EP30: Jay Thornhill of Baopals

Jay is one of three co-founders behind the wildly popular ecommerce site, baopals.com If you haven't heard of Baopals, it's basically taobao, but with language and function customized for english speakers. Same enormous selection (over 800million products and services!), just way easier to use, especially if your mandarin isn't up to snuff. Baopals is less than two years old but has grown from humble roots in the founders' apartment to a big office and a full-time staff of 30 people (and growing). In this episode Jay talks about how they came up with the idea, bootstrapping the initial website (instead of seeking early funding), early mistakes, and how they have dealt with their rapid growth. With increasing users, press coverage and investor interest, we also discuss what is next for Baopals. I won't spoil it, but the boys have BIG plans. The Baopals story, though early in it's telling, is an inspiring example of how friendship, determination, a good idea, and a little luck, can turn in to something really special with massive potential. twitter.com/techinshanghai WeChat: TheHungryFoolish

You can listen to EP30: Jay Thornhill of Baopals online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

EP30: Jay Thornhill of Baopals is an episode from Tech in Shanghai by John Vallis.

This episode is 01:25:11 long.

This episode was published on Aug 9, 2017.

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