Board of Directors
Adrian Li
Jonathan Palley
James Liu
Lawrence Tse
Adrian Li: Chief Executive Officer, Co-Founder
Adrian is responsible for managing the overall operations for Idapted and overseeing the business development and sales for its flagship products, EQEnglish, StudioChinese and the Idapted Live Learning System.
Prior to starting Idapted, Adrian worked for Pepsi in Shanghai in a project management role where he was responsible for coordinating the launch of a new product. In 2001, Adrian worked with JPMorgan based in London where he advised on acquisition and growth strategy for financial institutions. Adrian then joined a social enterprise incubator, Globalegacy, in 2004 where he advised entrepreneurs starting for-profit social ventures.
Adrian has a passion for education and founded a UK based charity; CNYTrust; which has raised thousands of pounds (GBP) to support children in rural China pursue education. The Trust has provided scholarships to many Chinese students and has also built a primary school in the village of Da Miao, China. More information may be found at www.cnytrust.org.
Adrian completed his degree in Economics at Cambridge University and holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He speaks English, Mandarin and Cantonese and enjoys training for marathons and ironman triathlon events in his spare time.
Entrepreneur, technologist and trained actor, Jonathan has been in the education technology field for over ten years - starting with his creation of the world’s first collaborative flashcard software, Virtual FlashCards (growing the business to over 1M users).
He’s a frequent speaker on the intersection of creativity and technology, most recently keynoting SD2C, China’s largest software developer conference and the British Council symposium on education and language learning. Previously, Jonathan has been the Executive Producer of a nationally recognized community theater organization, a researcher and programmer for advanced medical software and an actor in 30+ plays. He can also program in most modern computer languages.
In his spare time, Jonathan can be seen performing and leading workshops with Beijing Improv - a theatrical comedy organization that has shared cultures and introduced spontaneous creativity to thousands of people in Beijing. He studied physics and theater at Stanford University.
James Liu is the Co-COO of Oak Pacific Interactive (OPI), the second largest private internet company in China that owns and operates leading online services including mop.com, xiaonei.com, uume.com, donews.com, and renren.com. James was instrumental in helping OPI raise 400 million dollars from leading investors such as Softbank in 2008. James joined OPI through the acquisition of UUMe which he founded in 2003 as the first social networking site in China.
Before that, James was heading the marketing group with the Silicon Valley based Fortinet, and helped the company grow revenue from zero to US$ 33 million within 2 years. James was a senior product manager for two years with Siebel Systems, and worked as Product Manager at Netscape and Cisco as well while at Stanford. James served as consultant to eBay and helped the company develop market entry strategies into the global Chinese markets. Before that, James worked with BCG as a management consultant for three years.
James is an engineer by training. He holds dual degrees in CS and in Economics, both from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, He received his MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he graduated as an Arjay Miller Scholar.
Lawrence Tse is a partner and co-founder of Gobi Partners and has over 9 years of venture capital experience. Gobi is a China-based venture capital firm with over US$200 million under management focusing on early stage investments in China’s IT and digital media industries. Gobi’s strategic partners include IBM, NTT DOCOMO, McGraw-Hill, Sierra Ventures, Steamboat Ventures, and Nokia Growth Partners. Prior to Gobi, Lawrence served as an Associate for the Beijing Technology Development Fund backed by Beijing Enterprises and Tsinghua University Enterprise Group. He holds a B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and an M.S. in Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management from Stanford University.
Lawrence Tse, Gobi Partners