
B2B SaaS in China - jbrun
http://www.jonathanbrun.com/b2b-saas-in-china/
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avinium
Most important question - is it profitable?

My experience was that Chinese companies are loth to pay for _anything_ , let
alone software (and let alone EHS software).

Also, I'm more interested in hearing about Fight Club Politique.

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sdm
This has changed a lot in the past few years. My company started as an
outsourcer with a WFOE in China doing custom development for clients in North
American and Europe. Today much of our business is driven by Chinese clients.
About 2 years we noticed ago that Chinese companies were willing to pay the
same rates as our North American clients. There is a lot of money on the
table, a big push by the government find tech solutions to modernize existing
industries, and a massive shortage of skilled engineers.

This is also why we've seen so many Chinese companies in the tech and games
spaces outsourcing to North American these days. It seems every week another
Chinese company is opening an AI research lab or game studio somewhere on the
west coast of North America.

I would add, it's still more difficult to do business in China than North
America. And you will still find bad actors who don't want pay the final
instalment post-delivery. But the are increasingly rare these days. As China
matures it's becoming more and more like any other stable market.

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thisisit
> a massive shortage of skilled engineers.

I keep hearing that a lot in every other country. And every time I wonder -
what is the criteria for the shortage? If it's skill, what is the skill? If it
is from a value perspective, what is the expected engineer output vs salary?

~~~
sdm
In the case of China, a big part of the problem was that the government was
too slow to encourage CS education. While it has been pushing CS for the past
10 years, the result is a pyramid with a very very wide base as many juniors
are produced every year but very few engineers with the 10+ years experience
you'd expect from a senior engineer. So the main problem is the ratio to true
seniors who can lead teams or solve problems that reach into many domains are
in small compared to the total number of developers. Over time this will work
itself out.

Salaries for seniors are rapidly approaching NA rates, it's no longer viable
to outsource to China purely for cost reasons. I expect in 4-5 years if the
trends hold they will reach parity. But right now the issue isn't about money
-- those senior engineers have their pick of their projects and it's very
common for them choose lower paying roles if they can work on problems and
tech that interests them.

10 years ago, Chinese dev offices looked like sweatshops with as many people
crammed in as possible. Now there isn't much difference between NA dev offices
and Chinese ones -- at least in 1st and 2nd tier cities. Really the whole
development culture has shifted from everyone wanting to work at big foreign
firms with safe jobs to everyone wanting to be in a startup. It's done a
complete 180.

