Live Blogging at Red Herring Asia 2006
Hong Kong, 29th Aug:
Arrived bleary-eyed this morning from London and then straight to the Conference venue…not disappointed. Good agenda, a number of exciting companies and some good panel discussions.
*****
Some observations from the company presentations:
- PowerPoint is the bane of our times…and sadly there is a woeful lack of coaching on making good presentations. Way too much content on some slides and pitches. I recommend everyone reads Guy Kawasaki’s “The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint”. (Note to myself: re-read it)
- Had a flash-back of the pre-bubble days during one of the presentations…”Beta roll-out – Q3 ’07; IPO – end of ’07”…I am not making this up.
- Noticed that a lot of companies were not really about fundamental innovation or disruption but were aiming to create value by innovation in process(es) or dis-intermediating complex delivery channels – nothing wrong with that…the markets that are being addressed in these business models are so large and fast-growing that enormous value will be generated even though there is no “text-book” innovation happening. Case in point: Focus Media; Also see one of my earlier posts on this: “Globalization = Copying a Successful Business Model?”
- Startling statistic (at least to me): 77m broadband subscribers in China (60% of online population) and still only 8% penetrated.
