Marc van der Chijs' Homepage!

(Update: weblog moved to http://marc.cn/blog.html)

Last update: 04/21/06 

For everyone who doesn't know me, my name is Marc van der Chijs, 33 years old. I have been living in China for more than 6 years. Last year I got married - a new phase in my life! The big day was September 10, when Grace and I tied the knot in Beijing. Check out our wedding website, or look at all the pictures from our wedding.

In 2002, after working for DaimlerChrysler for 7 years in financial functions (first in HQ in Stuttgart, then 3 years in strategic planning and controlling in Beijing), I decided to go in a completely different direction. 

In the fall of 2002 I quit my job to study Chinese. At the same time I set up my own company, C & C Asia Ltd., specialized in trading and consultancy. Then I met Sierk Vojacek, owner of the only European film and TV production house in China, SVP Shanghai Ltd. We teamed up together and during the past 3 years I spent a considerable amount of my time working with him. We specialize in producing commercials (clients among others Proctor & Gamble and Motorola) and TV programs (Beyond the Infinity, Trendy Life) for national and regional television. Most of our TV programs are paid for by big companies, such as Ford, Nike and Sony. Next to this we also produce documentaries and corporate films. 

However, because my consulting business started to grow I had to spend more and more time on that. In 2004 C&C Asia merged into China Bay Partners. China Bay focuses on market entry consulting and business performance improvement in China, and on M&A transactions between foreign parties and local companies. Most of our clients are medium-sized European and American clients. After the merger I became a managing partner of China Bay, in charge of business development and client relations.

Next to that I am also a co-founder in internet start-up Toodou.com. This idea for this company Gary Wang and I had in October 2004. In December 2004 we set up a legal entity for this that originally focused on audio podcasting. However, the company has evolved to become an online multimedia aggregator network: Through the Toodou.com website users can automatically submit, distribute, and receive personalized content (audio, video, flash, and pictures). This content is also used to produce short TV and radio programs that we can syndicate to Chinese networks. Toodou has grown extremely fast, and is very well know among Chinese bloggers and internet users. One reason is that it not just a multimedia podcasting site, but that it also combines a social network (groups and friends functions), and a blog function. Many Chinese magazines, newspapers and radio and TV programs have reported about the company. At the time of writing (January '06) we are the biggest podcasting and video site in China. We have over 150,000 registered users, but only a small part of our users registers so the real amount of users is many times higher. Our most popular files have been downloaded many hundred thousand times. Until the the end of 2005 Toodou was self-financed, but then IDG provided us with an investment that allows us to follow our growth strategy for the next 6 to 9 months.

Since January 2006 I am CEO of Spill Group Asia. Spill Group is an online gaming company that is originally from Holland. The company runs casual gaming and skill gaming portals all over the world. I am building up their business in Asia from our headquarters in Shanghai, and this currently takes most of my time. Spill Group has over 1.2 million unique visitors per day and is poised to become one of the world’s leading online game portals and game traffic sites. Spill Group has online game portals in Holland, Belgium, Germany, France, UK, Poland, Italy, Spain, China, Malaysia and India.

Due to the pretty heavy workload these ventures bring with them, I do not update this site frequently. However, I do have a weblog that I post to about several times a week. Most posts are about China, things I read, see or do here. Of course a XML feed is available to make it easy to read updates in a RSS reader. My most recent pictures can be viewed at www.flickr.com/photos/chijs

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