For the MSA Capital team, 2021 is the most beautiful year since its inception.
According to the 2021 annual award finalists released by Private Equity International (PEI), an authoritative research institution in the global PE industry, with outstanding performance, as well as boss direct employment (NASDAQ: BZ), Medical Ferry Technology (2158. HK) and other IPO projects, and Jade Capital was successfully nominated for five important awards, including PEI's China Fund Institution of the Year, Frontier Market Company of the Year and Best Exit Institution of the Year.
At the same time, preqin data from the international authoritative database company shows that compared with other funds in the same period in 2015, heyu Capital MSA Fund 1 (a phase one dollar fund) ranked first in Asia in the second quarter of 2021 in the performance of VC (venture capital) institutions.
"This data is only publicly available. If not discounted, the return on performance will be doubled. Zeng Yu, founder and managing partner of Heyu Capital, said.
In 2021, despite the continuous fermentation of the new crown epidemic and the continuous strengthening of policy supervision, Heyu Capital still accelerated the pace of investment, and announced more than 20 new investment projects, of which more than 50% of the targets came from the biotechnology track. She believes that the current biotechnology investment is still in the early stages, this track has broad prospects in the future, and Jade Capital is also expected to become the first practitioner of "China's GP internationalization".
At the beginning of December 2021, Titanium Media App conducted an exclusive in-depth dialogue with Zeng Yu, founder and managing partner of Heyu Capital, comprehensively reviewing the nearly ten years that Heyu Capital has gone through, as well as telling the story behind Heyu's next Big Thing plan - through the cycle of the times, always betting on biotechnology and cutting-edge technologies and other fields to promote the growth of top entrepreneurs.
Zeng Yu stressed that the values of the Team of Jade Capital are consistent, and everyone agrees with long-termism, teamwork, continuous learning, only doing the right thing, not following the crowd, seeing the essence of everything, maintaining integrity, and believing in the power of simplicity. And that's the core reason why they can become "Asia's no.1 VC fund institution".
Founder and Managing Partner of MSA Capital Zeng Yu
Values of atypical VCs: "Long-term investment is learning and awareness of the industry with continued enthusiasm"
On the evening of December 6, 2021, the East Third Ring Road CBD business district was crowded, but the inside of Heyu Capital was brightly lit, and a unique and distinctive internal exchange meeting was held here.
Heyu Capital's investment managers, managing directors and others sat around and constantly consulted the middle speakers on cutting-edge scientific issues. It was very surprising that the keynote speaker in the middle of the conference was not Zeng Yu, but Professor Ding Hong of the Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who studied topological quantum computing. The core purpose of this exchange is to hope that the team will find the next investment direction from Ding Hong's scientific and technological and industry views.
As one of the founding directors of the "Future Forum", Zeng Yu and her team of Heyu Capital are very concerned about innovative investment in cutting-edge technology and technology. Zeng Yu told Titanium Media App that similar internal exchange meetings are often carried out, and institutions regularly hire scientific experts in specific fields to inspire new perspectives with these scientists in repeated discussions and brain collisions with the world's leading cutting-edge science, looking forward to eventually forming a leading business model or advanced cognition of the next frontier discipline.
"The (Heyu) investment team is essentially a mutual learning organization, because the industry changes very fast, rather than saying that Heyu is investing, it is better to say that we are a high-speed learning machine, we continue to dig up new ideas through learning, and finally turn the information we obtain into the cognition of the market segment, and then into the cognition of the company's founder and business model, and finally realize an investment decision." Zeng Yu said that although the team did not invest in the subdivision of quantum computing on a large scale, she was very optimistic about the development of artificial intelligence (AI), 5G, big data, quantum computing, biotechnology and other industries.
Today, Heyu Capital has more than $2 billion in fund management, focusing on early and growth investments in key areas such as healthcare, cutting-edge technology, Internet and consumption. Investment cases include BGI Genomics, Yiduyun, Weilai, BOSS Direct Hire, Meituan Dianping, Yanming Biology, Danxu, Andu Biology, Black Sesame Intelligence, Sightbit, Biling Technology, Cider, Ma Liuji, etc.
Feng Jiawu, Managing Director of Heyu Capital Biotechnology Investment, has served as the director of the Enterprise Development Department and the director of the Risk Management Department of Yizhuang SDIC, and has been engaged in study and scientific research at the Beijing Institute of Virology of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Heidelberg University in Germany, and New York University in the United States, with 20 years of study and work experience in the field of biotechnology and basic medicine, and 10 years of experience in the field of equity investment.
