Will this YC startup spark up startup dreams?

Gigster, a YC-backed startup, is a full service development shop that turns your idea into reality. How does it work? Users go to Gigster’s site, contact their sales engineer and tell them what they want to build, in 10 minutes, Gigster will return a quote for what it will cost and how long it will take. Next, they will manage a group of freelance coders and designers to build the product and report weekly. Once project was handed over, Gigster can also provide maintenance service and upgrades for extra money.

I agree that the pain points does exist, as the startup environment heats up, it is increasingly difficult to spot a suitable CTO to join your project. Outsourcing the project might be a good choice if all you need is a minimum viable product to proof your concept and pitch investors. (This is a common in China)

However, finding an outsourcing company still needs the founder to manage the developers all the whole way through and Gigster seems want to differentiate themselves in this aspect by assigning a PM to handle 100% of the management of the developers and be the sole point of contact.

To keep it simple, on one end, they assign a PM to communicate with the founders, on the other end, they carefully select the freelance developers to control the quality. Its a smart move but the hard work for them is to convince people it’s worth the money to eliminate the management headaches that won’t be around for too long and how well they actually can manage and lead a group of talented freelancers that aren’t working together in the same office.

In China, there do have alot of outsourcing company that help founders to build their app at a very cheap cost ranging from RMB $5K – $30K. Interestingly, some of this outsourcing company originally is a startup, but when their original startup idea didn’t work out, since they already have engineers in place, they start bidding outsource projects to generate cash flow to survive and searching for the next idea.

Will be interested to see if this concept can Copy to China too.

An app for parents to decide where to bring the kids go at weekends!

Oumen.com is a Beijing based startup with traveling X parenting concept focusing on 0-12 years old kids. The app consolidates all the possible family activities in China cities, including domestic/foreign travel, winter/summer camps playgrounds and exhibitions nearby. The pain point they are trying to solve is a lot of parents have no idea where to bring their kids to play, either weekdays or weekends. Currently, they raised RMB $50M series A funding to improve the product and roll out some on/offline campaigns.

Their positioning is kinda smart to avoid the direct competition with Ctrip (travel) and Dianping ( Group-buy + review) and found an angle to mix them together. Their business model is also proven feasible, which is to split commission with suppliers.

As a father, I face exactly the same pain point every weekends. My original solution is to browse in MeiTuan to search for a good playground/activity, pay it by wechat and bring my daughter along. But the problem is there is a lot of irrelevant information and I need to keep scrolling the screen for kids activity, so in a user perspective, I think the market is pretty huge for Oumen. Hope can see them roll out in Hong Kong soon. =)

Are you Hungry? Can this app help!?

Ele.me an O2O company in catering / food delivering service based in Shanghai, again raised USD $90M this month, which is merely 7 months away from their previous USD $350M series E.

Lets have a quick look on their stats: 2M order/day, RMB $60M transaction volume/day, cover over 250 cities, 300k restaurants onboard and accumulated 40M users while >75% of them from mobile devices. They are definitely the no.1 in China food delivery market at the moment.

While everything seems so right, what I am thinking is, how much longer do they need to burn money in exchange of market share? Probably only their investor Tecent or Sequoia knows the answer.

Month ago, I’ve downloaded the app and try to order some food while I’m in Shenzhen, and of course one huge motive for me to do so is they have subsidy for the 1st order, which is a common customer acquisition tactic for various kinds of O2O biz in China. However, I am disappointed in the user experience and end up without any ordering.

First, the restaurants choice are still quite limited and some famous restaurants nearby the neighborhood are unavailable, obviously there’s still much hard work to do in singing up restaurants. Second, there are some complicated combinations for food ordering in order to have free delivery (or to use their coupon). Awwh, I am kinda hungry already and really don’t have the mood to figure out the rules. Finally, I quit the app and called the restaurant that I’ve saved in my mobile and order directly. That’s my experience.

At this stage, I think they should shift the focus back to develop a great product to attract more users and restaurants to sign up organically instead of spending lots in advertising and subsidize new users.

Ghost or Phantom?

Drone fans will definitely know what I am talking about. Years ago, when people want to buy drones, DJI is a no brainer due to its quality, fame and probably there ain’t much choice in the market at that time.

Nowdays, the drone market had a wide variety of products and some of it even half the price compared to Phantom, like the TransDrone A from Aheadx, which recently also raised USD $2M seed round.

Ehang, another UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) company, just raised USD $42M serie B couple days ago to further facilitate the product and BD in the global consumer and commercial market.

I checked out their website and found a comparison chart.

If DJI is already the “Apple” of Drones, the market should allow a “Samsung” of Drones and a “Xiaomi” of Drones. Ehang probably wont head into the commercial space as there’s already an elephant in the room. Moving to consumer space will be a logical move, my guess is that which company have the best cost control will ultimately win the game in the consumer market and this probably explains why Ehang have a new CFO on-board.

I look forward buying drones is just like buying a toy in Toys “R” Us.

Will this company disrupt the real estate agency industry in China?

Nowadays, what kind of startup can become #1 in the market in just 120 days and have a valuation of USD$ 1 billion in less than 18 months?  A Shanghai based-startup called Aiwujiwu (爱屋吉屋) did it, they take over 28.95% of the Shanghai rental market in 4 months time and they just raised their USD$120M serie D at $1 billion valuation.

Continue the O2O trend in China; this startup is trying to apply online to offline concept in the real estate industry and uses slogan like zero commission; real listings; no storefront; appointment by app and internet+ when they break into the market since March 2014, and somehow it seems to be working.

