WSO Podcast | E98: Kevin Jon - Consulting at Roland Berger in Germany to Head of Startup Accelerator in Shanghai
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In this episode, Kevin shares with us his path from a top consulting firm in Germany to helping run a startup accelerator in Shanghai. Learn why he made the jump to China, the differences in the venture capital and startup space in China compared to the US, what his plans are for the future and the realities now with Covid-19 in Shanghai.
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WSO Podcast (Episode 98) Transcript:
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:00:06] Hello and welcome. I'm Patrick Curtis, your host and chief monkey, and this is the Wall Street Oasis podcast. Join me as I talk to some of the community's most successful and inspirational members to gain valuable insight into different career paths and life in general. Let's get to it. In this episode, Kevin shares with us his path from a top consulting firm in Germany to helping run a startup accelerator in Shanghai. Learn why he made the jump to China. The differences in venture capital and startup space in China compared to the U.S., what his plans are for the future and the realities now with COVID 19 in Shanghai. Enjoy. All right, Kevin, thanks so much for joining the Wall Street Voices podcast.
Kevin: [00:00:56] Thanks for having me, man.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:00:58] So it'd be awesome if you could just give the listeners a short summary of your bio.
Kevin: [00:01:02] Yeah, sure. So I started studying in Germany at the University of Mannheim, what I studied there was business administration, and during my studies I always positioned myself very broadly. So I was a total generalist. I looked into a law firm and to start up acceleration into a startup into SM Consulting in India. And so it was all over the place. But for me, that was very much fun and I liked it. And after my studies, I had a quick placement at Rocket Internet for three months in Sydney. Before then, I transitioned into strategic consulting at Roland Berger for approximately three years. But the last half year of it, I was already focused on my own startup accelerator or funding accelerator, as we called it in Berlin, where we were getting pre-seed very early stage startups in touch with the right investors and angels before then making the big move from Europe to China. Shanghai, where now I am in charge of the accelerator. It's called so the company is called XE note, and we do three things. One is space like we work, for example. The other thing is corporate innovation. So for example, a McKinsey digital would do focus purely on innovation in China. And the third thing is acceleration business, and that's what I'm in charge of
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:02:42] The acceleration business. What do you mean by that?
Kevin: [00:02:44] Exactly. So there's the acceleration business. What we do is we do startup acceleration, helping startups from outside of China get into China and gain traction in China. And then there's multiple business models. How we monetize that
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:03:00] And are most of your investments coming out of U.S. Europe, where what companies are coming to you guys for help for that,
Kevin: [00:03:07] Typically mostly Asia and Europe? So with the US, historically, we have done very little, although it's still a spot on my map that I want to engage more with in the future.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:03:21] Great. So let's start back kind of in your university days and tell me a little bit about why you went there, what your thought process was as you're going through. You said you kept everything very broad as a generalist. Was that because you figured it didn't matter to specialize or you just found it? You said you found it interesting. It was fun for you. So what kind of eventually, why did you take the first? You said the first roll out of school was rocket internet. Exactly. And that was, but did you have internships during your four years? Is that traditional in Germany to have some work experience before you graduate?
Kevin: [00:04:01] Yeah, so the way it usually works in Germany is you during your studies, you develop a vision for where you want to go. But you do one or two or three internships there and then you start as a full time in that role. For me, I always knew going into university, I always knew I wanted to start my own business eventually. And so I figured the best way to learn as much as possible about business is to look into a lot of different companies from a lot of different industries. So I never started Business Administration studies and were like, OK, I need to get into investment banking or I need to end up in private equity. It was always the goal was to start a business, to change the world and to truly have an impact. So I so I did a lot of different things. I started interning at a small startup that was probably one of the internships where I learned the most. Then I worked for accelerators, then I looked into a Magic Circle law firm. I was at the federal Bank of Germany and so on. Until then, the end of my studies approach and I realized, Oh, actually, you learned a lot of a lot of things during your studies, but it still feels super theoretical. Like most of the things you learned in accounting or in controlling or in finance, you are not really certain how to apply them. So I faced the decision between doing my master's degree like 90 percent of my mates study mates did, or I figured I might try this thing called consulting that I got in touch with over the last couple of months because the University of Mannheim is one of the target universities for consulting firms. So but working, recruiting?
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:05:53] Weren't you too late or was this in your you're like your third year? Or was this when you kind of decided
Kevin: [00:05:59] I might do that? It wasn't my third year.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:06:01] So you still had time.
