Michael Michelini has been living in mainland China since ’07, helping western companies leverage Chinese social media for business. He loves connecting local and international businesses together to give hard working people global opportunities.
We chatted with Michael about his new startup in Shenzhen and the startup scene in China:
What is your startup?
Social Agent is an online tool to help businesses find customers in the Chinese market via social media. Our SaaS (software as a service) lead generation service constantly searches for new potential customers, and adds them to your Social Agent account. Find, track, manage, and report these business leads in a simple online CRM (customer relations management).
How did you come up with this idea?
I love blogging, and over the years, a lot of my blog readers would ask me for help entering the Chinese market. Thy had absolutely no idea where to start, and had hit dead ends with making Chinese websites, Baidu search campaigns, etc. Social media around the world, but especially in China has created such transparency that I knew there had to be a way to leverage it to help businesses understand how to sell in China.
Who are you targeting and how big is the market in HK/Asia?
We are targeting Western businesses primarily in the US and EU markets. While large MNCs have already entered the Chinese market, small to medium sized foreign enterprises is still an untapped and under-served market – and the potential is huge – businesses all over the world need to start taking advantage of the newly developed and growing Chinese market!
What are your future plans for your startup?
Allow businesses of all sizes to enter international markets with more transparency and seeing ROI and results faster. We plan to continue to grow our offering in the Chinese market, but also to add additional social media platforms from around the world.
1 Benefit and 1 Challenge in the HK startup scene?
Benefit is the international and cosmopolitan scene – its great to meet people from all cultures in the world, as well as the ease of access to Mainland China.
1 Challenge is finding developers, as the startup scene grows here, it will continue to need to overcome the challenge to pull developers from investment banks.
Social Agent
- URL: www.socialagent.me
- Twitter: twitter.com/socialagentme
- Weibo: weibo.com/socialagent
Connect with Michael:
- Twitter: twitter.com/michelini
- Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/mikemichelini
- Weibo: weibo.com/michelini
- Blog: http://blog.michaelmichelini.com
Michael recommends:
Michael just sent out this email to all of his Social Agent users – and we think it’s a great way to update everyone on how your startup is doing, so think about sending one out for your startup as well:
Dear beloved mentors, advisors, partners, allies, friends,
Past 2 weeks have been exhilarating, part of the reason I personally love the startup life – we’re creating something of value!
Product developments:
Friday Feb 22 we “flipped the switch” and went fully online with our new version. What you saw in our last mentor email is now what’s live. Working on in-app billing (to enable free trials to upgrade), UX cleanup, and help section / pop-ups (users need more guidance)If you would like a demo account to login, please reply to me and I will issue you one on a test account.
Overall state of the business:
– 300 beta signups (still have yet to email announce our go-live, currently not collecting emails on live site, only signups)
– Free trial demo to 8 companies (wine, e-commerce, agencies, usa investments, musicians, supply chain, media, mexicoseafood)
– 7 paying customers – education, usa warehouse, e-commerce, wine, real estate, startup (1 barter, 1 NGO)
– 1 paused account (see below)Customer Developments:
Our top customer, Nogogo.cn, has currently paused their account. They are a happy customer who referred now 2 customers – and this pausing of their account is not a SocialAgent issue, but due to management changes pending on their side.“Mike has shown me a lot of his startup ideas, but finally he sold me on one – SocialAgent.me made sense from the first time he demo’d it to me in my office – find customers and measure real results from Chinese social media. We started with a brand new Sina Weibo account and identified customers in Social Media – my staff learned which products are hot and which are not. We grew our fans and measured real results from Chinese customers. Thanks Mike and the whole Social Agent team.” – Nir Itzhaki, Nogogo online grocer
We also have helped a UK sunglass retailer identify customers in Sina Weibo, on Saturday he received a very engaged user who is getting a quotation now. Also other clients have been getting customer feedback last week and learning our new system – both the “boss, manager, and worker” level accounts (we’re a multi-level account system)
Team:
We are adding more sales assistants to our network, and connecting them to Social Agent customers – Mike met a few of them last Thursday night, as in shown in this photo http://goo.gl/iwi1h – learning to build a community of people who want to make it easier to do business in China.Where we need help / input:
1) Sales funnel development – We have a few entry points in our sales funnel, of course direct sales, but also free trials, demo calls, webinars, “get weibo”, getting verified on weibo, learning how to do business in China. Looking at various services / ebooks / demo services.2) Always looking for beta users (thanks to those current patient beta users, we’re getting much better now), and now ONLY for this email list we’re offering a 30 day free trial of this our tool (first level package), to help companies find customers in China – let us know if your company or other friend’s companies are interested. Our clients tend to be B2B interested in China market entry / growth
3) As we say every week: Please follow us on https://angel.co/social-agent-limited , http://facebook.com/weiboagent http://twitter.com/socialagentme http://www.weibo.com/socialagent http://www.linkedin.com/company/social-agent-limited
Culture:
Our team has bonded well during this stressful go-live the past 2 weeks. Had a celebration dinner last Saturday in Hong Kong with Chris, Doug, Wouter, Amy, Xing, and Mike.PR / Community:
Mike and Amy went to a Sequoia capital meetup (the fund is visiting Shenzhen more now) this past Sunday. Other then that, we’re keeping our heads down and focusing on product and customer development.Funding:
We are being much more selective now, we have had a few chances to apply / submit BPs but are waiting for the right opportunity. Also something we can’t announce yet until early April, stay tuned.In closing:
Its been a very hectic time to switch online, we pushed through it, we’re happy we’ve done so, and are working closely with our first customers, and will do what it takes to make them a success case.Thank you all and touch base again in 2 weeks!
