My Chinese identity or Chinese branding hurt my business.

Maybe 99.9% of the users on pick talk.

They don't know that it was a Chinese company before the administration brought it up.

People are not willing Thio, where they're Chinese nous under sleeves.

They also like Thio, you know, bring in the random white guy to join the group photos just to make themselves look more legit.

The U.

S market is massive and an important one for brands to break into.

Chinese companies are no exception, but for creators who want to make it big in the US, they have to overcome their own risks and challenges.

Customers and government regulators scrutinized their data and privacy practices for one, and they have to refine their products design for a market they don't live in.

Maybe most challenging of, although, is overcoming the stigma of being Chinese.

Publicizing where they're from is often a tough, risky decision for founders to make, and one that could have wide reaching repercussions.

A lot of these great companies with great products don't usually talk a lot about the fact that they are designed and made in China.

My name is Lou.

I am the general manager off global strategy.

Indiegogo.

So what I do and what my team does is we help Chinese entrepreneurs successfully launched a crowdfunding campaigns on the platform.

We first started looking into China as a growing market for years ago.

Really, at the time we were seeing so much innovation coming from the country.

But what was challenging that, you know, language barrier cultural barrier was quite significant.

Although these companies have interesting products to offer potential backers, they still feel like they have to obscure where they're from the team section.

It's a huge part of storytelling in a crowd funding campaign, but that part is often emphasize for campaigns coming from China.

A lot of times, when they do have their team photos, they like to gray scale it to kind of the emphasize their skin tone.

Founders will anglicized their names.

None of these tips and tricks are actually validated with a be tested on their page, and I think a lot of it that passed down knowledge of what they think.

This is how they should approach the American market by ways off.

You know the burden of representation.

If people see a copycat product that is made in China, then they will draw the connection off because it is a Chinese product.

Then it Issa called counterfeit.

You look at the successful brands coming out of Europe and us.

They're usually quite true to their identity man a Mr Yan and the general part of how a club HCV see Jerry's an investor who works at Hardware Club Ah, venture capital firm that invests in early hardware startups, He says.

European and American companies usually don't de emphasize their origin and instead use the same messaging internationally as they do in their domestic market.

They're selling a specific Western image.

Chinese companies, on the other hand, feel like they have to change their messaging, which is kind of unfair situation for a lot of the Chinese brands that are now successful in domestic market.

But then they're trying to piggyback in tow American Market, which is one of the most frequently market because the story that works domestically most of the time those stories are not attractive enough for American consumers.

We talk about tick talk.

They didn't pretend to be American company.

It's just basically push our service that people like that.

People just find it neutral and and started to use it if they put the Chinese later in the logo.

If they say this is, you know, creating China, you can make a very strong argument that people would be more doubtful when they used the app.

Even if users didn't realize Ticktock was a Chinese company, the U.

S government knew and deemed it a security risk.

Now the president Trump's threat to ban TIC Tac with widely popular but Chinese own video sharing app at a fear that the link to China poses a security risk.

Over the summer, the Trump Administration announced that would ban Ticktock from the U.

S.

Market unless it found an American buyer.

The administration argued Tik TAKS ties the Chinese government and its security practices were risk to American consumers.

At the same time, the Trump administration also wanted to ban Wechat, the most popular chat app in China, over the same concerns.

These air just the most recent actions against Chinese companies.

The gay dating app Grindr sold to an American firm after the U.

S.

Government expressed national security concerns.

And while WAY and ZTE to other Chinese companies are now locked out of US government contracts, some of these concerns are really and verified, meaning the Chinese government could potentially access, use their sensitive data or censor their speech.

So when Chinese companies enter the U.

S.

Market, they have to be transparent about how they treat customers data.

Many creators find ways to work around the Chinese government, or at least proved their security.

When Zoom was scrutinized earlier this year, it doubled down on privacy and collaborated with Facebook's former security chief, Alex Stamos.

Another smaller creator, Jenkin Shaw, says she and her team rent service from Amazon to preserve data.

Before backers started Thio back the project.

We got that questions a lot related.

Thio Data Storage.

Where did you store your data or how are you going?

Thio.

Protect Our Privacy.

