Wen ┃ Historian
Edit ┃Q
As a legendary figure in the Chinese business world, Ma Yun can make him value very few women, and the women he can personally invite are even rarer.
And Li Ying is one of the few.
She is the operator behind Ma Yun, who holds the economic lifeblood of Ali, and is jokingly called China's "female version of Buffett" by everyone.
In order to get her help, Ma Yun even went to the United States three times to find her, which was described by the industry as a modern version of "three Gu Maolu"
Li Ying
But she is still single, and if someone wants to chase her, she has only one requirement for her partner: not to disturb her work.
It can be said that Li Ying, who combines beauty and talent, is undoubtedly the "woman behind Ma Yun" and an important hero who created Ma Yun's 100 billion empire.
A gifted and intelligent Hakka girl
Li Ying is a Hakka family whose ancestral home is in Meixian County, Guangdong Province, but due to the work of her parents, she grew up in Shenzhen.
Parents are high-level intellectuals, but also the elite of the business world, so they attach great importance to their children's education.
And perhaps it is genetics, or it may be talent, Li Ying has been talented and intelligent since she was a child, when she was studying in Shenzhen, when she was just in the first grade, she had already learned the knowledge of the third grade, and Li Ying, who jumped successively, made the school teachers look at her with astonishment.
However, when I first entered junior high school, my parents had already gone to the United States to live due to job transfers, so my parents asked Li Ying to go too.
However, Li Ying, who grew up in Shenzhen, still has some resistance to the unfamiliar environment, and she has become accustomed to the domestic life and learning system, and now when she goes to the United States, she is afraid that she will not be able to keep up with the progress of learning.
You know, a person who ranks first in every test score in China, if he becomes the bottom in a foreign country, that kind of psychological blow is very fatal.
So she had a discussion with her parents - if she could jump directly into high school in the United States like she did at home, she would choose to stay in the United States, and if not, she would return to Shenzhen to live.
In the face of such a request, although the parents were helpless, they still agreed.
Li Ying came to the United States, the first thing is to learn English, talented and intelligent she learned like a hanging, after a month of closed study, she successfully passed the American jump test straight up.
Such an experience also laid the foundation for how many offers she won from well-known universities in the future.
In this way, after Li Ying arrived in the United States, it took only half a year to jump from junior high school to high school, so that when she first went to college, she was only 17 years old.
Because of her outstanding grades and the recommendation of many teachers, Li Ying just graduated from high school and received acceptance letters from many universities, including MIT, Yale and other top universities in the world.
After much thought, Li Ying chose MIT, which is also the cradle of her legend.
Geniuses also have to jump ship frequently
In college, Li Ying did not stop for a day, and it took her only three years to get two bachelor's degrees and a master's degree.
You know, such achievements may take five years or more for ordinary people.
Li Ying also earned a title for this: "a woman like the wind", and she answered the question in an interview about the outside world calling her a genius:
"There's an old saying in Massachusetts: school, sleep, and social circles, you have to choose two things. So I chose to sacrifice sleep. When others are cheerful in the bar, I am studying, when friends around me are in love, I am studying, roommates are sleeping, I am still learning."
Even with amazing talent, but still have to work so hard, Li Ying's success is expected.
As a result, at the age of 20, Li Ying already has a bachelor's degree in computer science, a bachelor's degree in economics, and a master's degree in electrical engineering and computer science.
In 2000, with dazzling achievements, Li Ying successfully entered her dream enterprise - McKinsey.
This is a world-class leading global management consulting firm where Ying Li works as a career consultant and draws on a wealth of advanced expertise.
Here, Li Ying also did an interesting thing, because she was not old, but she had to learn to play well in the hands of a professional veteran in her forties and fifties.
To this end, she specially bought a lot of black and blue dark clothes, in her words: "I hope that I look older, the older the better, at least like 30 years old." 」 ”
But just when everyone thought that she would develop in The long run of McKinsey, she chose to resign and leave the position that many people dreamed of.
In the following ten years, Li Ying has successively worked in a number of well-known investment companies: KPCB's youngest partner in the world, deputy general manager of UTStarcom, marketing director of Ikanos...
But each piece of work has not been done for a long time, and the longest stay is only two and a half years, so frequent job hopping is not common in the investment industry.
Later, when Li Ying recalled that time, she said:
"I don't know why I rushed myself so much at that time, maybe I was too young, everything was fresh, I didn't like ease, I wanted to do everything quickly and then do another thing, I wanted to graduate quickly in college, I wanted to retire quickly when I worked, and it's still a pity to think about it now."
