Venture Capital "Veteran" Zhang Suyang: How Can Entrepreneurs Overcome The Darkness In Front Of Them?

It is necessary for a successful entrepreneur to have a clear idea, recognize the reality, find a way and make a decisive decision, no matter what kind of environment.

"Every period has its own dividend. For example, in 2017, the focus of the Internet is mainly on bike sharing, and there are no other opportunities. However, at this time, significant changes have taken place. The industry has begun to pursue data from the pursuit of traffic, resulting in the demand for data, AR and cloud services." on September 16, Zhang Suyang, founder partner and chairman of volcanic rock capital, revealed in an exclusive interview with 21st century economic reporter that his current investment focus is on applied technology and new medical treatment mainly based on genomics and proteomics.

At present, some scientific and technological innovation enterprises are in pre dawn anxiety. In order to empower entrepreneurs, the "Jujin Cup" entrepreneurship competition held by the school of management of Fudan University is also opened today. The event, which has been held for 18 years in a row, focuses on the new generation of information technology, biomedicine, new energy, new materials, intelligent manufacturing, energy conservation and environmental protection.

With the emergence of new general technology, hard technology has become the focus of future investment. "There are application scenarios and huge market in China, but there is a lack of core competitiveness at the bottom of technology." Professor Lu Xiongwen, Dean of the school of management of Fudan University, believes that the development of technology is rhythmic and the diffusion is cyclical. At different stages, entrepreneurs should pay attention to the rhythm, acquirement and maturity of different technologies.

Wavering "long tail effect"

As a veteran venture capitalist who joined IDG in 1994, Zhang Suyang has invested in classic cases such as ctrip.com, Rujia, Hanting, one tea and one seat. As for the continuous tightening of the supervision of the Internet technology industry by relevant departments this year, he believes that both entrepreneurs and investors will face some changes, but in general, there are still many opportunities.

"What was the principle of burning money in the past? He pursued a monopoly, and then relied on the long tail income generated by monopoly to compensate for the part of money burning in front of him. Only with long tail income can he burn money. If there is no long tail income, no one will burn that money, and investors are not stupid. This is the basic situation. However, the premise is to achieve a certain degree of monopoly." Zhang Suyang judged that under the current situation, it is estimated that few investment institutions are willing to burn as much money as in the past.

In fact, the capital market also pays more attention to the self hematopoietic ability of innovative enterprises. According to the public data, in the first half of this year, more than 90% of the companies listed on the science and technology innovation board achieved growth in revenue, more than 70% in the net profit of the parent company increased, and 30% of the company's net profit increased by more than 100%, with a total R & D investment of 25.403 billion yuan.

The science and technology innovation board plays an important role in supporting the financing of science and technology innovation enterprises. At present, there are 331 companies in the science and technology innovation board, covering the new generation of information technology, biological medicine, high-end equipment, new energy, new materials, energy conservation and environmental protection industries, with a total market value of 5.38 trillion yuan.

In this context, star technology companies, including Alibaba, Baidu, Jingdong and station B, have also moved from the US stock market to the Hong Kong stock exchange. For this change, Zhang Suyang believes that the choice of listing location is closely related to the type of investment currency. "The reason why they all chose to list in the US stock market at that time was mainly the era of US dollar investment, and now the investment scale of RMB has exceeded that of US dollar. It's also a good choice for (investors) to choose to launch in the domestic market. Now, it's not that they can't be listed overseas, but that some terms and matters need to be negotiated between China and the United States. After all, an open market is beneficial to all aspects. "

How far can ideal entrepreneurship go?

Even experienced veterans, Zhang Suyang had a hard time in 2001. "In the face of the turmoil in the Internet industry, everything has become a small matter. Many companies said that there would be no such thing. I remember that when I invested in Internet companies in the United States, the average clearance rate was 8%. If you get 10%, you will get a bonus. This is very tragic. When I was at the bottom, I used $500000 to buy the shares of $5 million invested by Goldman Sachs, which is equivalent to the current $30 million We buy it at one tenth of the price, and when the Internet bubble is over, we will get a 100 times return. "

This huge uncertainty exists in the field of science and technology entrepreneurship. According to Professor Lu Xiongwen, innovation in science and technology is different from that in traditional manufacturing and service industries. Science and technology innovation enterprise is a process from 0 to 1, and the probability of failure is very high. In this process, the scientific and technological innovation enterprise team should have a stronger sense of mission and greater feelings. At the same time, sci-tech entrepreneurs need to further strengthen management and clarify business logic.

But a very realistic question is, when the enterprisers with feelings know that there is a future, but they can't see hope now, how can they get through the darkness in front of them?

"First of all, we can't persuade him to give up his ideals. Ideals must exist. If there are no ideals, we can't do anything innovative. Secondly, many of them involve the thinking methods of scientists themselves. Compared with foreign scientists' entrepreneurship, Chinese scientists will encounter more problems in business management. Therefore, we should pay attention to both feelings and reality, and the proportion of ideal feelings should not exceed 5 0%, preferably about 20% - 30%, "Zhang Suyang further pointed out.

In the past years, due to the lack of technical content and threshold, the Internet industry has been competing for capital, cash flow and sea of people tactics for a long time. Therefore, the competition mode is quite fierce.

Tang Zhehui, senior partner of Ernst & young, believes that the country is now vigorously encouraging innovation and development, and many technology-based enterprises have ushered in the spring, especially in the integrated circuit industry, where many entrepreneurs are scientists. For these scientists, they often specialize in technology, that is, the combination of business and technology. In the process of enterprise management, their products tend to be more obsessed with technology, which may not be good for the market. "Or after investors invest, they are obsessed with sales, which is 1 billion yuan this year, 2 billion yuan next year, and 4 billion yuan in the next year. In this case, the KPI is to set the sales volume, and then to collect the money. I have seen some enterprises. Basically, they can raise some capital in six months. If they can't, they will fall down. However, some entrepreneurs are very cautious and are not willing to raise funds Therefore, from the financial point of view, from the financial point of view, they often lack of financial budget and other aspects

In his view, only after the perfect combination of technology and capital will there be enterprises, and the naked running of technology is not far away. Therefore, for technology-based entrepreneurs, the most important thing is legal and compliance operation. No matter from the perspective of law, tax and finance, compliance is the first step and can not touch the red line; In addition, we should pay attention to sustainable operation. Good enterprises should have core technology, and do a good job in budget and cash flow management from the financial perspective, so as to go further.

(Intern Li Qiang also contributed to this paper.)