Not a day passes that people don't talk about the great opportunities that India and…
Entrepreneurship
Didi Chuxing, the largest ride-hailing service is China, confirmed today that it will acquire Uber China. According to reports, the two companies will keep distinct brands, apps, and business operations, but the backends will be merged. The deal ends a long, costly battle between the two rivals: Uber had been spending $1B + a year […]
Not a day passes that people don't talk about the great opportunities that India and…
Today we announced our investment in Indochino, a website that helps people to buy a…
Didi Chuxing, the largest ride-hailing service is China, confirmed today that it will acquire Uber China. According to reports, the two companies will keep distinct brands, apps, and business operations, but the backends will be merged. The deal ends a long, costly battle between the two rivals: Uber had been spending $1B + a year to gain traction in China, while Didi Chuxing had been offering subsidies to its drivers and riders as well.
This news means that we can now add Uber to the long list of U.S. companies that couldn’t make it in China: eBay, Google, Facebook; the jury is still out on what Amazon’s eventual fate will be. Yes, Yahoo got a multibillion-dollar windfall from its investment in China (Alibaba), but it never built a successful standalone product/company there. It seems like hardware companies (Apple) are the only ones with a chance of making it in China.
There are many factors behind this string of failures. Companies operating in China face strict regulation/censorship (Facebook, Google, Twitter). There’s tough local competition (Uber and eBay). And there are cultural challenges that make it tough for a foreign company.
But, the China prize is so huge that every single large tech company will try to succeed despite the spotty history of its peers. China is a must-do for large public companies, but it’s a much more difficult question for mid-sized tech companies.
About 10 years ago, I traveled to China, South Korea and Japan for AbeBooks with my co-founder Hannes to understand our expansion options. We ultimately decided against going into China for three key reasons:
Does this mean that all mid-sized tech companies should stay out of China? Not necessarily. It’s an enormous opportunity and you can be successful if you have the following two things going for you.
In the end, every founder and CEO will look at the China question, see the track record of every company before him or her, and decide for themselves what’s best.
Portfolio
It’s been an eventful quarter (when has it not?), and somehow we’ve already crossed the halfway mark of 2025. We wanted to take a moment to highlight just a few of the wins, milestones, and momentum we’ve seen this past quarter. As always, there’s a whole lot happening behind the scenes that can’t be shared […]
The V1 family kicked off the new year with fresh energy and no shortage of…
At the end of Q1, we anticipated that a tech sector slowdown is ideal for…