Wokai, Venture Weekend

Just met up with Casey and a little “focus group” of students from China (and one Chinese American) to brainstorm ideas for Wokai. We brainstormed a few ideas for marketing/fund raising- from allowing people to donate from their mobile phones, to gift certificates and how that would change things. After the meeting I’m more optimistic about Wokai: they’re looking to develop a Chinese version of their site, and looking to move more into China. They’re starting something which looks into microfinance in China. It looks good.

China is an interesting market; it has such an incredible government capable of bringing the country to incredible heights. Sometimes I wish I was in China instead- it would have been such an experience to have lived through the most explosive growth land of the 21st century, rather than have a front seat in witnessing the stumbles of a waning giant (i.e. the USA).

Am now sitting in Stanford’s Venture Weekend, helping out. Its pretty amazing hearing 20 people in the room do a startup- from brainstorming the idea (what they are doing now) to actually creating the product. Its also very interesting to see how the dynamics of the group work: the emergence of the leaders, the vocal ones, the clever ones, the ones who are obviously “tuning out”. It will be interesting to see how this all turns out at the end of the weekend.