StarHub takes the route of cooperating with the superstructure, acquiring projects through interviews, conferences, lectures and operations, and at the same time outputting content for them to digest the investment.
Cool purple shirts, matching purple suits, 185cm long legs, coupled with a handsome face, Yang Ge, founding partner of StarHub after 85 years, is recognized as a male god + Netflix investor in the VC circle.
He himself, however, desperately wants to tear off the label of netroots.? People can only see what is exposed, what they can't see is me doing forms and writing PPTs at 3 am.?
As the head of an up-and-coming fund, there is no lack of focus and topics on his body, through the glittering back, how Yang Ge experienced seven business failures and two times with the death of the shoulder?
Pride is torn
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Turning back to the 2010 microblogging, 53 Chinese characters honestly restore the cynicism of the year Yang Ge. 2005 junior started the second venture, a toss is 5 years, but ultimately Yang Ge's Tsinghua halo torn to shreds.
It was a medical device project, the product was the size of a cabinet, for patients to do automatic testing. Yang Ge is the co-founder and CTO, responsible for algorithms, UI, security and other software-related work. For him, who majored in physics at Tsinghua, the challenge of crossing the border into the medical industry is not small. There is absolutely no long-term planning, can only think of today should take this step, tomorrow should take that step, are reasoning forward.?
After some detours, they still took the most difficult bones: applied to the national and PCT invention patents, and also got the medical three licenses.
2007~2008, 2 million, 4 million, the project has received two rounds of financing. The seemingly red-hot business made Yang Ge's bottom line so strong that he handed out business cards to everyone. This sophomore began to entrepreneurial young man, vaguely tasted the flavor of success, ? think the company is going public?
It didn't last long, and the unspoken rules of the VC community ruthlessly erased the project's surface glory. The bell that rings is not the bell of the listing, but a boring stick: the negotiated financing has fizzled out over and over again.
Yang Ge recalls, in 2008, every week there are investors will be the olive branch into the door, the largest single investment of 150 million yuan, he and the founders have signed a payment agreement (SPA).
Although there is black and white, should be to the mouth of the duck flew as usual. And such a farce, a play is actually three years.
Yang Ge is the No. 2 shareholder, every day can receive the founder of the major shareholders such a phone call, ? They have this money next week? The first time I saw the phone, it was a very good one, but it's not a good one. Tomorrow, the account? The day after tomorrow. The day after tomorrow, a copy of the agreement has been signed, every time you can not wait a dime.
? How can you meet a liar every day? The first thing you need to do is to get a good deal of money to pay for the services you need. It is that no one invests, it is one by one to cheat you.? He said with a sneer.
Funds are stretched thin, coupled with a lack of experience in the medical industry market, the product in the hospital to promote, one can not be sold. Yang Ge got his hands on only one copy?
These are the only contracts in the world that have been signed.
A few years later, Yang Ge recalled these details, can not help but lament: ? One of the biggest problems of being young is that you don't know how far away you are from getting the next contract. Think others say it is quite interesting, there is an intention to place an order, the gap between this intention and what really happens, young people are completely without concept.?
After the contract was broken more than ten times, the intention to invest hundreds of times, coinciding with the graduation of Yang Ge graduate school in 2009, the company's cash flow breaks. The company's cash flow was broken in 2009, when Yang Ge graduated from graduate school. He came up with a Beijing dialect.
In order to start this business, he gave up going abroad and studying for a doctorate, but graduation is unemployed. Yang Ge for the first time with skeptical eyes to look at 24 years of life, ? When I was a kid, I got an A in history and thought I could do a lot of things, and when I grew up, I realized I was nothing. I went all the way to Tsinghua to get A, to the community is mixed up in such a miserable, feel that all the things before are in vain, no one recognizes.
The original pride was torn to pieces. He first thought of light life, the computer playing the inspirational chicken blood movie "when happiness comes knocking", while watching and crying along with the little boy inside.
Wiping away snot and tears, microblogging and blogging became the catharsis of his indignation. Yang Ge's first blog post, "Redemption" has this sentence: ? The good thing is, there is a limit to being stupid in most cases.
The good thing is that every loss Yang Ge has suffered has been summarized as a ? social laws? So far, he **** summarized more than 200, summarized by the last costly failure called ? Mixed into the mainstream market?
Yang Ge said, each society has a baseline, called benchmark, in this baseline above the people, the more disciplined you are, the more you do not play hooligan, your harvest is upward. But below this line, the more disciplined you are, the more you respect morality, the faster you go down; those who don't talk about the rules of the paste to engage in, but better than you mix.
