The German city of Bielefeld – population 325,000 – is not the most fertile place for young, ambitious Internet entrepreneurs to grow. The Dreyer brothers were itching to leave their home for southern Europe when their father quickly thrust a newspaper article into their hands. “Shanghai – The City of the Future”, it read.

That same day, five years ago, the Dreyer boys booked their tickets to China.

Today, David, 28, Julius, 26, and Robert, 24, are sitting on millions.

Their Shanghai-based company, The NetCircle, specializes in developing and supporting large-scale Web communities. One of them is a dating site, which ranks among Germany’s top 20 Web communities.

The Dreyer sites have more than 2 million members accounting for 2.5 billion page views per year. Being able to handle such a volume of web traffic is worth a lot in the Web 2.0 world – in numbers: more than 7 million yuan in 2008.

In addition to website development, the young men’s company also trades in domains and invests in Internet start-ups. They have more than 50 employees from more than 10 countries working in a 1,000 sqm office at the end of Shanghai’s Yichang Road.

The area is an arrangement of tiny, two-story brick houses with red-tiled roofs in seeming defiance of the city’s ubiquitous imperative to “Grow or go!”

The apartments didn’t go, nor did they grow. They have metamorphosed from the scruffy warehouses into stylish loft offices called the “Warehouse Creative Center” – a nucleus of entrepreneurial creativity, formed with the support of the local authorities.

In one of the gray brick houses, behind a ponderous steel door, lies the office of the three young laowai from Germany who are living the expat dream.

Back in Bielefeld, in the western part of Germany, the brothers’ Internet entrepreneurship started very small, when they still were in their teens, Julius Dreyer says.

“We bought memorable Web domains and programmed them in such a way that they were easily found by search engines,” he explains.

Internet users were forwarded to sites, which were more serious, but harder to find. Those sites, in turn, had to pay a little transfer fee. By 2004, they had saved enough money for a long holiday. “At first, we planned to go to Spain, Portugal, the typical Mediterranean destinations that young people in Europe dream of,” says Julius Dreyer.

But the call of China was too loud.

Once in Shanghai, the brothers first rented a six-room apartment in the Putuo district, just opposite the Jade Buddha Temple.

On the 28th floor, they started their Internet project, rather leisurely at first – after all, it was meant to be a working holiday.

But suddenly one of their dating sites became flooded by hordes of users, and they had to work day and night to keep the site running.

They hired programmers, Web designers, and by the end of 2007 a 30-member team squeezed into the brothers’ apartment, which had become a stifling battery farm for IT experts.

When the municipal government offered the young entrepreneurs the opportunity to move into the old warehouse next to the Suzhou River, it turned out to be a good deal for both sides. The NetCircle boys agreed to renovate the masonry building. In return, the city offered them a reasonable five-year lease.

In their expansion, the Dreyers had already hired Swiss Claude Ritter as CEO to help organize their business structure.

“It was quite a challenge to coordinate such a fast-growing start-up,” says Ritter, 28. “We had to hire excessively to keep up with the fast development of the Web projects.”

The problem wasn’t the lack of applicants, but rather finding the right people to integrate into an international team made up of Chinese, Germans, Uruguayans, British, Kazakhs, and many others.

“With people from so many different backgrounds, there are quite a few chances for misunderstandings, of course,” says Ritter.

On the other hand, such cultural diversity is also a source of creativity and inspiration. With its international, creative and non-hierarchical work climate, the start-up had become an attractive employer.

“We receive 30 to 40 applications every week,” says Ritter. “One or two of them get invited for an interview and pre-employment testing.”

The NetCircle plans to enlarge its workforce by another 10 to 20 percent in 2009 – and is looking out for Chinese employees in particular.

“With Chinese staff members, there just aren’t all those organizational efforts which the language barrier and a relocation in a foreign country entail,” explains Ritter.

Ritter has personally experienced this culture shock. The Swiss expat first came to Shanghai in 2005 for a 4-month university project and like many foreigners, didn’t speak a word of Chinese.

“I had never been to China or even some other Asian country before,” Ritter says. “Before that university project, I had actually been more interested in going westwards, to America.”

China was unknown territory to him. “I was downright fascinated by the flexibility and the possibilities here,” Ritter recalls.

After the project was over he just couldn’t imagine returning to Switzerland.

He stayed in Shanghai and soon discovered one of the Dreyer websites. He made contact, became a project leader at their company, and now, less than four years later, is CEO.

In order to better liaise with the locals, Ritter learned to speak some Chinese. “Only a little, but it’s just enough to get the everyday life stuff done,” he says.

Julius Dreyer, in contrast, is almost fluent. He and his brothers have taken two to four hours of Chinese lessons every weekday since arriving in Shanghai.

“The great thing is: The more you get to know of the Chinese language, the more you soak up China’s culture and history as well,” he says.

He’s glad he quickly overcame the initial culture shock that prevents many other expats from feeling at home in Shanghai.

With thousands of foreigners living and working in this city, it is quite easy to isolate oneself in an expat community bubble, Julius Dreyer says.

“You have to be proactive to break out of this parallel universe, in order to experience the new, the exciting.”

One shouldn’t be too anxious either, especially with exotic Chinese cuisine.

“When I go to a restaurant for example, I always order the dishes which looked the strangest to me – to fight my culturally acquired disgust for them,” Julius Dreyer says laughingly. “That might involve some self-conquest. But it’s worth it.”

The Dreyer brothers are now looking for their next adventure.

On July 20, the same date they arrived in Shanghai five years ago, Julius and David want to continue their world journey, while younger brother Robert will stay in Shanghai for a few months to finish his projects.

They are preparing themselves for a new life in Barcelona but don’t want to abandon their old life entirely.

They want to go and grow.

The plan is to set up a new branch of The NetCircle, which focuses on marketing and sales and supports the headquarters in Shanghai.

“After all, Internet business can be done from everywhere in the world,” says Julius Dreyer.

“You have to get yourself out of the comfort zone every now and then, otherwise you become idle and rusty.”

http://www.thenetcircle.com/