Jenkin is the co founder of Luke Labs, a smart home device company that launched its first product, Wouk, a smart doorbell on Indiegogo in 2019.

The doorbell system is designed for people who live in apartments or move around frequently.

It collects some personal data given that has a live feed of who's entering and exiting people's homes and employees facial recognition software.

Its customers, of course, have concerned about how their data is stored.

We do a few the pressure to answer these questions, for example, for Europe with specific telling people that your data is covered by G, d.

P R.

And then we combined that laws when we are building the software or using the cloud, um, for US market, for instance, we are using AWS.

We will be really transparent to backers about these facts that we really respect and protected their privacy following their local laws.

But even these considerations might not be enough to satisfy the American market or regulators concerns we are seeing a lot of these high profile, very successful companies from China are getting bad PR.

We're getting directly targeted by the US government.

You really never know these days what kind of policies, what kind of tariffs will be coming through right?

It really is random.

It comes at any time.

At the stroke of midnight, the US hit China with tariffs on $34 billion worth of goods.

China's great firewall hinders creators in other ways too, namely restricting their access to popular social networks.

The Chinese Internet.

Unfortunately, it's silo very much siloed from the rest of world.

Chinese people didn't grow up using Google Facebook instagram.

So when Chinese entrepreneurs air trying to enter the American market, really, they're learning everything from zero, even if let's say they are quite established in China and they've got a million followers on wabe.

All right, which is the Chinese Twitter, you know, another 100 k on wechat.

It doesn't really mean anything for the rest of the world because it's not Facebook and Twitter.

So even if these Chinese companies managed to overcome these challenges, they still have to consider the basics.

Designing a product that appeals to a new market Ah, product that does well in China might not succeed in the U.

S.

You have to change the design for sure.

If you have something that works for China, especially if it works very well, it could be sure that it's probably not gonna be working well in different culture.

A campaigner that we worked with, they created the world's lightest e bike that is also very foldable, right?

You know, when they launched their campaign.

Actually, it didn't do as well that as they expected, for a few reasons.

First of all, you know that affordability wasn't actually that much of a attractive feature for the American consumers.

Rest for Asian countries, living spaces and much smaller.

So that future was actually highly desirable, you know, A year later, they came back with the second version, very bike and the product positioning.

It's actually your ability.

You can do it in different terrains, and it's good for campaign.

That campaign did so much better.

But for all the struggles they might face, Chinese companies do have one major advantage.

Ironically, the biggest challenge was actually the biggest advantage they have.

If we take about physical good, obviously, today allows things are made in China.

Hardware is always a challenge.

But when it comes to campaigners from China, it's less of a challenge, right.

Instead of trying to figure out on the Internet who will be a good factory to manufacturer product?

Ah, lot of the creators that we work with there can really just walk across the street right and sign a contract with the manufacturer and then get their product made so In that sense, it is a significant advantage.

Theo, Theo.

Stigma against Chinese companies, Israel Honestly, Even trying to find a creator to talk about these struggles was difficult because of how sensitive a topic this is.

But hopefully, over time, Chinese creators will find ways to address their U.

S customers concerns and bring their products abroad.

For Jerry and Lou, the key for these companies is to be true about who they are.

Don't try to pretend to be something or someone you're not.

If you're not, American brings, You're not the story with D.

J I.

Where they didn't pretend to be American or European companies, just a company that has the best product.

And you keep building best product, better product on top of that and eventually win almost the entire market.

Just by doing that, we do observe the some very successful brands or companies that are started by Chinese founders are doing really great, such as one plus or zoom.

So I think that's something that we look up to, and we do think that those are examples or models telling us that Chinese identity won't be something that stop you from building a very successful company or a product that people love, You know, being proud of your country of origin, right?

Because at the end of the day, it is really about the product being awesome.

When your audience, you know, by the product, used the product and then like it that z all it matters, it doesn't matter if it's labeled made in China.

Um, all they care about is that this is a great product.

Hey, all Thanks for watching this episode is part of our new season of in the making.

So if you haven't yet, make sure you check out Episode one, which is about the challenges that gadget startups face when trying to sell their products on live TV.

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