One Founder tells his crazy story of getting on television in China, the other relates a “well-timed”
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The time I competed on China’s version of Shark Tank

Startup: Biosensorix
Storyteller: Luka Fajs, Co-founder and CEO

Basically we were invited to join the Chinese version of Shark Tank which is called ‘The Next Unicorn’.

I had one call prior to the show, one half-a-minute call on WeChat. They asked, “what do you do?”, “Where are you from?” A few more questions, OK, bye. Boom.

I was like, “Nothing is going to happen out of this. I am clearly not the match.”

Half-an-hour later, “You’re coming to China in three days”. I did the WeChat call on Friday, they wanted me to be in China on Monday.

So Ok, I book the flight, I went there. Basically I arrive there and they tell me to come in the morning. It basically was waiting all day to do a short piece of filming.

They actually combined Trump’s The Apprentice with Shark Tank. We had to run around like crazy completing jobs. The only problem is nobody spoke english, and I don’t speak Chinese.

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What I figured out is I just have to find the right camera and smile. And then just talk and try to communicate with team members who spoke a bit of english.

Somehow, I managed to go through to the next round. The next round of challenges and I went through. I don’t know how I went through. Actually, I think because I’m a not-so-bad-looking Ang Moh, I went through.

Then there was the final act which was actually the Shark Tank situation. There were quite a lot of companies from abroad — New Zealand, Australia, the US I think.

I did my pitch in english, I don’t think anybody understood but I got second place. I don’t know how.

Well actually I do know. We have a very good technology that’s basically self-expanatory. There were 20 investors there in the judging panel and we got the highest valuation and most money raised from two investors. That’s how we got second place.

It was funny, because they didn’t speak english and I don’t speak Chinese. It was all about hand gestures and nodding and laughing when other people were laughing.

The time we started our Hong Kong logistics company right before Chinese New Year

Startup: Pickupp

Storyteller: Crystal Pang, Co-Founder

When we started in Hong Kong we were two months in and we were new to logistics and didn’t quite know what to expect.

We decided to open in the pre-Chinese New Year period when everyone is trying to send things soe we underestimated how many orders could come in. We were expecting X and it became three times as X.

It was the day before Chinese New Years and all the logistics players were home. They had closed shopped already. Because we didn’t want to disappoint our customers, all of the engineers drove and they were out delivering until 11pm the night before Chinese New Year.

So that was painful, but it became a good experience for the engineers because they noticed some of the not-so-user-friendly things in the interface. So they say, “I think I know why you complain about things not being very user friendly”.

Now we have a better revenue model. We hike our price gradually for people who are very, very last minute. We will do the work, but they just have to pay the price. Our [delivery peole] will actually want to come out the day before Chinese New Year so they can earn some pocket money.

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For us, we learned not to underestimate. How people talk about Christmas, 11.11, people talk about crazy logistical nightmares. I think we went in a little too optimistic.

But I think the lesson is believe in the market force. If you have someone who is willing to put up the price, there are a lot of healthy bidders out there. We’ve seen a pretty healthy market since we have implemented that change.

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