This is the communication method that Liu Chuanzhi likes. Whether it is facing media interviews, work reports or attending events, he hopes to fully understand the other party’s ideas and then talk about his own opinions.

Source: Toutiao.com Author: Wang Qingwu Ma Tengke

Lenovo Star delivered the report card in 10 years, Chairman of Lenovo Holdings and founder of Lenovo Group scored 85 points. After

scored, he turned to Wang Mingyao, general manager and partner of Lenovo Star, sitting beside him, "Is 85 points OK?" This move made the interview atmosphere particularly relaxed.

This is the communication method that Liu Chuanzhi likes. Whether it is facing media interviews, work reports or attending events, he hopes to fully understand the other party’s ideas and then talk about his own opinions.

Link Holdings Chairman and founder of Lenovo Group Liu Chuanzhi

Why is it 85 points? Liu Chuanzhi gave his own reasons.

In 2018, in , Beijing Zhongguancun , there were more than 200 entrepreneurial incubators, 13,000 high-tech enterprises, more than 320 listed companies and nearly 70 unicorn companies in . This was unimaginable 10 years ago.

can cross the river by feeling the stones, and develop from charity entrepreneurship training to today's " angel investment + in-depth incubation" model. In Liu Chuanzhi's view, it is a bonus point, "it is exploratory."

"The pursuit of business is not just wealth, but allows money to make greater contributions to the country and society. In this direction, what Lenovo Star does makes people see signs." Liu Chuanzhi said that this is another plus point. In fact, this idea has been through his more than 30 years of Lenovo career.

For him, another important bonus point comes from people.

Liu Chuanzhi will care about the thinking of the team management, such as Wang Mingyao's sharing within Lenovo Holdings, media interviews or forum speeches. If the content is good, Liu Chuanzhi will like it at the end of the article. When you see those who need discussion and reminder, Liu Chuanzhi will send WeChat as soon as possible or communicate with them on the phone.

"Focus on a business, I will observe whether the leader is qualified and see his overall strategic direction, that is, to do the right thing. In addition, whether the company has established a good mechanism, whether it can fully mobilize everyone's enthusiasm and do things right together." Liu Chuanzhi said.

In Liu Chuanzhi's view, Lenovo Star's report card has been recognized by the market, which just proves that they have caught up with a good era and set foot in the country's destiny.

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In the 1990s, Zhongguancun once organized a group to visit Taiwan. As one of them, Liu Chuanzhi met the godfather figure of Taiwan's science and technology Li Guoding . During the exchange, the natural sensitivity of entrepreneurs made Liu Chuanzhi notice the role of investment in scientific and technological development mentioned by Li Guoding, as well as the successful practice of Taiwan's Hsinchu Science and Technology Park. This planted the seeds of investment in Liu Chuanzhi's heart.

2000, the founder of BAT raised funds in the country and encountered walls everywhere. Many years later, China's capital almost collectively lost its early investment in BAT, which made Liu Chuanzhi quite touched. In Liu Chuanzhi's view, one of the important reasons was that at that time, "I was not rich and I dared not invest, and I lacked vision and could not understand it." Such limitations were very representative in that era. Chinese capital needs more time to break the limitations.

In Liu Chuanzhi's view, the 40 years of reform and opening up have just provided Chinese enterprises and capital with sufficient time to cultivate their internal skills. It can be seen that behind a new wave of rising unicorns, Chinese capital has begun to frequently appear. The total fund of Junlian Capital , Hony Investment and Lenovo Star, which are under Lenovo Holdings, has a total fund of about 130 billion yuan, and has invested in more than 700 companies, of which more than 50% are technology-based enterprises. In fiscal year 2017, 's financial investment in business contributed 4.128 billion yuan of net profit to Lenovo Holdings. What made Liu Chuanzhi even more gratified is that these companies achieved good value growth after investment and created a lot of wealth for society.

"We didn't understand it at first, but later we understood it. We didn't believe it before. Now we believe it. With these, we should start thinking forward. Lay the foundation of wealth first, and then do it more." Liu Chuanzhi said that what angel investment represented by Lenovo Star needs to do is to think ahead and firmly adhere to this direction. Never give up until it succeeds.

