After speaking with some business owners based out of Hangzhou last evening at the NextStep Tuesday at M1NT it appears from a cursory discussion that not enough attention is being paid to smaller tier one and tier two cities. As I am off to GuangZhou today to learn more about the web community in GZ and HK, my eyes have been opened to the smaller communities who are looking for resources to make connections and grow businesses in China. This also plays right into the direction of NextStepDirectory.com ’s growth for China–move on to Beijing, Hangzhou, Suzhou and beyond.

Some raw numbers that I was given last night speak of a mere 9000 foreigners working in Hangzhou of which no strong community of business owners have focused around. Obviously this community needs to be built up. If you are interested in talking to me about doing more NextStep focused events in your Chinese city feel free to send me an email or comment here.  joseph (DOT) constanty (AT) nextstepdirectory (DOT) com

Again, I would like to thank Frank Phillipe of M1NT for giving us such a great venue last evening. The M1NT team is on to something quite interesting for the Chinese marketplace, and I am interested to see where the Shanghai and future Beijing endeavors take them.