TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing kicked off its second and final day with a bang last night, with Sarah Lacy chatting with Lei Jun (Angel Investor, Co-founder of Xiaomi), on how he plans to take on the likes of Apple in the mobile phone industry. Next up was Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom, who talked about the photosharing startup’s international efforts and how it plans to deal with the onslaught of clones.
In an “Attack Of The Clones” panel, a few of Groupon’s fiercest Chinese competitors discussed the daily deal space and how it is maturing in China. Additionally, a number of panelists from e-commerce companies in China ventured into what the future of online retail is in the country.
Lacy then sat down for a fireside chat with accomplished entrepreneur Fritz Demopoulos — an expat who arrived in China in the late 90s while he was working at News Corp and went on to start (and sell) two very successful companies. And Evernote CEO Phil Libin took the stage to discuss chat about entrepreneurship and building products people love.
Venture Capital in China was the next topic of discussion and Steve Ji of Sequoia Capital, Rocky Lee of Cadwalader, Hugo Shong of Accel – IDG, and Hans Tung of Qiming Ventures sat down with Lacy to discuss the state of the market in China. Serial entrepreneur Brian Lee then discussed one of his current companies, ShoeDazzle, and the do’s and dont’s of celebrity endorsements. And Cheezburger CEO Ben Huh took the stage to present his views on Internet culture.
For the Startup Battlefield, we were able to narrow down the group to six finalists, which included Anquanbao (presentation), 8 Securities (presentation); Moglue (presentation); OrderWithMe (presentation); TouchPal Contacts (presentation) and UnitedStyles (presentation).
In the end, the judges chose OrderWithMe as the winner! OrderWithMe is a group buying system meant to help Western small business owners by drastically simplifying the process of acquiring Chinese-made goods in bulk. Anquanbao, a cloud-based security service for websites and the admins who run them, was the runner-up.