up on is saying that a certain restaurant is the best in Shanghai in its category (e.g. best Italian restaurant). I think Shanghai has become one of the best cities in the world with regards to good quality food, and a good restaurant here often equals the best restaurant in many other cities on this planet. This weekend I had dinner in three good restaurants, an Indian one on Friday, and Italian on Saturday and a Japanese on Sunday. They are all among my favorites, and if you live in Shanghai and have not visited them, give them a try.

Friday my wife and I went to Bukhara, an Indian restaurant on the corner of Hongmei Lu and Yan’an Lu (3729 Hongmei Lu, inside the International Pearl City complex), in Hongqiao. The restaurants serves authentic Indian food (as least, that’s what an Indian friend tells me, I am no expert), and the fact that a lot of the customers are from India likely confirms that. The decoration of the building is excellent, both the inside and the outside (if you drive on the lower level of Yan’an Lu you can see it on the corner). The service is friendly and very fast, and the waiters all seem to be from India. The food is fantastic, and as usual I ordered and ate way too much. We have 5 different kinds of Naan (bread), two curries (seafood and spinach/cottage cheese), sheez kebab (lamb), and fragrant rice. If you don’t live in the Hongqiao area it is still worth the drive over, at night there are normally no traffic jams, so you can be here in 15 minutes from People’s Square.

Saturday we had our usual Italian dinner at Casanova (see also a review on the predecessor of this blog, dated April 18, 2005). It was the second Saturday in a row that we went here for dinner, but that was mainly due to the fact that it is one of the few good restaurants where you have a (small) chance of getting a table without a reservation on a Saturday night. The restaurant is located in a nice old villa, with a lounge bar downstairs, and the restaurant upstairs. They have good pizza’s, but actually you should go for the ‘real’ food. This time I had foie gras as a starter followed by a salad and as the main course a grilled tuna (medium rare cooked on my request, fantastic!). My wife went for the beef carpaccio and spinach-cheese (I think) ravioli. All excellent as usual, and also here a quite good service. Don’t forget to leave a tip, they even remind you when you get the bill (they put a small note in it, explaining that a tip is not included). Is this a new trend in Shanghai, where tips are normally not expected?

Sunday afternoon we had a photo session that lasted a bit longer than we expected, but at 9:30 PM we managed to arrive at the relatively new Haiku restaurant on 28B Taojiang Lu (close to Hengshan, and almost next to O’Malleys Irish pub). I have to admit that I normally get my Japanese food at one of the many all-you-can-eat (and drink) places, but this place is a different story. Not only pricewise (although it’s not too bad, we paid about RMB 700 without drinks), but especially quality wise. What a fantastic sashimi they serve here, wow… And the hand rolls, simply delicious! The atmosphere of the restaurant is modern, very different from the other Japanese restaurants in Shanghai. The service of the Chinese waitresses is average, but manager (?) Mark compensated that with small talk at some of the tables and giving advice about the food. If you like Japanese food but have not been here so far, give it a try. But be warned: you might not be able to go back to your regular Japanese restaurant without being disappointed about the food!