Zhongguancun in Beijing: China's Silicon Valley

Steve Blank (left) and Kai-Fu Lee

In the few days I was in China, I met with several VC's, angel investors, business press and spoke to hundreds of entrepreneurs, writes Steve Blank, a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley Haas School of Business, in The Berkeley Blog. I was blown away by what I saw in Beijing. This was a modern city in a hurry to make a first impression - think of what Rome looked like in the time of the empire or New York in the 1920's - now it's Beijing announcing that China has arrived.

But what make the overwhelming impression for me was finding an entrepreneurial software cluster on par with the Internet software portion of Silicon Valley. The physical heart of the Beijing startups is in Zhongguancun. Read more