No sitting down for startup buff

Yolu's application is based on the Yolu Card Reader, the company's most popular product. It is the world's first multi-lingual card reader that is able to move information with unprecedented accuracy from scanned cards into users' apps as well as the cloud. Even if users have lost their mobile phones, they still have the information in the cloud. If users have two cell phones, they can make sure their data are completely backed up and in sync.

"The most interesting part is if somebody in your traditional address book changes their information in the future, you may lose the connection with that person. But as long as someone else scans that person's new card with their new phone number or address, you will get the update from the system," says Robinson.

The concept of Dunbar's Number suggests that the average person will maintain stable relationships with about 150 people in his or her life. But this may not hold true for businesspeople, who may need to maintain and manage an unwieldy number of contacts.

"I had that headache myself," says Robinson, showing the 9,151 contacts he has in his cell phone. "So by doing all this we are trying to make pain pills instead of vitamin pills."

After graduating from the University of Southern California in 1989, Robinson spent three years working around the world on the ski slopes in Switzerland, as a bartender in the Virgin Islands, an English teacher in Prague after the revolution, a grape picker in France and a BMW assembly line worker in Germany.

"Then I took the train through Siberia and Mongolia to Beijing, and upon arrival I had a China epiphany. The dragon swooped down, as it were, dug her claws into me and hasn't let go since," he says.

Woody Allen once said that 80 percent of success is showing up. Robinson learnt that from his travels and decided to show up in Hong Kong in 1996 and make things happen. He originally planned to work in the Internet industry, but unfortunately someone forgot to tell the Internet industry to show up before he did. At the time there were very few Web users in Hong Kong and perhaps 50,000 Internet users on the Chinese mainland.

That was the beginning of Robinson's rollercoaster career in China. During his four-year stay in Hong Kong, he was one of the first executives of Renren 1.0, an early version of the service.

"We were involved in a crazy ride. Renren 1.0 went from zero to a public listing in 9 months. We raised $37 million, then it was worth $1.5 billion, then we sold the company. Suddenly I was so rich on paper with tens of millions of dollars. And then the NASDAQ crashed so I lost all that money overnight!"

Robinson went on to co-found computer and mobile digital device companies Mobile Interactive Games Ltd in 2001, ShouJi Mobile Entertainment and Dada Asia in 2006 and Kooky Panda Ltd in 2007. He sold his stakes in the first three to companies such as Tencent but is still on the board of Kooky Panda.

"My previous experience of riding a bicycle in Africa (from Kenya to Cape Town) and hitchhiking across Europe prepared me to be an entrepreneur much better than a desk job, because I was used to chaos and craziness," says Robinson.

He says every startup is an absolute mess, but in many areas, particularly in the Internet and wireless technology sectors, it is becoming much cheaper to start something up, especially compared with the dotcom boom of the late 1990s.

"It has become dramatically cheaper to start an internet or technology company since hardware costs have plummeted and open source software has become ubiquitous," Robinson says.

"This isn't simply a China phenomenon, but with the 'China price' helping to keep costs down and the natural entrepreneurship of staff it's not only cheaper to start a business in China, it's cheaper to fail here too."

xiaoxiangyi@chinadaily.com.cn