Understand Your Local Markets
Today, I spoke with an entrepreneur who is building a startup in China. As we discussed, I asked him about data privacy on the product. He gave me an answer which surprised me. Simply, he noted, in the U.S. and the broad Western world, there is an ambiguity on who owns the user data - the company or the user. But in China, we know who owns the data – the government. With that certainty and clarity, we do not really worry that much about data privacy because we know the person that owns the data. And because the users know that, the issue is well managed.
That is very interesting when an entrepreneur knows that the data it builds and accumulates would largely be made available to government. And yet those users happily use the products.
For everything we do, we need to have a real local understanding of markets. There is a clear uniqueness in China and that teaches that being local in business is strategic. Let us forget the morality of what the government demands. Just focus on what the local market demands.
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Interestingly, across African markets, there are outliers in regulations which must be understood. Those should not be taken for granted.
Sometimes clarity is lacking, even when an entrepreneur attempts to understand the local market and its regulations; those saddled with the responsibility of providing clarity and insights, most times don't even understand their job roles very well.
You can only execute what you understand, else a chaotic situation is unavoidable. The ambiguity of who owns what must be taken care of, with such, understanding the market becomes easier.
