[Isaac Mao, Chinese entrepreneur. Photo by Shel]
Part 2 of 2
It is fitting that on a day that China's head of state is telling a political assembly that the Communist Party must stay in control, that I write about Isaac Mao who is doing a fine job of bringing entrepreneurialism into China. where he tells me, bloggers have little, if any, trouble bypassing the command and control policies of it's government.
Isaac is no Communist by any means. But he is a "sharist," and there is a difference. " In sharism, people have the same rights wherever they live. "Under Communism, the state owns all property. In sharism I keep ownership but I like to share and it's up to me. Prosperity and ideas spread because people like to share," he told me last month when we met for a loing San Francisco lunch..
It's an interesting philosophy, one that he says he acquired from his mentor, Japan's Joi Ito, who first inspired Isaac to blog back in 2002. But it's also interesting because, like Joi Ito, about half of Isaac's focus is as a venture capitalist.
When we met, Isaac saw no irony between sharism and venture capitalism. "VCs like to share wealth," he replied flatly.
While he is currently a partner in UCI Venture partners, Isaac was in the states to talk to denizens of Sand Hill Road. He is raising a fund to start his own venture fund and is close to reaching his $50 million goal. In the US, that would be a miniscule amount, but in China, it will go a long way because costs in China remain so low, investment capital goes further.
His fund will focus on social media startups that can help to open China's culture to the rest of the world. But he wants to bring them a layer further. "I want to help them become profitable."
There are many venture capitalists in China. A good number of them are satellites of American private equity investors. Isaac is not worried. "I have the hometown advantage. I understand how China thinks," he said.
He also has experience
Current investments under his management is called another.com (temporarily closed), which delivers feeds through RSS and IM.
What's interesting about another.com is indicative of how the Chinese tech community is bypassing Chinese attempts to control social media. The server is located in the US. Users in China, can grab content from Six Apart blogs or CNN News. Not only is the government unable to stop it, they cannot even see it, according to Isaac. Besides, the site breaks no censorship rules. He also asserts that Another.com is not attempting to defy government. "We are just a business trying to make money."
Isaac says that a high percentage of China's 20 million social media community members know how to access uncensored versions of Google using mime servers located outside of the country.
He expressed disappointment in Google because it self censors in China. "Our law does not require Google to remove content. They volunteer to do it it. They try to adapt to our hidden rules, which frequently change. Google goes along. Google loses. So do the Chinese people."
Throughout my interview with him, Isaac impressed me as fearless. He shrugs that off. He's just an entrepreneur and he sees great opportunity in China right now. Like in the US, he sees his government, as an often inefficient, sometimes irritating obstacle, that can be dealt with.
Social media is flourishing in China. Twitter is exploding because the Chinese love it's simplicity. The other half of Isaac's life is immersed in the Social Brain Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to building an "open source culture." It promotes free speech and shows people easy ways to bypass "the Great Firewall" of China censorship, which he also calls the Kung Fu Network.
Flickr had a half million Chinese users when a Chinese woman posted a Tiananmen Square photo in Germany. China's government responded, not by blocking Flickr, but by blocking every photo. So, in China, when you visit the popular photo site, you only see black squares where the photos would appear.
Social Brain is the numbers keeper and their most conservative way of counting says that bloggers and other social network participants have grown by at least twentyfold in the last two years and the rate of growth is accelerating.
Through the Social Brain Foundation, Isaac tries to experiment with different social media tool so that he understands the diversity. he uses wikis to allow bloggers to write whatever they want and have other bloggers answer. It is extremely collaborative with 50 of China's leading bloggers all chiming in to discuss censorship. They publish a weekly review of what bloggers were blocked. They link to thousands of Chinese bloggers.
Isaac sees diversification of content as the growing trend among China's 20 million bloggers. Demographics are all over the board. Blogger ages range from age 10 to over 70. The hottest topic is politics. A majority of people openly discuss social problems. There are significant chunks still absent, such as middle aged business people who do not blog in any great numbers.
Government is responding by imposing new regulations. It requires that bloggers register their full name, so Chinese bloggers respond by using aliases and nicknames. They know how to use fake ID numbers that cannot be traced back to the original senders and nearly all blogger do it.
The government has also ordered companies to share all content, and end user IP addresses including messages between
between bloggers. Government wants to see all messages. Isaac told me that most people don't even know the regulations and those that do ignore them. The government cannot keep up with the billions of message, including IM, going about and they cannot track.
There was a time when Isaac was one of a small handful of prominent Chinese bloggers. Now there are thousands and the number keeps growing. They cannot hide, but the sheer volume of content these prominent bloggers produce make it extremely difficult to suppress control or even discourage.
In short, as Isaac describes it, the government is pretty much screwed in it's attempts to suppress the free speech in the blogosphere.
"In China, we talk openly about the government system failure. People see a lack of balance between powers and society particularly at the grassroots. People are talking about their problems in public and those problems all track back to management and governance," he observed."
Where is it all going? How will social media change China, and in so doing, the world in general. Isaac see it filling the niche that government-blessed traditional media fails to fill. We can reach more people through social media than traditional media in China can. He sees greater diversity of content and creator. Because search services like Google are failing the Chinese people, in his view, "We will use our own trusted resources in the future.
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Shel,
Great write up! It's good to get an insight from one of the leaders from China. I couldn't meet him in SF, but glad to see you guys found time. I will meet Isaac in November in Beijing and I'll get my first hand look at the scene during that time as well.
Posted by: Angus Lau | October 16, 2007 at 05:01 PM
Angus, Thanks for reconnecting us. I hope some day, we all get together in Shanghai.
Posted by: shel israel | October 16, 2007 at 06:27 PM
Shel, just found that a typo on Anothr.com, without "e".
Posted by: Isaac | November 10, 2007 at 09:53 PM