Kai-Fu Lee has confirmed that he’s leaving his post as head of Google China to start something called Innovation Works, a mix between an incubator, a development lab and an angel investing firm. The plan is to hire 100-150 smart young Chinese engineers, help nurture their ideas, then spin off 50-75 of them a year, with seed funding from Innovation Works. He’ll hire up another 50-75 more smart, scrappy kids to fill that gap and keep the cycle going.
Incubators have certainly had mixed records in the U.S. Idealab flamed out in the Internet bust along with most of its brightest companies. Even incubators that spawn successes– like Max Levchin’s MRL Ventures that spawned Slide and Yelp or Evan Williams’ Obvious that was an early home to Twitter—typically dissolve once a hot idea is found. Y Combinator and TechStars have been lauded as launch pads for the Web 2.0 generation, but so far haven’t given birth to any truly huge homeruns.
But in China, things are different and Lee sees a much greater need for something like Innovation Works.
source http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/06/will-china%e2%80%99s-best-coders-flock-to-kai-fu-lee%e2%80%99s-new-incubator/
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