Kevin: [00:06:02] Yeah, right. Ok, so there was in my third year, and so I figured, OK, so either you're doing a master's degree or you do like a practical master, as I call it, which would be consulting, basically trying different industries, trying different functions and just seeing how that works. And then I figured after a couple of years, you know, I can make an exit and become my own boss.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:06:27] Did you feel like there were enough engagements to actually get that broad of an education? Or were you on like long term engagements? Or were you jumping around into enough industries where you felt like you've got a pretty good experience?
Kevin: [00:06:38] Yeah. So me, myself, I did 12 projects in the three years, so that was quite a quite a good and healthy amount of project.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:06:48] Yeah, that's awesome. So but what was this initial kind of when you first got out of school? So you got you've got an internship in, was it at Roland Berger?
Kevin: [00:06:58] Not so the way it worked, then was once I finished my studies, I applied to a number of consulting firms. I was totally clueless, so I didn't really do a lot of research. I, for example, I totally skipped applying for Bain because I thought these guys are too focused on. They are too much into mathematical stuff, and I kind of found their website boring. So I figured, you know, I'm not going to apply there.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:07:26] So like financial engineering, well, it sounds like you were the typical, you know, arrogant 20 year old like I was.
Kevin: [00:07:36] It was I was like, to be honest, I was pretty clueless. And that's of course, also why I do right now, the things I do on the side, right, with my YouTube channel and stuff.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:07:48] Yeah. Tell the listeners your YouTube channel because it's pretty popular. I think you're pretty well known. So why don't you tell people so they know where to check you out?
Kevin: [00:07:55] Yeah, sure. So I have a YouTube channel. It's called Management Consulting Insights, and I started it during my last year at Roland Berger, where I started with a couple of vlogs I recorded from a project in Paris and people got interested and they started asking questions How? How does that work? And consulting? What do you like about it? What do you hate about it? How do you get in there? And so I started recording videos about that, publishing one every week so you can find me on YouTube. If you type in Kevin John, I will pop up or management consulting insights.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:08:35] And how did people how did your how did your boss and your company deal with the fact that you were developing this personality? Did they not care because it wasn't big enough yet or when you started? Or was it something that they talked to you about?
Kevin: [00:08:50] Yeah, at the beginning, of course, it wasn't big enough, but rather sooner than later people found out, of course. And to be honest, most of the people took it pretty well, you know, so most of them thought, Hey, that's actually that's actually quite interesting. And I would say, Ron Berger is one of the more, you know, I would say they are more tolerant towards these kind of things. It's great where whereas you have other firms where you know, any publicity is very strictly forbidden and controlled. So that was all right. Of course, you always need to. It's a professional context, so you need to be careful and you can't show office from inside and all these kind of
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:09:36] Things were they were they like warning you by the end saying, be careful and stuff like that? Or was it something where you were? You know, I.
Kevin: [00:09:45] Yeah. So through the during progression of time, I had talks with people and I just asked for myself, you know, so what's allowed? I don't want to make any mistakes. And so I think that went pretty well. At the same time, of course, now that I'm totally free, I'm still even a bit more free to just say my opinion about anything, right? But I would say, yeah, I was positively surprised of how well that went with with the firm.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:10:21] That's great. And so tell me a little bit about kind of. This initial so you were you were telling me about how you specifically kind of went to this, this how it works
Kevin: [00:10:32] And I think, yeah, exactly so. So I did all these internships and then I decided, OK, I'm going to go for a practical master's degree. Which to me was consulting. And then I had four months left until I was supposed to start my consulting job and I had a I had very good contacts to rocket internet. And so I managed to secure a, it's called, I think, global venture development program traineeship at rocket internet. So I went to usually that's the thing that lasts, I think, nine months. And I said, Sorry, guys, I'm not available for nine months, but I would love to help out for three months. Is that possible? So that was possible. So I went to Sydney, which was like, beautiful, you know, perfect work life balance. Yeah, even though we worked hard. But on the weekends, we had a lot of fun. And but that also then in that sense, it strengthened my ambition to get into consulting because I realized that, you know, the startup world and especially the way rocket internet runs their ventures. It's super chaotic and it's super fast, and I really appreciate it. Or I knew that it would be good to have a super strong understanding of all the fundamentals. And so I thought consulting must be a great place to learn that. And I had a couple of good mentors at Rocket Two, who worked at the top tier strategy consulting firms because they do a lot of hiring from there. And so that just reinforced my decision to work in strategy consulting for a couple of years.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:12:15] Yeah, and you were there for three years at Roland Berger. So why do you think you stayed so long? I think. Is that typical or is it? Is it usually two years? And then kind of the next step?
