a business like Diligenze in China

it's long known China is struggling with reforms in the financial services industry, which has handicapped many world-class financial institutes' inroads into China the holy grail at the moment. For example, GE's largest business - Commercial Finance has stayed away from China despite of all the buzz. The reason is simple - hard to get things back in China. The chairman of J.P.Morgan Chase, an external director of GE, used to say that GE Capital's strength lies in its ability to collect money (vs lend money to the right customers). In China that would definitely be a show-stopper right now due to the lack of a social framework/system to guanrantee ownership of things - anything that can be used as colletaral.

I'm sure with China's progress in the financial services industry it's only a matter of time to develop such an universal system. In the US, for every consumer/commercial loan, a lien needs to be filed through Diligenze to a central registration database. If the borrower does not pay back loans, the collateral will be claimed by the lender based on this lien verification. Why not start up a company such as Diligenze in China? Imagine how big the market is going to be - eventually every borrowing/lending transaction will flow through this system/database. What's more, it's recession-proof as its success correlates to the overall growth of China's financial services industry - which is going one-way ahead.

sitcom about sea turtles in Shanghai

Given the sheer number of sea turtles in major cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shengzhen, a dedicated sitcom about life of haigui would be very popular I'm sure. Many topics can be explored in this series that can draw lots of interest - cultural shock after coming back from overseas, swtiching from MNC to Chinese local company, office politics, life of overseas expats, shanghai girls dating westerners, startup in beijing, red-hot real estate market.. I haven't seen any Chinese sitcom that covers all these in one. Of course that doesn't say much as I've watched little TV programs from China. Heard the news that some people were working on a sequel to the then-famous Beijinian in New York fifteen years ago. So I'm not alone in thinking along this line. But the main character from that series has no education background in the US so it would not cut as a very convincing and representative sea turtle.

ski resort in China

滑雪在欧美早已普及，在中国还是刚刚萌芽。我注意到最近两年来娱乐小报上对港台明星的报道里越来越多地提及“某某在。。。滑雪”的字样，　这个地方经常是中国北部某地。内地流行在小资圈内的一些时尚杂志也开始有对滑雪的记叙。我觉得这就跟汽车一样，国民生产值到了一个水平后肯定会发展起来。这个行业有大钱可捞。首先，国内现有的场地设备很差，跟欧美完全不在一个档次上。有两三个猾道就很拽了。这容易，把外国的一个标准场地照搬过来就行了－思想更新一下而已。其次，可以开辟中国特色的“一条龙”服务。滑雪，洗澡，搓背／按摩／修脚，吃，karaoke, 喝，麻将。这可是咱们的强项啊。这个会带动一系列的周边行业，服饰，器材。。。利润可以直追高尔夫了。

赶快圈地吧，有了地，其它都好说。

transparent leash for pets

it seems that in many places it's unlawful to walk your pets without the leash. If you are in Boston Common or Central Park in New York, you can see pets on lease everywhere. Poor little ones. I grew up with The Adventure of Tin Tin so deeply encraved in my mind pets like Snowy should be let go in the wild with no strings attached. It's always my dream to have a pet like Snowy that will follow me loyally without any form of enforcement and I would absolutely envy people who can do that.

Since that idea is pretty much outlawed, maybe we can come up with a transparent leash? From a distance, other people may not see the leash at all and they would think your pet just follows you blindly as they should always do. It probably takes some expensive material to make it but it's worthwhile for all those envious looks.

I haven't seen any pet with a transparent leash yet.

spoiler.com

I watch many movies and don't always understand every one of them. I want to set up a website that simply gives away all the spoilers, suspenses, obsecure references, wierd jokes and explains the plot in plain English. This is totally against the ideal way of viewing and enjoying films but I just feel sometimes people would need it.

Bring Netflix to China

if one day I relocate back to China, one of the biggest worries would be where I can have access to the best and latest movies - the privilege that I enjoy abundantly in the states. I'm not too concerned about art-house/indie movies - it's probably easier to get them in China anyway, but I do watch loads of American flicks between the level of monter-blockbusters (which means they will be released in China also most likely) and B-class ones. I don't want to count on China's DVD pirated market - it's too commercial-driven so no doubt many good/old movies will not be available and quality is another problem.

What I need is basically bringing Netflix to China. I can set up a company to partner with Netflix. People set up accounts with Netflix from overseas =>Netflix sends DVDs to my company=> my company puts them into a UPS/Fedex envelope and send to China right away => customers send DVDs back to my company's office in China => my china office sends them back to the US office => US office sends them back to Netflix in the original envelope. There are a few obstacles: 1) I need to talk Netflix into allowing accounts being set up outside of US using non-US address otherwise my business will have to take over the inventory risk and be a little more of a passer; 2) all Netflix DVDs are of region 1. I'm not sure how common is all-region DVD player in China. If it's not then this idea is over. 3) I don't know how many chinese working and living in Beijing or Shanghai have the habit or watching netflix on regular basis and are willing to pay a large premium to maintain that access in China. 4) government regulartion. DVDs may be subject to custom's inspection.

garage ticket getter

when I go to Kendall Cinema in Cambridge, it's always a challenge at the entrace of the parking garage. the drive-way to the garage has such a huge turn that no matter how close I keep the car to the left side of the road, the distance to the ticket machine button usually still has a formidable distance from me, not to mention if it's Huiling who's driving. Well in general ladies due to their height disadvantage, has bigger trouble getting to that ticket button. So....