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Lenovo Star is the youngest business in the financial investment sector of Lenovo Holdings, and it is also a path that Liu Chuanzhi has blazed in the industrialization of scientific and technological achievements.

Talk about 2008, Lenovo Holdings took out 400 million yuan to test the investment of Lenovo Star. Liu Chuanzhi admitted frankly, "This money is not a small amount." But at that time, he told the Lenovo Star's startup team more than once, "400 million can be used to pay tuition fees, as long as one team can be brought out."

Once, Lenovo Star management went to Lenovo Holdings to give a report, and mentioned several goals such as financial returns and brand influence. Lenovo Holdings President Zhu Linan immediately interrupted, "Don't mention financial returns, but do a good job in entrepreneurship training, and do a long-term basis. The return is natural." The statement of the LP senior executives has relieved the pressure of the just-starred Lenovo Star team a lot.

Nowadays, Liu Chuanzhi rarely focuses on specific businesses. But he is very concerned about the special training class of CEO.

As the first lecturer of the CEO's special training class, he has never missed the course "How the President is Tempered" in 10 years. Although the content is in his mind, before each class starts, Liu Chuanzhi will ask his colleagues to collect the questions the students want to know the most. He will prepare carefully in a targeted manner. In class, the lecture notes in Liu Chuanzhi's hand will always be marked with handwritten pens.

"We chose some people and trained them for free. Even if Lenovo Star did not invest in the end, and others would still invest in it. It is a promotion to the entire society. I think it is good." Liu Chuanzhi said.

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Liu Chuanzhi is a person who loves to think, and it is difficult to judge whether this love of "thinking" comes from nature or is it polished by shopping malls for more than 30 years.

Every time he will sit down and think about whether the decisions are made appropriately and whether it can be better. Once he thinks it clearly, he will try every means to achieve it. Lenovo Holdings began to focus on investment, establishing Junlian Capital, Hony Capital and later Lenovo Star, and entering the strategic investment field to form a unique "two-wheel drive" model, which is due to this thinking and persistence.

The other side of "thinking" is that you will consider others.

In the early days of Lenovo's business, a colleague of the company talked to Liu Chuanzhi about a private matter that troubled him. Due to the system issues at that time, this researcher at , Chinese Academy of Sciences, was not eligible for senior professional titles because he went to work in the company. Such a thing was not an isolated case in that era. After thinking about it, Liu Chuanzhi came up with a solution. After the company name on his business card, he printed the words senior engineer to employees who meet the standards. He neither made any mistakes nor comforted his colleagues' psychology.

seems like a trivial matter, but this, like the story of "72 tenants" and "self-run pig farms" circulating in the outside world, reveals the heartfelt attention and concern of the employees.

The first generation of entrepreneurs have experienced tests of all sizes in their entrepreneurial journey. Many of them are unimaginable to entrepreneurs today. Liu Chuanzhi's habit is to think and summarize while fighting. Now, he will also communicate these with the management of Lenovo Star. He hopes that as someone who can help early entrepreneurs, he must think deeply about which institutional and mechanism issues will have a substantial impact on entrepreneurship. Don’t be obsessed with the form, you need to find a solution.

Because of his love to ponder things, many interesting things have happened to Liu Chuanzhi. One of the things that is most often joking by colleagues is that he went to the bathroom while going out to participate in an event and got lost when he went out. "I am only responsible for considering major issues related to the company's development. I don't care about anything else, but someone has to help me manage it." Liu Chuanzhi said.

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74-year-old Liu Chuanzhi listens to at least one book every day from Luo Zhenyu's "Get" by .

He will watch movies when he has time. " Tiny Times ", "Don't Ask the West", and " I'm Not a God of Medicine " are all films he has read. When he was studying, he not only chose "Glory and Dreams" and "Liu Yazhou's Selected Writings", but also watched "Tencent", "Shoe Dog" and " Three-Body ".

He would want to have a popsicle walk with his wife in the summer in Beijing; he would also be so excited that he couldn't sleep because of watching the World Cup.

