



In execution, Chinese entrepreneurs are unafraid of the tedious, messy, and risky tasks, if they help achieve the ultimate result. Chinese CEOs usually have absolute power within the company, which makes execution much more effective.





As an example, the “Chinese Groupon” Meituan was tenacious in focusing on users’ needs and found a way to nail that problem. They found that people wanted to eat take-out food, but it had to be delivered with 30 minutes (including cooking time), and the cost must be brought down to about 70 cents per delivery in order to profitably offer “free delivery.” Meituan then maniacally worked on this problem for years, eventually hiring 600,000 people on mopeds, adopting an Uber model, finding riders willing to work during meal hours, tweaking the lowest-cost delivery vehicle (battery-operated mopeds), solving the battery life problem for mopeds, inventing AI matching and routing algorithms. After billions of dollars of losses and many years of iterations, Meituan managed deliver food to any destination within 30 minutes and under 70 cents. That totally changed the way Chinese people eat. And that differentiated it from the US Groupon, Yelp, and OpenTable, which collectively are worth less than one-tenth of the $60 billion valuation.









Meituan chose this approach rather than resting on its laurels like Groupon and Yelp, because Chinese entrepreneurs are tenacious and if you have a profitable “light-weight” business, you will find yourself surrounded by entrepreneurs who want a share of your profits.



Fierce competition pushes entrepreneurs to improve the product at lightning speed, with incredible work ethic, always pressured to develop impregnable business models. As a result, Chinese products often evolved into better products than their American counterparts (e.g., Wechat vs. Whatsapp, Weibo vs. Twitter, Taobao vs. eBay).