He believes that you must mix into the mainstream market with a credit system, and find people in the mainstream market.
Rebooting himself, Yang Ge is once again looking for a place to put down roots, waiting for new shoots to top off the dead tree in front of him.
Kneeling to the ground and rushing to the bottom
Yang Ge wanted to enter a finance-related company, learning financial knowledge to make up for the short board of the last venture. But the uncertainty is so pervasive that every step forward is like jumping off a cliff. The resources of the four years of medical entrepreneurship are not useful, the ability to program is not useful; re-entry, no work can not afford to spend three years; to KPMG part-time job, a monthly salary of four thousand dollars, whether to go, dare not go?
The embarrassing thing is that, although it has been reduced to such a field, but in the original social circle, but also swollen face. People around you think you are the boss, the social cost is very high, how to maintain?
By the age of 26, each socialization of Yang Ge has to carefully calculate the cost. When he did the form every day, the cash cost of a social event, the cost of time are recorded, ? Spend 200 dollars to participate in an activity, the results did not fall anything, light to others to support the scene, this is certainly not dry?
As a result of the family is good, playing small not to sit on the subway, public transportation, he also squeezed into the year of the 2 yuan subway.
Into the new environment, Yang Ge realized that the previous small suffering is nothing, a new round of abuse has just begun.
At KPMG, Yang Ge's leader was two years younger than him, and called Yang Ge a? kid? Yang Ge was sent every day to ? permanent? print room and was asked to rework over and over again.? This nail is crooked, retype it, the edge of the printing paper is not wide enough, retype it. The reprimands ring in his ears, and he remembers images from the movie Gladiator.
? There was a man who knew seven languages who was captured and eventually hacked to death. Before he died he said I know seven languages and was hacked to death as usual because all these talents are useless here. It's like the Shawshank Redemption, where you have to think about how you're going to get out of this place, not what other abilities you have. Everything else in that context is a negative. It's zero points here, and it doesn't help to add 10,000 points anywhere else.
This experience is also summarized by Yang Ge. A person who wants to be successful must learn to kneel down, kneel down to others, kneel down to things they do not like. It is not that the knees kneel down, but their own really low. Because a lot of threshold, you hard knock knock to the head may not be able to pass, but once you kneel to the ground, found that this threshold is not much higher, a moment to pass.
A low head, the crown fell, a kneeling, pride broken. Yang Ge feels that do not dare to bow down and kneel, so that many of his peers fall into mediocrity. He has been in the Beijing five, plus Tsinghua and Peking University alumni circle, most people did not have a particularly big achievement after 90% because they can not let go of their own, the good man only mention the year courage.
Just like back to the furnace remodeling, Yang Ge cross-border crazy to make up for the short board. As early as 2013, he has been the vice president of Dajiang Investment; during the period, he also experienced the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh start-ups, none of which ended in failure.
In his third venture, he founded the Youth Elite Business Union (Kaiye.com) to expand his knowledge structure and network circle. Their activities from the early five or six hundred people scale business social gathering, to the last activity only less than ten people to participate in, can only be organized to play mahjong.
Due to too much equity dilution and an unprofitable business model, Kaiye collapsed. Yang Ge timely stop loss, write off the company, clean up the financial Compared to the second venture, with the experience of wind control, do not go on can not continue to lose money. The contacts also got, the liquidation of the clear...?
His psychological construction, however, did not keep up, and it took a year to heal. Negative emotions accumulated and erupted again in 2013.
Entrepreneurial successive failures, internal and external pressure, 27 years old, Yang Ge felt that he became inert, that is the only year he will play games in the office.? From the age of 18 to 32 this year, 14 years I have not wasted time, basically a year when others three years with, wasted a year, now are super regret.?
This is like a marathon, before holding back the energy to run in front, a lazy stagnation, he panicked.
Originally scheduled for the end of the year of the engagement trip, Yang Ge has become a person of the edge of life and death trip. Before the engagement, he and his girlfriend burst into a fight, a person with a credit card, a small bag, ran to Japan.
I wanted to go to Osaka and sleep in a capsule hotel, but when I got to Nagoya, Yang Ge collapsed. He walked alone on the cold streets, cold wind into the bones, the sky gray, said sunny not sunny, said rain not rain, he felt surrounded by clouds, quiet not hear a wind sound.
That day was December 31st, the last day of the year, there is nothing worth summarizing in the brain. A person does not know how long to walk, no food body uncontrollably vomiting diarrhea, 185cm big man became a walking corpse; bloodless face as a mask, squeeze not a drop of tears and smile. The company's website has been updated with the latest information about the company's website and its website.