In mid-July 2018, Liu Chuanzhi's investment career ushered in a major event, and Lenovo Holdings completed the acquisition of the original bank of Luxembourg , Luxembourg International Bank. To this end, he made a special trip to Luxembourg for a series of business activities.

In addition to the trip, this curious old man also visited the local specialty cake shop in Luxembourg. He said that Chinese people are not suitable for eating too much of these things in their surplus belly, but he is very happy to smell them.

This is Liu Chuanzhi's appearance outside of business, wonderful, real and full of fun in life.

In a corner of the Rongke Information Center Park, the location of Lenovo Holdings, there is a very old and simple communication room. That was the birthplace of Lenovo 34 years ago. Just two days before the interview with Liu Chuanzhi on Toutiao.com, a documentary team with the theme of the 40th anniversary of China's reform and opening up had just completed an interview with him. In the camera, Liu Chuanzhi slowly walked into the communication room. More than 30 years ago, this 40-year-old middle-aged man held his energy and started a miraculous business with 10 colleagues. In 2008, in the building next to the former site of this communication room, Lenovo Star set off again. The time nodes of history are different, but for Liu Chuanzhi, the dream of developing a country with science and technology has never changed.

Attachment: Lenovo Star 10-year development record: investing in 200+ projects, systematically laying out AI and medical

carries the industrial genes, starting from charity entrepreneurship training, Lenovo Star, which has explored the "angel investment + deep incubation" model, delivered its 10-year report card in 2018: the scale of managed funds reached 2.5 billion yuan, and it has 200 investment projects, including Ledo Games, Megvii Technology Face++, Pony.ai, Kaituo Pharmaceutical and other star projects...

For this report card, Liu Chuanzhi, chairman of Lenovo Holdings and founder of Lenovo Group, gave 85 points.

Since Lenovo Holdings has given its first 400 million yuan in 2010, Lenovo Star has iterated many times, and by 2015, it has become an angel investment institution with market-oriented operations.

As a new army in the financial investment territory of Lenovo Holdings, Lenovo Star has attracted a lot of attention from Liu Chuanzhi since its birth. Liu Chuanzhi personally teaches the first lesson of the Lenovo Star Entrepreneurship CEO Special Training Class (hereinafter referred to as the "CEO Special Training Class") "How the President is Tempered", and he has maintained this habit for 10 years.

In addition to investment, Lenovo Star’s greater significance for Liu Chuanzhi is that in the heart of this first-generation Chinese entrepreneur, he hopes to support the science and technology industry to serve the country.

"The country is rich and the people are strong. The strength of a country and the rise and fall of the nation are the power of science and technology in the future." Liu Chuanzhi said in an interview with Investment China.com that the 10 years of Lenovo Star's development are due to the changes in the times of reform, opening up and innovation and entrepreneurship. "In the next 10 years of the great changes in business in the future, I hope that Lenovo Star can rely on forward-looking judgments on high-tech and professional investment to seize the initiative in the development of science and technology."

started with public welfare entrepreneurship training

2007 Two Sessions , Liu Chuanzhi reported to the then president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Lu Yongxiang . He noticed that in the Institute of Technology in the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the transformation of scientific and technological achievements has always been a problem. At that time, there were more than 500 enterprises directly controlled by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, but only more than 40 had annual sales of over 100 million yuan. Liu Chuanzhi said that Lenovo is willing to invest funds and manpower to train scientists with entrepreneurial intentions in the Chinese Academy of Sciences to become entrepreneurs for free, so as to promote the transformation of scientific and technological achievements of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Liu Chuanzhi's proposal made Lu Yongxiang very happy and firmly expressed his support. In 2008, Liu Chuanzhi founded the "Lenovo Star CEO Special Training Class", which lasted for ten years.

Liu Chuanzhi started his business from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and knew very well what scientific and technological personnel should experience in starting a business. He hopes to start with human training and share Lenovo's experience and lessons from running an industry and investing over the years.

