Putting China On The Silicon Valley Map: NetScreen And Fortinet Founder Ken Xie (Part 2)

SM: How long did you stay with the PC company doing network installations? KX: I was there for one year. I jumped around quite a bit, and sometimes I was working for multiple companies at a time. The second year I was in a grant program at Stanford. The electrical engineering program is very difficult

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Putting China On The Silicon Valley Map: NetScreen And Fortinet Founder Ken Xie (Part 1)

Ken Xie started his first network security company, Stanford InfoSystem, Inc., in 1993. A few years later, he realized the performance limitations of a software firewall and started NetScreen. NetScreen later was acquired by Juniper for $3.5 billion. At the end of 2000, Xie founded Fortinet, which pioneered Unified Threat Management (UTM). Ken earned his

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IPO In China: Made-In-China.com President Joseph Wong (Part 7)

SM: Why did you list in China instead of Hong Kong? JW: The main decision was made by the CEO and CFO. Since I did not make the decision directly, I cannot say what were the final reasons for choosing the Chinese markets over the Hong Kong markets.

IPO In China: Made-In-China.com President Joseph Wong (Part 6)

SM: Is Made-In-China a public company? JW: Yes, we went public last year. We went public in China.

IPO In China: Made-In-China.com President Joseph Wong (Part 5)

SM: Your business model is basically paid subscription and advertising fees from suppliers. Buyers get to use the site free. Do you have any other revenue generating aspects of your business? JW: We actually try to provide additional trader oriented services for the buyers and suppliers.

IPO In China: Made-In-China.com President Joseph Wong (Part 4)

SM: Let’s delve more into your search engine traffic strategy. You said that search engine traffic accounts for anywhere from 20% to 30% of visitors to your site. Are you including optimization of your site as well as paid search advertising in that traffic volume? JW: Yes. We include all search engine traffic and follow

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IPO In China: Made-In-China.com President Joseph Wong (Part 3)

SM: Tell me more about your website. Is it entirely in English? JW: We have two languages for our site, English and Chinese. The English portion of the site is targeted at the international trade market, such as importers. The Chinese side is targeted at the domestic Chinese market, which would primarily be the manufacturers

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IPO In China: Made-In-China.com President Joseph Wong (Part 2)

SM: Was your strategy to consolidate Chinese exporters on one side and worldwide importers on the other side and then let them connect through your Web services? JW: Yes. The idea was to put suppliers and buyers on a single site so that they could meet.