From time to time I come by videos of talks that VC’s or entrepreneurs have done, and they’re absolute boring snoozefests. Although, once in a while I find a true gem like this one.

In a talk last month with the Stanford University Technology Ventures Program, Dana Mead from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers breaks down everything from how venture capital works to how firms deal with founders and scaling its investments.

Mead provides some awesome insights into what it takes to turn a newsworthy investment into a huge return for a firm like KPCB. Of course, being the group that placed a big bet on Google, they know a thing or two about the subject. This video is great for people on both sides of deals in tech.

At the 40 minute mark, Mead discusses a touchy subject, bringing outside management into a company to take it to the next level. This is of course the part where some founders end up leaving the company out of frustration.

Sit back and learn from one of the masters.

I met with one of Tudou’s founders, Marc van der Chijs, now CEO of Spil Games Asia, for coffee and a chat in Spil’s offices in a converted warehouse beside Shanghai’s Suzhou Creek.  Originally from the Netherlands, Marc first came to China in 1999 as a senior controller for Daimler-Benz’ China operations. He left Daimler-Benz soon after to work as an independent consultant.  Marc was unable to discuss Tudou’s upcoming IPO during our meeting because of the public filing.

Instead, our chat focused on Spil Games and the issues that all web startups have with monetizing their sites. We also discussed Marc’s work as an Angel Investor, with Shanghai based technology startups.

Spil Games

Spil Games are one of the world’s leading online gaming companies with 47 websites running fully localised content in 19 languages and serving over 4000 games to upwards of 130 million unique visitors per month. Their games target web and mobile users. Marc explained that, while most of their existing games use Adobe Flash they are now creating their games in HTML 5 to enable them to reach the broadest possible audience and allow them to run on Apple iOS devices reaching a significant proportion of the mobile market. He can envisage a time when HTML 5 takes over as the predominant platform for web and mobile gaming.   Spil are actively promoting the technology with others  by a HTML5 game jam that they organized together with Google in both Hilversum and Mountain View.  So far, most of their titles are single player but, with the rise in social gaming, especially on the mobile platforms, they are finding their output in those genres increasing.

I asked Marc the question on the minds of all web startup developers, how do you monetize your sites? Marc responded, that, at Spil Games, with 130 million visitors per month, advertising revenue is clearly a significant income generator, however, there are many users who ignore advertising, or indeed, don’t even see it. The real growth in monetization is in micropayments and advertising within games. Many game fans, once hooked, are willing to make a small payment for a level up or to buy some item within a game. Micropayments for in-game upgrades are not yet the largest income generator for online games but it is a growing slice of the pie and could soon overtake banner advertising as an income source.

The trick, of course, with all web content, is to “keep it fresh” that means update daily and, for games sites, introduce at least one new game every week. Otherwise, your readership and members are not going return.

Angel Investing

I first came to know of Marc van der Chijs through his Twitter account @chijs. On his twitter profile he describes himself as an “Angel Investor” I wasn’t entirely sure of the distinction between angel investors and venture capitalists so I asked Marc to clarify for me. The distinction as very simple, Venture Capitalists are usually companies where Angel Investors are typically people who may not have as much to invest. However, the boundaries are somewhat fuzzy, especially with the emergence of Super Angels, Angel investors who have larger amounts of money to invest.

Marc continued, that he focused his investments on local Shanghainese technology startups but that he had reduced his investment activity recently, mainly because there were simply too many companies approaching him, but, also because many local startups are focusing on the Chinese market only instead of taking a broader global perspective.

One local startup that Marc has invested in that he does believe can have a global impact, although he was quick to point out that he is also a co-founder, is unitedstyles.com, a personalized kids online fashion site that will go live (in beta) on November 15th.

The Girl 2.0 Expo, held in Shanghai over the weekend and run by Girls in Tech China, pulled in some big name speakers like Dave McCLure, Venture Capitalist and founder of ’500 startups’ and Larry Namer, founder of E! Entertainment TV.

Girl 2.0 was originally founded to empower women in technology but has grown in stature, “building an ecosystem that is changing the way women work with and support one another”.

“It’s the century of women. I’m in the right place at the right time. women in China.” Larry Namer, founder of E! Entertainment TV at Girl 2.0 China.

The conference included ‘Gone in 30 Seconds’. a competition for 5 startups to give a 30 second ‘elevator’ pitch to 5 judges led by Silicon Valley VC and Angel investor Dave McClure. Surprisingly, given the nature of the conference, it was an all male judging panel.

Other talks and panels at the conference included discussions on learning from China and learning from the USA about setting up cross border ecosystems to encourage entrepreneurial collaboration between Silicon Valley, Silicon Alley and China.

Last night at the May Tokyo 2.0 event a presentation was given by Hiro Maeda about a new venture capital group called Open Network Lab. Open Network Lab was formed earlier this year by three public Japanese companies; Digital Garage, netprice.com, and kakaku.com.

The main topic of the presentation was the Seed Accelerator Program. For the Seed Accelerator Program, teams of three people can submit an idea or working prototype to the Open Network Lab. If the team is accepted into the Seed Accelerator Program; Open Network Lab provides free office space for 3 months, free internet service and hosting for 3 months, $10,000 in initial funding, and mentorship to support the team.

Open Network Lab has partnered with the venture fund incubator based in Singapore, Neoteny Labs. One of the benefits of the partnership is that mentors from both VC groups are shared. Some of the mentors include; Joi Ito, Dave Morin creator of Facebook Connect, Shawn Fanning, Cory Ondrejka who created Second Life, Tim O’Reilly and several others.

After three months are up the teams have a chance to present their product to investors from the US, Japan, and Singapore. If an investor sees potential in the product, they will invest directly in the product.

Hiro Maeda’s full presentation from Tokyo 2.0 can be watched below:

Open Network Lab Presents at Tokyo 2.0 May.

A primary mission of Open Network Lab is to help Japanese startups expand and succeed globally, not only in Japan. I think this is a great initiative, and look forward to seeing what new startups and ideas come out of it.

For more information visit Open Network Lab’s site, or check Dr. Serkan Toto’s article on Techcrunch.

Draper Fisher Jurvetson, the venture capital firm which backed Skype, Feedburner, Overture, Baidu, and many such other startups which were later acquired by big Internet fishes is planning to raise $400 Million for start ups in India, US and China.

The economic growth rate indicates that India and China would surpass the total economy of rest of the world. So venture capitals are ready to re-invest after a long break due to the global economic crisis.

The firm may invest 15 percent of the funds in India said Mohanjit Jilly, executive director of DFJ’s India unit. DFJ expects to invest as much as $20 million a year in India, which has a history of investments in India and had already invested $75 million in 18 Indian companies since 2005.

The California based firm has invested in India-focused companies including travel Web site Cleartrip.com , the Indian travel site with tremendous market reach and Reva Electric Car Co., which has a tie-up with General Motors Corp. to sell electric cars.

Norwest Venture Partners, based in Palo Alto, California, raised a $1.2 billion venture-capital fund, the biggest to be completed this year, to expand in Israel and India. While DFJ is investing almost half the funds compared to previous year, on this Jolly says ‘Smaller pools of capital are easier to manage and can help investors recover their money faster’

Talking about investing particularly about Indian startups, Jolly says “India has been and will be a story of growth for decades to come, Just hold on and ride it.”