andrewmb

The thing to understand about China is that domestic alternatives to international products, especially in 'sensitive' industries (basically anything technologically significant) is ALREADY a core government goal and a major cornerstone of their tech, IP, and political policy. The CCP has stated on many occasions--going back years--that their goal is to eliminate any reliance on non-Chinese firms. This has more urgency in some industries (eg semiconductors) than others, but the ultimate goal is the same.

To provide more of a direct answer, I think that Shenzhen has really great long-term prospects as a tech/innovation hub. Very large number of investors, existing and large tech/innovation/industry cluster (consumer electronics), and long-term government incentives. You can already start to see the momentum building. I've seen major changes since first doing business there (Feb 2012) and even over the past ~2years that I've lived there.

However, the prospects of moving there are not significantly better than the US. China is opening up new classes of visas and making certain business licenses more accessible, but my general impression from being in the ecosystem and talking with locals and foreigners is that it's difficult to get a sustainable business off the ground. The immigration situation (if that is a goal) is bleak.

As another user mentioned, this idea (stationless bike share/rental) has been white-hot in China since the past summer, with a lot of extreme incidents occurring in the past couple months. The article doesn't exaggerate about 10ft tall piles of bicycles. Vandalism is a major part of the competition between companies as well--it is a regular sight (in Shenzhen) to see bikes with spray paint over QR codes, falsely reported damage, missing seats, etc.

Overall, the system works extremely well and is super convenient, but Shenzhen has very good public transportation to begin with and most of the sidewalks in the city are very wide compared to those in San Francisco. Those are two of the key things that have enabled this type of service to emerge and take off in China--it's really just solving a "last-mile" problem of getting to a point that's too far from a metro station to comfortably walk but not far enough to take a cab.

Can you back out $12?? I would put the BOM closer to $6 if I'm going with the high estimate, and more than half of that cost will be driven by the ATMEL and OLED.

I'm currently working on a company that could just as easily start in China as the US: anything you can share regarding where and how to find investors? No "Chinese AngelList"?

As others have mentioned, nothing is even close. For certain types of industries there are cities in the US and Europe that are competitive (eg mil/aero in Los Angeles and DC metros), but for general product development and especially consumer electronics nothing is close.

What do you hope to gain out of living in these places? There are plenty of foreigners who have been in Shenzhen for over a decade and are only marginally more interesting or successful now than when they arrived. The location rarely changes what's inside. If you find Shenzhen interesting, just come! It (and the rest of the HK+PRD megalopolis) is not even close to peaking in terms of creative or engineering output. Just bear in mind that there will always be a barrier. If you're thinking of turning into a local you need to be either (A) a skilled Chinese (B) an extremely well capitalized foreign company (C) an extremely skilled foreigner willing to spend years in the city and learn the language to fluency.

All that being said, you want to look for cities with strong population growth trends, very low wages, and huge levels of government investment. India is probably your best bet, though I know nothing about it other than what's in the news that they want to be the next China. That will be tough since India is missing some absolutely fundamental pre-requisites to the kind of growth China has had.

Is this true? I know that as a US Citizen I'm required to pay taxes on worldwide income; but any lawful resident of the USA has the same burden? I'm a little skeptical that someone not on a permanent immigration path would be subject to this, but I'm neither an attorney nor an accountant so...

You should download and explore WeChat (微信）. It seems like facebook at this point is now chasing functionality that's been present in Chinese apps for several years. WeChat lets you order food, buy train tickets, etc in addition to the messaging. The comparison I've heard is that in software B2C China is ahead by 5 years, B2B USA leads by 5 years. And China is defining new C2C and O2O. Hardware is a toss-up.

Looking for a software engineering cofounder.

I'm working on a project automating tasks around physical product development, and eventually leading into a SaaS/platform with some intelligence to take advantage of new directions in digital manufacturing. I have a feature roadmap and connections to some early users for sales/testing, but my background is not software engineering (MechE, manufacturing, and some EE/embedded systems). Currently I'm evaluating freelancers to get an MVP built since I have a small amount of money to work with.

SEEKING WORK

Location: Remote (primarily Shenzhen, China); Las Vegas, San Francisco Bay Area

We're a boutique product development firm focusing on concept design through manufacturing and delivery of consumer electronics products. We focus heavily on low-volume, flexible manufacturing in China Pearl River Delta region. Another of our particular specialties is precision electromechanical systems, but we've designed, prototyped, and manufactured systems ranging from wearables all the way through interactive kiosks and high volume packaging. We have a lot of experience in helping companies source from China from the prototype stage.

Email: [email protected]

The easiest way to know is to watch the chinese deal websites. I use those for sourcing anyway so I perform an idle search here and there. In all honesty, if you're getting cloned it's a positive signal that you have a potentially good product (at least on the higher end of the technology scale--for someone like an early-stage fitbit it would be disastrous if the cloners were capable). If you aren't able to watch deal websites, there are other pretty easy ways to track it.

It's also about the strategy of your development--you can take a few very small actions early on that will make it orders of magnitude more difficult to copy your product. But, generally, it's not worth a factory's time to clone your product, especially if it integrates manufacturing processes they don't have access too. I have this benefit because I work mainly with small factories and while they do cooperate with each other, there isn't the infrastructure or margins to allow them to do anything other than focus on building parts as quickly as possible.

My email should be in my profile, drop me a line!

To provide a somewhat-contrasting anecdote, I've been dealing with Chinese factories (mostly in the Pearl River Delta area) for the last 3 years, manufacturing fairly high-tech products. We haven't had any of the problems you describe. We did our first small manufacturing runs sight-unseen with our initial partners and everything went well. I think the story of cratered Kickstarters has more to do with creators who have little experience in manufacturing and no clue what they're doing in China, rather than some intrinsic failing of Chinese factories.

There are plenty of ways to make your BOM work in your home country, but at least in the US it's surprisingly difficult to get low volumes (<5k units) manufactured economically.

Memrise has some decent Chinese decks.

But if you really want to learn the writing, get skritter. Absolutely worth the cost.