NECINA Entrepreneurship SIG Workshop - “How to Acquire New Customers?”

[Hui Huang]

NECINA Entrepreneurship SIG Workshop    “How to Acquire New Customers?” – A case study by presenting a new business model   Venue:  Delloitte, 1000 Winter Street, North Entrance, Suite 2000, Waltham, MA Time:  6:00 pm – 9:00 pm, Monday, July 18th, 2011 Cost: Free to NECINA members, and VIP guests, $15 non-members Online Registration required: http://www.acteva.com/booking.cfm?bevaid=221383 Every entrepreneur likes to acquire more customers. How do you achieve that goal? NECINA Entrepreneur SIG has the honor of having Dr. Wei Gao, a successful founder and entrepreneur to present the business model of his latest venture: usGroupDiscount.com.   Groupon created an exciting new business model, which leads them to build up a billion dollar company in less than 3 years.  It broke the record in American history. Google offered them $6B to buy out and got refused. They are ready to go IPO at a value of $30B.   usGroupDiscount.com uses this successful model from Groupon to apply it in the Asian community. Groupon didn't create royal customers, they don’t have repeated business. But usGroupDiscount.com, on the other side, count on the royalty. In the past two months, usGroupDiscount.com had several merchants coming back to ask for deal again. usGroupDiscount.com customers are repeated customers. There are a few other areas that can be penetrated deeper into the market under this model.   In the talk, Dr. Gao will present his business model, his plan, and ideas to do a better and sustainable business.   After the talk, we will have a round table discussion on the topic of acquiring more customers, with everyone’s participation. Agend 6:00 – 6:30pm      Registration and networking, pizza will be served 6:30 - 7:30pm     " Exciting New Business Model "  Dr. Wei Gao, Founder,  US Group Discount and Axcel Photonics 7:30 - 8:30pm      Round Table Discussion on how to acquire new customers 8:30 - 9:00 pm     Networking   About the Speaker Dr. Wei Gao has been in US for over 20 years. In 2000, he started his venture back company, Axcel Photonics to make high performance semiconductor lasers. As founder, CTO, President, and CEO, He built up the company from inception with extreme capital efficiency, developed the technology and products second to none. More important, he managed investor’s expectation properly and built up great rapport from board members and investors. In 2005, the company sold to private investors and he stayed on as President to run the company. In 2010, he left Axcel and started a new venture, US Group Discount. Other working experiences include: Former faculty at Beijing University in Physics Department; Engineer at Lasertron (later Corning Lasertron), founding employee at Multiplex and sales/marketing role at Nortel Networks in Optoelectronics division.   Mentor of MIT Venture Mentor Service; Senior Member of IEEE, LEOS; Member of Optical Society of America; Member of OCEAN (Overseas Chinese-American Entrepreneurs Association); Member of NECINA (New England Chinese Information and Networking Association).   Event Organizer: NECINA (New England Chinese Information and Networking Association) is a premier hi-tech professional association founded in 1996 by some of New England's most successful IT industry entrepreneurs such as founders of Cascade Communications, Sycamore Networks, and ArrowPoint Communications.  Its mission is to provide a platform to foster entrepreneurship and leadership by combining the leading edge technologies with best business practices.  In the past 14 years, NECINA has delivered high quality conference programs and networking events to its increasingly diversified members in an effort to maximize their awareness and involvement in new technologies and emerging business opportunities.   NECINA thanks Deloitte for providing event venue and facility.