Former Google China President Kai Fu Lee cemented his career transition from manager to entrepreneur last September with his own early-stage investment fund and start-up incubator, Innovation Works.

Lee’s new company will provide angel funding for Chinese start-ups, unlike most funds in China which prefer to invest in mid- to- late-stage companies.  Lee plans to hire over 100 graduates from China’s top universities who are eager to build up their own businesses, giving them scope to develop projects from scratch to implementation and expansion.  Lee’s company has already attracted investment from many famous Chinese entrepreneurs including Steve Chen (co-founder of YouTube), Guo Taiming from Foxconn Technology Group, Liu Chuanzhi founder of Lenovo and New Oriental Education & Technology Group’s Yu Minhong.

Drawing on his strong background with Apple, Microsoft and Google, Lee aims to pursue three major directions for his company; e-commerce, cloud computing and mobile computing.  He believes that these businesses are at an inflection point in China and that now is the time to develop them further.

Lee joined Google four years ago after a highly publicised legal battle between the company and Microsoft, which later sued Google claiming that Lee violated his employment contract when he switched jobs.  He successfully built up a working team for Google China, despite Google only capturing a small share of the online search market from Baidu.  Confident in the success of Innovation Works, he maintains that he won’t snatch talent from Google China and that new talent will be offered enticing share options upon joining the new company.

China International Business – Nov 2009

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