I’m in the unusual position of being able to test the essays I write
about startups. I hope the ones on other topics are right, but I
have no way to test them. The ones on startups get tested by about
70 people every 6 months.

So I sent all the founders an email asking what surprised them about
starting a startup. This amounts to asking what I got wrong, because
if I’d explained things well enough, nothing should have surprised
them.

I’m proud to report I got one response saying:

What surprised me the most is that everything was actually
fairly predictable!

The bad news is that I got over 100 other responses listing the
surprises they encountered.

There were very clear patterns in the responses; it was remarkable
how often several people had been surprised by exactly the same
thing. These were the biggest:

Great stuff – thanks @dapunster

HONG KONG -(Dow Jones)- Hong Kong based private-equity firm Infiniti Capital
said Friday it has teamed up with Chengdu-based Green Leaf Film Studios and
Oscar-winning design and special effects specialist Richard Taylor, to raise
between US$200 million and US$400 million for a new fund that will invest in
film, television and other projects targeting the Chinese market.

The fund, called Panda Screen Productions, will focus on animated and visual
effects-driven live action products.

Some projects will be aimed specifically at the domestic Chinese market while
others will seek a more global audience. Chinese productions will be co-produced
by Chengdu-based film production company Green Leaf Film Studios. Green Leaf, a
new venture, was spun out of architectural rendering firm IDF Global. It is in
talks with the regional Chengdu government about access to facilities, land and
resources.

“We have all been excited by the opportunities and capabilities we have seen
in China,” Kenji Steven, chairman of Infiniti Capital, said in a prepared
statement.

The new fund will be managed by Infiniti Capital’s Hong Kong unit, Infiniti
Advantage Ltd. Infiniti Capital also has offices in Christchurch, New Zealand
and Sydney. It has more than US$1 billion in assets under management. Milestone
Capital, a New Zealand-based private investment group, helped arrange the fund.

Interesting, Richard Taylor of course being the head of Weta.

CrunchBase is the free database of technology companies, people, and
investors that anyone can edit.

Here, you can learn and edit everything about companies like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, MySpace and Tagged, products like Droid and Google Wave, and people like Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs.

There are some Hong Kong start-ups listed in here, a bit tricky to find them though.