China's economy is still growing, but many tech companies are feeling the chill.
Food for thought: tech entrepreneur Lin Liu believes"winter is coming" for tech firms"Winter is coming," laughs Lin Liu, a 29-year-old Shanghai tech worker.Big firms like Alibaba, Tencent, and search engine Baidu have slashed jobs."And I think this slowing down will continue," says Ms Liu, who's run a tech start-up and the Slush start-up conferences in Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Nanjing.
"What drove things completely insane was too much money," argues William Bao Bean, managing director of Chinaccelerator, a Shanghai-based start-up accelerator.Chinaccelerator's William Bao Bean says too much money was sloshing around the tech sector There was a"real push for economic growth from the government" and big funding from state coffers, he says."Before, you could get $3m with two people knocking and a smile. Now you can get $3m with two people knocking and a smile and six weeks of meetings," he says.
Dockless bike sharing rivals Mobike and Ofo were pedalling off with investors' money last year in a bitter duel for market share."You definitely have a lot more people walking around those bikes than riding those bikes," says Gregory Prudhommeaux, who has worked with Shanghai start-ups since moving from France in 2005.
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