Education & Training

China-In vs. China-Out: How to launch your startup in China?China is a whole other ballgame The way we look at China and the way we think that other entrepreneurs should look at China is with great humility. China’s ecosystem is more challenging than any other I’ve seen, so if you don’t know how to take your first business steps into China, if you don’t have a plan and a very clear roadmap, and if you haven’t familiarized yourself with other companies’ case studies of failure, then it’s very likely that you’ll lose money in your attempt to launch over there.When we were building ironSource’s & quot;China strategy& quot;, I met with CEOs of not just Israeli companies but also American companies,?and I saw that most of them are not only failing to achieve their goals, but some of them actually failed so miserably that they had to shut down their Chinese operation. This really made us think about what we could do differently and we tried to analyze the main factors that might lead to either success or failure.& quot;China-In& quot; vs. & quot;China-Out& quot; The Economist ran an essay last year that I think did a great job explaining the challenges and opportunities that can be found in China. Taking our cue from the lessons of this essay, we basically identified two different types of strategies for companies to break into China:China-In:?The first type involves companies outside of China that see China as their target market. Their aim is to go after the Chinese user and their goal is to gain market share inside China. We call that & quot;China-In& quot;. Here, success is the exception not the norm. While the professional social network LinkedIn has successfully penetrated the Chinese market, Facebook, YouTube, Google and WhatsApp – all giant successes outside of China – have virtually no presence in China. On the other hand you have their Chinese counterparts, companies like WeChat for example, that are doing amazingly well and are clear market leaders in China. [Side note: After my second visit to China I downl