Comments on: Please Stop With Your Chinese Math

By: Krish

Krish — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 08:04:56 +0000

Then what will happen to a car manufacturer, 100 million in population so I can sell my car to everone ? .. Chinese math kills the projection.. Be more practicle..

By: China Law Blog

China Law Blog — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 03:02:22 +0000

About the only time I hear this “Chinese Math” is at seminars and even there it has become such a cliche that it has all but vanished. The new one is to sell to 10% of China’s middle class and then go off and define that class as much bigger than it really is. I did hear a lot more “Chinese Math” during the dot.com boom, but then it was “eyeballs.”

By: Fereira

Fereira — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 19:17:32 +0000

Guys, what do last posts mean? On the other hand i had read about SONY’s launch of Walkman, amidst the market research stating that there wouldn’t be enough buyers for a product with out recording facility.

By: Palani

Palani — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 06:58:04 +0000

It is quite true that when some one ventures out he needs to have the confidence of the investors and naturally tries to project a rosy picture. While in reality, it takes a bit of great effort to make the market understand of the new widgets or concepts. On the other hand i had read about SONY’s launch of Walkman, amidst the market research stating that there wouldn’t be enough buyers for a product with out recording facility. But it turned out to be a product that created a revolution. Thus Numbers always do not define success.

By: Kevin S.

Kevin S. — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 06:46:33 +0000

I was convinced once by a type of Chinese math by an expat entrepreniur acquiantance of mine in China. He persuaded me that he could get well-over 200 students from the city of Weifang, a city of 800,000 people, many of whom want to learn English from a foreign teacher, for a two week summer English course. There would be a few thousand potential students, he said, which is probably true, and we only needed 200, likely less than 10%.

Anyway, my acquaintance claimed that he had already had dozens of phone calls inquiring about the course. I agreed to work with him and helped him a bit with marketing a few days in advance of the opening class, passing out fliers and organizing impromptu English speaking sessions at malls. This kind of marketing didn’t seem to get many results, and I was starting to think that opening day would be a grim scene. It was. We had twenty people show up that day, and only eight come back the next.

Honestly, although I felt sorry for him, I was glad he had failed, because it had become obvious to me that he had put very little thought and planning into how we would teach.

By: Dan

Dan — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 02:40:46 +0000

this is where the ‘fortune 5,000,000′ comes in!

By: John Shepler

John Shepler — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 00:31:17 +0000

This is why test marketing is so important. You need to figure out how much time/effort it takes to get a few sales before you mortgate the farm only to find out it costs more to get those million sales than you could ever make in profit.

By: medvegonok

medvegonok — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 02:37:03 +0000

Very interesting post – a kind of cognitive illision.

By: Melanie Phung

Melanie Phung — Fri, 26 May 2006 17:07:27 +0000

This is a great post. Reminds me of when I worked as a writer at an organization that insisted on equating the stat “97% of the world’s population lives outside the U.S.” with “97% of the market for American goods lies outside the U.S.” I kicked and screamed, but they wouldn’t give up the notion that sheer size of a population corresponded with demand or purchasing power. I left as soon as I could.

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 09 May 2006 21:43:25 +0000

Rob,

Great post! The reality is that a company can’t succeed unless they OWN some niche, even if it’s miniscule. You can always add new niches, but unless you get that first one, you’re toast.