Interaction with Isaac Mao, co-founder CNBlog.org (LIVE)

Today, for the first time, we have to blog on the fly in an evening with Isaac Mao, co-founder of CNBlog.org. He shares his experience as an investor on the areas of entrepreneurship and social web and offers interesting lessons in how to take advantage of the market in China. This event was held in the Aquarius Room, NUS Staff Club and is organized by Singapore Internet Research Center (NTU), SISS (SMU Information Systems Society), E27 and The Technology Initiative. This is the first time we are blogging live for an event.

Of all the people we have heard about the web 2.0 concept in Singapore, Isaac Mao has presented the most realistic view on how we can exploit its potential to the fullest. Drawing from the concepts of long tail and tipping point, he explains how traditional means of protecting innovation and creative works is being challenged by the open source model, for example, the Creative Commons Licence by Lawrence Lessig.

A photograph after the event: (From Left) Justin Lee, Isaac Mao, BL, Margaret Tan & Gwen. (Thanks to Ming Yeow and Loh Kai En for contributing this photo)

There are some interesting general lessons that can be drawn from his talk and it can be applied in China and also everywhere else. What I recall most from Isaac’s talk, was his repeated call to entrepreneurs not to be evil.

• Creating the market by engaging the customers: Isaac shared his experience about he started his blogging enterprise in the hard way. When he first started off as a blogger, there was hardly any existence of a blogging culture in China. He built his base through interaction with other online users and subsequently, found a team to start a company that provided chinese blogging. Through distributing their technology and encouraging people to blog, they built a strong user base and subsequently move towards revenue generating model to sustain the company.
• If you are a venture capitalist, you have to be prepared to take the risk: He started by asking anyone who the most successful venture capitalist was. His definition of a successful venture capitalist is one who made a sound investment with high returns. Of course, I was the person who got the answer. It was the monarchs of Spain, Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile who funded Christopher Columbus that led to the discovery of the New World. Columbus discovered the new world and that investment created profits that was larger than they can imagined. Isaac also warned that the entrepreneurs are also subjected to risk and they have to be prepared that they may be the next sacrifice of the market. His advice is that the entrepreneur must be serious, be prepared to take the risk and have the vision to go for the next big thing. He advocated that the entrepreneur should share their ideas and vision to others in order to decentralize the risk.
• Pro-amateur (AM) revolution: Before any innovation becomes mainstream, the amateur will have to find new ways to make his technology as a hobby and get his user base. In the light of looking at our traditional media, with the advances of Google Video, Flickr and youtube, the floodgates of creativity is now open to the amateurs. This revolution may reach the tipping point with online media replacing the traditional media.
• Identity, Copyright, Privacy and Quality: Isaac noted that more and more people are abandoning their anonymity in the web 2.0 in order to establish credibility for the creative work and innovation they created. He foresee that the trend will move towards the protection of privacy. In an interesting note, during question time, we discuss the peer to peer model, and he brought up the current model for China known as c2c (Copy-to-China) model. Although most Chinese startups are still copying the ideas in the internet from the US, he believes that there will a shift towards quality and that will drive the beginning of innovation. The appropriate example that was brought up a few times, was Japan in the 1950s. Japan first started to copy the designs of electronic gadgets from the western counterparts. Till they become financially affluent in 1980s, they started to innovate their own design and are currently now leaders in this market. In his view, China will eventually evolves toward that stage.
• The forces to stop us from being creative: He also noted the forces which can deter us towards a model of free access, free speech and free thinking and one key point that reigned throughout the discussion was the underlying point that there had to be less restrictions by both the print and online media and even the government. Only by allowing the playground to be an empty one, can there be freedom in thought, freedom in action, and thus breed the coveted trophy of creativity.
• Don’t be evil. One point that was brought up many times during the discussion was the humbled plea to aspiring entrepreneurs in the audience to not do evil while doing their business. Certain cut-throat entrepreneurs could be so profit-minded that their business models result in the constant harrassment of consumers. One example would be how spyware detection agents could turn out to be spyware themselves and refuse to be uninstalled from the computer. Or no matter how hard the user tries to unsubscribe from a mailing list or a service or product, his/her name is still on the list. To Isaac, these were no-nos and the audience agreed. Social and basic humanitarian concerns should still be in place and in a way, this plea was to seek entrepreneurs to find the virtue in them to respect another person’s right to privacy. But one key question is, where is the grey line between doing evil and a “virtuous enough” revenue stream? What if your business model relied on some sort of constant contact with customers – when is the right time to stop? To that, Isaac answered: do less evil. To him, this should be the way entrepreneurs look at things, and not try to exploit consumers.

The session was an insightful one where the mostly Singaporean crowd heard from a seasoned Chinese entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and most of all, a visionary. Isaac entertained with his playing of the hit video by “BackDormBoys”, light jokes and intellectual wit. His talk had content but didn’t bore any of us (we hope!) and as A-list a blogger in China as Guy Kawasaki is in the US, Isaac was approachable and was eager to share his experiences with us all – so that we may learn, and we thank him for that.

More on the event: Check out Justin Lee’s An evening with Justin Mao.

About Isaac Mao: (Mao Xianghui) is a software architect, entrepreneur and social technology researcher. He was one of the earliest bloggers in China and was the co-founder of CNBlog.org which was set up to deploy open collaborative research on the Internet, its technologies, and its impacts on society and business. One of his initiatives include urging his compatriots to translate content from Global Voices and other sites to avoid a “one way world” in which all content in China comes from Chinese media and where US media characterizes China and Chinese people don’t talk back. His ideas on harnessing blogs, peer-to-peer and grass-roots technologies to empower the Chinese people have made him a respected voice in the global blogosphere, and China’s most famous blogger. He also has a personal blog known as Meta.

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