Posted on: General China Query Forum Reply Here: http://genconnect.rootsweb.com/gc/China/General/10322 Surname: ------------------------- CNBC Interviews Steve Simpson, CEO of Chineseroots.com Chineseroots.com is in the media limelight once again. On the 24th of January, our website was featured in the Squawk Box Plus segment of CNBC news. Our Chief Executive Officer, Steve Simpson, unveiled the latest developments and plans for the company. The following is the original transcript of the interview. Presenter 1: So you wanna draw up your family tree, but you don't know how. Well, you might want to turn to Chineseroots.com. The company hosts a website which provides just that service and it's not just a hobby we're talking about; the company is gearing up for a listing in the very near future. For more on the company and their plans, we're talking to Steve Simpson, CEO of Chineseroots.com. He's here in Singapore. Steve, welcome. Steve: Thank you. Presenter 1: This is an interesting service. Now, apparently, you offer Chinese ancestry. Basically you can trace it back as far as 1100 years, so that's some 1000 AD or so. Steve: Absolutely right. Presenter 1: But really do the records, are the records that accurate? Steve: When you get to the records, the records are extremely accurate. The Chinese people have done a wonderful job in preserving their history, and so, we're very very happy when we get to the records and you, yes, can go back a very very long way with the records. Through the Cultural Revolution, certainly some records were lost, but that's part of the game, being able to find the records. We can't promise people, you know, that we'll find the records for them, but we can start giving them a pointing…you know, we can get them into the game and starting to look for their roots. Presenter 2: Steve, It's Bernie in Hong Kong. Historically speaking, aren't Chinese families already very very good about genealogy, about keeping track of their roots, I mean, compared to, you know, I grew up…I spent most of my life in North America, but compared to my friends in school, I seem to know what went back 5, 6 generations crystal-clear, compared to their knowledge of their family history. Steve: You're absolutely right, Bernie, and it's great that they have preserved their records but you've got to remember also that people are very scattered, and so, what we are looking for is people being able to get to their roots. Let me give an example. There are 70 million overseas Chinese as we class them. A lot of these people have never been able to get back into China itself and get to their roots and what we're hoping to do is to share those records with them. So I agree with you that there are many people who have preserved their records; there are also many many people who have lost their roots. Presenter 1: Steve, I understand your website is multilingual. You launched in September of 2000. When do you hope to make a buck or two? Steve: Very good question. The key to our business is getting a subscription model running - getting people to subscribe to that database. It would take us to June or July before we've got sufficient information in that database to be able to charge people. Along the way, we are setting up other products as well which would relate to the family pay-per-view type products that we're putting in there, as an example, naming of children, which is something very unique to the Chinese. We've put that in there for people to pay-per-view, but we expect June, July to start making the bucks from the site itself. Presenter 1: Ok, naming of children. Sounds like a service Bernie needs. Bernie? Presenter 2: Steve. How much overlap is there between Chineseroots.com and other services, particularly North American based ones right now like My Family.com, Genealogy.com? Is there actually quite a bit of overlap? Will you come up with a lot of the same information they came up with already? Steve: No, definitely not, Bernie, I think this is a unique thing that we have. We have access to the Chinese databases, people like that do not have access to them. We have these on an exclusive basis and it's not something that those type of companies in the Western space have wanted to bring into their business plan at this stage now, so there would be very very little overlap between the two types of approaches, between the Western and Chinese. The place we will find a bit of overlap is when we start putting up the English records as an example of rivals in the US. This would be extremely interesting to people of Chinese background. We would put that into our site. That would also be available in the North American sites but I see that as the only overlap. We have a very very unique piece of business here. Presenter 2: Steve, can you handle complexity? I mean, if you'll entertain me for a second while I indulge myself. I have a particularly strange family history. Back 2, 3 generations there, across the border of Guangdong province, but that's after immigrating from the north, Harbin, which is close to the Russian border, port city of northern China, going back 7, 8 generations, there were a smattering of people in my family tree from Vladivostok, Khabarovsk and Siberia. Now, are you going to be able to tell me where I came from 10 generations ago? Steve: Bernie, as I said, the challenge is always being able to supply people with information. Now, you are a very unique person. Presenter 1: You don't say. Steve: But what's the good thing is that people like you know something about your family. Now, with those records, obviously available, other people can start looking at those records, and finding their roots. With your case, it sounds quite complex, but it is surprising when you get into Chinese records. They're so well preserved and so well laid out that you can go back several generations straight away, unlike the English space where, as an example, if you look, for me, you would find perhaps my mother and family on my birth certificate. With the Chinese, you will find the whole record in the jiapu record. Presenter 1: Steve, you are looking to go public. Tell us where, when, how much you are trying to raise. Steve: We're moving very very quickly. We've looked at the markets and have decided that you can't stay small. We need to give ourselves capital through, you know, being able to use our stock to make acquisitions or whatever. We need revenues in the company. We will go public within the next days. We will be making an announcement. We will be looking to the North American markets. To do that, we've already lined up reverse takeover into the North American markets. We'll be raising 3 to 4 million dollars immediately. We've been working with underwriters on that. And that will secure the company for the next 2 to 2œ years whilst we really put in together this strong business plan. Presenter 1: All right. Looking forward to it and good luck with it. Thank you very much for joining us today. We've been talking to Steve Simpson, Chief Executive of Chineseroots.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- About Cybersia, Inc. Cybersia, Inc., has positioned itself to become the leading online network for families of Chinese ancestry. The Company's web site properties, Chineseroots.com (in English and Chinese) and Chinesekin.com, offer comprehensive resources and interactive tools that connect Chinese families. Chineseroots.com's exclusive alliance with Shanghai Library, known to possess the world's largest collection of Chinese ancestry records, provides access to 90,000 catalogued volumes of family details dating back to the 10th century. Other industry partnerships include various world renowned genealogy organizations such as the Taiwan Surnames Association and the Shanxi Genealogy Centre in China. For more information, visit http://www.chineseroots.com or http://www.magnumfinancial.com/root.html. Link: CHINESE GENEALOGY & FAMILY CONNECTIVITY URL: <http://chineseroots.com>