Can Beijing reinvent Zhongguancun, China's Silicon Valley, while still replicating its past success?
In September 2014, Cho-Nan Tsai, a software engineering manager in Pasadena, California, got a phone call that felt like the beckoning of history. A fellow alumnus from Columbia University had an idea for a startup that could disrupt China’s wild digital marketing scene. Did Tsai want in?
“He told me there are a lot of these [venture capital firms] popping up in Beijing, and companies were getting funded very easily,” Tsai recalls.
Kai-fu Lee at Disrupt Beijing 2011. Credit: TechCrun
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