Massive Chinese Brainpower Is the Next Really Big Thing

*The following is an excerpt from the One Hour China Book, for which a 2017 version is available here.   “There is a great story about Steve Jobs freaking out about six weeks before the first iPhone was released. It was reported by The New York Times and has become part of the folklore of […]

How Tsingtao, CR Snow and the Other Beer SOEs Won Big in China (Pt 1 of 2)

The Chinese beer market looks similar to beer markets in the rest of the world – mostly regional markets mostly dominated by a few giant beer companies. But take a look at the below chart from 2013. You’ll note that China evolved with one big difference with the rest of the world: The dominating beer […]

Hold On To Your Hat. Alibaba.com is Building a Massive New E-Commerce Platform (Pt 1 of 2)

At the CES conference in Las Vegas last year, it was the exhibit by Alibaba that really blew my mind. Yes, all the robots and drones were cool. But what Alibaba.com, their B2B business, is doing really sent my mind reeling. Unless I am mistaken, they are building what could be their biggest initiative yet. […]

While Luckin Fights Starbucks, HeyTea Has Lines Out the Door in China (pt 2 of 2)

In Part 1, I argued that Starbucks China most interesting competitor is not Luckin Coffee. It is HeyTea, an upscale Starbucks-type business focused on tea (something Chinese consumers really, really like). And to their credit, HeyTea appears to be mostly focusing not on digital (or financial engineering) but on product development and continually thrilling their […]

My Notes From the 2019 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting (Pt 3 of 3)

This is Part 3 of my visit to Berkshire 2019. Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here. Question on online furniture retail and strategies where you go for customers first and profits later. There was some discussion about Amazon. On the strategy of going for customers first and profits later, he mentioned Amazon has […]

My Notes From the 2019 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting (Pt 2 of 3)

This is Part 2 of 3 on my visit to the 2019 Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting. Part 1 is here. I got to the CHI Health arena in downtown Omaha at 5am. Yes, this was a bit crazy. But last year, I went with my parents and we got there around 7am, basically when the […]

Why Didn’t China Attend the 2019 Berkshire Hathaway Meeting? (Pt 1 of 3)

The 2019 Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting in Omaha was awesome. As always. But there was a very conspicuous absence of visitors from China this year. The decrease from last year was unmistakable. So what happened? In 2018, the Berkshire event was likely the most popular “China event” in the USA.. It was crazy. Of the […]

Facebook Copying WeChat is the Ultimate Gangster Move (pt 1 of 2)

Mark Zuckerberg’s memo on “privacy-focused messaging and social networking” has some really big implications. It is focused on private messaging and the WeChat-type operating system. To me, it looks like the first move in a strategy to turn Facebook into a much larger and more powerful company. That such a big power play is dressed […]