Profile: Innovation Works' Chris Evdemon

"China is like a huge sponge, soaking in all the knowhow it can get from abroad," says Chris Evdemon, a partner with Beijing-based Innovation Works. "As a foreigner, you always have to find a way to reinvent yourself, find something new that you can bring to the table."

Evdemon has been in Asia for nearly a decade, spending much of that time adapting to a rapidly evolving landscape. Even his arrival in 2004 was something of a reinvention. Aged 30, Evdemon had decided to leave his home city of Athens and enroll on the MBA course at INSEAD in Singapore. Prior to that, his successes and failures as an entrepreneur had been limited to home soil.

A mechanical engineering graduate, Evdemon spent his early years in the family's shipping industry business while at the same time attempting to launch his own start-up. Success came in 2000 when he acquired the license to run the European Computer Driving License (ECDL), an international computer skills accreditation program, out of Greece.

"It went very well but after working hard for a number of years, I realized it was not the best use of my most productive years," Evdemon says. "Even then Greece was in a bad situation and the market was too small. Asia, on the other hand, was the next big region of growth."

Emerging angel

His only previous experience of Asia had been a 10-day break to Japan. Evdemon describes this first year at INSEAD, and the connections he made there, as the template for his future success. However, it was Dublin-based ECDL that created an opportunity in the region when the licensors invited him to head up Asia.

As Asia CEO of newly-established International Computer Driving License (ICDL), Evdemon spent two years based in Singapore but traveling throughout the region in search of local partners. He then left to focus on angel investments.

Evdemon's angel activities date back to his MBA year. He has made 17 angel investments to date and exited four of them, and is most proud of is Singapore-based PropertyGuru, now a leading local real estate portal. However, most of the early deals involved China, including Beijing-based ECitySky, an avatar-based social gaming company acquired by YY in 2012, and Ethos Technologies, a Chinese software development outsourcing firm sold to Symbio the same year.

After two-and-a-half years In Singapore, Evdemon decided to move to Beijing. "I had to move to where things were happening," he explains. "From my frequent trips to China, I got the sense that the country was seeing explosive growth in the tech industry."

Evdemon spent the first six months in China building his network, spending his mornings in meetings and his afternoons studying Chinese.

The angel investments continued and he eventually became a venture partner at Eastern Bell Venture Capital and a founder member of the China Business Angel Network.

In 2009, he came onto the radar of ex-Google China head Kai-fu Lee, who was looking to set up his own incubator, Innovation Works. "I basically cold-emailed him," recalls Evdemon. "But he had heard about me from the founder of one of my angel investments and to my great amazement he replied within five minutes of my email."

By this point, Evdemon had already developed some of thoughts of his own about bringing an incubator model, similar to Silicon Valley's Y Combinator, into China. "I thought this type of accelerator-incubator program was very much needed in the Chinese early-stage ecosystem," he says. "At that time it was nothing like today; there was a complete lack of quality people, mentors, capital and M&A activity."

Seeding start-ups

Evdemon first joined Innovation Works, which operates an incubation plus investment model, as investment and business development manager. Soon after, he was asked to manage the firm's incubation program, which had an intake of 28 start-ups in its first year. Of these, 11 went on to receive further capital. The following year, in late 2011, Innovation Works reached a $180 million final close on its debut fund.

One of Evdemon's first investments with Innovation Works was Wandoujia.com - translated as Wonder Pod - a cloud- based Android app market set up in 2010 to take advantage of the absence of Google from the domestic China market.

"This was a big part of our strategic vision in 2010, when we found out Google was leaving the market and saw this left a gap for catering to the Android ecosystem," says Evdemon. "There were only 5-10 million devices in the market then, so it was a contrarian bet, but we knew Android was going to skyrocket in China."

Innovation works has since gone from strength to strength, closing its second fund at $275 million last year. The firm is now looking for opportunities beyond China, with the launch of Innovation Works North America, a $10 million reserved pool of capital in Fund I that will be invested in Silicon Valley.

"The world in terms of technology is becoming smaller," says Evdemon, "but China is still a very difficult place for American companies to operate because the competition is basically killing them."

While the US has plenty of talent interested in coming to Chine, few have any clue about how to do so and who to work with. These are the companies Innovation Works is targeting and for Evdemon it could mean another move. "I can envision myself going to the US. On average, I spend two months in Silicon Valley every year, over four or five trips, while spending most of my time in China. I can see myself inverting that."

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• Topics
• People
• Greater China
• Early-stage
• Innovation Works
• China
• seed