[Mayfield Fellows: China] The Great Wall and Goodbyes

Our last day in China was a blast, a great way to end our Mayfield trip. 

We woke up early and loaded onto a bus that took us to the Great Wall in Badaling, a 1.5hr trip.  As we drove into the mountains, the scenery was amazing.  We had a tour guide on the bus that none of us could understand except David.  All we remembered was how loud the volume was!  Badaling’s Great Wall point is perhaps the most touristy of the Great Wall destinations – cheap souvenirs, fake wood entrance (think Matterhorn or Splash Mtn), and speakers blasting Kenny G (I kid you not!).  We were a bit taken aback by this introduction to the Great Wall.  But, once we all made it up to the wall itself and began our climb (we climbed from tower 4 to tower 9), our initial skepticism was washed away.  This wall truly is amazing, especially when you consider it took decades to build, 10 thousand people, and it spans approx. 10k miles in total!!  This is one experience I will never forget – just like the Taj Mahal in India.  How lucky we are to experience 2 of the greatest man-made feats of engineering in one trip!!

 

 By the end of this Great Wall experience, we were in high spirits.  We felt on top of the world; the Mayfield Fellows are prepared to tackle any obstacle; any challenge or issue we know we can navigate to a solution.  Like getting back home:

Well, eventually we found our bus and made it back to Beijing.  Our final event was a good one — dinner with some of our Haas classmates and some of the 2010 new admits!!  We ate in a very cool area called Hohai, which is a bar/restaurant area surrounding a small lake.  I don’t remember the name of the restaurant where we ate, but it was very tasy!  We crammed 12+ folks into a small private room and had a blast.  I wish I had a picture of this event, but I had already used up my 2 GB of memory space on my camera (yeah, I took ~600 pictures on this trip!!)… 

And that was that.  We woke up very early the next day, caught a cab to the airport, and spent the next 24 hours traveling back to the US through Hong Kong.  Our Mayfield Trip 2008 has come to a close and now we are on to beginning our summer internships.  What an experience!!  We met with so many successful folks on our trip from VC, law firms, etc – some great contacts.  We saw some amazing sites, and experienced some of the finer aspects of the Indian and Chinese cultures.  And we ate (and ate, and ate) some extremely delicious, and occasionally adventurous, meals.  I have to shout out some kudos to Uday and David for their excellent job in being our tour guides, translators, food experts, etc in India and China respectively.  Thanks guys, you were great!!  And with that, I am signing off – Mayfield Fellows 2008 trip blog is officially complete!!

[Mayfield Fellows: China] Operation Do-Everything-In-China On Road to Success

We Mayfield Fellows don’t quite know how to describe this two week trip; is it a vacation?  A business trip?  I think it’s just a big mash-up of both.  But in any event, we have certainly done a lot, whether it be educational meetings or sightseeing excursions.  The wear-and-tear on the team is showing, but we’re still kicking (on fumes) and having a great time!

Our last day in Shanghai was productive.  Brian had been on a mission since we arrived in China to go to the Shanghai Museum.  We decided against going Saturday afternoon because the line was wrapped around the building – we thought we’d be clever and show up early on Sunday morning to beat the crowds.  Well, little did we know, Sunday was a holiday (Children’s Day), so the line was even longer in the morning, full of families waiting to get inside!!  Once inside, we experienced four floors of very cool, historical artifacts.  I took lots of pictures of many of these exhibits, here are a few of my favorites:

We had one last meeting that day with NEA Ventures, and one last evening on the town. We then said goodbye early Monday morning. 

Beijing — our last leg of the trip, home of the summer olympics (in ~2 months). I have to say, I’m not sure they’ll actually be ready for the games by then!  Lots of construction is happening all over town, restoration of lots of the sites, etc, but I cannot see how the city will be ready by the start of the games.  Reminds me of that commercial for Coke (or something) before Athens where the sprinters ran through a construction site of workers finishing the stadium!

Yesterday we visited Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, right in the center of Beijing.  Quite cool, although we found ourselves very ignorant of the historical significance of what we saw.  I need to review my 8th grade world history books I guess…

We ate dinner at a famous restaurant renowned for its Peking Duck dishes.  I can say we certainly had opportunity to eat duck – pretty much every part of the duck!  I can elaborate later, it was a new, and actually delicious, experience!!

Today, we visited the new Olympic Stadium and surrounding area – there is quite a bit of Olympic excitement all around town, and the new structures are quite amazing!

Well, this is my last blog entry from China – we have one last day, which I am very excited about, as we will be traveling to the Great Wall for a day trip!  Should be a great way to end our Chinese experience.  I will finish out our Mayfield trip blog after I get back to the states, so stay tuned!