Kevin: [00:12:25] I would say it's two to three years usually. And for me, it was I always planned on staying two to three years. And then, of course, you can't really plan it up until the last months, like you get opportunities or you don't, and it takes a little bit longer for me. The last half year. And that's also something where I'm thankful to the firm. I told them, Hey, guys, you know, on the side, I'm by the way, we're building this startup funding accelerator with a couple of friends. Can you guys give me a sabbatical? You know, I would like to explore that opportunity. And surprisingly enough, they told me, Yes, that's possible. Do your thing, you know, and if it works, then scale it. If not, then come back.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:13:14] And so how did you approach that conversation? Because that can be really touchy, did you? Was it with directly first with your manager saying, Hey, I want to go, do this startup? Can I come back in three months? Wouldn't most places just tell you like, no,
Kevin: [00:13:29] You can't
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:13:30] Do that? Like, is that? Is that normal? Do you feel like that was just because you developed strong relationships or why? Why do you think that that
Kevin: [00:13:37] Was the case? Yeah, definitely because of because of good relationships. So I would I was always trying to have good relationships with my mentors and always. Yeah, so it was really about keeping good relationships. I had multiple mentors within the firm and with these mentors, I was very open about my ambitions and my future goals. And I think that contributed to the fact that they then were also willing to give me this this additional trust.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:14:15] And so they kind of knew that it was just a few year, two to three year stint and there wasn't any expectation that you would stay on and become a manager or an engagement manager and get promoted through with it, is that is that typical for the firms there? Is it like, you know, sometimes they go to business school, sometimes people go, you know, what do people do coming out of?
Kevin: [00:14:36] I wouldn't say that. I, you know, I wouldn't say that you should clearly communicate that you are going to leave the firm in two or three years. But what I did and what I was very open about is my big ambitions to start a company, build an empire. And so they knew that, OK, so either this guy is going for the partner track and then probably he realizes, Oh, like, that's not, you know, that's not really building or going to get him in the empire. And then he jumps to something else, or he's naturally just going to leave in a couple of years. But basically being straightforward with your vision and your ambitions, that's something I think that's very beneficial.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:15:23] Why do you think you have such big ambitions to build an empire? As you say, what's and what is an empire look like to you?
Kevin: [00:15:29] Well, that's something I ask a lot of people. How do you develop ambitions? So to me, I haven't come up with the perfect answer so far. I know that your parents. What about your parents? Yeah, like, that's what I just wanted to say. I know it has a lot of a lot to do with how you grow up. And for me, certainly my mom played a big role talking about managers of Fortune 500 companies when I was barely 15. But I'm oftentimes asking myself if that's not too easy, you know, if there's not more so.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:16:09] What did your mom do that she was talking about these leaders.
Kevin: [00:16:13] She was working at a law firm, but not in a not in, you know, she was working on the side of a law firm. So the service is very cool.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:16:24] And your father was, do you have a relationship with him? You close with him?
Kevin: [00:16:28] Yes. Yes, my father is a general practitioner. So Dr.. Like my dad. So he was always the one pulling me back and saying, you know, Kevin, things like family love. All of that is also important. My mom was kind of the total opposite saying, OK, go for the go for the career, go for the. That's cool.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:16:51] Yeah, that's cool. So you so you kind of. Have this ambition of an empire, what's your vision of Empire? Does it matter what the business is in? Is it more about the size and the number of people you employ? Is it the revenue? Is it the profit? What do you view as kind of success kind of down the road?
Kevin: [00:17:10] Patrick, ultimately, I think it's about influence. And so if it's whether it's a firm with 50 people where you do highly important deals for states and governments, or whether it's a, you know, fifty thousand people firm where you produce semiconductors or whatever the hell, yeah, it doesn't really matter. But I think this influence component is something that drives me. Now, should it be beneficial for the world, of course, like you want to, you want to build a legacy and you want to build a positive one, at least for me, that's the case. So, so all of these are factors that make me wake up in the morning and be extremely, extremely driven and ambitious. I don't I'm not the kind of person that has problems coming to work or working on Saturdays and Sundays. For me, that's actually fun in my current stage of life. I'm sure it will change at some point once you grow older and maybe, you know, a little gray and the beard. Yeah, exactly. You know, or you manage to grow a beard in the first place.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:18:23] So I have I have three young kids, four year old, a two year old and a one year old, and they're all stuck at home because of the coronavirus or the COVID 19. However, you want to call it. And so it's it's definitely priorities do change. I do remember probably being closer to your age when I was traveling the world and I was at Rothschild in London, partying like crazy, having a great time and then for the training and then coming back to New York. It was it was a blast. But I feel like it's interesting because things do shift and they shift. Kind of. Slowly at first, but then really fast, especially once you get married and you have kids, if you want that, if you want that. So I know, I know there's some people that have actually chosen very deliberately to be single and are happy with that decision, one of our top members actually on the site. So. I'd love to just hear a little bit more about where you feel like you're able to build the most influence in what form that takes. And just as people think about influence, can you talk a little bit about how you're not? You're obviously building that through YouTube and media and all that stuff and through what you're doing there. But then also, do you feel like your connections into the accelerator and startup community that you're building now is going to be what's kind of the true driver towards that influence? Or do you feel like it's more you doing your own thing on the sides and just experimenting?
