Venture Sprout

I’m starting the new year with a big change.  As of tomorrow, I’ll be joining Google in a role leading product management in China.  It’s an exciting change on many levels and I wrote a post on my personal Elliott Ng blog talking about my motivations at length.  Here’s a quick excerpt:

In this role, I’ll be leading a small, very-talented team of product managers who are doing two things: (1) launching products and supporting global R&D projects focused on Google’s global markets, and (2) driving a product roadmap serving the domestic Chinese market.  I’ll be commuting to China from Mountain View until June or July, at which point my wife, our 3 boys, and some subset of our accumulated “stuff” will lift off from our home near Mountain View and land in a new home somewhere in Beijing.  In the meantime, I’ll have plenty of time to rack up frequent flier miles, become “Googly” (aka programmed in the Google global culture) and build important relationships in the global R&D organization at Google which is Mountain-View centric.

Needless to say, that means my entrepreneurial energy will be applied toward Google’s incredible opportunities and huge challenges in China for the foreseeable future.  VentureSprout (aka Ng Ventures LLC) will go into hiatus for a while.

2010 was a great year in large part because of the opportunity to work extensively with HUBS1 Ltd., an online travel distribution company based in Shanghai.  I had the opportunity to speak at both the 2009 China Travel Distribution Summit and also the 2010 China Travel Distribution Summit, and I can say that my understanding of the China travel industry was so much deeper as a result of working inside the industry at a well-connected startup.  I’m thankful that Teddy and Shaun (the HUBS1 founders) allowed me to contribute to their efforts.  I’m still advising the company informally as their strategy has shifted post-World Expo, and I look forward to having them as trusted mentors and advisors on all that I’m doing.

I’m also thankful to Wei Jiang of 2DuNet, a good friend and exceptional entrepreneur, who has been carefully steering his startup through the difficult waters of the China automotive industry.  While I’m an “advisor” to his company (and a seed investor), in reality he has given me 10x the advice I’ve given him.  I hope I’ve been a supportive and trusted sounding board to him over the years.

Like everyone in China, I’ll probably have a few occasions to hand out a VentureSprout business card!  I don’t expect to be doing any angel investing in the near term, and I don’t expect to be incubating or heavily involved in any startups outside of my day-job working at Google, which will be demanding and heavy on travel between Mountain View and Beijing/Shanghai/Taipei.

I’m guessing my personal blogging will be only at CNReviews.com and ElliottNg.com, but we’ll see how things go.  Excited about the start of this new year, and please look for me at these other URLs!