Venture Capitalists Bank on Blog in China

Filed in archive Venture Capital on September 4, 2005

China's Communists have obsessed over tight control of the media since the party's rise to power. But don't tell that to the Middle Kingdom's more than 10 million bloggers and the domestic and American venture capitalists backing them. Bokee, a red-hot
blogging portal, whose Chinese names translates as "blog" was established by Beijing Blog Times Information & Technology Co., and claims to have more than 2 million users. But the question is why are venture firms like Bessemer, Granite Global Ventures, Mobius Venture Capital, and Softbank's Asia Infrastructure gambling $10 million on China's blogosphere?

The answer is simple: Bokee may be the next Chinese Internet stock to enter the Internet Stratosphere and there's a renewed dot-com exuberance not seen since maybe the late 1990s. Skeptics and myself included, do not think there is any proven business model and no one, not one analyst, pre-or post dot com bubble, believes that China's market has one billion potential customers; nor a stable and consistent policy for Internet development. Despite these reality takes, other prospective Chinese blog IPOs in the works are Blogbus.com and BlogCN.com. Bokee following the Baidu and China Internet companies aims to hit a home run with a future Nasdaq listing.

Blog entrepreneur, Edwyn Chan has also joined the blog frenzy fray with the launching of Blogku. In an interview with me on my other blog, AsiaMedia, he candidly comments on the challenges associated in being a blogger in China.

He says " if you are blogging for yourself, you should stay clear of sensitive topics, however its controversial topics that gets attention. Even if you are not blogging about the government, writing about controversial stuff usually leads to one offending someone. In a society that is all about guanxi, that's not too cool to offend someone as you might lose out."

VC investors in China's blogging industry know there is continued uncertainty surrounding government internet regulations. Despite media reports to the contrary, bloggers on Bokee and other blog sites do not have to individually register their true identities with the government.

Who knows. Not wanting to lose out, may drive more of the venture community to or is should that phrase really be, up against the Great Wall?