Kai-fu Lee: China's evolutionary decision-makers and executives in business incubators

The Chinese business community is not short of professional managers with a record of luxury and clout, but like the rapid boom and bust that we have witnessed in the past decade, few of these once-famous professional managers have had a long and long history of career change.

However, there is no shortage of real experts, even if it is out of the big company's aura of the addition effect can also be a personal brand more and more bright. Out of Google China nearly three years later, Lee has done this. His new career innovation workshop has become one of the most famous Angel investment forces in China, and he has tens fans and huge appeal on the Internet.

In August 2009, kai-Fu Lee left Google to create innovative factories, from professional managers to entrepreneurs and investors. At the time, he hopes to become "China's y Combinator", the incubator model to promote local science and technology entrepreneurship, and then from the investment in entrepreneurship projects in return. At that time, Angel investment in China is still a small circle of topics, and entrepreneurial incubator is never into the public eye.

Smart as Lee Kai-fu correctly judged the trend. With the start-up and investment environment maturing, China's internet in a short span of two or three years, the rapid growth of entrepreneurial climax and angel investment in the fast-growing period. Kai-Fu Lee and Lei (Weibo), Shire, Xiaoping and other well-known angel investors together to become a hot figure, its first targeted mobile internet, social media, E-commerce and other hatching direction has become the hottest investment in recent years.

Back to see Lee's transcript: Innovation Factory has gone through 2.5 of the time, has completed 180 million U.S. dollars in the first dollar fund raise, will soon complete the collection of another 700 million yuan in the first renminbi fund. Innovation Workshop incubation and investment of 47 projects, more than 2000 workers in the workshop, in the interview with the global entrepreneur, Kai-Fu Lee revealed that in the incubation investment of these projects, there are 18 projects into a round of investment. At least for now, the idea of Kai-Fu Lee is already an impressive career.

But the high level of attention also questioned the constant. A multinational company executives, a professional manager to choose Entrepreneurship, his past success can continue? Investing in the internet has opted for a hatching model that has little success in China, and is it possible to find a foothold in Angels and VC circles to survive? In the mobile internet entrepreneurial tide, innovation factory can really rely on its advantages to seize the commanding heights of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial projects? Even in the innovation Workshop under, its incubation, investment project is called the innovation of the word industry is also controversial. In particular, there are a number of projects in the Innovation factory in the United States Internet companies shadow, such as imitation of Tumblr dot network. One view is that innovation workshops are supposed to have more responsibility for innovation because they advertise the name of ' Innovation '.

The success of the innovation Workshop was not conclusive. The risks and rewards of early investment are also huge, and the return cycle is long, and there is no doubt that innovation workshops will still face visible uncertainty in the future, and scepticism about its business model will persist for a long time. But if the Chinese Internet can appear Paul Greheum (Paul graham,y combinator founder), Kai-Fu Lee is undoubtedly the most likely person.

"I'm not optimistic about the business prospects of the incubator in China, but if one of them succeeds, it's Lee's innovation workshop," he said. "A venture capitalist who is familiar with Kai-Fu Lee told The Economist.

Graduates

In September 2009, just created the innovation Workshop will be the office of the Tsinghua Science Park, which is a few steps away from Google's building, coincidentally, the office was also Google China's office. The office is also paved with the gray carpets of the age of Google, with red, blue and yellow eggs. Innovation Workshop partner Wang Huihui bought tables and chairs, and several founders sat in an empty office to discuss what to do next. Starting from this, but unlike other companies, innovation workshops are not just about recruiting the people they need to run, it's more about entrepreneurs, or more accurately, the technicians who drive entrepreneurial projects.

Kai-Fu Lee started his own boss of the news, he received a large number of resumes. Many of these people value the personal prestige of Li. Come to the people who are not only the Internet field, some people with straw harvesting technology, as well as the idea of flying saucer, came to the factory, hoping to see one side with Kai-Fu Lee, get his help.

