Serial Entrepreblogger

By Michael Cole On January 23, 2008 · Leave a Comment

This is my first post. This is my new blog. This is my new life. Welcome.

Well, okay, maybe it’s not such a new life. Maybe it’s a lot like the old one, but it’s different too. And since I only half know what I’m doing, I’m sharing my adventures with all of you in the hope that folks may share some insights. And maybe some of you will learn from what I’m doing and how I’m going about it.

Right. So I should get to the point sooner or later, which is that I’m starting up China’s first neutral, online exchange for industrial property. This is a new business for me which I am starting from my living room, and I’m hoping to build it into the next Alibaba. (Now there’s a job I should have taken).

Prior to starting this business, I was the managing director of 8 Days — a nice little company that I started which made a nice weekly English magazine, 8 Days, which later was transformed into 8 Days-SH, which is now just known as SH. After successfully flogging that to some lovely people from Hong Kong, I am reinvesting my hard-earned kuai into the world of online b2b. And, btw, before starting 8 Days I was General Manager of an outfit called that’s Shanghai. That was fun and profitable as well.

Since it’s unbecoming for a blogger to be narcissistic, (too easy to be confused with all the other bloggers), I’ll get back to talking about the project. Right.

Starting up a project is WAY more fun than running one. I started up 8 Days and ran it for three years. The most fun I had was definitely when we were still operating from my living room on Xinle Lu (although sharing my apartment bathroom with 12 staff did get a bit dreary). Now I’m back in my living room, but have relocated to Tongren Lu, and once again everything is about plans and dreams. Actually, plans, dreams, and address formats for database design, but that goes without saying.

Here’s the overall plan as it stands now:

Establish offshore company
Register trademarks
Establish WOFE (wholly owned foreign enterprise)
Get website built
Hire some (very affordable) staff
Make website famous
Make lots of money
Move to someplace where people don’t push and shove, but which is still slightly more fun than Minnesota

Right now, I have already taken care of the first two steps — the offshore company is established and the trademarks are registered.

(Was going to show you the trademark here, but couldn’t get the *&^%$#@! blog program to work right).
Now I should just need 10-15 more years and I should be all through with the rest of the bullet points. But for the moment, it’s on to other things. Will be back tomorrow with more adventures in business building.