Chinese Airbnb rival Xiaozhu was valued by investors at $300m in a fundraising round last year, reflecting high hopes for the country’s home-sharing sector and prompting takeover interest from the Silicon Valley company.
But Kelvin Chen, the Chinese tech veteran who is Xiaozhu’s co-founder and chief executive, has bad memories of excessive overseas management after a previous US buyout.
“If we wanted to hire a single person, we would need approval from HR three months in advance but, in the same time, our competitors could grow from a staff of 200 to 1,000,” Mr Chen says of his time at travel site Kuxun, owned by TripAdvisor from 2009-15.