What Does It Take To Be A Venture Capitalist In China? Let’s Just Ask Them

This is the first post in our series: Meet China’s Midas, where we will talk to a mix of Chinese venture capitalists who have made successful investments in China’s growing tech space. Stay tuned over the coming one month as we talk to Chinese investors from Beijing to Shanghai about what it take to be a Midas in China. You can follow our updates at @technodechina for new stories in the series. 

The era we live in is often dubbed as venture winter in China, as tech startups face dwindling funding. In the first half of 2016 ,173 new venture-capital funds in China raised 78.9 billion yuan ($11.8 billion), down 42% and 14% respectively from the same period last year, according to pedata.cn. However, do the Chinese investors feel the same?

China has formed a venture ecosystem full of its own character and tech entrepreneurs, spurred by the past year’s O2O craze and drone innovations, to this year’s WeChat business ecosystem and internet celebrities. This could not have been possible without a strong backbone of Chinese investors. There are a total of 14 partners covering China that made it to the 2016 Forbes Midas list.

So how do Chinese venture capitalists find good deals and know that they will grow up to be Chinese unicorns?

Over the next three weeks, Technode will be asking a spread of successful Chinese venture capitalists exactly that. We at Technode have scraped together a selection of China’s Midas for a series of interviews looking at what it’s like to throw money into startups in China’s tech scene.

The investors in our China’s Midas list include:

• Steven Ji: Partner of Sequoia Capital China
• Scott Zheng: Founder and managing partner of Buttonwood Capital as well as the angel investor of Momo and Inke
• James Mi: Co-founder and managing director of LightSpeed China Partners
• Xiaohu Zhu: Director at GSR Ventures, and early investor of Didi and Ele.me
• Lifeng Yu: Managing partner of GGV Capital’s RMB fund
• Matt Cheng: Founder and managing partner of Cherubic Ventures as well as the angel investor of Wish.com and Hyperloop
• Jenny Lee: Managing partner of GGV Capital who ranked 40th on Forbes Midas list 2016
• Andrew Teoh: Founder and managing partner at Ameba Capital and angel investor of Mogujie and Kuaidi
• Feng Li: Partner at IDG Capital Partners

You can follow us @technodechina to see the stories unfold.

Image: Shutterstock.com