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The beginning of 2022 has been a good drama - Internet company executives are leaving the big factories and driving towards the tide of hard technology.
Investment institutions are not idle. Friends of relevant institutions revealed that now they and their peers are "squatting" at the entrance of the big factory, looking for and negotiating entrepreneurial projects. Among the institutions it describes, it includes some leading investment institutions.
The cold winter and the enthusiasm of entrepreneurs seem to form a contrast, but also let people wonder the mystery.
In fact, compared with the tide of 2015, 2022 is not a good year for entrepreneurship. Investment cools down, the track is overheated, and many investors' attitude towards projects or entrepreneurship is "look again". Coupled with the lack of the blessing of the original "double creation" policy, entrepreneurship and investment should have insufficient staying power.
In order to complete the income performance and protect the valuation of the investee, today, the investment industry is seriously involved, and employee overtime has become the norm. It seems that investment institutions are "holding up" the projects in their hands, carefully cultivating and waiting for the opportunity.
But the tide of hard technology and other major trends seems to be a wild horse that has lost its reins, disturbing the "peace of the faction". In Hangzhou, near Ali's headquarters, that's it. The investment institutions with offices in Hangzhou confirm this fact, and this year's departing executives of large factories are very optimistic about hard technology, "especially Ali."
Cloud, autonomous driving, and enterprise services have become the main components of the new generation of entrepreneurial people. In addition to Ali, for other Internet companies, there are also relevant executives who have chosen to start a business.
Who's taking the lead in rolling up hard tech?
The hard technology trend is sudden, and the entrepreneurs of large factories are the first to bear the brunt. However, due to the difference in the tone of the "old owner", it has also marked these entrepreneurs with deep differentiation.
Compared with Tencent's social and entertainment capabilities, Ali's e-commerce genes are inherently more closely bound to the real economy. That is to say, in the eyes of e-commercemen, every trace of wind and grass in the manufacturing industry will make its internal employees tense their nerves.
Within Alibaba, there are also directly related companies such as Rhino Manufacturing. When communicating with Mengtiqi, the internal employees of Yuanjing Capital also felt that the fit between Ali employees and the current tide of hard technology rise was very high.
Alibaba has a unique enterprise service gene, in addition, coupled with Alibaba Cloud has become the focus of its internal development, after the "cloud nail integration", data and technical capabilities have been extended.
In the ecosystem where Ali is located, it seems to be under favorable conditions. First, Shanghai, Ningbo and Hangzhou belong to the concentration of large e-commerce supply chain, Ali has been deeply cultivated here for a long time, and the industrial cluster effect is obvious; second, the province represented by Zhejiang is famous for manufacturing overseas, for small and medium-sized enterprises, the demand for manufacturing transformation and upgrading is very strong, the target market is concentrated, and the user demand increase is large.
Ali's data analysis, which is good at this time, can be very useful. It can be seen that among the giant companies, It is not surprising that Ali can take the lead in entering hard technology. Now, in addition to Ali, giant companies such as Tencent and Huawei are not far behind. At present, Tencent Cloud has a data lake strategy, and its cloud-native solutions are also about to come out, and the industry believes that Tencent Cloud has full staying power.
In terms of chips, Ali's (holding or shareholding) companies have companies such as ZhongtianWei and Hengxuan Technology. In terms of ByteDance and Tencent, the competition for AI includes companies such as Songzhi Intelligence, Cloud Whale Intelligence, Zero Rhino Technology and Entropy Technology. In 2022, the CVC led by Tencent Capital is much more low-key, so that it voluntarily withdrew from some of the company's shareholder seats and holding matters. But in terms of investment, CVC is still quietly laying out.
However, such "volumes" will happen more in the dark in the future.
Another interpretation of "volume"
In 2022, investment to hard, entrepreneurship to hard, investment Intiqi has been described in the title "2022 Investment New Logic: Investment is Developing in a Harder, More Industrial, and More Landing Direction". However, there are also investors who have their own annotations on this round of hard technology "frenzy".
Point 1: "Little Giant" breaks the business cycle brought about by the poor business environment brought about by the rapid development of the scale of startups in the past to counter the bad business environment of the giants, and is a clear response to "don't roll up". At the same time, the Beijing Stock Exchange has also opened up financing channels for small enterprises.
Viewpoint 2: The Beijing Stock Exchange is a last resort choice for investors at a time when the exit channels in the United States and Hong Kong are not smooth, and whether the Beijing Stock Exchange can provide continuous liquidity is still worthy of continuous attention.
At a time when the "roll is not rolled" is still being debated, investors who are mainly engaged in the VC industry have been ruthlessly "critically attacked" by the iron fist of reality.