"Training is a public welfare nature, and Lenovo Holdings is all inclusive of teaching fees, food and accommodation." Tang Xudong, senior vice president of Lenovo Holdings and chairman of Lenovo Star, who participated in the discussion, recalled the decision at that time.The proposal for charity entrepreneurship training was soon finalized at the presidential meeting.

In three months, the then vice president of Lenovo Holdings Cao Zhijiang visited more than 20 research institutes under the Chinese Academy of Sciences across the country to recruit students. Lenovo system selected personnel with practical experience in venture capital as lecturers. Wang Jianqing, chief management consultant of Junlian Capital, was responsible for editing lecture notes at the time. In order to make this lecture notes practical and solve the most critical problems in corporate growth, Liu Chuanzhi participated in the revision of each edition. "The handout was not approved until the ninth edition. The focus is on what problems will happen when the company is founded, how do we understand and think and solve them. We must communicate this idea with the students so that they can understand it if they like to listen." Tang Xudong recalled.

However, enrollment work has been coldly received in some research institutes of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Directors cannot understand what the purpose of a company spends tens of millions of yuan a year to do this training, whether it is simply for the promotion of scientific research results, or whether it is to gain great benefits from it. To do this, the admissions team has to elaborate over and over again about their starting point and what they want to do. Ultimately, practical actions tell the whole story. In 2009, the special training class began to recruit students widely from the public.

2008, when the first session of the Lenovo Star Entrepreneurship CEO Special Training Class was held in

, during the first session of the first session, Liu Chuanzhi communicated with the students many times, and he found that "whether the first payment for entrepreneurship for scientific and technological personnel comes from is a big problem." Immediately, he put forward new requirements, "Whether Lenovo Star can succeed depends not only on the reputation of the training. If good seedlings can be found in it, Lenovo Holdings can only be considered successful if one or two seedlings grow."

Through research on student projects, when the first session of the special training class was completed, five companies had signed investment intent with Lenovo Star or an early institution recommended by Lenovo Star.

In the second half of 2009, Tang Xudong officially took over Lenovo Star and established the operating model of "charity entrepreneurship training + early investment". In 2010, Lenovo Holdings invested 400 million yuan, and Lenovo Star has its own angel investment fund . Zhongguancun, where the Lenovo Star is located, has always been the weather vane for China's scientific and technological development. The intensive research institutes and university resources have led to the development of this place and become one of the most active regions in the world with equity investment after 30 years. Nowadays, nearly 90 technology companies are born here every day. This has allowed Lenovo Star with a fertile ground with a technological preference.

htmlIn 10, Lenovo Star clarified the three major investment directions of TMT, artificial intelligence , and medical care. The scale of management funds reached 2.5 billion yuan, and it has more than 200 investment projects, including Ledo Games, Megvii Technology Face++, Pony.ai, and Kaituo Pharmaceutical.

Ledo Games parent company Chuangmeng Tiandi , as Lenovo Star's first IPO project, logged on Nasdaq in 2014, bringing over 100 times the returns to the fund. According to Wang Mingyao, general manager and managing partner of Lenovo Star, the project exit return of Lenovo Holdings that year had exceeded 10 times.

In 2014, Ledo Games parent company Chuangmeng Tiandi was listed on Nasdaq

In addition to investment, the Lenovo Star Entrepreneurship CEO Special Training Class also brought another "wealth". As of July 2018, 11,184 founders have registered for special training classes and 876 have been admitted. The admitted star friends have won the favor of more than 100 famous VC institutions, with a total corporate valuation of more than 550 billion yuan.

"This has also formed the core competitiveness of Lenovo Star: resource platformization and investment specialization." Wang Mingyao said.

In his opinion, LP Lenovo Holdings' brand effect and its multi-stage investment fund are undoubtedly the unique resources of the Lenovo Star platform. In addition, Lenovo Star has accumulated nearly 900 entrepreneurial students and more than 200 invested projects, which makes Lenovo Star not only an angel investment institution, but also a platform that gathers various resources urgently needed for early entrepreneurship.

