(Chinese Version)

　　Unlike most investors that are reserved and serious, GGV Capital’s managing partner Hans Tung has a rather outgoing and passionate personality. He speaks in a rich and low voice and gives a firm handshake. Even if you see him for the very first time, you would remember this American Chinese investor.

　　Hans Tung has achieved a perfect investment portfolio during his 12 years of career as an investor. He has invested in Xiaomi and Airbnb, and later became Xiaohongshu’s board chair. He also discovered the immense potential of Wish, a small company that few people knew at that time. Up till now, these startups have grown into today’s unicorns.

　　Since 2013, Tung had been included on the Forbes Midas List. In the 2017 list, he has been ranked as the 19th best investor in the world.

　　Despite his participation in the financing of these star companies risen from consumption upgrade, Tung sees himself as a boring person in life. He hasn’t really tried all those new products and services brought by the companies he invested. He learned most of the user experience of the services and products from his friends and colleagues.

　　When asked about how to conclude a method based on his long years of investment experience, Tung told us that his answer wouldn’t be what we thought would be. In his opinion, besides understanding users and the products, to master investment techniques also requires knowing the history, which he believes is in fact more important. By studying China, the U.S., Japan, and European countries, knowing their history, similarities and differences, and comparing their industries, investors will learn to detect the tendency and acquire insights, he said.

　　This history-based investment method is reflected in Tung’s reviewing comments on the companies he invested in.

　　When talking about Xiaomi’s ecosystem, Tung can start analyzing Taiwan’s semiconductor industry and the consumption upgrade’s impact on the American society’s supply chain value during the post-world-war-two era. Tung can relate Xiaohongshu and other cross-border e-commerce platforms’ rise to historical events like Spain discovering the new continent. Tung would think of his high-speed-train trip from Tokyo to Osaka 15 years ago in Japan when talked about the domestic demands that are driving today China’s consumption upgrade.

　　As one of the earliest Taiwanese immigrants fresh off the boat in America, Hans Tung had studied and worked in Taiwan, the U.S., and Singapore etc., eventually settling back in mainland China in 2005. He had experienced the difficult era in which guanxi was the key to investment projects. In 2013, he returned to the U.S. Now he is living with his families in the Bay Area in California, spending about one third of his time investigating projects in China.

　　With such work and life experience, Hans Tung developed a more sensitive mind on investment projects in the cross-border category. Whether it’s Airbnb and Wish’s importing to China, or Musical.ly’s exporting, Tung could always make use of the capital and talent resources, providing protection and guidance for the invested companies in internationalization.

　　For instance, Tung and GGV Capital helped Xiaohongshu hire Tiger (Qie Xiaohu) as the company’s CTO, who was the former director of Google’s global R&D department.

　　Tung mentioned that he really admires Hillhouse Capital’s founder Zhang Lei. In his opinion, Hillhouse Capital has been smart with investing in listed companies. The capital company also recruited a group of talented minds on mid-term investment, while willing to invest in some early-phase foundations. In this way, the company, in fact, formed its own ecosystem chain.

　　“When Internet companies are building their ecosystem chains, investment organizations are also doing that. It’s not a matter of group efforts, but more of a strategy matter,” Tung said.

　　Looking from GGV Capital’s investment portfolio, which includes Xiaomi, one of the earliest smartphone companies in China that utilized community and fans, cross-border e-commerce platform Xiaohongshu, homestay platform Airbnb, and video app Musical.ly etc., is very much focused on product distribution and the information demand upgrade. Such consumption upgrade, as well as the user profile, are becoming more common around the world.

　　On consumer goods: Participation, customization, and light promotion

　　The development trend of the consumer goods in China in the past two decades shows the growth of consumption options (diet juice, salad, amino acid shampoo) and the transformation of consumption mindset (vegetarian lifestyle, simple design, sporty style). It seems the development is influenced by the west more or less. Students who went overseas to study, as well as professionals who had previously worked in the West brought their consumption lifestyle to China, spreading their lifestyle and pushing the consumption upgrade forward.