In response to the titanium media App's question "Why did you choose to join Heyu Capital", Feng Jiawu said, "I met Zeng Yu earlier. Later, when I cooperated on some projects, I was deeply attracted by the investment style of Yu Capital. Dare to shoot at a very early stage, and the quality of the selected projects is relatively high. We are very compatible with the trend judgment and project cognition, which is that we must support and invest in China's original innovation in the field of biotechnology, and the low-hanging fruit opportunities in the biomedical industry in the past decade have been lost, and we are not optimistic about many 'innovative drug' companies that are not really innovative, so we firmly invest in China's original innovative first in class new drug companies and continue to maintain enthusiasm for interdisciplinary fields. ”
Feng Jiawu also revealed to the Titanium Media App that Zeng Yu mentioned many times in internal meetings before, "Each project is invested well, and our team shares the investment income and honor together, and the wrong investment is my (Zeng Yu alone) responsibility and mistake." ”
Feng Jiawu said that this kind of responsibility and determination is difficult to see in other investment institutions. This is also one of the unique cultures of Heyu Capital, which regards the mistakes made in the past as great value and wealth, cherishes every opportunity for mistakes, constantly absorbs nutrition from mistakes, and quickly corrects and grows rapidly.
"A leader like Zeng Yu will make everyone feel very fair, and there is a pattern and a mind in doing things, which is long-termism." Feng Jiawu pointed out that the Yu Capital team has the same values, and everyone agrees with long-termism, teamwork and continuous learning.
In fact, Zeng Yu's shaping of the correct values of the team is rare in a highly competitive investment environment, and this value runs through the whole process of team building with Jade Capital.
At the annual meeting of the company held in Sanya on December 24th, Zeng Yu let the team share enthusiastically, aside from work, tell more about how to explore the world, about sports and healthy lifestyle, about courage and honor, and at the same time, everyone also brainstormed together, reviewed and shared investment performance, work experience, thereby improving the team's mutual understanding and cooperation efficiency.
Many entrepreneurs and scientists also share the values of Heyu Capital. Zhao Peng, the founder of BOSS Direct Employment, once told the media that when the company encountered difficulties that year and no fund was willing to invest in Boss Direct Hire, Zeng Yu's team was the only institution at that time to increase investment in all-round support to make the company smoothly embark on the fast track of business, and finally successfully achieved IPO.
"For the recognition of innovation height, the recognition of scientific and technological productivity, and the recognition of scientists' creativity and social values, I think this is the essence of the values of Heyu Capital." Feng Jiawu said in an interview with the Titanium Media App.
Zeng Yu believes that the heyu capital team only does the right thing, does not follow the crowd, sees the essence of everything, maintains integrity, believes in the power of simplicity, and respects time.
Don't pick the low-hanging fruit, firmly believe in biotechnology & cutting-edge technology, and do long-term, difficult and correct things
Heyu's first $150 million venture capital early-stage fund was established in 2015.
Zeng Yu replied that for a new fund, 2015 was not an excellent, or even a relatively bad time to enter the market - when the mobile Internet was in the middle, the sharing economy was hot, the O2O concept was prevalent, and the primary market was ushering in an unprecedented valuation bubble. However, Heyu Capital does not want to follow the crowd and follow the trend of investment, but clearly changes a differentiated investment style - "dare to bet heavily in adversity" strategy, investing in a total of about twenty startups, nearly half of which have grown into unicorns, and several companies have become home run projects. The loss rate of the first phase of the fund is only about ten percent, which is far lower than the failure rate of the international VC fund between 40% and 60 percent.
Zeng Yu pointed out that in the past decade, the mobile Internet has essentially been model innovation, and this innovation drive is to learn the "Silicon Valley culture" model, and then take it to China for localization development, and finally become a super large platform. But Heyu Capital believed at the time that it should avoid crowded projects as much as possible and look for business models and entrepreneurs with real potential.
Medical Ferry Technology is an excellent proof case. At that time, he had the idea of starting a business, and hoped to create a medical AI company. She met Zeng Yu at that time and told her about her insight into the development prospects of medical AI big data, which can be driven by AI to form innovative medical solutions, which made Zeng Yu very excited, because Gong Rujing's team and ideas are the next "The Next Big Thing" she has been looking for.
In March 2015, in the A round of financing of Medical Ferry Technology, Heyu Capital, as the earliest investor, supported Medical Ferry Cloud, and then led the second round of investment, not only that, a few years later, Zeng Yu also directly introduced several international sovereign fund LPs to complete direct investment. On January 15, 2021, Yidu Technology IPO in Hong Kong, with a market value of more than HK$50 billion, which also brought huge book returns to Heyu Capital, which is one of the best investment projects to date.
