David Ben Kay
Chairman,Yuanfen~Flow™
Over the 40 years that David has had an interest in China, both he and China have experienced sea changes. David has been consistently focused on China since a night class in Chinese in 1971 while in high school in Denver, Colorado, and throughout his formal academic training at Brown University (AB, 1976), UC Berkeley, the Stanford Center in Taipei (1977-1980), Thunderbird School of International Management (MBA 1981) and then UCLA Law School (JD, 1986).
David has been in Beijing for the past 20 years and was in Hong Kong for the three years immediately prior to that. During his 15 years as a corporate lawyer, David assisted over 250 companies in setting up businesses in China and managed issues from a wide range of industries: aviation, automotive, energy, consumer products, finance, pharmaceuticals, high technology, media and communications.
Among David’s largest and most interesting clients was Microsoft. In 2003, he had that rare opportunity for a lawyer in private practice to go “in-house” into a company he had known so well from the outside, having helped Microsoft set up its China operations in the early 90s and acting as their outside counsel. From 2003 to 2005 David was Microsoft China’s General Counsel, heading up the Law and Corporate Affairs Group. In addition to managing all of Microsoft’s commercial and IPR related work, he was also in charge of the company’s government relations as well as their corporate social responsibility efforts in China.
In 2005, David took on a position Steve Ballmer created called the “Piracy Czar” (aka General Manager, Genuine Software Initiative). David was Microsoft’s spokesman and “evangelist” for innovation and IPR protection and played a significant role in the Chinese government’s policy decision to encourage innovation. David left Microsoft in 2008 to pursue his entrepreneurial ambitions.
He converted his loft in Beijing 798 Art District into a new media art gallery: Yuanfen 缘分新媒体艺术空间. With this additional experience as owner, manager, curator and “gallerist,” David has converged his experience and skills to expand the Yuanfen platform into Yuanfen~Flow, a business incubator focused on launching globally minded companies in China through the fusion of art, technology and sustainability. Yuanfen~Flow provides services, facilities and relationships customized to the needs of entrepreneurial start-ups, as well as corporations seeking to gain entrance to China.