Lost one day later, family and friends of the phone one after another bombardment, in a state of death Yang Ge, mechanically answer the phone, tossed to buy a ticket back to China, ? vaguely conscious, to play the second half, have to come alive?
This outbreak of depression, and so the plane landed in Yantai, Yang Ge only some back to the soul; transfer to the capital, he was fully alive.
Picked up a life, which allowed him to throw away too much emotional component before.? Passing through this kind of life and death, you look away, is casual, other things are casual.?
In the six months since then, Yang Ge has been on the computer every day, talking to himself in English. He joked: ? Mao Daqing Mao always turned out to be depression, and then adjusted through running, over-adjusted into a ? talker?
Yang Ge is the first to be a member of the Chinese government, and he is also a member of the Chinese government.
Yang Ge believes that people and things are a well-designed parabola, if you rush down, like riding a roller coaster, rushing to the bottom can not rush up.
Rushed through the nearly with death to make a face. The bottom of the valley, he confessed that from that day, to today's stop, he basically did not go downhill from the strategy.
The eighth venture - StarHub
Belonging to Yang Ge's parabola, the first half of the seven entrepreneurial failures, seem to be in the eighth entrepreneurial rebound. early 2014, Yang Ge decided to set up StarHub.
In his eyes, this is a natural thing.
Seven startups have enriched his network and skills, and his experience covers most of the industries. Each line of the people, the stomach counts what the little things, can be felt.?
? The first time related to their own professional math; the second time to do medical equipment; the third time is the network circle, SNS community; the fourth time is the hardware embedded development, software-hardware combination; the fifth time to open a chain of restaurants; the sixth time to do the wine sales; the seventh time to do the trust and asset management of the FA.?
Studying finance, crawling and rolling in the financial industry has been five years. In Dajiang Investment and since then the work of the North China Investment, Yang Ge has seen too many projects, ? Not to mention the most watched TMT, simply because look at the mineral energy project, the periodic table of elements can be recited backwards and forwards?
Most importantly, because of the accumulation of the first few years, he entered the mainstream market of the investment circle, with the ability to raise funds and contacts.? The ability to raise capital is especially critical when you want to make a new fund.?
Accumulating connections has long been a professional habit for Yang Ge.
Before StarHub, he made a small database of contacts left behind by government consultants and lecturers, which he organized by phone, email, individual, company, etc. When he was 27 years old, the unread messages on his cell phone's WeChat were 3,000 to 4,000, and last year, the little red dot showed more than 400,000 messages.
When the crippled barrel, finally each side is inserted into the board, can hold water.
In the fund-raising stage, he is no longer like when the young entrepreneur who was cheated, anxious to cynicism.? Fundraising is the same as startup financing, it may be 100 LPs are interested in your fund, 30 people are willing to talk for a second time, then 10 people signed the agreement, 5 people fulfilled their commitments, and the last 2 people made the payment.?
He spoke more sophisticated color, ? The first thing you need to do is to talk to your friends, and you can't talk to your friends. The money as long as you do not put in your pocket is not your, put in your pocket may not be your?
In the face of this kind of thing, Yang Ge's emotions have not mentioned the degree of anger. I think the general public so-called angry, upset or cynical, etc., are you do not understand the world.?
Only invest in people with no obvious shortcomings
In the beginning, the investment track of the investment circle changed in the blink of an eye, and Yang Ge did not limit himself to a specific industry. Touch and go, see the moves, and decide as you go.?
As he searches for various industries, he pays more attention to what kind of entrepreneurs he invests in. Inside StarHub, he summarized it as four points and six merchants.
Four points: a deep knowledge of the industry chain, a very strong ability to adhere to the ability to learn, the ability to iterate, the ability to execute; six quotient: IQ, emotional quotient, financial quotient, reverse quotient, political quotient and moral quotient.
And when it comes to these ten aspects, it's hard to find 100-point entrepreneurs, usually there are high and low in all aspects. Yang Ge's secret is to invest in people who don't have particularly obvious shortcomings. The reverse quotient is particularly low, all the other quite good, once encountered problems he quit, this kind of person can not be invested.
Furthermore, the first long version of the entrepreneur can not be too short. There has to be one or two things that make it better.
Tang Ziyou of V.Fine, a project invested by StarHub, is quite representative. Yang Ge met Tang Ziyou, who is ten years younger than him, at a roadshow. Generally speaking, a person's logic, knowledge structure, give me the feeling that 50% of the first five seconds of the basic stereotypes, or you do not speak can be, the remaining two to three hours of communication, you can determine the other 20% of this person.