Of course, not only Medical Du Technology, but also Yu Capital has recently invested in important companies such as Yanming Biology, Danxu Biology, Xingeyuan Biology, and Andu Biology. Among them, in December 2021, Heyu Capital led a US$60 million B+ round of financing for Andu Bio, a translational science and clinical pharmacology CRO service provider focusing on providing clinical project management for domestic and foreign innovative drug research and development enterprises, supporting innovative drug development projects at all stages from preclinical to clinical and post-marketing.
The core team of Adolux Bio is from AstraZeneca in the United States, composed of the world's leading quantitative pharmacology experts, bioanalytical experts and clinical management experts, the core members have formed a good organizational management ability, and in the Chinese market, Adulus Bio's quantitative pharmacological technology and bioanalytical technology occupy a professional ability advantage in the new growth points of the domestic CRO industry, and the future will achieve the expansion and growth of the global market through mergers and acquisitions. It is worth noting that andu Biotech's investors also include Sequoia China, Hillhouse Venture Capital and so on.
Zeng Yu said that in developed countries such as Europe and the United States, the field of biotechnology investment has been very mature. Nowadays, China has a strong national strategic policy support, the continuous optimism of market-oriented capital, the accumulation of international talents, etc., and the founder has a great determination to innovate originally. Zeng Yu believes that biotechnology is the "Next Big Thing" she is looking for, and she is very optimistic about the industry with strong beliefs, and it is also part of Heyu Capital's impact investment.
In Zeng Yu's view, Heyu Capital will not cast a wide net of investment in the outlet, but will look beyond the outlet. This differentiated investment logic in the field of biotechnology is what she calls "sniper" investment.
To some extent, this also lays the foundation for the value of Heyu Capital - to do long-term, difficult and correct things.
Zeng Yu said, "There is too much 'noise' in the investment industry, if the institution continues to make some investment decisions under the noise is very dangerous, if two people of completely different levels are given the same symmetrical information, the final investment decision they get may be completely opposite." This requires how to distinguish between noise and truly valuable information, and how to deal with information effectively, which also confirms the old Chinese saying: see the difference. ”
Today, Heyu Capital mainly divides the betting area into biotechnology, as well as early and growth period investment in key areas such as cutting-edge technology, Internet and consumption. In the past 6 years, Heyu Capital has made heavy bets on the biotechnology track, built a medical investment team, gathered the top scientists in the industry, and invested more than 100 in TMT and medical tracks.
Yanming Biology, a investee enterprise of Heyu Capital, is a cutting-edge biotechnology company dedicated to developing new mechanisms of small molecule drugs in the field of inflammation and tumors, and is also a real first in class innovative drug company in China's original innovation, "This will be a milestone cup-like project for China's new drug research and development" Zeng Yu said, Shao Feng, co-founder and chairman of Yanming Biology, is the deputy director of the Beisheng Institute of Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Jade Capital mainly values academician Shao Feng's internationally leading pioneering scientific research achievements in the field of cell coke death. These results have potential application value in a variety of important diseases, as well as the senior industrialization team led by him and co-founder Dr. Deng Tianjing, which is the core reason why Zeng Yu's team bet heavily. (For details, see the previous article of the Titanium Media App: "Heyu Capital Zeng Yu: Why I Bet on the Next Big Thing "Source Innovative Drug" 丨Fengyun Investors")
In July 2021, Heyu Capital participated in the 100 million yuan round of financing of AI pharmaceutical company Fukun Intelligent A; in October 2021, Heyu Capital led a round of equity investment in Yanming Biology; in October 2021, Heyu Capital laid out gene sequencing and diagnostic equipment developer "Anxiyuan" financing tens of millions of dollars; in November 2021, Heyu Capital co-invested in the high-throughput single-cell multi-omics platform product developer "Xingeyuan Biologics" B round of financing; in December 2012, Heyu Capital jointly led the investment in the digital diagnosis and treatment solution provider of cerebral nerve diseases "IBT Frontier Technology" Pre-A+ round of tens of millions of yuan financing... The Heyu Capital team is concentrating its firepower in the field of biotechnology.
Chinese and foreign partners to accelerate international investment
In fact, as a private equity investment institution with deep roots in China and a global perspective, Heyu Capital not only has a domestic market layout, but also invests globally from a Chinese perspective, led by Ben Harburg, managing partner of MSA Capital.
Ben is an American, and he and Zeng Yu form the perfect Chinese and foreign partners. Ben has also attracted and recruited a number of foreign partners, forming a strong international background and cross-cultural and cross-regional team culture.
