Whenever I talk with founders about Asia GTM, one thing keeps coming up: Don’t use the low context low trust Anglo social model to retrofit a high context high trust Asian market.
This sounds obvious, but a lot of Western teams still get it wrong. In the US/EU, trust is much more rules-mediated. Once users understand the game, the platform can become a utility. They care about liquidity, fees, terms, policies, product flow, custody, refund rules, etc. If the system is legible and productive, they don’t need to personally bond with the players as much. (except meme coins, where the players are the product lol)
Asia is much more high context and relationship mediated. The brand, the founder, the local partner, the education group, the sales call, the friend who introduced it, the KOL who explained it, the broker/CS person who answers at midnight, all of these become part of the product.
In the West, users underwrite the game. In Asia, users underwrite both the game and the people around the game. Maybe the only exception in the west is Elon, who understand the populism game so well and turn himself into the biggest leverage of product distribution, thats also the reason why he can navigate the game in both US and China so well (His relationship with Li Qiang, the current Premier of the PRC and who championed entire Tesla/Shanghai endevor when he was mayor of shanghai is the key)
You see it in top crypto exchanges, where people like CZ/Yi at Binance or Ben at Bybit still actively reply to average users constantly, this is their core job. That is not random “engagement.” It is public counterparty trust maintenance.
You see it in Taobao, where you can almost always talk to a real human behind each shop, from small sellers to large brands, plus Taobao’s own CS layer 24/7. Compare that with Amazon, where the whole experience is much more process/software handled
You see it in Chinese EV/consumer brands too, where founders like Lei Jun from Xiaomi are constantly livestreaming, posting, replying, and being visibly present everywhere.
You also see it in CFDs/FX, where local introducing broker networks became deeply embedded because they did the human work platforms could not automate: educate the noob, answer every call, explain every trade, absorb every panic moment.
The nuance is not “Asian users don’t DYOR and just follow brands/founders.” They absolutely do. But the diligence object is different.
If you don’t understand this, you will keep hiring “local BD” and wonder why nothing works