Of course, although the rush is a little, but Li Ying is also growing rapidly, and the experience of each company has supplemented her with the nutrients that investors should have, allowing her to accumulate a lot of skills necessary for being a Wall Streeter.
And it is these unique experiences that provide conditions for her and Ma Yun's acquaintance, and even let Ma Yun "three Gu Maolu"!
Met Jack Ma
In 2009, in Hangzhou's West Lake, Alibaba's Jack Ma and business tycoon Yu Feng planned to set up a fund company in order to be able to tap more excellent enterprises.
Yu Feng
In fact, the general framework has been fully set, and now there is an experienced management talent.
Although at that time, Ma Yun's Alibaba was as good as the sun and the sky, and it was proud in the field of e-commerce, but in the field of fund investment, Ma Yun could only be regarded as a "small white", so this talent could only be hired from outside.
Before starting the fund, Ma Yun had heard About Li Ying's "legendary record" from friends many times.
Ma Yun's extremely keen sense of smell let him know that this investment talent on the other side of the ocean is the talent she wants, and she can also become her right hand and create great value for the enterprise.
Therefore, Ma Yun took a plane to the United States, personally came to Silicon Valley, asked Li Ying to join his team, as the manager of the fund company, and Ma Yun invited Li Ying's experience, which is also known as the contemporary "three Gu Maolu" in the industry.
It turned out that when Ma Yun first went to Silicon Valley to find Li Ying, she was not very interested, because in Li Ying's view at the time, there was no essential difference between this fund company and the investment company she had previously worked for.
She has been struggling in the United States for so many years, has her own contacts and resources, and is considered by many investment companies to be the most potential entrepreneurial partner in the United States, so her business value is of great potential value.
And most of all, she's always wanted to build her own team, not be a professional manager.
Therefore, Ma Yun's first invitation also ended in failure, but with Ma Yun's personality, how could he easily give up, so it was not long before Ma Yun embarked on the journey of inviting Li Ying again.
This time, Ma Yun provided generous salary conditions, in order to show sincerity, even arranged a luxury car for Li Ying, but Li Ying still refused.
But Ma Yun still did not give up, because in his view, Li Ying is the most suitable candidate.
That day, Ma Yun and her chatted for a long time, from the purpose of the fund and his own views on the future market, and finally said that it will give Li Ying considerable room to play, and will not pass Li Ying's plan because some high-level people can't understand it.
It is also this that makes Li Ying interested, because this is what she wants - to build her own investment brand. In the end, Li Ying was impressed by Ma Yun's sincerity and decided to join Ma Yun's team to help him "fight the country".
In April 2010, Yunfeng Fund was officially established, and Li Ying became the founder of Yunfeng Fund and one of the managers of Yunfeng Fund.
The name of this fund company comes from the two founders - Ma Yun and Yu Feng, and the slogan is also very domineering: "The cloud shows the world, and the front collects the future."
At this time, Li Ying has also had one more title since then - Ma Yun's behind-the-scenes trader.
Ma Yun spent so much financial resources and energy to invite this person who was not very optimistic in China at that time, in fact, many Ali executives felt puzzled and doubtful, questioning whether it was worth it.
However, from the later results, I have to admire Ma Yun's poisonous eyes, because Li Ying's joining is definitely "value for money"!
Create an Ali legend
The establishment of Yunfeng Fund is very much in line with Li Ying's own vision of starting a business, so this time, she did not plan to jump ship again, but to sink her heart and polish this brand into a leader in the industry.
Li Ying was mainly responsible for investment in high-tech, new energy and other fields at Yunfeng Fund, and during that time, Li Ying closed herself in her office almost every day to study the development prospects of related industries.
With unique market insight and years of investment banking experience in Silicon Valley, Li Ying led the Yunfeng Fund to invest up to 1.3 billion yuan in the first phase alone.
This was very risky at the time, and many people on the board of directors opposed it, after all, it was a newly founded company, and most people thought that it should still be steady and steady, step by step for insurance.
But Li Ying insists that these target companies have been researched by themselves for a long time and will not go wrong.
To this end, she also deliberately found Ma Yun, hoping that he could support her decision, and also hinted that Ma Yun had promised herself that she would give relatively large control.
After many discussions by the board of directors and after detailed research and investigation, Li Ying's decision was approved.
And the result is not to live up to everyone's expectations, the recovery of this investment is as high as 16 billion, the profit is as high as 12 billion, which is a very incredible return on investment in the eyes of the domestic investment industry at that time.
At this point, Li Ying has also become the brightest star of Ali's business empire.