The Brazilian version of "Ant Financial" Nubank is a good example. In June 2021, Heyu Capital participated in the overall $750 million Financing round of Nubank G, the largest fintech unicorn in Latin America, and it is worth noting that Berkshire Hathaway, a subsidiary of Warren Buffett, sands Capital also co-led Nubank in this round.
On December 9, 2021, Nubank (NYSE: NU) successfully landed on the New York Stock Exchange, giving birth to the world's third largest IPO in 2021, causing a market sensation. Today, Nubank has a market value of more than 280 billion yuan, which has become an important international investment case for the team of Heyu Capital.
On December 9, 2021, Nubank, invested by Heyu Capital, successfully landed on the New York Stock Exchange (Source: Nubank)
Ben Harburg's investment logic for this Case is as follows: "China is the benchmark for financial digitalization, and we invest globally through a Chinese perspective. We have an insight into the development of fintech companies in all active regions and believe Nubank is a breakthrough winner. As Nubank becomes the largest digital bank in Latin America, it will benefit greatly from chinese best practices from Chinese investment institutions. We are excited to partner with Nubank to disseminate these strategies and support the company." ”
In particular, Ben Harburg has focused on Chinese best practices, which better reflects the international vision and resources of Heyu Capital as a Chinese investment institution.
Not only Nubank, but also Jade Capital has invested several unicorns in the Middle East and North Africa, South America, India and other markets in recent years.
The best times for Chinese investors have arrived
On December 9, 2021, a report entitled "The Great Tech Rivalry: China vs the U.S." jointly published by Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and the University of Cambridge showed that in the next decade, China is expected to replace the United States as the world's first in high-tech manufacturing core areas such as artificial intelligence (AI), 5G, quantum information science, semiconductors, biotechnology and green energy.
The report shows that over the past two decades, China has leapt to the forefront of basic biotechnology research. From 2007 to 2017, China's biotechnology publication volume increased by an average annual rate of 20%, second only to the United States; in 2019 and 2020, China surpassed Germany and the United Kingdom in the bionatural index, ranking second; China also generated the most biotechnology patents every year, its global share increased from 1% in 2000 to 28% in 2019, with an annual growth rate of 16%, while the SHARE of the United States fell to 27%, with an annual growth rate of less than 3%; in terms of cell therapy patents, China is leading the way in terms of both the total number of patents and the growth rate.
A recent article published in the British journal Nature noted that "China's life sciences companies are still innovating ... With aggressive policy support, a multi-hundred million patient market, and talent capabilities, they may challenge U.S. dominance in biotechnology. ”
In the past two years, China has introduced a series of regulatory measures for the Internet industry, causing great turmoil and uneasiness in the financial market. However, in areas such as biotechnology and cutting-edge technology, China continues to send positive and strong signals of policy support. In the 13th five-year and 14th five-year development plans, brain science and brain-like research, genetic technology and other biotechnologies, as well as a new generation of AI, quantum information, integrated circuits and other cutting-edge technologies are the core scientific and technological innovation areas that China needs to break through.
Therefore, China's future growth must rely on scientific and technological innovation, as long as China continues to attach importance to and develop the market economy, new investment opportunities will emerge one after another. As a heyu capital that is deeply rooted in China and looks at the world, the best era of investing in China has arrived.
In the past two years, the investment industry has been turbulent, but Heyu Capital has significantly accelerated the pace of layout, which is mainly due to heyu's "non-conformist" investment judgment: the more the market declines, the more investors need to think backwards to make correct investment decisions.
"The future is still the best time for Chinese investors, not only in China." Zeng Yu firmly said that the Hong Kong Stock Exchange has done 18A for the medical industry, and the ChiNext Board, the Science and Technology Innovation Board and the Beijing Stock Exchange, which Chinese mainland, have actually built a large environmental design in the field of biotechnology from the national strategic level, top-level structure design, and policy encouragement, so as a professional investment institution, Jade Capital has more investment opportunities.
"No one has put AI, new energy vehicles, and cutting-edge biotechnology in an important position before. Seven years ago, when we invested in Weilai Automobile, the world did not dare that Chinese companies would build their own EVs, and now we can see that the electric vehicle industry has improved significantly this year. Zeng Yu said that only cognition is the most important, and finally realize your cognition into an investment decision.
Zeng Yu stressed that investing is not only a practice, but also a process of completely super-intensive rapid learning and curiosity about the world. (This article was exclusively published on the Titanium Media App, written by | Lin Zhijia, edited by |)