What Now? Q&A with Ex-Google China Chief Kai-Fu Lee

Kai-Fu Lee, who last week resigned as president of Google China, has launched Innovation Works, an incubator for Chinese IT startups. It has been funded with $115 million, including from lead investor WI Harper Group and individual backers like Steve Chen (co-founder of YouTube), Terry Gou (chairman of Foxconn), Liu Chuanzhi (chairman of Legend Group) and Yu Minhong (chairman of New Oriental). I spoke to Lee on Friday, and what follows is a transcript (we had agreed to embargo the news until this evening): peHUB: Innovation Works sounds much like a Chinese version of Idealab or Y Combinator. Are those fair comprisons, and are there other such programs already in China? Lee: There are similar programs in China, and at least one public company based on similar ideas. But I think our model is different, for several reasons: First, I think we are specifically targeting the spaces in which this idea works. These are the spaces were you can move quickly: Cloud computing, ecommerce and mobile Internet. Second, I think that I bring a unique ability to draw talent. I’ve hired thousands of people at , and many joined because of me. When I joined Google, for example, it was basically an unknown brand in China. The first people joined because of my brand, not because of the company’s brand.