Opportunities and Challenges in China: VC Perspectives

This seminar is part 2 of SPRIE's 5-part series on "Greater China: Entrepreneurial Leaders."

From a venture capital investor's perspective, what are the key opportunities and challenges of doing business in China in the current environment? Why? How is China's emerging private equity investment industry? What are the major differences between "home-grown" Chinese private equity firms and foreign capital firms? Bobby Chao will address these questions, based on personal experience gained over the past twenty years.

Bobby Chao began his career as one of the five original founders of Cadence Design Systems. A year after Cadence's successful IPO, Bobby founded Ocron, a leader in Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology and document management software. Bobby was chairman and CEO of Ocron until Umax Technologies, Inc. acquired it. He then became part of the Umax team serving as senior vice president of marketing in charge of corporate marketing and investment. Bobby was previously general partner for Technology Associates Management Company and has served as chairman and CEO of VA Linux Systems.

Mr. Chao currently serves as chairman of Dragon Venture Inc., a cross-pacific venture capital, consulting, and M&A company, bridging the U.S. and Greater China markets. Portfolio companies focus on telecommunications, Internet infrastructure, Linux, fables IC designs, and EDA. Mr. Chao is currently on the board of several companies and professional organizations.

Mr. Chao holds a B.S. in physics from Taiwan, an M.S. in physics from Georgia State University, and an M.S. in aeronautical engineering from Stanford University.