From my observation, there are couple reasons they can create this kind of miracle:

1.) They composed the right story: the VCs are fond of O2O projects in China for the past 2 years, while most of them are related to personal door-front service, they select a traditional real estate industry.

2.) They selected the right market: the rental market in Shanghai is fragmented, which is nice for startups as its relatively low barrier in proof of concept. Once they proofed the concept, they can easily sell to VCs in the whole China perspective, which meets their appetite.

3.) They chooses the right KOL, targeted the right TA and did a wonderful job in localization. They chooses Cai Ming(the lady in their landing page), a well-known actress among age 30-50s, which highly likely will be landlords and shot a TV commercial in Shanghainese.

Currently they expanded to 7 other cities in China, and for sure it includes Beijing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. Can they replicate their success in these cities? Its still early to say, but for sure it will be a tough fight as traditional agencies in this cities are much powerful than those in Shanghai. If these agencies boycott and refuse to co-broke with Aiwujiwu, they probably need to raise more funds to do massive market advertisements to acquire real landlord listings.

Lets keep an eye on it.

A mobile app that every sales person should have

Here’s my story, I downloaded an app, study it for 5 mins, and decided to pay an annual subscription fee for it, and this app is called Sellf. This Italy-based startup is trying to build a run-keeper for business: a smart and easy to use mobile CRM, and it works.

Back to the time when I was a front-line insurance agent (good old days =P), I schedule myself to meet at-least 3 clients per day, which is around 66-80 meetings per month. I always face an issue called Lost Opportunity and get overwhelmed by unorganized meeting notes, to do lists etc.. At that time, I am using blackberry and Nokia phones which is merely a communication tool and obviously, buying a grand business planner/organizer like Moleskine doesn’t help either.  To solve this, I need to hire a personal assistant for constant reminders.

The sweetest part of Sellf is that you can track every lead in different ways, like to do lists, phone conversations, summary notes that can sync to Evernote and schedule appointments sync to your calendars. You can set personal targets every month as well as team target once your team accepted your invitation. Indeed a great way to manage a team of sales when everything are transparent.

Months ago, I recommended this app to my buddy BSze,the Head of Sales of a HK based startup and glad that he likes it and subscribed too.

Noticed Sellf had raised their seed round USD$ 500k back in Aug14, I will not be surprised they announce their A round soon.

Will online supermarket bloom in high density cities?

Yet another round! Redmart, a Singapore-based online groceries marketplace, just raised raised US$26.7 million C round recently. Well, I’m bit surprised that in this round they even pull in Far East Ventures (investment arm of one of the Singapore’s largest property developers). This company catch my attention when Eduardo Saverin, a co-founder of Facebook take the lead in the venture round back in Jan 2014.

Honestly, I am not a big fan of online groceries marketplace, Singapore residents may agree with me that shopping in supermarkets in this lovely city is more than comfortable and pleasurable. So I was thinking what type of users actually will buy groceries online while supermarkets is just downstairs or few blocks away.

Similar in Hong Kong, there’s a online supermarket called HKTV Mall (they are not a startup, they originally wants to do TV Channel) just spend millions of dollars in advertisements covering every single Hong Kong MTR stations. Personally think that it was a successful marketing campaign as it grab the eyeballs of most Hong Kong people, Ricky Wong is never lack of stunning ideas. However, back to the fundamentals, will online shopping, particularly groceries bloom in Hong Kong, one of the most dense city which e-commerce was never a favorite?

Both Redmart and HKTV Mall have the similar concept but totally different starting motive. One is backed by star VCs and aim regional expansion, another supported by personal money and is a back up plan. Interested to see how far these 2 companies could go and most important, will this business model work in density cities.

I am not that positive though, as I don’t see buying groceries offline in these 2 cities is a pain in the ass. Morever, I do enjoy shopping with my wife and kid in supermarkets. =P

I love your boots!

Last night I was just discussing with my wife what birth gift to buy for our second child, then I read this news this morning. Owlet, a small bootie that can track baby’s heart-rate and respiration and checked via mobile device, raised USD$ 6M series A recently.

When I saw their promotion video, first thing I pop in mind is: Gosh ~ Hope I have this device when my 1st daughter was born. The video really hits me as I have similar life experience. This bootie is really a innovative hardware that solve actual pain points of parents who have new born baby.

Their pricing, USD$249 however is a little bit high for Asian countries. If they get their pricing strategy right in Asia, I believe its a no-brainer baby gift.

Can renting apartments really cut out the middleman?

Oliver, an apartment finding app that “connect renters with apartments” raised their USD$1M seeding fund in NOV 2014.

Whats the most important factor to in renting an apartment? I am sure everyone has a different answer. Some would determine by the price, and some would decide by the location. My question is, how important is the “agent commission” matters in renting process? (Obviously, it matters more in the buying process)

In Hong Kong, for instance, the commission for renting an apartment is 1/2 of the monthly rent. Which turns to 4.16% of the annual renting budget. Guess people are willing to pay this if the agent can help source what they need, negotiate the price and handle all the documents?

Besides, for the owners, assume they are relatively wealthy (or busy). Can they afford the time to open the doors for potential renters couple times a day? Or they prefer hand the keys to the agent and let them take care of it?

Back to the startup, the concept is really nice but will be difficult to implement. Besides accumulating owner inventory and a schedule matching function, should also develop some value added function that directly smooth-en the transaction process of both sides.

Lets see if the middleman can survive at the end of the day.