Kevin: [00:19:53] Yeah. No, me doing my own stuff on the side. It's really just experimenting, as you already pointed out. So for me, that's nothing that I see as my long term goal. I do think it's important to build reach and following online. So I do think in today's world that's an asset to have five thousand ten thousand fifty thousand people following you. But that being said, the main thing I think is, you know, for me is interesting in terms of value generation going forward is bridging the gaps, the knowledge gaps between China and the rest of the world. So. Um, it's like there's a there's a huge wall, a huge information asymmetry between China and the rest of the world. And I see my mission in, you know, taking a hammer and poking small holes into that wall and then slowly increasing the holes. And so there is lots of potential there, although many people think that China is opening up much more and free flow of goods and information. But the reality is the information asymmetry is still super high. And every day I stay longer in China, I realize now that I'm interacting, for example, with the Shanghai government or with other high ranking Chinese government officials. I just realize what a different world that is and how much of potential there lies in connecting, for example, China and Europe or China and the US more. And for me, the thing that I'm interested in is startups. So for me, it's about the startup ecosystem and specifically focusing on building bridges for the startup ecosystems in China and the rest of the world.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:21:54] He talked to me a little bit about how the differences between like a Silicon Valley where I'm at right here and the startup community in China and super fascinated to hear if you have an opinion on what the main differences are. I mean, is it such that here were the VCs like do bikes play a huge role in China or is it other influencers or other like are there more accelerators? Do you know kind of the differences between both cultures?
Kevin: [00:22:22] Yes. So there's a couple of differences. I would say the first one is just the sheer scale of resources. I mean, China, just as a country, is so much bigger, so much more people, so much more money to deploy. So that's the first difference.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:22:39] Secondly, when you when you say money to deploy, you mean just invest just investments in general, just pure capital, like chasing these deals.
Kevin: [00:22:47] Exactly. Pure capital. I mean, the total amount of venture capital went down, obviously over the last quarter quarters. However, um, however, the money in the system in general and I think the reason why it went down is because it was just too hot. I mean, there was just the VC scene in China is a very young one. They are not super experienced. Deals are pretty straightforward and you don't have different kinds of contracts and participation schemes, as you have in the US. Mm hmm. And so they still have a lot to learn, and it's the first time that kind of this this market cooled down a little bit, which I think is
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:23:33] What we needed, which
Kevin: [00:23:34] Is dated. Exactly. So that's the one thing, the sheer scale of resources. The second thing is obviously the role the government plays because here you have an authoritarian capitalism as opposed to what we have in the West. So you need to always take the government into account, especially if you plan to build an empire, you know, if you don't plan to stay small and in a niche. The third thing is the mindset of the typical Chinese consumer. The Chinese consumer is very open to giving away their privacy, their data, so they don't care whether you take their data as long as some benefits arise from that. So if you do a survey in Germany, you know, it's like 10 percent of people are willing to give away their data if they get some benefit from it here, it's like it's the majority, you know, people just don't care. Yeah. Yeah. And so. So that's so that's another thing. And then maybe the fourth thing to close with is. Based on these three factors, things like lean startup or things like design sprints and methodologies that came from the West. And people try to adopt them in China. They usually don't work. Even things like in the West, you always say you need to pick a niche. You need to pick one narrow vertical and conquer that one and then go on to the next one. Even things like that are not totally applicable. You have many cases of startups and companies here that go super broad in the beginning and manage to conquer multiple verticals at the same time and somehow find to manage to create synergies between those. So it's a it's a very different. Ecosystem.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:25:40] Yeah, I wonder, and so in terms of accelerators and VC funds and are they are there traditional funds like you have here in the U.S. in terms of limited partners in the LPG structure? Are there similar things in China that are where there is these massive VC funds with 10 billion equivalent of USD that go out and make know 100 investments across SAS software, for example? Is it similar in that sense?
Kevin: [00:26:11] Yeah, I would point out three main differences because the most things are similar, but some things are different, so it's a little bit faster. So that means the general, like the duration of a fund, will usually not be 10 years, but might be shorter six seven years. That's normal for Chinese VC funds. Second thing is, you have you always have R&D funds and you have used funds, and that's important to know for founders from abroad who seek to get funding is if the VC firm you're talking to only has an R&D fund, then it might actually be pretty difficult for them to give you funding because they need to go through a lot of legal loopholes to give you that money. However, it's much easier if they have a US fund.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:27:10] Interesting. The second thing you kind of raise, they can raise in two denominations, basically in the currency, and it's helpful if you're if you're an outsider, kind of coming in. Ok, so that's interesting. Ok, and then sorry that your last difference.
