Business incubators look to China for tech world’s next big thing
No longer dismissed as the land of the copycats, China is increasingly attractive to foreign start-up accelerators hoping to nurture the technology giants of the future
In 2013, when Zhao Chen was appointed to launch a start-up accelerator in China, his move was met with suspicion among the tech community in Silicon Valley.
“Do you have innovation in China?” was one reaction. “Isn’t China a place where people just copy what Western companies do?” was another. Even at his own company, a San Francisco-based firm whose graduates include the creators of PayPal and Dropbox, it was not rare to hear those questions, he recalled.
Three years later, the landscape is completely different. No longer the land of the copycats, China is now attracting serious attention from foreign incubators and accelerators that want to nurture the technology giants of the future.
Broadly speaking, “accelerators” or “incubators” are businesses that help start-ups quickly advance their development in whatever ways are necessary, from mentoring to finding them partners to helping them pitch their ideas to investors.
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The Plug and Play Tech Centre, where Zhao serves as managing partner for China, recently opened a new office in Beijing, its ninth accelerator in the nation.