Lately, there has been a lot of buzz about Kai-Fu Lee’s departure from Google. I’ve read reports from both Business Week and Tech Crunch. Although they have excellent coverage on the story, there still seems to be some mixed understandings from the general public.
Hence, I’ve compiled an English version of Kai-Fu Lee’s latest blog post on Sina, telling the story all by himself about why he is leaving Google. This post was originally published at 10:17 am on 9/7/09, Beijing Time (10:17 pm, 9/6/09, EST). Now his post has amassed 663 comments with 28,531 overall views. here is what he says:
“Today, I announced to form my own company Innovation Works.
Looking back at my career, it seems my life has always been serving for three purposes – Innovation, China, and Youth. As a matter of fact, Innovation Works is being built on those three things. Although this new company seems to be a milestone transition in the Chinese history, it is actually just a natural continuation of what’s happening now in China.
So what is Innovation Works? Plain and simple, it is a combination of angel investing and innovative products. As a company, we nurture great ideas and create innovative products. Our goal is to spin off products that present promising futures in a later time and form a company for each of them. Then we will look elsewhere for other risky investment opportunities as far as innovative products are concerned. In a nutshell, Our vision is to generate more and more high-tech products.
Innovation Works is the incubator for all innovative entrepreneurs. We hire talented people, nurture their ideas, train them, and help them grow. Not only me, there are also other renowned business leaders and investors who are willing to mentor our team, among which are Liu Chuan-zhi (Founder of Lenovo), Yu Minhong (Founder of New Oriental Education), Tai-Ming Gou (Founder of Foxconn), and Steve Chen (Founder of YouTube).
Innovation Works will help develop angel investing opportunities in China. Angel investors are rare to see nowadays in this country. In the US, the entire Web 2.0 era couldn’t have happened without angel investors. People such as Larry Page, Steve Jobs, and Sergey Brin have all benefited from angel investing companies. To catch up with the US trend, Innovation Works is striving to match excellent business ideas with ambitious and innovative entrepreneurs. By providing enough funding, we can help those people make their ideas a reality.
Why are we able to double or even triple your success rate? Here are our advantages at Innovation Works:
- Sufficient resources, including legal, financial, and infrastructure services;
- Shared software platforms, and Search Engine Optimization services;
- The best engineer teams and our ability to pair them up with other talented individuals in other specialized fields;
In China, Innovation Works is a new concept, which is unprecedented. Furthermore, I believe our business model fits the particular circumstances in China. What would be an important add-on to our venture is my own technical background, the accumulated experience I gained through last 20 years’ hard work at Google and Microsoft, business relationships I’ve developed, my impact in the tech industry, my global vision, and my ability to communicate well. All those added together would greatly enhance our chance to succeed. In the next 10 years, I believe we can create about 50 innovative and successful companies, and 500 well-accomplished entrepreneurs, improving China’s global recognition and impact!
Last but not least, I would like to cite the last paragraph of the poem “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost:
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Something ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood,and I -
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.
I draw the parallel between this poem and Innovation Works because we, hereby, have chosen the road no one else has taken.”
To summarize his post, I would agree with his reasoning. China is a rising dragon. To seize opportunities, it means he must sacrifice. It would be interesting to hear your perspectives on his story. For further reading, I recommend “Interview: Google China’s Kai-Fu Lee Debuts Innovation Works” (Newsweek) and “Will China’s Best Coders Flock to Kai-Fu Lee’s New Incubator?” (TechCrunch).
