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So You Wanna Be An Entrepreneur In China?

By Dan Harris and Steve Dickinson

Every month or so, I get an email from someone asking me for my views on their starting a business in China. These emails usually come from someone who has been in China for a year or so at a really low paying job or from someone who just recently graduated from college in the United States. I typically respond with one or two sentences of lawyer advice, something along the lines of the following: I really do not know what to tell you, never having been an entrepreneur in China myself, but from the perspective of a lawyer who spends his life representing companies (including start-up companies there), I can tell you that it is going to be much more difficult and more expensive for you to start a company there (at least legally) than in the U.S. For an on the ground view of what it takes to be a foreign entrepreneur in China, you should read Sam Goodman's book, Where East Eats West. I am now also going to tell them to read Rand Han's recent post, entitled, "Confessions of A China Entrepreneur." This paragraph both tells you what Rand's post will be about and why you absolutely should read it:

So in the interest of fully answering the ?China Entrepreneur? question, I?m going to take those of you not already bored with this article down memory lane, and reflect on how many times I got my assed kicked, punched, and handed back to me in a beautifully arranged gift basket during my journey through China?s ?wild wild east? business frontier? from the street level looking up.

The post is a no holds barred history of Rand's Shanghai-based advertising agency Bloody Amazing and his just-formed digital social media agency, ZeroDegrees. Though it does ramble a bit at times (which Rand admits and which really only adds to its charm), doing so it only makes us better "feel" what it is like to go through starting a business and becoming an entrepreneur in China. I am hoping this is only part 1 of a series.

Full post as published by China Law Blog on March 09, 2010 (boomark / email).