I found the most interesting point in the whole article the publicly stated consideration of establishing a China presence.
It would appear to make a lot of sense given current capital availability in China, world-leading mobile payment penetration, and US/SF issues with visas, overheads, component sourcing. Get over here!
How is China with 'innovation' though? The portrait we seem to get so often in the West is that China excels at imitation and fails at original thinking. Maybe innovation isn't needed for domestic success, but it is for creating things that penetrate the rest of the world (and, these days, dare I say universe?).
Well we have perfect mobile payment penetration, the only significant electrical vehicle fleet in the world, and the world's most successful social networking platform. None of these things are copies.
What's stopping these things penetrating the west? For payments, mostly incumbents. For e-vehicles, mostly protectionist levels of government regulation that make small vehicles too expensive to approve as roadworthy or illegal to drive, and foreign SNS platforms have outright announced they are planning on emulating WeChat.
It would appear to make a lot of sense given current capital availability in China, world-leading mobile payment penetration, and US/SF issues with visas, overheads, component sourcing. Get over here!