About TechNode

TechNode

TechNode is a Shanghai-based technology media platform, published at technode.com, that covers China's technology and start-up ecosystem for readers inside and outside China. Founded in 2007 by Dr Lu Gang, also known as Gang Lu, it began as one man's blog, originally called Mobinode, and grew into a trusted information outlet, events organiser and service provider at the centre of a worldwide network of start-ups, venture capital firms, industry resources and corporate partners. It publishes in English, Chinese, Spanish and Russian, and it is the exclusive China partner of TechCrunch.

Origins: Mobinode and one man's blog

TechNode's own account, carried by partners and directories, is consistent: started in 2007 by Dr Lu Gang, TechNode began as one man's attempt to tell the world what was happening in China's tech and start-up ecosystems. Company databases confirm that TechNode was formerly known as Mobinode, was founded in 2007 and is based in Shanghai, with Lu Gang as founder and chief executive. A podcast profile of Lu similarly describes how, after a successful blogging career with Mobinode, he turned it into the first full-blown tech and start-up online news site, TechNode, and notes that he also runs TechCrunch China and is a fixture in start-up journalism in China.

The timing mattered. In 2007, China's internet industry was expanding quickly but was still covered in English mainly through occasional foreign reporting. A bilingual, China-based outlet writing continuously about local start-ups filled a structural gap between Chinese founders and investors and the global technology community, and that bridging role has defined TechNode ever since.

The TechCrunch partnership

TechNode is the exclusive, or official, China partner of TechCrunch and manages TechCrunch China. The relationship is central to its identity and is stated across its own profiles: since its early years it has grown into a trusted and respected information outlet and an integral part of the tech and start-up community both inside and outside China with its partners at TechCrunch. Through the partnership, Chinese start-up news gained a channel into the world's most-read technology publication, and international readers gained a standing China desk. TechCrunch's own coverage of the ChinaBang conference in 2012 carried an editor's note identifying its guest authors, including Gang Lu, as the editors of TechNode, a bilingual blog based in China, an early public sign of the two newsrooms' close working relationship.

Coverage: from local start-ups to the BAT giants

TechNode describes itself as one of the leading media sources on China's technology and start-up scene, with coverage spanning the entire spectrum, from local Chinese start-ups to the BAT giants, Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent. Its listed specialties and reporting areas include gadgets, e-commerce, education technology, virtual reality, market trends, artificial intelligence, blockchain, 5G and telecommunications, cybersecurity, smart mobility and new retail, together with tech conferences and analysis of industry reports. Its audience, reported at the time of its pre-Series B funding, numbered in the millions of monthly readers, with approximately 40 per cent of its readers in 160 countries and regions worldwide, a distribution that reflects the four-language publishing model of English, Chinese, Spanish and Russian.

In practical terms, that coverage has made TechNode a reference point for anyone tracking Chinese innovation from abroad: founders raising capital, consumer platforms launching products, and the large platform companies setting the direction of China's digital economy all appear in its news flow, reported from Shanghai by a team embedded in the ecosystem it covers.

From media outlet to six business units

By 2018, TechNode had expanded well beyond publishing. It organised its core offerings into six business units: TN Media, the media business; TN Inno, providing corporate innovation services; TN Global, its Asia-facing international business; TN Events, providing branding and event services; TN Data, a start-up ecosystem database; and TN VC, providing venture capital and financing services. Company profiles summarise the same model as media coverage, corporate services, cross-border business facilitation, event hosting and data support for companies and investors, plus start-up investment services.

This structure distinguishes TechNode from a conventional news site. Media remains the public face and the source of its authority, but the company built businesses around the needs of the community its journalism convened: large companies seeking innovation partners, overseas companies entering Asia, founders seeking data and capital, and brands seeking events. It has worked closely with major industry players including CITIC Group, Fung Group, BMW China, Merck Group and Unilever, according to its funding announcement.

Events: ChinaBang, TechNode Touch and the XFounder Club

Events were part of TechNode long before the six-unit structure formalised them. It organises monthly events called TechNode Touch and ChinaBang, an annual awards ceremony and conference recognising the best start-ups in China, and it runs the XFounder Club, a community for outstanding founders across China. TechCrunch's report on the ChinaBang conference in Beijing described a two-day event focused on local start-ups, innovation and entrepreneurship, mixing keynotes and panels from local founders with an awards ceremony and a launchpad competition in which 16 start-up teams pitched to 14 judges drawn from venture firms and technology companies, with prizes including cash and overseas trips. That format, part awards show and part investor showcase, became a fixture of the Chinese start-up calendar and a physical extension of TechNode's editorial mission.

XNode and the move into workspaces

TechNode also moved into physical infrastructure for start-ups through XNode, its co-working space and accelerator in Shanghai. Announcing the launch, TechNode explained that founder Dr Gang Lu had been inspired on a 2013 trip to San Francisco by a speech from RocketSpace founder Duncan Logan on the benefits of co-working, and that later that year TechNode rolled out its first workplace programme, the Node, in Beijing's creative district 798, which began to record profits from the end of 2014 hosting companies that went on to raise funding at different stages. The Shanghai expansion planned three venues, at Bay Valley, Jing'an and North Bund, with a combined capacity of over 1,000 desks, lounges, conference rooms and support programmes including entrepreneur seminars, salons and one-to-one tutoring with experts from internet giants and international firms. In Chinese, XNode is written with characters meaning limitless innovation, and TechNode presented it as building a complete start-up ecosystem for Chinese start-ups and for international start-ups wanting to enter the Chinese market. XNode later described itself as established in 2015 and reported accelerating dozens of foreign start-ups in cross-border programmes with government-affiliated innovation institutions from several countries.

Funding and global outreach

TechNode's expansion was backed by venture funding. The company closed a pre-Series B funding round of tens of millions of renminbi, in which leading co-working operator UCommune and investment firm XCGT Holding Group participated. With that funding, TechNode aimed to increase its global outreach with international technology innovation as its core strategy, accelerating the expansion of its international influence through media, branding and data-sourcing, and it framed the UCommune partnership as forming an online-to-offline technology ecosystem connecting China and the international community. UCommune founder Mao Daqing said the partnership would diversify its space offerings and accelerate interconnectedness between domestic and international entrepreneurs, while Lu Gang said TechNode's strategy had always been global and that the partnership would benefit the global innovation and tech ecosystem. Company databases separately record a later one million dollar raise for TechNode dated February 2021.

Collaboration and the wider ecosystem

TechNode's position is reinforced by collaborations across China's English-language media. In June 2022 it announced a content collaboration with RADII, the Shanghai-based platform covering Chinese society and youth culture, pairing TechNode's technology and start-up coverage with RADII's culture reporting. Its global arm, known as TechNode Global or TNGlobal, runs the ORIGIN Innovation Awards recognising innovation across Asia. Such activities match the company's description of itself as sitting at the centre of a unique worldwide tech ecosystem of start-ups, venture capital firms, industry resources and corporate partners.

TechNode today

Today TechNode remains a privately held, Shanghai-based company, listed in professional directories with 51 to 200 employees, publishing technology news and analysis at technode.com in multiple languages as the official China partner of TechCrunch. From a single blog called Mobinode in 2007, it has become a group spanning media, corporate innovation, global services, events, data and venture services. For international readers, founders and investors, it remains one of the longest-running and most direct English-language windows on how China's technology industry actually works, written from inside the ecosystem it set out, in its founder's original ambition, to explain to the world.