How to realize the transformation from industrialist to investor

Now China's rapid economic development , for enterprises to provide more opportunities for industry and market development space. Many entrepreneurs who have grown up and have become more stable have been thinking about how to change from being invested to investing in others. They are looking for industry opportunities as much as possible, realizing the transformation from industrialists to investors.

There is no doubt that Ding is the representative of the winners. He 1993 and Tian together to create the United States Asia Letter Company, in early 1995 to return to set up the Asia Letter Technology (China) company, the first time to bring the internet back to China. 2000, Ding led the successful landing of the Nasdaq. In 2003, Ding resigned from the nerdy successful entrepreneurial ding is not a torrent of retreat-when he was his identity has become the Jinsha venture partner. Now, it has been more than 7 years since he joined the venture bank. From an entrepreneur to a full-time VC, how did Ding successfully achieve these two role conversions? 7 years of experience in the venture, so that he has a new understanding of capital?

Why do I change roles? Interest dictates

"Beijing University Business Review": you founded the Asia letter, and led asiainfo on the Nasdaq successfully listed. As an industrialist, why do you turn to venture capital?

Ding: 1998, my first child was born, I went to the United States to take care of them, at that time, two things have a greater impact on me. The first thing is that I have some concerns about business and finance, and I begin to understand what PE is and what the stock price is related to. The second thing was that I was at the University of California, Berkeley, and I read a senior management program, although just a few months of study, but the impact on me is very large, make up for my management ideas and knowledge of the lack of the previous perceptual all systematized, I began to be able to standardize the induction of things.

After that, I made a strategic report on the future development of the letter, analyzing why the Asian letter should leave the domain of system integration and become a software business. At that time, Asiainfo had not been listed. One of our independent directors, after reading the report, told me that you could almost make an IPO report. Of course it was an encouragement to me, but now it's a very high rating to think about it, which means that my mindset was more like an investor than a CEO. I think more strategically about which new business to enter. How do I get in there? Wait, not simply to see the problem at that time. In fact, doing a good job is harder than making a new investment because it involves a lot of "baggage" issues.

Then I really turned to investment, I think investment is actually what I like to do, but also the things I am better at. In fact, I am not good at day-to-day management, also do not like, I prefer to think of things independently, such as corporate strategy, market direction and so on. Therefore, I often joked that 90% of the signature can actually be signed by my secretary, only to do the first 90% of the things to do that 10% worthwhile. Of course, I also need to spend a lot of time looking at the applicant's PPT, but I think it's better than being a CEO.

Transformation from qualitative to quantitative

"Beijing University Business Review": What do you think is the biggest difficulty in turning from an industrialist to an investor? What is the experience of the Asian faith to help you invest?

Ding: Turning investment from an industrialist is very difficult because it is equivalent to two different professions. Investing is a fine job, especially early investment. Because at this time the enterprise neither like the angel so nothing, with the brain to think about the problem can be, and not like later investment, can be based on a lot of numbers to do evaluation. Therefore, it is not easy to change from qualitative to quantitative if you have a wealth of industry experience and rely on these experiences to quantify the risks and rewards of the project.

From my experience, if you do not have the experience of being a CEO in a listed company, it may be more difficult to get there. Because in general, there are two types of CEO, one is to do strategy or market, the other is to do the CFO. The former may not have much quantitative concept, but he can qualitatively know which direction the strategy goes and how to go, and the latter often make decisions by numbers. The best CEOs have to be particularly strong in both ways--as much as a CFO can speak with numbers--and a long experience that allows him to have a qualitative strategic intuition, and to quantify that intuition.

Early investment must be quantified. On the one hand, to be able to from the market, technology and product understanding, to determine whether the project can be successful. At the same time, the project can be quantified, such as how big is the market size? What is the potential competition going to bring you? How big is the cost structure?

When we talk to some entrepreneurs, we will find that most people will say how good my product is, this thing will certainly be wanted, but there is no quantitative concept. Then I will ask him, the cost of this product, the price is how much? Is there any market demand under this kind of price? This is often the case with skilled entrepreneurs who are most likely to make such a mistake: some markets may only exist in a small area, and most people may not have such a demand after a wider range, Or the smaller the market, the end of the market is likely to disappear, enterprises will not survive.