Kevin: [00:27:23] Exactly. And then the last difference is you have if you talk to people at VC firms, some of them might be called an investment manager or so let's pick an investment manager, for example. In reality, they are not in reality, they are probably on the associate level. But in China, talking about those roles, you can kind of always deduct one position. So I have some I have some friends from startup funders who approach. We see firms. And are you still there?
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:28:04] Yeah, I'm here. Can you hear me? We lost we lost you for a second, but yeah, I heard everything, so you were saying basically you have to deduct two positions for roles, and if somebody is a man,
Kevin: [00:28:17] Basically deduct one position. So I have friends who are founders and who have been in touch with investment managers and they think, Oh, this guy has decision competence like he has decision power. But in fact, he or she is just the one doing the screening. So that's something some- sometimes disappointing to people talking to Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:28:41] Interesting. Ok, that's great to know. And so tell me a little bit about if there's people that are interested in. Moving to China, like you did and moving to you're in Shanghai, correct? Yes, Shanghai. So either move to Shanghai or moving to China for opportunities, where do you think the best places to be are in terms of city in terms of specific, you know, obviously you might be biased with being in an accelerator, but are there other opportunities you see, like if somebody wanted to say stay with a large consulting firm and come to China, is that an option? What are the what are the options for for people outside of China that want to kind of go there and they see such big opportunity?
Kevin: [00:29:24] Yeah. So geographically, so we can answer in terms of geographies and in terms of industries, in terms of geographies, it's really just the three tier one cities Shenzhen, Beijing and Shanghai that are interesting most of the times because smaller cities are much less international than the big cities. And among those three big cities, it's really Shanghai. That's the most international one. So me coming from Shanghai to Beijing, I already feel, well, that's much more Chinese than what I'm used to in Shanghai. And that's something you need to take into account in terms of industry. To be honest, without speaking Chinese, it's super hard. So if you want to join any consulting firm? Without speaking Chinese, you have two options, either. Forget about it or you are a senior enough, so you have done like three, four, five years at a consulting firm. And then you make a transition. And then what happens is they will give you someone who translates for you, and that means your seniority must be high enough and your expertise in a certain area needs to be high enough in order for that to justify them. Giving you the translator.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:30:51] Hmm, that's interesting. So it's pretty rare. You've got to be pretty senior, pretty valuable. So tell me a little bit about specifics around. So you said you have to know, you have to know Chinese. So basically that's I assume mostly native, if not basically fully fluent business,
Kevin: [00:31:09] Fluent, at least. Exactly, so it's really you really need to be pretty fluent otherwise, especially business Chinese.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:31:18] Are you yourself fluent?
Kevin: [00:31:20] No, I'm not.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:31:21] Ok. And so you're OK because you're dealing with people trying to come in you. The majority speak English, I assume, or.
Kevin: [00:31:30] Exactly. So that's the loophole. You know, one of the one off 10 positions you find are positions where it's not really required to speak Chinese, and those are mostly positions that are outward facing. So communicating with the outside world. And for me, that's the case. I mean, for 90 percent of my job, when I talk to the Singaporean government, when I talk to start ups in Berlin and so on, I don't need to speak Chinese. Then of course, there's these 10 percent where we talk to the Chinese government, for example, where it would be nice for me to be fluent and speak Chinese. But then again, Patrick, that's a challenge that takes probably five years to master.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:32:15] And are you? Are you going to try to master it? What's the plan for you? Are you going to be in Shanghai for five years, two years? Do you have a roadmap for yourself at all or is it just as long as you're seeing good opportunities in the business? Is doing well, you'll stay.
Kevin: [00:32:30] So I have I have a couple of. And in Germany, you say you have irons in the fire, you know? Yeah, so they are hot now and you need to do the work, do the work. And so until these fires, these irons are finished, I will not leave. That will probably take, I don't know, one to three years. And once I'm done with these irons, I can then decide, do I see bigger opportunities now with my new background, my new experience outside? So maybe as someone who connects China and the rest of the world from outside of China, which would be possible? Or do I see great opportunities within China state? And that being said, what I do right now is I do practice Chinese every day. I try to get better at it, but I'm also realistic and know that I have super high. Like I work a lot and some people really dedicate the full day to learning Chinese, so I'm definitely progressing slower than some of my peers.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:33:41] That's fair. So how did you even come up or how did you know coming out of consulting? How did you even find this opportunity and tell me a little bit about how you found yourself in Shanghai? Was this something you were you were actually seeking? Or was it something where this opportunity presented itself through your network? And talk to me a little bit about that because I think that's pretty interesting.
