Why Chinese tech start-ups are wooing users overseas
As the domestic market becomes more crowded, technology firms are increasingly trying to give their products more global appeal
As competition in China’s technology industry intensifies, more start-ups have begun to look beyond their home market, using their knowledge and expertise to woo users in the United States and beyond.
Musical.ly, for example, an app which lets users record 15-second videos of themselves lip-syncing to famous hits, was founded by Chinese entrepreneurs Alex Zhu and Louis Yang in 2014, and has since gone on to amass more than 130 million registered users, most of whom reside in the US.
Musical.ly started out as an app for creating videos, with users sharing their clips with friends through other social networks such as Instagram.
“When Musical.ly was built, [the founders] threw it out to different countries to see which one would stick. Interestingly enough, the people who responded were teenagers in the US,” said Hans Tung, managing partner of venture capital firm GGV Capital and a board member at Musical.ly. GGV Capital is an investor in Musical.ly.
“They have more time to create content, which they cannot make as easily on Snapchat or Instagram.
Musical.ly eventually grew into a social network,” he said.