text | Yu Yan
compiled | Wu Ge
produced |Yu Guan Finance
The current Winter Olympics held at the door of the house has attracted unprecedented attention from the Chinese people. If you talk about the most popular national-level Internet celebrity in this Winter Olympics, in addition to Bingdun , it is Gu Ailing .
On February 8, 18-year-old mixed-race girl Gu Ailing became the first champion of the event in the freestyle skiing platform final, which was also the Chinese team's victory in this Winter Olympics. 's first snow gold medal.
Gu Ailing's success,The support of her family is inseparable, especially her mother Gu Yan . She once said in an interview that her mother is the best mother.
As a result, her mother also quickly entered the public eye, and a report about her 20 years ago was also swiped for a while. The top-level academic qualifications and professional resumes of famous Chinese and foreign schools have made many mothers sigh that " chicken baby must be chicken first".
Gu Yan's profile on LinkedIn shows that his career is mainly involved in the financial and investment fields. It can be seen from the interview with her in " China Science and Technology Information" in 1998 that she is a witness and participant of the domestic investment community's opening to the outside world, even more than today's "Queen of Venture Capital", Capital Today founder Xu Xin "Getting Started" earlier.
It has been 30 years since the 1990s and now, the domestic financial industry, investment industry and Internet industry have already undergone tremendous changes. If Gu Yan could dig deep into this area at that time, maybe he would become a well-known domestic investor like Xu Xin, and as a Bole of BATJs, he would share the domestic Internet feast.
Now that she is the mother of an Olympic champion, it is not a blessing.
We might as well use Gu Yan’s experience as a pretext,Take a look back at those past years.
From researcher to Wall Street White-collar
Same as daughter Gu Ailing, After graduating from the University's Department of Chemistry, he continued to study for a master's degree in biochemistry in our school, and became a close disciple of Professor Shen Tong, a famous biologist and one of 's experts in the synthesis of bovine insulin.
In addition to studying, Gu Yan, who was born in a scholarly family, loves sports.
Gu Yan, who graduated from Peking University in the 1980s, went abroad and became a member of the international students and entered Auburn University with a full scholarship ( Auburn University ) majored in biochemistry and molecular biology. After obtaining a master's degree in biology, she entered the Hughes Medical College of The Rockefeller University in 1989 to study molecular genetics.
However, Gu Yan, who originally took the scientific research route, chose another path in 1992 and was admitted to Stanford University School of Business . In this place near Silicon Valley, she studied for an MBA degree at her own expense .
This is a major turning point in Gu Yan's life, which determines the trajectory of her life in the rest of her life. As for the reason for the transformation, she said in the interview, "Professionalism in politics, finance, and law has a greater direct effect on the country than basic science."
Venture capitalist Bill Draper has said many times, "Without Stanford, there would be no Silicon Valley." On another level, there is no venture capital agency and angel investors network, and no Silicon Valley.
In the 1990s, Gu Yan's Stanford brothers and sisters, as well as venture capitalists, were obsessed with finding those "tech sprouts" in Silicon Valley.
John Doerr, a venture capitalist at the time and one of the directors of Google , has repeatedly claimed in speeches that "the Internet is the greatest legitimate wealth creation in the history of this planet." Most of his own wealth comes from investments in Web 1.0 companies such as Amazon , Netscape, Sun Microsystems ( SunMicrosystems ) and Google.
In such an environment, Gu Yan, as a student at Stanford Business School, should have an initial impression of the venture capital industry.
However, Gu Yan first set foot in the investment field, not in Silicon Valley, but in Wall Street.
According to her LinkedIn profile, from May to August 1993, when she was still a student at Stanford, she worked for four years in the investment banking department of Lehman Brothers (Lehman Brothers). Monthly summer associate (summer assistant).
Yes, it was the one that collapsed during the international financial crisis in 2008.
This is Gu Yan's initial contact with the financial industry in public information.
1993 was the time when Lehman Brothers entered China. In that year, Lehman Beijing Office opened and did two major events. One was to underwrite bonds for China Construction Bank , creating a precedent for the private placement of overseas bonds by Chinese companies. The other is to underwrite the first overseas dollar dragon bond for MOF.
And in June of this year,China has just released the macro-control "Sixteen Articles". Mr. Zhu began to serve as the president of PBC, and proposed to "block the evil door and open the main door". In December, the " Company Law " was passed, and the "Decision on Financial System Reform" was issued in the same month. The financial industry is entering the normative period from the chaotic period.
At that time, Lehman Brothers was a relatively early foreign financial institution entering China, Goldman Sachs did not enter the Chinese market until the second year.
In the early interview, Gu Yan introduced her experience at Lehman Brothers, where she carried out the work of listing, merger and reception of the company, and had successfully operated a sum of 200 million yuan for China. U.S. dollar loans have created a precedent for Chinese financial circles to successfully conduct commercial loans on Wall Street in the United States.
There is currently no public information on what role Gu Yan played in Lehman Brothers' initial engagement with China, or which projects she was involved in.
When Lehman Brothers went bankrupt in 2008, according to the announcement issued by CCB on September 19, 2008, it held a total of US$191.4 million in bonds with Lehman Brothers, which became the amount of bonds held at that time. largest Chinese bank.
