HEAD OF THE DAY
🇨🇳 Miranda Qu
📱 From blog to lifestyle giant: In 2013 Miranda Qu co-founded Xiaohongshu (“Little Red Book”) and has since grown the social-commerce app to over 200 million monthly users. After a $300 million funding round in 2018 and a $20 billion valuation in 2021 led by Alibaba and Tencent, her net worth stands at about $1.8 billion. Qu owns roughly 10 % and is Asia’s tenth-richest self-made woman billionaire at the age of 37.
In January 2025, the U.S. threat to ban TikTok led to a surge in downloads as millions of so-called “TikTok refugees” switched to Xiaohongshu, pushing it into the Top 3 charts in many different countries and to #1 on both the U.S. App Store and Google Play. Warmly received by Chinese users, this sudden rush made the platform a household name in the West.
👉 Lesson learned: Nail your community’s real needs from day one: Xiaohongshu succeeded by launching as a shopping guide rather than just another social network, then scaling by turning deep user insights into personalized offerings.
The China Survival Guide for Western Businesses
Entity setup, WeChat strategy, hiring your first local team. 12+ years on the ground in Shanghai.