... maybe we can design a clamp - pretty much like the barbeque clamp so that they can easily reach out to touch the button and get the ticket with the clamp. It should not be difficult to come up with a design to serve that functionality. What would prevent it from becoming a big hit is probably the way it looks. The look has to be elegant so a lady would not feel awkward to do that with the burning gaze from drivers lining up behind.

Multiple locations on One Map

I don't know why no mapping service that I know is able to put multiple locations on one single map. Maps@Yahoo, mapquest, maps@google... none of them can do that. That would be such a cool service! I think some online companies do that, but with a fee.

A Chinese Restaurant with Western Waiters

This idea came from Vicky - imagine an authentic Chinese restaurant with all waiters/waitresses being WASP? They should all speak fluent Chinese and do exactly what they are supposed to do - serve customers as waiter/waitress. Westners have been treated like god so far in China (or any other developing countries in general) and local chinese always seem to be in some sort of submissive role when interacting with them in China. So let's reverse that!

We can probably find some good recruits among the exchange foreign students in renowned chinese universities. My only concern is they might amass too much intimate knowledge of the inner workings of a typical Chinese restaurant. Whatever it is it probably doesn't look too flattering.

Bring Cambridge Street Artists to Shanghai

There are many street artists in Boston/Cambridge. I always see them in the subway stations. Today Huiling was joking with me that American's primary education is so successful that too many good musicians can only end up in the street. Another idea strikes me: why not import them into China's booming pub scene in metropolitan cities like Beijing and Shanghai? At the moment pub performance is dominated by Philippinos - strange phenomenon in Asia. I'm sure Chinese locals will welcome performance by American artists. I can set up an agency company to arrange events/performances for those American. For the pubs in Shanghai/Beijing it will be easier to deal with me directly as I have an inventory of such artists and guarantee steady supply of good performances; for American bands/artists no doubt it will be easier to deal with me directly than the pubs. The beauty of this business model is it doesn't take much capital to run. I just need to have some connections. The problem is it doesn't take much education to do this either. So why me?

Private Movie Investors in China

Movie business is booming in China is the last ten years. Then-controversial directors like Zhang Yimou and Tian ZhuangZhuang now are able to produce movies within the perimeters the goverment allows. More and more movies are financed, promoted and launched by private companies. This is another industry that just fits perfectly with my interest. Maybe I can run a small company with a modest starting capital, find a good director with potential like the WKW in 1991, create some buzz through internet (blair Witch Project) or word of mouth through highly selected art-house cinemas (Sideways), and then lastly make some nice money. This is fun to do for me but the money and the connections in the circle will be good road blocks.

Sell Books by Pieces/Chapters

Another idea came across my mind when strolling with Huiling after Guggenheim Museum in New York. All the bookstores, no matter they are on-line or off-line, only sell books as a whole piece. Why not sell it chapter by chapter? The idea came from iTunes where you can buy songs individually instead of buying the entire album. If we can somehow image the entire book, we can break down the entire book into chapters and charge for each chapter. If readers only finish through chapter five, then they only pay up to chapter five instead of the whole book. For myself I rarely finish reading the entire book, but the book-buying so far is either not buy or buy all. If I grab a best seller, I probably shy away from $25 for the entire book but wouldn't mind paying $1 for reading chapter 1. If I don't like it fine my loss is floored. I believe the impulsive reading for those first few chapters are not captured anywhere in the market by the way books are being sold and it could add up to pretty substantial economic value. Having said that, it will require a change in people's reading habit. Some may like to start from the very last chapter to get a peek of the ending and some may like to jump around in the middle. Also tracking which chapter has been read could be a technological barrier as well. Well, who would expect ten years ago that songs could be purchased one-by-one from an album? In a sense that's tearing apart the traditional "concept album" experience and spoiling all the fun for the artist.

Financial Modeling - The End of Spreadsheet

I've spent quality of my professional career working on spreadsheet and I think I can say without shame that I know most of the stuff there is out there to know about Excel. A lot of those fun hours were spent doing forecasting company's financials by builing and tweaking models. I think it will be a very interesting business idea to run company that sells a product that just does that. Such a new business venture will fit my background and strenght perfectly - I know spreadsheet, I know planning and I know modeling in their most excruciating details and on top of that of course I still have the entrepreneourial spirit within.

However does such a product really exist? Frankly speaking I have not come across anything like that yet despite of my extensive experience in this field. It's just a really exciting idea.