Kai-Fu Lee's exposition of the mode of innovation Workshop incubator was widely discussed in 2009 due to the high degree of concern, and there are also different opinions about the model of incubating entrepreneurship. Unlike now, Lee and his partner initially thought that the factory uses Google's internal selection of creative projects, first by the staff to create ideas, and then vote in the internal ranking, the partners to conduct a final assessment, each year from the selection of 20 ideas to try, and then after the test to select 10 projects, The final step is to set up 5 to 6 subsidiaries. The whole cycle will take 1 years to try, and the innovation Workshop will give it money and incubation services. Once formed, the internal subsidiaries will be detached from the platform of the Innovation Workshop, and Kai-Fu Lee will help these companies to find a new round of venture capital, and the innovation Workshop will also participate in the investment. And the scale of the workshop remained around 110 people, with the incubation company's departure, the workshop immediately add new entrants in.

This incubator model with the ideal color, kai-fu Lee can learn from the experience is only his own good aspects, will be creative into projects and products, and team management, and in the entrepreneurial and investment areas he is a "freshman." But looking back, kai-fu Lee and innovation workshops have put a lot of effort into the first batch of in-house incubation projects, and the business model that has not been successful in mainland China has not brought it to a dead end.

The focus of innovation Workshops-mobile internet and E-commerce-became the most concentrated area of capital and entrepreneurship in China over the next two years, and its belief in the prospects of an open Android system gave birth to its first batch of incubating results. The first batch of interior hatching projects, such as dim sum, pea pods, application sinks, Friends League, Magic Chart Elves, is the result of Lee and his team hitting mobile internet trends. For the forecast of the trend of the future, the model of the Innovation Factory has got the time of trial and error and adjustment mode.

It is not easy to bring the team to work with the innovation Workshop, to really make the project into a pioneering team, the early internal incubation project has undergone an unusual entrepreneurial process, such as the workshop to find a fit entrepreneurial leader to take over these projects and lead these internal projects to go on.

The birth of application sinks contains a number of dramatic colors. According to Creative workshop insiders recalled that the morning of March 23, 2010 after work, see Lee Kai-fu and the workshop of several workers to discuss the launch of the application shop. When Google decided to transfer its mainland search engine to Hong Kong in the wee hours of the day, Lee was sensitive to the market space behind the move. The project will be launched soon.

and application of the current CEO Rochuan is officially joined in July 2011 application sinks. Kai-Fu Lee initially recommended to Luo, Rochuan also worry: Can unite the team, respect each other, the team can accept him as the leader of the core. Since last February, Lois has been in contact with the team, and its core members have been consulted regularly. Even after the early project brothers have been financing, the application of sinks are still very calm, did not show panic and impatience. "In the running-in application of the team practical, mature mentality, let Rochuan determination and application to go down."

Unlike application sinks, pea pods take different approaches, and they are the active "talking" CEO. Cui, chief operating officer of Pea Pods, told global entrepreneur that by the end of 2010 the pea-pod software was at a high rate of collapse, and three co-founders were rethinking whether they needed a stronger person to lead them. At that time, Baidu's former chief architect Zhou Limin has joined the Innovation Workshop Entrepreneur program, Pea pod according to its own technology-driven characteristics, persuaded Zhou Limin to join Pea Pod as CEO. The realization of this idea also makes Lee Kai-fu and Hua surprised.

In other internal incubation projects, the dim sum was led by Zhang Lei, head of the former Baidu Mobile, and the founder of the alliance was young and experienced but lacked other experience, and the Innovation Workshop recommended three senior executives to its CEO, Lanci, to help him start a business. After the in-house projects have been graduated from the factory, the innovation Workshop will be able to focus on incubating and investing in the entrepreneur's ideas, as the entrepreneurial mentor role, without the need to spend a lot of energy to do the product.

As of 2011, Innovation Workshop Early internal incubation projects, such as snacks, peas, friends, application, etc. in the last year to complete a round or even the B round of financing, magic Figure Wizard and Le ah two incubation companies are sold to Baidu and Sina respectively.

Internal hatching takes a lot of time and effort and requires a leader who fits the project as the core of management. and the investment institutions with large funds, need to put money in a certain amount of time to cast a certain number of projects, all areas of intelligent people are many, innovative factories rely on their own strength is difficult to cover a lot of good ideas. Behind many problems, how to improve the success rate of incubation in a short time, innovation workshop Thinking of the transformation: the seeds of entrepreneurial projects from the outside, into the workplace environment to catalyze, rather than in-house production.