Kevin: [00:34:00] Yes. So growing up, my best childhood friend was Chinese, so that was the first time I got in touch with Chinese culture. I liked it. And once I turned 16, I realized, Oh, you know, China actually is also interesting economically, so there is something to do there in terms of business. Mm hmm. So very early on, I formed the vision that I wanted to do make a career in China, at least for a couple of years, because I thought, you know, it's something that I can only that can only have a strong upside. And so after finishing my consulting years, I thought, OK, so either you do it now or you'll probably do it never, because then you grow older. And as you already said, Patrick, you know, you start. Maybe you have a girlfriend and all these things start and it gets super difficult to say, Hey, you know, let's move to China. And so for me, I decided to make the move. How did I do it? Or what would I tell people who tried to do it themselves? You really need to go the networking route because if you go the official sending an application through the website route. First of all, what you'll find is mostly, you know, like teacher gigs. So you're not going to find a lot of finance jobs that or finance consulting whatever you're aiming for. And secondly, if you find some of these, what happens is, you know, these people, they get 50 applications by Chinese people and then they get this one application from you written in English. And there will be a bit confused at first, even if it's a position that where you can speak English. So I would say it's much better to in a country like China, where it's all about networking, all about building those strong bonds to approach people personally. How would I do it or how did I do it? I went to LinkedIn. I reached out to a lot of people.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:36:16] How did you do your filters? Like, what were you looking for? Obviously, location. But what else were you looking for? You knew you wanted to be in the startup space or no?
Kevin: [00:36:23] Yeah. I was purely looking for people in the startup space. And I supplemented that with real life offline experience. So I actually did multiple trips to Shanghai. And I remember one trip where I was here for two weeks and every day was full of coffee dates with different potential leads or business partners.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:36:46] And so it's the same. It sounds exactly the same as the U.S..
Kevin: [00:36:52] Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And networking is
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:36:55] Universal. That's the lesson here.
Kevin: [00:36:58] Exactly. Exactly, you know? So just building
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:37:00] Relationships. Ok, so yes, you came for two weeks and you didn't have a job or this is your on your savings, basically. And you're just,
Kevin: [00:37:09] Yeah, I no, that was that was during the time when I was working at Roland Burris. I took two weeks holidays and went over.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:37:16] Wow, so that was your holiday just coming in Shanghai and having coffee chats with people all day. Exactly, you might actually build your empire with that attitude. Ok, so you're you, you were meeting with people. Tell me what those meetings were like. I think that's pretty interesting. Was it a bunch of people who were in the only people in the startup space? Where were? Like from Germany, mostly, was it people from all around Europe from tell me like who you were getting actually success at actually even scheduling a meeting?
Kevin: [00:37:50] Yeah, in general, I would say. Two types of people. Firstly, Germans, secondly, foreigners in general, though, with Germans, of course, it's easy for me coming from Germany, texting them and being like, Hey, you know, you did exactly what I also want to do. Coming from Germany to China would be great to exchange some thoughts. And these people immediately get this kind of mentor instinct. Wow, I can help this guy. And they
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:38:22] Were they in startups and VC funds and that type of stuff, mostly
Kevin: [00:38:26] Mostly that stuff. Accelerators, startups, innovation companies, head of innovation at Company X. Got it. Ok, cool. Things like that. Yeah. And so that was the one thing. And then foreigner versus Chinese. Also here. I mean, just us being foreigners or being people from the West. We have very or we are we just bond better with other foreigners. So my success rate with contacting foreigners who lived in Shanghai expats was much higher than contacting Chinese people. Even though I had, I met some wonderful, you know, a couple of people running big VC funds, Chinese people who were also willing to meet up with me and talk about opportunities. But of course, these people then also spoke fluent English. So those that was the situation
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:39:30] Got it, and so tell me about the actual meeting that kind of was your break. Your breakthrough was that during those two week that one of those. So how many how many meetings did you have per day on average? You say five, three like three meetings, three meetings per day and it was across two weeks. So like 15 a little bit more, I guess. But you know, 20.
Kevin: [00:39:54] Yeah, I was it was 20 plus 20 plus meetings, I would say. And funnily enough, so this one, this one networking trip wasn't where I found my current job or my current occupation. Nevertheless, many of the people I met that time I stayed in touch with, and I also did that. I think one and a half or two years in advance of me making the transition to actually go to Shanghai. So I had the time to build up the relationship and make it a genuine one. But what led to my current position is I found the founder of X through our alumni system. So he actually was a Ron Berger alumni like 15 or 20 years ago. Then he went into real estate, which is where there's lots of money in China. And then he thought about, you know, what? What should I do next instead of retiring? Ok, let me start an innovation company. And it was him who I got in touch with through LinkedIn, and he then agreed to work together.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:41:08] Great. And so did you. Did you meet him in person first in Shanghai or?
