Kai-fu Lee: pioneering utopia with 800 million and his reputation as a bet

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Lee

With 800 million yuan and his reputation as a bet, Kai-Fu Lee to create a set of angel investment, VC, software companies, headhunting, incubator as one of the new model.

"I am not what you think of as ' Gen II ', I do things that are different from anyone in the world." ”

This is the afternoon of September 10, 48-Year-old Lee with a confident smile, with a moderate but irrefutable tone, answered the "entrepreneur" thrown the first question.

Just three days ago, China's most famous and possibly most successful professional manager left the company for 19 years as a high-profile career in China. His new plan, a unique company called "Innovation Workshop", stood behind him as a group of powerful supporters such as Liu Yu (Chairman of the US-China group), Mr Gou, Liu, Mr Yu, Chen Shijun (one of YouTube's founders).

A rather bold and ingenious business design. According to Lee's plan, innovation Workshop will build a 110-member team within 1 years, people who want to start a business with their own unique skills and ideas--not a business plan--to join (of course, the prerequisite is lucky to be his fancy), these ideas will be in the innovation workshop to discuss the opportunity to verify, After voting, such as Google's internal screening methods, decide whether to formally set up a project, the formation of teams, development, but Lee has the final decision right.

Of the 20 projects produced each year by the Innovation Factory, 10 will receive 500,000 dollars or more angel investment, and Kai-Fu Lee hopes that there will be 5 projects can be developed into independent companies, and get a round of venture capital (from outside). The Innovation workshop and the team members of the project will also receive the corresponding shares.

Lee's goal is, 5 years with 800 million yuan investment in mobile internet, cloud computing, E-commerce and several other fields to create 25 innovative enterprises. Please note that he uses "workshop" instead of "workshop" or "Factory", which "represents both bulk and refinement" (Kai-fu).

Utopia”

"We are not incubators", Lee refused the label.

"In China, the incubator is almost equivalent to real estate, I do not want people to say that Kai-Fu Lee to engage in real estate, in our place who said the incubator will be fined a dollar," he half joking and half seriously.

"We're not like the star of Lenovo." "The latter is one of the most important projects that Mr Liu is currently focusing on. Using the management and investment resources of Lenovo Holdings, a one-year CEO training is conducted for the Chinese Academy of Sciences and some of the society's aspiring or pioneering scientists. "They are trying to turn some of the scientific results into business, and our project has a clear business orientation from the start," Lee said.

He preferred to use the vague term "entrepreneurial platform" to define innovation workshops: Provide office space, bid business license, lease server bandwidth, draft legal contracts and other logistics services, internal to the project screening evaluation, for a project to recruit the most suitable talent, the project development of the database, technology will be accumulated, Company-wide sharing to reduce the development costs of other projects; Kai-Fu Lee and his partners will "fine" guide the entrepreneurial team, and eventually will help the project to introduce venture capital. "We combine the essence of 5 things in Angels, VC, headhunters, software companies and incubators," said Lee. Of course, this is only on paper.

In his view, the entrepreneurial environment in China and the United States is vastly different. The latter is already a natural ecosystem of the fittest, all are relatively mature, information unobstructed, interpersonal network developed, capital free flow, where evolution determines everything. And the innovation factory hopes to build a "greenhouse" to foster innovative enterprises in the harsh environment of China.

"Does that sound like a utopia?" "Entrepreneur" asked.

"You can understand that," Kai-fu Lee is not opposed to this is often regarded as "utopian" connotation of the title.

"Every job I do is utopian, and the Microsoft China Research Institute is the only real research environment for all the multinationals in China," he said. Google China has done the same as the U.S. headquarters of the 20% from the next to the innovation, I am most proud that they have succeeded in a small area, I am most disappointed that they have not been able to expand outside. Because there were competitors around. Innovation Workshop is also a utopia, but I hope it has the ability to expand, because now I am surrounded by friends. ”

Leader? Founder?

In just two days, Kai-Fu Lee received 12,000 resumes.

Obviously, this has something to do with the good image that the young Chinese students have built up over the years. But this time, Kai-Fu Lee is definitely not a college student entrepreneurship project.

