Kurt Davis has spent twenty years in Silicon Valley and Asia, working in venture capital and business development for technology startups, focusing on deals with companies like Apple, Microsoft, Spotify, and Sony.

But he experienced failure, with his very first business, a mobile game company. Kurt was living in Hong Kong in the early 2000s and from there he witnessed the beginning of a wave of innovation in China, especially in tech. Alibaba, Tencent, Baibu, all of them were launched around that time and were beginning to grow.

It was exciting and Kurt couldn’t resist the opportunity. He left his job and moved to Shanghai in 2003 to make it as an entrepreneur. He was really into football and hit upon the idea of starting an online fantasy football game app. At first it was going to be a website but, after realising they weren’t going to be able to monetise it very well, they then turned their attention to mobile phones. Remember this was 2003, so the early days of smartphones, before the iPhone. All of this was really new, but they did it! They got mobile phone carriers, like China Unicom, to sell their product and also spread into other countries in Asia.

So what went wrong? Listen to find out.

If you have any feedback, we’d love to hear it. What would make the show better?

hello@secretleaders.com

Sponsor links:

quickbooks.co.uk/secretleaders

IFH 083: 11 Golden Rules for Filmmakers on Social Media