At the same time, professional investment is also one of the concepts that Lenovo Star adheres to. "Investment is not about chasing the trend. You can make money from any hot thing. Angel investment also needs to do industry analysis and research clearly before you can invest boldly." Wang Mingyao said.

latest data shows that in the first half of 2018, more than 40 companies of Lenovo Star’s investment projects received a new round of financing. The total amount of corporate financing for students of the special training class during the same period reached 17 billion yuan.

Harvest a professional team and precise playing style

Asked Wang Mingyao, what is the biggest gain of Lenovo Star over the years? He blurted out that he was a team trained in seven or eight years. He said that this is the wealth accumulated by Lenovo Star and an important "stamina" in the future.

is different from the method of "it's up to the boss to decide". Lenovo Star will encourage investment managers and junior analysts to express their opinions at various meetings. If it is reasonable and well-founded, the opinions will be adopted. This method sometimes makes the decision-making process seem very conflicting and game-making, but the problem is not clear, which can greatly improve the team's ability to argue problems and logically think.

Secondly, every member of the Lenovo Star team has the opportunity to directly participate in the project's post-investment management and value-added services.

"When we invest in a project, we need the investment manager to write a report, conduct interviews and research. In terms of time cycle, it is not as efficient as a celebrity investor who decides the plan alone, but in the long run, the team will grow." Wang Mingyao said.

Li Minghe Leng Yan, who joined Lenovo Star in 2012 and 2013, was promoted to partner in 2017. Li Ming was responsible for TMT investment and Leng Yan was responsible for medical investment. These two partners are a new generation of post-80s partners born at the grassroots level of Lenovo Star.

Lenovo Star Partner Team (from left: Leng Yan, Lu Gang, Tang Xudong, Wang Mingyao, Li Ming)

From the newcomer, the fund can provide sufficient training space, which is the same feeling between Li Ming and Leng Yan. In 2016, Li Ming began to participate in team management, which allowed him to break out of the idea of ​​investing in individual projects and make it clearer how to make investment allocations. Leng Yan gets a lot of opportunities to look at and invest in projects as soon as she joins, and constantly polishes herself in actual combat.

In addition to cultivating talents, Lenovo Star has also explored a set of methods in improving the accuracy of early investment.

For example, Lenovo Star will hold 1-2 concentrated project review meetings every year to analyze the current development status and process of investment projects, discuss the decision-making basis at the time of investment, the matching between the development of post-investment projects and the changes in the market environment, help the investment team improve their judgment and improve investment logic.

In order to accurately invest, Lenovo Star also followed the "determined strategy" from Liu Chuanzhi's management methodology. In the angel investment circle where "shows a wide net", this seems a bit alternative.

According to Wang Mingyao, Lenovo Star will improve a new strategy every two years. From 2010 to the present, its investment strategy has been upgraded from 1.0 to 3.0, and its investment focus has also evolved from the original advanced manufacturing, TMT, and medical care to TMT, artificial intelligence, and medical care. "The investment direction determined through this method has gone through the test," said Wang Mingyao.

In 2010, when Lenovo Star decided on the investment direction, considering that the Chinese and American markets have good performance in the long-term perspective, it finally decided to focus on the medical direction and focus on the innovative pharmaceutical segment. However, the research and development cycle of new drugs is long and has high risks. There have been few early-stage funds involved before.

"The Management Committee has had a fierce discussion on whether to insist on investing in innovative drugs." Lu Gang, a partner of Lenovo Star who is responsible for medical investment, said that looking back at the basis for reference when initially formulating the strategy, "there is nothing wrong". If you give up, you may suffer greater losses in the future.

From another level, new drug research and development belongs to the high-tech field that Lenovo Star prefers. "It is both a big industry and a strong technical barrier." In the end, the team adhered to the strategy.

Star's persistence began to begin in 2017. "When the industry was at its lowest point, 80% of the more than ten projects invested in were connected to the capital market," said Lu Gang.

Angel Investment End-up Thinking and System Layout

In 2010, there was actually a discussion within Lenovo Star on what investment route to choose - if a fund can make 10 times, then should you find 30 projects to make 10 times with the fund, or use less than 10 projects to make 10 times with the fund. The financial returns are the same, which path should I choose?