[Mayfield Fellows: China] Shanghai Express Rolls On…

The past two days in Shanghai have been filled with great meals and some fun exploration to parts of the city whose names I cannot pronounce. I apologize to any of you considering traveling to Shanghai, this entry will be of no help to your planning, unless you can match up the pictures to the actual destinations!

But first, business: Mayfield business to be exact. We were lucky to set up an appointment with one of Shanghai’s top IP lawyers of Watson & Band. We had a great discussion over tea about China’s regulatory processes, entrepreneurship and the law, and of course, the big question of how china is addressing violations and piracy of foreign IP.

We have explored several areas of the city over the last two days. The best I can say is that the city is divided into East and West by the Huangpu River. Most of the areas we’ve visited are on the West side. One of the great Chinese experiences is the Nanjing Road, with shopping galore for everything you can imagine, both fake and real. We were lucky to be there after dark and the lights and excitement of the area were fun. It got real interesting when we noticed one store selling pig faces (yes, it’s true)!! No one bought one, in case you’re wondering…

Today we explored a different part of town, near the famous “Bund” area of Shanghai. This area (which will remain nameless, someone please fill me in!) was a mix of local shopping area into an extreme tourist area. In the center of this tourist area is the famous Yuyuan Garden — this place is beautiful! We spent the better part of an hour exploring the nooks and crannies of the place – coi fish, rock formations, pagodas and all! Beautiful! (and surrounded by some great dumpling places I might add…)

Well, besides the good times during the last two days, we’ve had a great time exploring Shanghai’s nightlife as well – the French Corridor has Kaan’s favorite bar: Beaver. Known for it’s mean foosball table and relatively cheap beer. Tonight’s bar of choice was Luna, in some area I can’t pronounce. Expensive, but great fun! And near our favorite restaurant of our Shanghai experience, one that (again), I don’t recall the name, but it specializes in Taiwanese dumplings. Good thing Wende of the IBD team was there to show us the proper way to consume dumplings!!

We have one more day in Shanghai, and Brian is dead set on visiting the museum. One more meeting, and one last dinner hurrah, and we’re off to our final destination of our Mayfield trip, Beijing! More to come soon!

[Mayfield Fellows:India+China] Last Hurrah in India, Hello Shanghai!

Well, our travels in India are complete, and I must say we went out with a bang. We traveled to the city of Agra to visit the famous Taj Mahal, which I can say is definitely an amazing experience. About 4.5 hrs outside of Delhi, it was a long ride into Agra. But walking through the gateway and getting the first glimpse of the Taj Mahal is something I’ll never forget. We had a great guide as well, who told us the romantic story of a king who built the Taj Mahal to satisfy the dying request of his beloved wife – an endeavor that took him 22 years to build. Walking throughout the grounds and into the tomb was a worthy experience, despite the 100+ degree heat.

After this trip, we headed to the airport and said goodbye to India, and Hello to China – first stop, Shanghai.

Yesterday was our first full day in the city. Despite the layer of fog/smog over the city, we still had a great day. We visited the famous Orient Pearl Tower that gives visitors great views of the central part of the city. We also enjoyed a boat cruise along the Huangpu River that runs through the city. Both experiences were great fun, although we all noticed the fact that the city is pretty dirty. The air quality is suspect and the river water was not anything you’d want to swim in… But we were amazed at how developed the city has become over the last 10 years as we compared pictures of the downtown skyline within the Orient Pearl Tower.

We had great timing as we were also able to attend the Berkeley Club of Shanhai’s alumni event at the beautiful Westin Hotel. We met up with our fellow classmates who are in Shanghai on IBD, ate delicious hors d’oeuvres, and networked with Berkeley alumni.

Today we are off on more adventures as we explore this huge city, and perhaps a visit to our IBD friends’ office! More to come later…

Technology that can Change Lives

Global Initiatives was fortunate today to have an engaging discussion with Haas ‘96 alum Mark Beckford, who spent a significant amount of time developing Intel’s products and solutions for emerging markets. His background includes building strategies to sell to small business consumers in developing countries, setting up a new division to examine these strategies, and focusing on growing Intel’s business in internet cafes in China.

Mark spoke about Clayton Christenson’s books and how they emphasize that products with a simpler, cheaper value proposition will hollow out the existing market. This is how companies should view and approach Emerging Markets. In addition, Mark mentioned that content will likely be one of the biggest challenge areas in emerging markets, particularly since there does not seem to be one solution that applies to all regions. Finally, we engaged in a lively discussion of barriers to product uptake, wimax solutions, new business models, and income divides.

While I greatly appreciated the discussion, I was even more inspired to hear Mark’s story of how his own passion was ignited for “technology that can change people’s lives.”