After chatting with Tang Ziyou, Yang Ge believes that Tang Ziyou's character is similar to Steve Jobs and Zuckerberg, mixing business and art, and thinking differently from ordinary people, and can tell a lot of things beyond your expectations. And you feel that he speaks are right, this is called the future of universal values, the average person is not this thing.?
The following week, Yang Ge finalized a $1.6 million seed round of funding from StarHub for V.Fine (which has been followed up with a $6 million angel round).
But Tang Ziyou also has a number of common shortcomings, such as young people do not know how to control emotions, lack of management experience. Yang Ge said that young people will lack a lot of things, need a little to make up. For people with universal values, you do not force him, give him ten options, he can always choose the right one.
He joked: ? My principle is that all projects, all industries should not be excluded, and all people should not be excluded, and this person, even if you think he is disgusting, unreliable, earthy, and so on, you have to give him a few seconds. Ten seconds, you can know what he ate for more than twenty years.?
The investment is only to do the thing on the doorstep
Over the past three years, StarHub*** has invested in 30 projects/times, and 2/3 of them have entered the next round. For example, De Master, A Plus By, Heart on Heart and so on.
Among them, several projects with other first-tier investment institutions **** the same investment. This is to verify the goal set by Yang Ge three years ago: 2015 into the mainstream investment circle, 2016 industry everyone knows me. Yang Ge said that the actual pace of StarHub is faster than he thought. Last year, the industry's most mainstream ten organizations have established closer ties with Star Han, we invest in most of the enterprises in the cross and first-tier funds.?
Although it does not choose the track, StarHub internally divides the main track and secondary track. 2017, its main track focuses on industrial upgrading, including the integration and upgrading of agriculture, industry, warehousing, supply chain, manufacturing, and other industries; the second main track is the direction of AI + biomedicine, which is recognized by the first-tier capital **** same.
On the track adjustment, Yang Ge believes that the first element is the quick eye. Previously, he dreamed of making StarHub a top-tier dollar fund like Sequoia and IDG, but in China, policies are constantly affecting the market, and big changes happen every three years or five years.
?In 2016, the state advocated PPP and government-guided funds to drive industrial funds, and we judged that the state was actually starting to make efforts in local industries, and StarHub quickly made adjustments, and we knew that the Internet and O2O were definitely not the leading things anymore, and we must sink ourselves down and become a little more earthy, and look at agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, fishery, production and manufacturing, and agro-industry, etc.?
In this environment, StarHub invested in the agricultural supply chain project A plus by.? The investment is to cross the river by touching the stone, and the valuation of the project has doubled 10 times a year after the investment. This case makes us realize that to compete in the pattern of the red sea, not necessarily break out, must break through the pattern, in order to bend the road to overtake.
In the field of artificial intelligence applications, StarHub has not yet made a move, Yang Ge is waiting for the opportunity to move.
He analyzed that the development of artificial intelligence goes through three periods, the first is the technology trigger period, the second is the bubble bursting period, and the third stage is the mature development period. What we are now in is a relatively slow upward phase, there is uncertainty about the risk, everyone is in a wait-and-see state.
Doing the investment only to do the thing on the doorstep, so that the most money. Yingkai in January last year when the financing, three months short of being a martyr, one month short of being a pioneer may be. But for biomedical, may be ahead of ten years into a martyr, but ahead of three years to do pioneers, the time cycle to be judged according to the specific industry.? He said.
In the face of fierce external competition, at the beginning of last year, Yang Ge made a series of innovations within StarHub, unlike most investment companies. Unlike most investment firms, which have a partner system and an employee system, StarHub has adopted the model of a startup company. Unlike most investment firms, which have a partnership and employee system, StarHub adopts the operation of a startup company, which is internally divided into four departments: marketing, operation, investment and general management.
Outside, StarHub takes the route of cooperating with the superstructure, acquiring projects through interviews, conferences, lectures, operations and other channels, and at the same time outputting content for them to digest the investment.
Internally, Yang Ge adopts functionalized management. Star Han Capital is mainly responsible for acquiring and screening projects with only three investment managers (plus one intern), but its internal ? All the people in the army? and all other functional departments send projects to the investment department through other means. For StarHub, flat management efficiency is not always the best fit.?
The last three years have been quite smooth for Yang Ge, whose WeChat signature hasn't been changed, ?7 fat years, 7 lean years?, and whose sense of crisis is always present as the clock ticks to the west of the river.
He took StarHub as the eighth venture, and all entrepreneurship faces the same crisis: not to advance is to retreat, you do not do better than others is to die. ;