In the end, Liu Chuanzhi made the decision and chose the second path to invest in high-return celebrity projects. This tone also gradually took Lenovo Star's later investment style and investment philosophy. "This is actually to encourage risk-taking and pay attention to cutting-edge technology, rather than investing in projects that seem to be relatively safe when the wind is hot."

Now looking back at the route choice at that time, Liu Chuanzhi's judgment is wise. "VC can find a margin of safety, but angels can only rely on explosive projects, and its investment success rate directly determines this matter," said Lu Gang. The idea of ​​

also made Lenovo Star take the lead in the layout of artificial intelligence (AI) eight years ago.

In 2010, few people mentioned the term "artificial intelligence". In the field of advanced manufacturing that was focused at that time, in 2010, Lenovo Star invested in the iris recognition project Zhongke Hongba ; in 2011, it invested in the facial recognition project Megvii Technology; in 2012, it invested in the voice interaction project Sibichi . Wang Mingyao admitted that the initial investment in AI projects was entirely because of the fund's technical preferences. "We invested in a lot of such technologies in the early days. When the AI ​​trend came, they stood out and formed a layout."

Star's investment in AI entered a period of self-consciousness and began to systematically plan.

In order to maintain synchronization with cutting-edge AI technology in Silicon Valley, Lenovo Star launched Comet Labs in San Francisco in 2015, focusing on AI investment. Currently, more than 40 projects have been invested in the United States.

Lenovo Star’s artificial intelligence field layout

Reviewing the formation of Lenovo Star’s AI investment strategy, Wang Mingyao believes that this depends on Lenovo Star’s increasingly clear end thinking. "In history, any industry needs to make correct, large-value, and large-scale investments often based on judgments on the long-term future. The rise of Lenovo, Alibaba , Apple , Xiaomi , Xiaomi has proved this. They have a long-term grasp of their industry earlier." No one knows what the ultimate impact of

AI on mankind is. But it can be seen that AI has good commercial applications in sub-sectors such as autonomous driving, robot popularization, intelligent education, and brain-computer integration. Lenovo Star’s AI layout revolves around the above-mentioned sub-fields.

In the field of autonomous driving, Lenovo Star invested in Pony.ai. In July 2018, the A1 round valuation of the project has reached US$1 billion. In the field of assisted driving, Lenovo Star has invested in Qingzhi Technology; in the core technical aspects of autonomous driving, it has invested in lidar , mmWave radar , surround vision system, inertial navigation, etc., and has built an investment map for the autonomous driving system solution.

"Early investment, failure is a high probability event, but systematic layout can form a large-scale resource pool. The accumulation of projects can strengthen the team's deep understanding of a certain field and make more accurate judgments." Wang Mingyao said.

stands at the 10-year node to look at the future. Tang Xudong believes that Lenovo Star’s positioning as a leading angel investment institution in China will not change. "The mission of a leading angel investment institution is to have funds and excellent management to help enterprises grow, give LPs high returns, and at the same time realize the social value and influence of the enterprise. We hope to invest in some technologies that can benefit the whole people." How to maintain the industry's leading position and keep Lenovo Star at the top of the industry, Wang Mingyao said that Lenovo Star will focus more on some sub-industry. "Focusing will form more resources to help us make quick judgments and also allow us to provide more targeted post-investment services for the projects we are invested in. This is a very important direction for Lenovo Star in the future. In the past, the market believed that Lenovo Star's label was stable, but in the future, in the fields we identified, we will be more daring to take risks." Wang Mingyao said.

In an interview with Toutiao, Liu Chuanzhi told Wang Mingyao that Lenovo Star is a stage that can be big or small. If you make it big, it can connect training incubation, angel investment... and all of these are connected to form an ecosystem with huge energy. What it can be done depends on who will do it."Lenovo Holdings' employment philosophy is that whoever has the ability will create a bigger stage for him to display, give mechanisms and power, and you can make any requirements even if you have any requirements. But if the stage gives you it depends on how much imagination and ability you have to build this career." Liu Chuanzhi said.

Ten years of one sword. In Liu Chuanzhi's heart, he was looking forward to the Lenovo Star sword that will be sharp in the future.

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