In 1994, after graduating from Stanford Business School, Gu Yan joined Bankers Trust, the eighth largest bank in the United States.Worked as a derivatives trader and worked here for two years.
Two years after she left Bankers Trust (December 1998), Germany's largest commercial bank, Deutsche Bank invested US$10.1 billion to merge Bankers Trust to form the world's largest commercial bank . The acquisition also became the largest acquisition of US bank by a foreign bank at that time, and attracted widespread attention from the international financial community.
Gu Yan's initial financial career witnessed these important events in financial history. The experience in two well-known financial institutions also laid the foundation for his later venture capital investment. After
first generation venture capitalists
left Bankers Trust in 1996, Gu Yan also left Wall Street to return to the Bay District, began his career in the venture capital world.
In 1996, Gu Yan joined ITIM Asia and stayed for four years.
public information display,This is a software technology company that was founded in 1993 and has grown from 2004 through a series of acquisitions of small traditional retail software businesses.
At the same time, Gu Yan also had a business in China.
The 1998 exclusive interview in "China Science and Technology Information" shows that at that time she was the general manager of American Science and Technology Investment Co., Ltd., Beijing Oriental Weibo International Information Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Oriental Weibo" ) Chairman.
Business information shows that Oriental Weibo was established on August 8, 1997 with a registered capital of 4 million US dollars and a total investment of 8 million US dollars. It is the first information technology enterprise in China to introduce the US venture capital mechanism . Gu Yan is the legal representative.
"China Science and Technology Information" mentioned in another article in the same year that Oriental Weibo is a Sino-US joint venture established by American Technology Investment Co., Ltd. and Beijing Baifu International Group. The company was "established under the circumstance that international and domestic informatization is becoming more and more popular, and China's venture capital business can be said to be ready to emerge".
According to public information, American Technology Investment Co., Ltd. was established in 1994 by Gu Yan and Steven Evans, a famous American venture capital expert and a former member of the three-member leading group of the Sino-US Science and Technology Committee. - Co-founded by Stephen Evans-Freke, aiming to invest in high-tech industry projects in China and Southeast Asia.
In the middle and late 1990s,It comes at a time when the internet is in the fast lane. In August 1995, Netscape went public, setting off an Internet trend. At that time, a group of foreign venture capital institutions flocked to China to seek business opportunities.
At that time, Xiong Xiaoge, who was also studying in the United States, had taken the old club, USA International Data Group ( IDG ) founder Patrick Jay McGovern in 1992 (Patrick. J. McGovern) returned to China with USD 20 million, established IDG capital in Beijing, and established the first USD fund in the following year, becoming the first person to start a venture capital business in China. Known as the "Godfather of Venture Capital".
In 1998, Intel investor introduced its venture capital business to China, becoming the first foreign company to conduct venture capital business in China.
It can be said that it is the right time for Gu Yan to return to China to start his venture capital business.
In an interview that year, Gu Yan told reporters that venture capital is particularly popular in the United States, and venture capitalists call themselves angels because they "bring the wings of dreams to those with ideals".
It is understood that venture capital first appeared in the United States in the 1940s. In the 1980s, the concept of venture capital was introduced into my country. But until the late 1990s,The development of high-tech enterprises entered a climax stage, and venture capital began to receive attention.
However, for Chinese entrepreneurs, the new venture capital has not been accepted by people, and it is not easy to start.
Xiong Xiaoge later complained to the media. When he mentioned VC to people, people thought it was vitamin C. It was not until 2000 that IDG capital began to slowly pay off. Before that, it was all financially supported by the old owner IDG.
Even harder is finding the right talent. Gu Yan also admitted in the interview that the most difficult thing to do venture capital in China is people. If you have scientific and technological knowledge, management ability and financial operation experience, you can only pick one out of a thousand people in Beijing.
Besides, soon, the 1997 Asian financial crisis hit.
Except for the interview, there is no information about Oriental Weibo and its investment projects in the public information. The business information shows that the company was revoked in 2002.
This may seem to show that Gu Yan's Chinese VC dream has awakened.
On the other side of the ocean, the dream of a group of technology companies in Silicon Valley has also woken up. In 2000, the "Internet bubble" in the United States began to burst, and the stock price index of NASDAQ fell from the highest point of 5000 points.A group of high-tech companies' IPO dreams were dashed.
Gu Yan's LinkedIn information shows that in this year, she left ITIM Asia and joined California technology investment inc as a managing director (MD) for 11 years. It's the longest-standing company on her LinkedIn profile.
Since 2006, Gu Yan, who loves skiing, has also worked part-time at Northstar At Tahoe ski resort for two years. It was also here that Gu Ailing, who was just three years old, started skiing for the first time.
In 2012, 9-year-old Gu Ailing started to participate in skiing competitions in the United States. Perhaps to support her daughter's skiing career, Gu Yan also changed jobs this year and stayed at K2 Advisors for more than a year. Since 2013, he has worked as a private investor and expert in FusionInvestment Inc China.
Since then, Gu Yan has lived a passionate life of cultivating future Olympic champion Gu Ailing and continuing her investment career.
Gu Yan, the first-generation venture capitalist, has not become a famous venture capitalist like her domestic counterparts, but she has an excellent daughter and lives a very enjoyable life. , is it not a success?
Image: Network
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