Incubation services

People who leave innovation workshops often miss the early entrepreneurial hours of innovation workshops. During that time, creative workshops were also learning how to start a business and cultivate their own organizational culture. A lot of the culture of an organization comes from the leaders of this organization, and there is a trail to follow.

A former innovation workshop employee who worked at Google compared the culture of the two companies, in common with openness and equality. At Google you can ask your boss any questions you want to ask, and he will answer you. The same is true in workshops. A visible example is that Kai-fu Lee brought Google's TGIF (the God its Friday) tradition into the innovation workshop. During the office of the Tsinghua Science Park, every Friday afternoon, all the workers in the workshop will gather together, and Kai-Fu Lee will take the initiative to share the progress of the week, covering the issues of investment, incubation and development. This form of shared culture and assembly is also passed on in its incubation program.

Shanyu, who is now starting his own business, said of the experience of the Innovation Workshop: "You can feel the care of you, everyone can feel it, I don't know how he did it." "At the Christmas of 2009, the first batch of 40 workers at the innovation workshop were spent at Kai Fu Lee's home." Such gatherings are unprecedented for Kai-Fu Lee, and Li's colleagues at Microsoft and Google have not had this opportunity. With the workers of the Innovation workshop, Lee has shown his life. He could wear a suit and play Eastwood to perform a cowboy. And when the coworker told the cold joke, Kai-Fu Lee will leave the crowd immediately ran away, from his own refrigerator with a bag of plastic bags of ice to give him. That night, every coworker received a carefully prepared gift from Kai-Fu Lee. These include his apple-colored Apple Logot, his father's Li Tianmin books, Lee's own graduation thesis and so on. "You can feel the heart." "Zhou Shijun said.

The cultivation of organizational culture is imperceptible, cannot quantify, but very important. In the memory of the incubation of innovative factory services provided what kind of help, Cui think in addition to a few words can be summed up, such as human, legal, financial consulting, more is "the help of the workshop like air and water, you can find the platform at any time to help people." After graduating from the plant, the pea pod feels like "the flood has receded." This process is like going to college, just starting to start a business like just to college entrance, will not fold the quilt, will not lay the bed. Hatch in the workshop to learn survival skills. After coming out, although the office did not know how to buy water to buy electricity, but already have the skills to survive, in the market also have a foothold.

Innovative workshops for hatching, improve the run-up plan, accelerated planning and entrepreneurial plan, such as different incubation service system. Among them, the run-up plan, launched in October 2010, is for young entrepreneurs who have a high talent for technology or products but lack a wealth of business, management and operational experience. The acceleration program is for experienced entrepreneurs, the product or service may still be in the early stage but the founder with clear planning, team leadership and industry background, entrepreneurs in 6 months to accelerate development, and strive for the next round of financing, this stage by the Innovation Workshop Development Investment Fund to provide angel investment.

Majnoon, who joined the incubation program of the innovation Workshop, has over more than 10 years of experience in the network security industry. and his safety treasure project, in order to innovate the incubation of the workshop service, while accepting the innovation Workshop Angel Investment and a round of investment. With many years of working experience and understanding of the various problems in his work, the incubation service of the innovation Workshop is of unique value and deserves to be added to the incubation program for the incubation service while he has obtained venture capital. For example, the law of the Workshop lawyers to help establish an overseas corporate structure, innovation Workshop can also endorse entrepreneurs, in the financing of the dollar into a "can spend money" process to help them to bank loans. Entrepreneurs in business cooperation with the use of the factory's brand and reputation, in the workshop expert team consultation can form a sense of trust, so that in-depth discussion of the problem.

Not only that, but also the tangible personal influence of Kai-fu Lee can be used by the entrepreneurial team. According to the founder of the new workshop accelerated project, the pioneer of the road passenger circle, in January this year, Kai-fu Lee to travel abroad, installed the mobile phone application. Kai-Fu Lee in the process of using abroad will also give the pedestrian circle of products to make recommendations. In London, Kai-Fu Lee relied on the recommendation of the application, found a good restaurant, Kai-fu Lee in foreign countries also take the food photos, share to his microblog. While in transit passenger lap recruitment, Kai-fu Lee also forwarded the microblog, resulting in dozens of resumes, and eventually 3 people into the passenger circle.

