NICK ZHANG

I grew up in Xi’an China and got through the Cultural Revolution in
the PLA and then working in a bicycle factory. When university exams
resumed in 1978 I got into Xi’an Foreign Languages Institute where I
studied English language and American Literature.  In 1986 I had a
chance to go to the USA, so I did.

By 1990 I had an MBA and a US citizenship. I was also pretty bored in
the USA and ready to go back to China.  I became one of the early “sea
turtles” – Chinese who get a degree overseas then go home to get a
better job. I worked as a Department Director for Xi’an Janssen – the
pharmaceutical division of Johnson & Johnson in China, an “expat” in
my home town, opening new markets all over Asia for products made in
Xi’an.

Spent some time in Private Equity in Shanghai in the 1990’s and in
2000 I met some new neighbors in Shanghai. They were starting a mobile data company - I joined them as the CEO of Linktone, when mobile gaming as still really new in China. That’s when I got the “Zen CEO” nickname – dealing with very assertive people like China Mobile and international investors, sensitive creative geniuses, foreign employees with MBA’s and project management skills and the longhair guys who write code but don’t talk much.

Getting a lot of very different types of people to head the same
direction in a place where the rules chance every day – is what makes
running a business in China so interesting. You learn to give people
lots of space or lots of control, depending on the day. Mobile2Win was
a interactive mobile marketing/gaming company with operations in both
China and India, so after I sold it to Disney Interactive Group in
2008 it was time for something different.

Now I am starting to put together my new start-up, and the hint is
that it is about intelligence.

In China people usually guess that I am either an artist or a
gangster.  I walk around in New York and people think I am Hispanic.
More new opportunity: if I learn Spanish then I can be tri-cultural
instead of just bi-cultural.