James Zhu knew the time had come to join Fanli as full time chief operating officer in 2010, when the Shanghai-based startup first began to raise money. At the time, Fanli was an online shopping rebates service cofounded by an acquaintance, Gary Ge Yongchang, who ran it from his apartment’s living room. The startup period was difficult; China’s e-commerce market was still immature. The company had just two servers, one for the website and one for the database. Online speed was glacially slow. Fanli’s employees walked up and down Shanghai’s streets handing out cards to drum up interest. Ge initially paid out rebates using his personal credit cards.
Zhu was only helping out Fanli part-time; he had a senior role in the Shanghai office of Corel, a Canadian software company. “I had a great job,” he recalls. “I had a driver, oversaw a team of 200 people, and was paid quite a bit.” But institutional investors convinced him to come onboard as Fanli’s full-time chief operating officer. “They wanted me to have skin in the game,” he says. Within a year, he joined, and Fanli raised US$10 million in Series A funding (its first round of venture capital finance).
Nine years later, Fanli has grown into one of China’s largest e-commerce websites — an online directory and “flash event” company that matches Chinese shoppers with marketers from around the world, helping people find their most-desired goal (as Ge has been known to state it): “value for money: the best products at the lowest prices.” Fanli’s story is typical of about 200 rapidly growing Chinese “unicorns,” enabled by leading-edge digital technology, the burgeoning Chinese middle class, new capital-raising opportunities in Shanghai and elsewhere, and the enthusiastic entrepreneurialism of their founders.
この記事は strategy+business の Winter 2019 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です ? サインイン
この記事は strategy+business の Winter 2019 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です? サインイン
Transforming information into insight
Focus on six organizational elements to build a world-class data and insights capability.
THE URGENT NEED FOR SOPHISTICATED LEADERSHIP
The pandemic has highlighted a series of paradoxes inherent to the work of leaders. What comes next will depend on how well leaders face up to them.
The road to successful change is lined with trade-offs
Rather than trying to convince people your change initiative is the right one, invite them to talk openly about what it might take to implement it: the good, the bad, and the frustrating.
Sustaining productivity virtually
Maintaining productivity levels among remote employees is an enduring challenge. Here are five ways to help businesses and employees thrive while people work at home.
FORWARD TO normal
Entertainment and media companies are building business models that are resilient to the enduring changes in consumer behavior ushered in by COVID-19.
How leaders can promote racial justice in the workplace
Embrace four principles to turn today’s diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives into sustained progress.
CREATING THE OFFICE OF THE FUTURE
In a remodeled world, it is vital for companies to reinvent ways of working.
Consumer companies must take leaps, not steps
As shoppers show how quickly they can adapt to external shocks, retailers will need to radically reconfigure their business models.
Businesses can fast-track innovation to help during a crisis
“Unrealistic” timelines can actually work. Here’s how.
Agility and experience management work better together
Many companies achieve early wins with separate transformational efforts, then stall. But if combined and enhanced using “return on experience,” or ROX, measures, these two programs can unlock each other’s potential.