Creation Circle founder Li Xiaoning is the angel investor Xiaoping recommended and contact with Lee. The project was then taken to an angel investor Shire after the operation of the celebration dinner, after a team of angel investors decided to invest. With the investment of many Angels, the venture enters the workshop for an accelerated plan hatch. In the field of Angel investment, Kai-Fu Lee said that "This is not a special competition in this circle, is a friend relationship, will recommend each other project." We are willing to cooperate in the case of many entrepreneurs or early investors. ”

Now, with the gradual completion of the internal incubation program, innovative workshops have been able to hatch external entry projects at a faster rate. Innovative workshops are expected to attract entrepreneurs through their unique services and values, which are different from other angel investments and venture capitalists, and how much value the incubator model can bring to the entrepreneurial team, and whether the share ratio is reasonable compared to other angels, and the founders ' minds are determined.

Evolution

At the Beijing meeting of TechCrunch Disrupt held last November, Kai-Fu Lee revealed that innovative workshops will further adjust investment and hatching patterns. In the relatively existing incubation business, innovation workshops will increase investment business. In fact, the need for this shift has been gradually clear over the past year or two.

In the investment chain of the venture project, the Angel investment is obtained from the early concept verification, then the venture capital enters into the commercial model verification, until PE even the company's final listing, which has formed a comparatively perfect investment and financing system in the United States. The dividing line between the links is not clear-cut. And in the front of the chain to play Angel investment incubator will naturally face a problem, in front of them is a choice: to also run a fund, after the investment Angel Wheel, also enter the field of venture capital?

Innovation Workshop The initial choice is to enter. When starting a business, innovation workshops are not sure how big the scale of investment funds should be, which is a question mark in Lee's heart. Innovation Factory did a period of time, gradually feel, if the workshop and its fund only cast an angel period, after the investment is completed if the future success or failure of the start-up company entirely by themselves, entrepreneurs find their own investment or workshops to help contact, such a model will have several problems: the first is more difficult to bigger. Because the workshop in the incubation business itself to throw out the relatively little money, but the cost of human resources is huge, which is disproportionate to the existing investment funds, the factory depends on what income to support the team?

The second question, Kai-fu Lee found once after hatching, the industry, development trends and training team, can be very clear to see some excellent "seeds." He specifically explained: "Perhaps the first round of our seed wheel cast 100, after they have done it for 6-12 months, we can clearly see which 10 of the 100 are the best, which 50 are great, and which 40 are not expected, and since we have such insights, it would be a pity that we do not use it. Why don't we get a big chunk of money to invest in the 10 best, mid-sized investments that dozens of are good? "So, innovation workshops can be used for relatively low cost, relatively high probability, to vote for those who are worth investing in the enterprise."

These two reasons, so that Kai-fu Lee and innovation factory in outside the hatch they have to run a venture capital investment nature of the fund, its "incubation + investment" business model is established, but need to balance the ratio between the two. When the incubation business is streamlined, a large number of external "seeds" are hatched, which requires more venture capital to follow after Angel investment. It's like the two wheels of a bicycle that need to be coordinated to get the most out of a project that will keep the incubation business working properly, excavate and nurture excellent early-stage entrepreneurial projects, and give priority to the incubation of venture capital into these workshops.

Lee also highlighted the difference between the "incubation + investment" model and other VCs: the expertise and differentiation of innovative workshops or the early judgment of technology and trends. The investment fund of the Innovation Factory mainly invests the project which oneself hatches. After the angel investment and then cast another round or two rounds, and then also invited the industry's VC to come together to vote.

The balance between hatching and investment business, integration of hatching, angel investment and the advantages of venture capital is a need to constantly debug the process. At present, more than half of the workshop management team "time" and "energy" are in the seed period. But most of the money is not in early investment. "If the factory melts 100 million dollars, maybe only 20 million are in the early days, and 7 or 80 million put in a or B rounds." Kai-Fu Lee explained, from this point of view, although most of the money is not cast into the seed period, but in fact, the plant's energy, time and characteristics of the focus on the seed period.