Kevin: [00:41:14] And so we got in touch through LinkedIn and then agreed to have a meeting in Shanghai. And so I basically came to Shanghai without having anything like I had a couple of leads. Also, some of the people I met during my two weeks networking in Shanghai. But I didn't have any security. I didn't know what's going to happen, and my backup plan actually was to go to Hong Kong. So I knew I had three months of time to find something in Shanghai to make something happen. And then I figured, if that doesn't work, I'll go to Hong Kong and try over there. And if that doesn't work, maybe I'll go to Singapore. And then if that doesn't work, you know, I'm probably not.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:41:58] Is there reason you wanted Shanghai over Hong Kong and Hong Kong? Probably little more of a financial hub, right? And Shanghai?
Kevin: [00:42:05] Yeah, and Hong Kong. And you know, I always said that China and Hong Kong is not really China. It's like the people are so different. And I just found Shanghai to be even a bit more exciting.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:42:22] Ok, fair. So you did meet him, but luckily it worked out. Tell me about kind of what you went into that meeting with in terms of like perspective, in terms of like what you did, you have a set thing like I need to get paid this much or anything like that? Or was it more like, Hey, I'll work for for cheap as it was, did you have a certain negotiation going in? Did you feel like you had the job lined up or was it more just still kind of in the initial phases?
Kevin: [00:42:52] Yes, so I had I had two main thoughts, the first one was the salary really for me isn't a decision factor because whether I earn three K, five K or 10 K per month. This doesn't like this will not get me into a different lifestyle. You know, it's not like I'm going to buy yachts and properties all around the world if I earn five k more per month, right? I'm going to be able to invest a little bit more. And that's nice. But that was never the driver driving decision factor. The second thing for me was I do want to have the possibility to, based on this job, have some exponential. Exponential benefits from it. And ideally, monetary benefit, so of course, there was the discussion around what what do we do if new deals turn up? Can I be somehow, you know, become a shareholder if we start a new joint venture, which is surprisingly enough something you do rather often here when you make deals with big, for example, real estate, state owned enterprises and so on. So what are the options for me to then participate in these kind of things? So those were the two, the two things that guide me. And above that, to be honest, I was playing it cool externally, but internally I was just looking for anything. So I probably would have like this was looking back. This was the perfect or this is the perfect company for me, the perfect opportunity. And I'm able to take so much responsibility, lead a team, start and start a VC fund. Crazy things. But I probably would have accepted anything when I came here, you know?
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:44:55] And are your investors kind of already lined up or do you guys already have the fund lined up and or is it is it more like you guys? You guys are providing the expertise and people are the startups paying you like a consulting fee and then giving you a piece of equity to help you grow into China?
Kevin: [00:45:12] So generally, we have two things that we do. The first one, we have done that for a long time before I came is just we provide a startup acceleration program and start ups pay a flat fee. They don't give away any equity. And what we do with this one is, for example, we do it with a lot of governments because startups usually are not able to pay twenty five K for a startup program. So the government will pay for the for the startups. And that is a nice model. But of course, it's not exponential at all. Mm hmm. And so the second model that that actually is my OR was my duty coming here to introduce that and take this whole acceleration practice to the next level is equity. So we started now taking equity in selected startups that after landing in China and staying here for two months, find initial traction. And so what we do is we install people who will do operational, work on the ground, install them in their teams. And for that, we take certain equity share. Yep. And the second thing is we are in the process of raising an actual fund. That's very much my goal. We have been in touch with a number of private equity players who were interested in investing in the fund. We have a lot of corporates who could be LPs, potentially. But as you can imagine, those talks came to a halt a couple of months ago. But it's something we're picking up again, and that's probably one of the that's one of the irons I talked about to for me to finish that. And that will be a great learning experience, for sure.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:47:10] Tell me a little bit about what the climate is like now in Shanghai, given that it sounds like things are a little bit more under control with COVID there. Covid 19 So tell me a little bit about. Are things back to normal or things kind of half normal? What's going on and what could we expect in the U.S.? Do you think you've learned there?