"The people I want to attract in the future are mainly the real professional managers in big companies who know how to do business, make money, do general manager, p&l (income statement), make products." This kind of person is in the past 15 years slowly come out, to today has a group of thirty or forty years old majority, the Internet domain may be relatively young, the traditional domain is slightly older. This group of people is very easy to develop into entrepreneurs, and only they can be entrepreneurial leaders. ”

"The aim of the innovation Factory is to open the door of the professional manager to start a business more broadly, it was the only money that had been earned, the experience was sufficient, and the banner would have a lot of followers (which is what" the entrepreneur "often says is" the second generation "), or it's simply not killing people to start a business, and I'm here 100% Do not come to independently, other need to help, no matter how deadly we are welcome. Kai-fu Lee laughs.

What's the standard for miles? Work hard, be smart (smart enough, but not genius), practice (but do not recommend everything yourself), enthusiasm ", Lee called himself these are enough."

Please note that one of the words that Kai-fu Lee repeatedly mentions is "Leader". This person may be the originator of idea, or it may not be. He is likely to be a salesman, a product, not a technology, or even a No.1 of the project at first, but is considered by later investors as the most suitable person for the CEO. In any case, there is no pure sense of "founder" in the Innovation Workshop.

Lee believes the American way is right, and China's approach unfortunately has many problems. "Almost the most successful internet company in China is one person's business. Second, the cultural tradition of family business, third, it is difficult to turn into a real public company, you can not take away from the founder.

The role of the open reply

In fact, in the middle of the 90 's, similar patterns appeared in Silicon Valley, the most representative of which was the Idealab that Bill Gross founded. But 13 years later, Idealab not really hatched a successful company. Although some projects such as etoys.com and goto.com once listed in the dotcom bubble, they were soon either bankrupt or sold to big companies like Yahoo.

"Idealab requires every project to change the world, and Bill is the one who picks all the ideas that I can do." "Innovation workshop funds mainly from VC institutions, the United States and the U.S. will be with Kai-fu Lee to jointly manage this 800 million-yuan fund, which means that innovative workshops on the commercial value of the project will have higher requirements." "We must be able to make money, a project can be invested to set up a company, without investment will die, only 2 possible." ”

So is the role of Kai-Fu Lee The mentor or the boss in the innovation workshop?

"I don't want to be a mentor, and sometimes the best mentor is not a mentor." Learning by doing, I want to design an environment is doing, let employees do, do technology, do products, do the company, then I help them to do the company better. Of course, it's more about me and my senior partner, and we'll try to see it, and then we'll say to a team, you're going this way. ”

"I will teach because the experienced team may not need me at all, and inexperienced teams may need my help," he said. "Lee said," but as long as the innovation workshop, I am the boss, I will not be a dictator, but have the power to control them, because some entrepreneurs consciously not enough, experience is not enough. When necessary I will do some special actions and decisions, but most of the time should be able to act in a hands-off. Our goal is to help them fly hard wings, there will be some mechanism to make people feel that there is enough space, the stock is still quite a lot-perhaps not to do so much, but still good. ”

Gentleman Entrepreneurship

In the past 30 years, most of China's most successful entrepreneurs born Robin, paranoid, desperately, naively, no experience but still go to fight, grassroots birth, good luck plus persistent, smart, high potential, in some sense, these people are born entrepreneurs. But these are clearly out of tune with Lee's image, and people are skeptical: is Lee a suitable entrepreneur?

"Why must be paranoid to succeed, the age of entrepreneurs has changed, when everyone is barefoot, must be paranoid, now entrepreneurs are not all barefoot, Google out of the Zhou, Guo, contemplative, Sina went out of the Cheng, Jinshan, Baidu went out a bunch of people, they are professional managers, Are they barefoot savages? No. Now VC more and more are cast professional managers entrepreneurial, everyone is a gentleman, then the gentleman's way to compete. Lee said

Kai-Fu Lee first returned to the mainland is 1989, but really well-known for the domestic IT industry began in 1998 in Beijing to create the Microsoft China Research Institute, 2005, and the creation of Google China, the two times the success of the experience so that Lee will not be too lack of entrepreneurial feeling, but the way they behave.

"I think I have the gene for entrepreneurship, but many people think that entrepreneurship is a kind of hunger,hunger the word I do not object, but I think hunger is a hunger, passion, not a kind of poverty, no retreat, I am not poor, there are retreat, this can not do, I do not worry about money, but I am more passionate. ”

Kai-Fu Lee said, "If this is a total failure-for 5 years, 25 companies have all collapsed, not create value-now the reputation is completely gone, people will think I am not a person, what else can I do?" I have bite to retire. ”