In the near future, the crowded Innovation Workshop office will move for the third time and move to a good tower near the current building. There are 7000 square metres of offices that can accommodate the existing 2000 people and support the continued expansion of its incubator scale.

In the past year, Kai-Fu Lee summed up his understanding and growth of entrepreneurship and investment: "On the one hand is how to balance the incubation and investment; another point is to build a relatively strong all-round complementary team; third, we have cast about 47 projects, from which we see examples of success and failure, Let's learn more about how to do early investment. ”

Policymakers and executives

During the Spring Festival, Lee went to Switzerland for the World Economic Forum in Davos and stayed in Europe for 2.5 weeks. After returning home, he was ill for 1.5 weeks, counting up for one months basically not in the factory, but Lee felt the factory everything is working normally. If the team has something to communicate with him by email, many of the things are told: "Open and reply, we decided to do so, you have no opinion we do." "To this step, he just replies" OK, do it. ”

The number of incubation and investment projects in innovative workshops is increasing, and these projects are no longer as they were created, requiring him and partner Hua to devote a lot of effort to their own business. "It's impossible for two of us to support 47 projects, so we could all be killed," he said. Lee smiled and explained to reporters. The workshop established a team of investment and incubation services on the platform to work together. In 2010, the chief operating officer, Taoning, joined the workshop to rationalize the incubation business, and last year, there were many members of the industry with professional backgrounds and extensive experience in investment, legal affairs and finance. Most of the problems with the hatchery operations and investments of the plant have been resolved by the team's own power, rather than by the Hua of Lee or his partner. This is also the important progress that Lee thinks.

During his career as a professional manager, Lee he has represented multinational companies, Microsoft and Google in China to open up new institutions, the creation of the Microsoft China Research Institute and Google China, which is different from the traditional sense of entrepreneurial experience, but Lee sees his advantages: "From the big companies out of the entrepreneurial or investment, There may be challenges in some areas, but there are certain aspects that are certainly cumulative-how to be a licensed system, so that every position has a back-up mechanism, so that each role will not be stuck on one side, more institutional type of investment incubation, rather than relying on one person. "Li believes that innovation workshops will not be as small as the start-up or investment institutions, the" personal "become a bottleneck," in this respect certainly there is no such problem. ”

Co-founder of the Innovation Factory, Kai-Fu Lee's pioneering partner Hua, had a pioneering experience in his early years, and played a different role in Google as a senior management position. In the interview, Hua was dubbed "the brain Behind the Workshop", which was impressed by "cleverness, diligence, and mastery of strategy and product and technology trends." "One of the memorable details is, in order to study the new Web page technology standard HTML 5, Hua will find the relevant books, to the workshop workers to ask, and then try a trial of this web language can write what effect." Hua's strategic and industrial analysis as well as investment project decision-making in the workshop has a very important component.

And Kai-Fu Lee's important responsibility is to establish an atmosphere and environment, recruit the right person to come in, and then the process of dealing with things to operate, the entire team's structure, division of labor, cultural environment, etc. by him to do. In addition, he is responsible for the maintenance of many external relations, such as the government, the media, investors. The rest of the work is done by the division of Labor, Lee is the final decision makers of important issues. "If I see the company that has been invested is 1/4 of the time, the investment company or the discussion has not yet invested in 1/4, which adds up to half of my time and half the time I have to spend on what I have to do, as well as internal meetings and strategies." ”

More importantly, think about the future of innovation workshops. Lee recently likes to mention a book is "Lean Entrepreneurship" (Lean startup), the book compares the Internet as a test site, entrepreneurs can quickly throw a product on the Internet, and then based on user feedback to improve, it is like an experiment. To put it another way, the innovation workshop of investing in Internet projects as a new model of investment industry entrepreneurs, how many also have such experimental trial and error and rapid improvement of color. It's just that the cost of the experiment is not what the average entrepreneur can do with money and experience and ability. Will Lee's ambitious experiment succeed? Perhaps this is one of the most anticipated topics in this round of China's internet entrepreneurship boom.