Kevin: [00:47:30] So let's say two things, let's start on the personal side. So the things that I see personally and then we can talk a little bit about business. Sure. So personally, it's almost totally back to normal, except for two things. Still, everybody is wearing face masks. So I have mine lying around here and you have temperature controlled at all the every building, basically like my home or office walls everywhere. Except for that, bars are opened again. People go for parties, for drinks, they go to restaurants, they go to the gym, they are outside having fun. So in terms of. Personal impressions that that's what's going on in terms of business, we still, of course, feel heavy impact, especially cross-border startup acceleration. You can imagine that even if China is back to perfect normal health, there's nothing going on because you can't have any startups from Germany or from France, Italy, Australia, wherever they come from coming into China. They just have different problems right now. So that's heavily affected. On the other side, we are quite lucky to have this corporate innovation business, so we still are able to sell projects to some corporates, to some state owned enterprises, and that keeps us very much alive. Yeah. On the other hand, also for a startup acceleration, we do, as I told you, work together with governments and these governments right now, even though, yes, they do have other problems now too, due to COVID 19. But we still have a couple of well-paying government clients who want to send startups over to China or engage in things like online acceleration programs, virtual expert calls and things like that. So overall. To sum it up, it's going OK could definitely be better. We are impacted, but we're not going to die.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:49:54] Yeah, well, that's good. It's good to hear. Is it been a little bit of a how do you think in terms of the trend? Has it been? Where you said everyone's wearing masks, are people still wearing masks? I know it's people culturally for for wear masks, for pollution, usually right in certain cities anyways. So has that transition been more natural and do you feel like at the bars are people like taking off their masks and like congregating in small spaces still? And it's not a concern.
Kevin: [00:50:26] Um, so at the beginning, it was like people were definitely wearing masks all the time, even in restaurants, they tried to wear the mask and just take them off to put something in their mouth. Now it's still people are wearing masks all the time, but for example, if they go to the gym, they will take it off to do their exercises. And so now the situation is relaxed a little bit. But Chinese people are they are great executioners. So if you tell them something, they will, they will do it and they will stick to it. And so there is very high discipline in terms of wearing masks on a daily basis. I think I do think that's healthy right now because you never know whether there could be a second wave or things like that. Yeah. So for now, let's stay cautious. That's what I observe around.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:51:28] Yeah, things are pretty bad here, I think New York especially is getting hit,
Kevin: [00:51:33] And I see I see an interesting dynamic that from what I know in Germany is people are not wearing masks, mostly because there's just not enough masks, because all of them are being produced in China. And so in Germany, it's like if you wear a mask, it's considered almost rude because you like you're taking away masks from medical personnel, people, doctors, nurses, they need those masks. And why are you wearing the mask, you know? And whereas here in China, it's considered rude if you don't wear a mask because people actually wear a mask to protect you themselves, right? Right. And that's something people sometimes get wrong. Also, on a daily basis, like one year ago when I arrived here, one of my colleagues from my team got sick. So suddenly they turned up in the office wearing a mask. And I'm like, That's strange, you know? But it was actually to protect me from becoming ill.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:52:37] Right? That's interesting. Yeah. Culturally, it's very different, I think. I think it's going to be hard to get, at least in the U.S., going to hard to get wide scale mask wearing for any period of time. So it'll be interesting to see if we suffer kind of higher rates of contagion for longer. I hope. I hope not. We've been pretty aggressive, at least here in California, with the social distancing. Things have been locked down for a good three weeks now. We're even the playgrounds are blocked off, and so we have nowhere to go with. The kids is crazy right now. When they when they block the playgrounds off, I'm like, OK, this is getting this is getting pretty draconian. But yeah, I'm hoping like the grass start looking better over the next week or two. But. Yeah, it's been a crazy it's been surreal. It's almost like out of a movie, but I hope hopefully we can all stay healthy and any last thoughts before we call it of advice you'd give to your younger self or advice you want to give to younger listeners that
Kevin: [00:53:45] That, you know, so far, I think I'd be I'd be good. We talked about a lot of cool things.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:53:52] Awesome. And then, yeah, I guess in terms of where people can find you and want you to remind listeners again where they can find you and I'll link this link to it in the show notes as well.
Kevin: [00:54:03] Yeah. So people can find me on YouTube and on Instagram and on LinkedIn. So YouTube is management consulting insights. Or simply look for Kevin John J on for Instagram. It's the Kevin John or Tayce Kevin John, and for LinkedIn. I guess we can just link to it in the show notes. Kevin, Your Highness, my German real name sounds great.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:54:37] Well, Kevin, thanks so much for taking the time out of your day to share your story and some, some insight and some wisdom.
Kevin: [00:54:44] Yeah, it was super interesting, thanks for having me, Patrick.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:54:46] Thanks, man. And thanks to you, my listeners at Wall Street Oasis. If you have any suggestions whatsoever, please don't hesitate to send them my way. Patrick at Wall Street Oasis. Com and till next time.
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