Lei Ming: The biggest beta of Dewu lies in: At that time, we conducted a survey on the post-95 generation, judging that the opportunity of that era was an investment opportunity targeting the post-95 generation. My logic at the time was that if you want to seize the opportunity of a major era transformation, simply put, it's nothing more than "people, goods, and venues", and among these, the variable of "people" is definitely the biggest. So we conducted an in-depth research on the "Z generation" at that time, and I led the team to run through 8 cities, covering first, second, third, fourth, and fifth-tier cities. After studying this generation, we selected a series of investment themes based on the post-95 generation. Therefore, we invested in Dewu when the valuation was relatively low, and today Dewu's scale and influence are already very large.
When investing in Dewu, the wave of mobile internet was already slowly receding, and after 2018, enterprises like Dewu were rare. Overall, I think we should try to find opportunities with relatively large era betas, which may not necessarily be the largest, but still have some relatively large investment themes, such as blockchain and the post-95 generation.
Q: The current era opportunities are AI, robotics, and globalization.
Lei Ming: Actually, this is the core of our Zhui Chuang today. The biggest era opportunities next will be around AI, robotics, and globalization. In other words, truly valuable projects that can make investors money are actually those that can significantly improve social productivity and production efficiency through technological innovation. For example, AI and robotics are driving the improvement of human productivity, so this is the biggest era opportunity.
Positioning of Zhui Chuang Ecosystem Fund
Pursuing "China to Global"
Q: Today, almost all institutions are emphasizing their investments in AI, robotics, and globalization. As a new institution that has just been established for just over 2 years, how do you ensure that you can establish a foothold in the market and even continue to lead?
Lei Ming: Our positioning is the Zhui Chuang Ecosystem Fund, so a major advantage is Zhui Chuang's deep industrial accumulation and perfect innovation incubation system - Over the past years, Zhui Chuang has accumulated a systematic capability and entrepreneurial methodology by successfully building mature categories. We can find opportunities globally across industries and regions based on this system and methodology, especially opportunities related to robotics, and then carry out corresponding incubation. What I want to emphasize is that I have fully felt that the organizational management model and methodology established by Zhui Chuang are ahead of the current era, and the external perception may not be that strong and may take some time to slowly appreciate. We will open up these systematic capabilities to our incubated enterprises.
In fact, we have recently incubated many projects - on one hand, we can invest in Zhui Chuang ecosystem incubation projects at the lowest valuation at the first time; on the other hand, compared to external projects, these projects currently have a much higher success rate in our view. Several projects have growth curves of 300-500 million revenue in the first year and 1 billion revenue in the second year, and all projects are striving to make product performance globally first, achieve profitability in the first year without burning money, which is what we emphasize internally as "global high-end".
So these projects have high stability and can rely on Zhui Chuang's already established global channels to achieve very fast growth, and their growth potential is quite considerable.
A wireless pool robot product developed by Langyong Future
By leveraging the perspective of the entire Zhui Chuang ecosystem, we can also extend to projects outside of Zhui Chuang's incubation. For example, we can invest in some upstream projects, and at this time, we can consult Zhui Chuang's business team, such as whether they would use these upstream technical platforms, which is a relatively accurate and intuitive judgment dimension.
Additionally, we can also invest in global projects by leveraging Zhui Chuang's global perspective. We have already reserved some projects in Silicon Valley, in the UK, and so on. On one hand, our fund has teams overseas that can actively find projects; on the other hand, we can also get project recommendations through Zhui Chuang's sales team.
We are now also raising a dollar fund, but raising dollars today is different from the past - previously, the fundraising logic was that US investors were very optimistic about the Chinese economy, basically all in China, directly handing money to China's top GPs to invest. Today's external environment may have some changes, so we have been emphasizing the "China to Global" concept with dollar LPs, which is to make good use of various Chinese capabilities, including supply chain capabilities, engineer R&D capabilities, operational capabilities, etc., to achieve global layout.
Fund Returns and Ecosystem Synergy Can Be Achieved Together
Q: Positioning as an ecosystem fund, how do you view the priority of financial returns and ecosystem synergy?
Lei Ming: From the fund's perspective, we are definitely oriented towards financial returns first. Ecosystem synergy is actually a natural thing. For example, during the fundraising of Zhui Chuang RMB fund, we have a cooperative relationship with our business team - because each project may be suitable for landing in different places, the business team will comprehensively consider supply chain supporting facilities, labor costs, traffic convenience, and other factors to select several most suitable places for enterprise landing, and then we go to discuss establishing a fund with these places suitable for enterprise landing.
If we first raise a fund and then forcibly require the business team to cooperate with landing and reinvestment, such a model cannot be sustainable. Essentially, both parties are in a mutually beneficial cooperative relationship. We will also help enterprises strive for some good investment promotion policies. Overall, which incubation project our fund specifically invests in, at what stage, and at what valuation, these are all decided by ourselves. The core starting point here is to maximize the fund's returns and let LPs make money while minimizing risks. At the same time, the business team can also achieve some good results, so this is all natural. Fund returns and ecosystem synergy are not contradictory and can be achieved together.
Q: In the past two years, you have achieved good investment return multiples. What do you think Zhui Chuang has done well? What areas can be iteratively improved in the future?
Lei Ming: The relatively good achievements we have made in the past 2 years are largely attributed to Zhui Chuang's incubation model, entrepreneurial methodology, and reusable organizational management incentive system. The success rate of these incubation projects is naturally quite high, which is obvious. On this basis, we have also invested in some good upstream industrial enterprises along the way, whether in components or underlying algorithms. An important direction for our self-iteration next is to invest in globalization - from the perspective of a Chinese team, we will recruit some overseas teams in the United States, the United Kingdom, and other countries to gradually improve our capabilities and truly achieve "China to Global".
