Shanghai’s Startup Scene Takes Flight

Inside the Naked Hub’s French Concession location in Shanghai. Photo by Nathan Allen

A NEED FOR TOP YOUNG TALENT

Even for a local, Chiang has experienced difficulties beyond language and cultural barriers — particularly Shanghai’s cost of living, which, according to The Economist, is the 11th most expensive in the world. “Running a startup here is expensive,” Chiang says. Also, talent is tough to court, he adds.

“I think running a startup is all about people. And in Shanghai there’s a large percentage of Fortune 500 Global companies with their headquarters here,” Chiang explains. “This means it’s pretty easy for high-caliber young people to find a good job. These are the companies we are competing with in terms of hiring.”

Chiang says the competition among early-stage startups is equally vicious. But time in Shanghai and at CEIBS leads to a network, he adds, which is one of the most important things a budding entrepreneur can build. “One way I control my costs is, I have a lot of friends helping me,” Chiang says. An example is the “Hollywood level” of animation of the characters on the Gululu water bottles, he explains. “(It’s) simply because I have a friend who owns an animation studio and he spent 10 years in Hollywood doing animations for big-ticket movies,” Chiang laughs.

‘FOR ME, IT’S THE BEST INVESTMENT I’VE MADE’

For Greenberg, the experience at CEIBS and with Gululu has been about much more than networking and experience. “For me, it’s the best investment I’ve made,” she says in a coffee shop in her native Boulder, Colorado. “Because the value that it provides and the opportunities it exposes you to are life-changing. It will change the course and direction of your life.”

From a young age, Greenberg was an entrepreneur. After graduating high school, she spent a year in Central America and Europe, travel funded by years of operating a black market in Costco goods out of her locker at Boulder High School. The operation — buying in bulk from Costco and selling individually from her locker — was “more or less price arbitrage from Costco,” Greenberg explains.

But the idea — and growing up in a household where “no” meant find a more creative and better way of asking for something — fostered an entrepreneurial spirit Greenberg plans to see through after CEIBS.

Regardless of interest, she says if an MBA is in the picture, go to China for it. “I think that a lot of the U.S. idea of what China is, is based in stereotype,” she says. “There’s a lot of modeled information there. When you go and feel the momentum and competition, you start to incorporate it and you become more inspired.”

DON’T MISS: WHAT’S IT LIKE TO GET AN MBA IN SHANGHAI? or CHINA DREAMING: WOULD-BE MBAs STORM SHANGHAI