Can we stay in France to start a business? Live from Shanghai, and guest of the 6th start-up and innovation summit, Lu Guo, founder and CEO of Ushopal Group, specializing in the management of luxury and beauty brands for Generation Z, for get them to conquer new markets, responds bluntly: “I returned to China to start my business. China is still booming. There are great opportunities and we can meet long-term investor partners.” Before starting his business, Lu Guo traveled all over the place. After an MBA at the University of Pennsylvania, she worked notably at Johnson & Johnson and the Boston Consulting Group. For his part, Pierre Poignant, formerly at Alibaba, founder of Branded, buys brands that do not exist on the Internet to develop them. “I moved to Singapore to create an e-commerce platform with Alibaba. Eight years later, I returned to Paris to found Branded.”
But how do you succeed in gaining respect in Asia when you are a young French entrepreneur? “The first thing, he admits, is the impact and the balance sheet, the track record. It is the recipe of any entrepreneur. You have to move very quickly and hold the attention of others so that there is of the world following you. ” Lu Guo adds, stressing the importance of being “agile”, ready to change strategy. While recalling that it is difficult to be number 2 or 3, she insists on the need to be resilient: “It is very hard on the physical and psychological level, many entrepreneurs give up along the way, not because that the idea is not good but because of the pressure. “
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60 million against 1 billion
Chinese entrepreneurs have a market of over a billion consumers, while the French have only 60 million. Should the Chinese be global? “Chinese entrepreneurs are looking to the United States,” said Lu Guo, “those who graduate from school immediately think of the scale of the world, they are not satisfied with China. You are going to see more and more of them in United States and Europe. ” For Pierre Poignant, China and Asia in general is an essential market, where consumers adopt new technologies much faster than elsewhere. “The American market is more fragmented, it is more difficult to reach critical size very quickly, but access to capital is easier. Europe is behind. We do not have a single market, investors are still too local. We have a lot of great projects and a lot of entrepreneurship, but we need to raise money more easily and think more globally. “
Limitless
Patrice Nordey of Fabernovel founded Neteconomie.fr, sold to M6 before settling in Shanghai in 2007 to set up the Asia subsidiary of l’Atelier, the technology watch center of BNP Paribas. He then founded Velvet, a Chinese agency and digital strategy and activation sold to Fabernovel. “I loved being an entrepreneur in China. The market is extremely dynamic. There is a big difference with other countries. In the United States or in Europe, nobody dares to compete with Amazon or Apple. But in China, we don’t hesitate to go out and compete with the big guys. The only limit is ourselves. ” In short, we must dare to free ourselves from it.
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