In the following years, Li Ying led Yunfeng Fund to invest in major well-known enterprises such as Ant Financial, Huayi Brothers, and BGI Gene.
Today, we can see that these companies have developed into leaders in their respective industries. The Yunfeng Fund naturally profited a lot from it. According to public information, the investment return rate of Yunfeng Fund in these years is much higher than the average of other peers.
After more than ten years of development, Yunfeng Fund led by Li Ying has become one of the largest investment companies in China, bringing huge wealth to investors while its own scale has also grown to tens of billions.
These beautiful "achievements" not only brought her shining glory, but also made herself a huge fortune. According to industry insiders, Li Ying's annual salary in these years plus dividends and equity investment, her value has already exceeded 10 billion.
Because her idol is the god of stocks - Warren Buffett, and because of its investment philosophy and Buffett's similarities, Li Ying has also been called China's "female version of Buffett" by insiders.
In fact, although she is quite valuable and beautiful, after the collision of Chinese and Western cultures, she can still adhere to the "quiet and far-reaching" of Chinese culture, which is not easy.
Judging from her experience in Yunfeng Fund, Li Ying was "crazy" when she first entered the company, and she spent more time after that, adhering to a very low-key style of doing things.
Whether it is investment or life, Li Ying is like this, as she once said on a forum:
"It turns out that many things cannot be rushed, accumulated, precipitated, and done at the right opportunity."
"If you want to do something, you don't have to spread it until it's successful, because after success, even if you don't have to say it, people will know."
However, compared with her career attention, her private life has also attracted the attention of many people, especially her "strange" mate selection conditions.
Private life
Proud achievements and tens of billions of worth, coupled with eye-catching appearance, Li Ying can be said to have been popular all the way in the investment circle, and has always been a topic of discussion.
Compared with the investment direction, it seems that her private life can arouse everyone's curiosity.
It is not difficult to see from the photos that Li Ying's every move exudes a dignified atmosphere, the temperament is calm and smiling, although there are traces of age on the face, but the beauty is unquestionable.
It is also like this, there are many people in the circle who joke, comparing Li Ying's appearance with Liu Qiangdong's wife Zhang Zetian. However, even if she is golden and has a good temperament, Li Ying, who is now over 40 years old, is still single and not married.
The outside world has speculated that the standard of mate selection is too high, so it has not been found, but in fact, it is not, on the contrary, her mate selection standard threshold is still very low.
It turned out that during an interview, Li Ying publicly expressed her "mate selection criteria": "Other hard conditions are not very picky, and the most important thing is not to interfere with my own career."
As soon as this remark came out, it also stunned everyone, and they did not expect that as the "golden flower" of the asset circle, they actually put all their energy into the workplace.
But in fact, in the author's opinion, this should also be a trouble for successful women, "can not disturb her work" may be just a rhetoric, more importantly, Li Ying's own conditions are too superior, so has not found the right one.
As she said:
"As a woman, don't rely on the old and sell the old, think that the career has nothing to do with yourself, think that you are washing clothes, cooking, watching children, this is a big mistake. I think this also contains her attitude towards work and life. Love is not all. ”
Not only that, Li Ying herself does not particularly like excessive exposure, because she always feels that the useless exposure and unnecessary heat brought by the media will only affect her work.
Of course, although work occupies a large part of Li Ying's experience, she also has a life she likes, and collecting luxury cars is one of her few consumer hobbies.
It is reported that Li Ying has collected many cars, including limited edition luxury cars such as rolls-Royce Phantom and Bentley Tianyue. Therefore, many people said that the reason why Ma Yun sent Li Ying a luxury car that year was also a good practice.
However, many people in the industry also said that many of the luxury cars she bought had not actually been driven, but were just placed there, so it was likely to be her investment means.
In addition, the most expensive thing Li Ying spends outside of work is to study meditation and study organic food. Celebrities from these circles are often invited to their homes to discuss.
In her opinion, these things can play a relaxing role in her tense nerves.
In fact, from the perspective of china's increasing development, many female rich people have appeared in the domestic business elite.
Some stand at the forefront and represent the image of the enterprise, just like the iron-blooded lady like Ms. Dong Mingzhu. Some are sitting in the rear, quietly working hard for the company's enterprise development, and Li Ying is such a talent.
Now she has followed Ma Yun for 12 years and has become one of the indispensable elites of Ali Group. Just as the so-called "towel does not let the eyebrows", I also look forward to Li Ying's ability to create more eye-catching results in the future!
As she said of her idol Buffett: "I hope I can still be as active in the investment world as they are in thirty or forty years!" ”。