Lei Jun wears a lot of hats (he’s Xiaomi CEO, the board chair at Kingsoft and an angel investor) and is one of the most respected figures in China’s tech scene. As one of the wildly successful Xiaomi’s co-founders, he’s also someone worth listening to when it comes to China’s startup scene. In a recent interview, the Beijing News asked him what he thought the differences were between Silicon Valley and China. Here’s what he said:
The biggest difference in the startup environment between [China] and the US is that China doesn’t have enough angel investors, and there is not enough money being invested.
Domestically, over the past couple of years there have been more and more angel investors, but it still hasn’t become a major social trend. There are maybe 10,000 people in China doing angel investments, so there’s a big difference between that and America. If China had a million angel investors, that would allow Chinese entrepreneurs to really show off their talent.
Lei Jun is also a legislative representative to the People’s Congress this year. It’s largely a rubber-stamp congress with little policy influence, but in the interview Lei Jun said he hopes to make adjustments to China’s corporate laws that should make angel investing easier. Here’s hoping!
(Beijing News via Sina Tech)
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