What We Do

Tech innovation in China is very real, much of it driven by unique market conditions, genuine consumer needs, and fierce competition. Yet while the world is keen to learn, there lacks consistent, insights driven English-language coverage of China's tech scene.

We founded The Harbinger to address this most crucial knowledge gap. We leverage a network of China's top VCs and tech companies to generate exclusive, informative deep dive interviews (podcast link here) for a global audience. Content collaborators comprise tier 1 VCs including Sequoia, GGV, ZhenFund, IDG, Qiming Venture Partners, and Shunwei Capital, as well as the Yale Center Beijing and leading tech companies. Guests on our podcast include the founders and executives of unicorn companies such as Xiaomi, Segway-Ninebot, Agora.io, 17zuoye, PingCAP, Oyo China, 17LIVE, HTC, UT Starcom and more.

Harbinger was founded by Adam Bao, Yale '12. Previously, Adam launched a popular China tech podcast while at Shunwei Capital (Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun’s VC) and served as an interim director of business ops at portfolio company Segway-Ninebot (first CDR to IPO on China's STAR Board, ~$10b market cap). Before that, Adam managed corporate strategy initiatives at Blippar, a leading AR start-up that raised $100m funding, and was a management consultant at Strategy&.

Harbinger is also led by Tim Chen, UVA '12, who began his career in finance (tech banker and hedge fund analyst), ex-Uber, ran international product at Mobike (acquired by Meituan for $2.7b), and currently invests for MSA Capital. Tim also runs a monthly roundtable dinner series that brings together senior leaders from various professions (journalists, policy makers, tech company founders and investors) to discuss important tech topics between China and the West.