On the financing side, the market's performance is close to madness. An FA practitioner told Invest Montinch that due to the hard technology track is very dependent on resources. As a result, the number of ecological players has suddenly increased. "Domestic CAD and CAE projects are more dependent on the government and military industry, so the valuation of such projects is particularly expensive." In his eyes, companies with 30 million revenues can easily get 20-30 times the PS valuation.
A well-known fund investor shared with Investment Montiqi that the project of a hard technology company boss he knew has recently been sought after in the circle. In order to "take care" of the "face" of various institutions, "open" to investors who come to seek investment for half a day, the first 50 investors present can add the chairman's WeChat. The next day, investors lost their "privilege." "Actually, it's already been kicked out in this round." The investor confessed.
This is evident in the popularity of popular projects.
If you make an analogy, today's hard technology track projects are like the real estate boom a few years ago, exaggerating that the project is "one price a day". While some investors are still hesitating, other funds have already sold.
Investors and investors are also "volume" between not. An FA practitioner revealed to The Investment Montiqi that the founding partner of a fund once used the chip to solve the problem of primary school enrollment and provide office buildings for the entrepreneur's children in exchange for investment rights, and other conditions were the same. "But the tragedy is that it still hasn't been put in."
The madness of capital makes the invested companies extremely anxious, and the founders do their best to deliver on their high-growth promises. In this way, the "volume" between projects has also begun, such as the "ecological fund" initiated by entrepreneurial projects. When the ecological fund was established, hard technology companies moved the development history of Siemens and Dassault, believing that mergers and acquisitions can make the company bigger and stronger. Hopefully, relying on the "ecological fund" to acquire other companies and even competitors.
But in reality, other players in the industry are not interested in such funds. In this regard, some investors gave the answer that "most companies are relatively junior". But there are also people who have broken through the deep-seated reasons: "This money is equivalent to recognizing the big brother, why should I be your little brother?" That's it. ”
In addition, between the project and the investor, there are also "volumes". Some investors complained about investing in Montinch: "I found that some entrepreneurs have learned the method of 'fancy' refusal to invest, they (referring to the project) said to us before, 'We are not afraid of the deep alley, temporarily do not consider financing', turned their faces and took the money of other funds." ”
RMB fund wants to "take back a city"
In the context of the popularity of hard technology, in the investment institution industry, there are already funds that lock in the investment direction of 2022 in hard technology, industrial digital intelligence, and cutting-edge medical technology. On the whole, the investment direction of the majority of primary market investment institutions may usher in profound changes.
At the beginning of 2022, there will be quite a number of hard technology projects to obtain financing, and the circle sometimes rumors that a project has a "starting 1 billion valuation".
No matter which database you use as the standard, you will get the same answer - hard technology is really on fire. In terms of financing data for the first 15 days of 2022, hard technology has firmly ranked second in the number of financing in the primary market industry. In a way, hard technology has become a "resonance point" for the international situation, the will of the country, and development. In this process, the voice of policy, capital and intellectual property rights in it is more critical.
Among investment institutions, many institutions hope to "win back a game" through hard technology. In addition to established institutions such as Sequoia China and Jingwei Venture Capital, the rise of institutions such as Zhongke Chuangxing and Times Bole is particularly rapid. Times Bole told Investment Montinch that there are 20-30 hard technology projects to be listed in two years.
Some people in the industry commented that hard technology is facing a situation of "uneven quality" at this time. Due to the general large amount of investment and the difficulty of determining the return cycle, it is "more difficult" to invest in hard technology.
At present, RMB funds are still facing greater challenges, and it is difficult to say whether they can rely on hard technology to "turn over" in the future. "Two ends leaning on each other, collapsing in the middle" is a normal state of RMB funds – that is, due to the withdrawal of faults, early and late projects are too concentrated, and there are too few intermediate projects. Exit channels are particularly important for RMB funds.
Although, in the dialogue of investing in Montić, most investors said that they would not pursue the concept of "specialization and specialization", but they paid close attention to the exit of the Beijing Stock Exchange.
In fact, as far as the domestic capital market is concerned, the difference between US dollar funds and RMB funds is still very large. The former prefers to benchmark the concept of open source in the United States, and has low requirements for upfront profits. The latter pays more attention to the actual degree of landing and hematopoietic ability.
"I think price gouging will only hurt the industry in the end." One investor put it bluntly. In his view, he is more concerned about whether the technology to be financed projects have the first-mover advantage of technology, and at present, due to the hot speculation of capital, there is anxiety in the industry.
But in the face of the project with inflated prices, the investor can only wave his hand, saying that he has no choice.
After hard technology has exploded in the investment circle, some people are squeezing their heads to get investment shares, while others are still running for funds to raise funds. Under this tide, who is swimming naked, who will laugh to the end, perhaps, only time will prove it.