The VC queen "can't eat": living in a mansion is worth tens of billions, and it has not been possible to cast a unicorn for a long time

Author/ Author of "Finance and Economics" Weekly, Zhang Jikang, Ni Ping

Editor / Chen Fang

The "VCs Queen" also can't buy bread and milk

On April 7, a WeChat screenshot of Xu Xin, the founder of Today Capital, circulated on the Internet.

The screenshot shows Xu Xin, who now lives in Shanghai, asking in a WeChat group: "Which neighbor can pull me to the 'dumpling bread group'?" We have a lot of family and need bread and milk, thank you! ”

(Screenshot of webcast)

In the venture capital circle, Xu Xin has the title of "Queen of Venture Capital". Today Capital, which she founded, has countless successful investment cases.

Subsequently, the news about "the VC queen can't grab the rations" spread rapidly on the Internet, and some netizens ridiculed Xu Xin for investing in the Meituan, Yonghui supermarket, and Dingdong to buy vegetables, but still could not grab the dishes. Others found a book that Xu Xin had written called "What is $2.2 Billion?" and said that tens of billions of investors were also squatting bread and milk.

Just an hour after the screenshot came out, Xu Xin himself released the circle of friends, confirming the authenticity of the screenshot, saying that "the problem of bread and milk has been solved, and he is also participating in community group buying every day." She also explained that because her son brought his classmates to play and there were 12 people living in the family, the demand for food was relatively large every day.

For the nearly 25 million people living in Shanghai today, grabbing food every day and participating in community group buying have become essential lessons, even Xu Xin, who is worth tens of billions of yuan, is no exception. In the face of the current situation, various fresh e-commerce companies are also struggling to ensure the supply of materials in Shanghai, ushering in a new round of growth outbreaks.

According to the "Finance and Economics" weekly, as of April 7, Dingdong Grocery shopping has recalled 500 front-line delivery workers, and the intensive supply guarantee project of "Dingdong Neighborhood Group" launched during the epidemic has now distributed more than 1 million vegetables to nearly 100,000 families in Shanghai. Dingdong buys vegetables said that its overall order volume has risen by more than 50% recently, and the single-day order volume of some sites has reached more than 2 times the usual level.

In terms of daily excellent freshness, the throughput of Shanghai Dacang has reached 4 times that of before the epidemic, and in order to ensure the supply of materials to Shanghai, it has also opened the Hangzhou Dacang, where hundreds of employees live in the warehouse and work overtime all night.

In addition, Meituan and Hungry Mo are also increasing the supply of Shanghai. Meituan launched the grocery collection list and community group meal business, drew nearly a thousand sorters from Beijing, Guangzhou and other places to support Shanghai, and also invested a number of automatic delivery vehicles to help the last kilometer of contactless delivery; Ele.me also opened a community group meal service for Shanghai, and also set up a business department called "All-round Supermarket" to be responsible for the supply of fresh goods.

In the capital market, two fresh e-commerce companies that have been listed on the market have also ushered in a sharp rise. Hafu Securities shows that the stock price of Daily Excellent Fresh rose by more than 70% this month, and the stock price of Dingdong Grocery has risen by more than 90% in three days.

(Source: Dingdong buy vegetables)

And this time Xu Xin bread milk problem, the Internet is widely circulated is Dingdong to buy vegetables to help solve, and there are a bunch of people feeding her home. In this regard, the "Finance and Economics World" weekly verified with Dingdong to buy vegetables, and the other party said that it would not comment.

Xu Xin has a deep relationship with Dingdong to buy vegetables, and her story with her founder Liang Changlin began with a sharp question in 2018. According to Xu Xin, when she saw Liang Changlin's first face, she directly asked: "All the fresh and fruit sellers have hung up, how can you think of doing fresh e-commerce?" ”

Liang Changlin, who has been crawling offline, is naturally not afraid of her questions, and he replied that after doing all the community group buying, it turned out that it was still the business of running errands and selling vegetables that was the most popular.

Xu Xin, who has always had a keen sense of business smell, did not miss this opportunity, since discovering Liang Changlin, a thousand-mile horse in the fresh e-commerce market, she officially included Dingdong to buy vegetables into the investment universe of today's capital. Before Dingdong buys vegetables to go public, Xu Xin has made three consecutive rounds of undisclosed investment in Dingdong to buy vegetables.

Since then, Xu Xin has also frequently bought vegetables for Dingdong in public, and she has said that the golden sentence "The last bastion of e-commerce is fresh, and those who get fresh get the world", which even affects the entrepreneurial direction of some people.

In 2021, when Dingdong bought vegetables to go public in the United States, Xu Xin was invited by its founder Liang Changlin to ring the bell at the scene. Xu Xin, who has short hair, wears a delicate purple suit and stands on the left side of Liang Changlin with a smile on his face, ushering in a new journey of dingdong grocery shopping with him.

However, after the listing, Dingdong buys vegetables is not as beautiful as when they rang the bell, on the day of listing, Dingdong buying vegetables once fell below the issue price, and finally reported a closing price of $23.52 per share, a slight increase of 0.09% compared with the issue price.

But since November 2021, Dingdong has entered a state of decline, with the lowest price per share being only $2.50, and the total market value has shrunk by nearly 93% compared with the peak. The sharp decline in stock prices is related to its long-term losses, net losses of 6.429 billion yuan in 2021, and also related to the poor environment of the entire Chinese stock market.

In just three months in 2022, Dingdong Grocery Not only reported the news of layoffs, but also was interviewed by the Beijing Market Supervision Bureau due to product quality problems.

However, after Dingdong bought vegetables on the market, Xu Xin did not cash out and withdraw, but chose to increase his holdings. As of December 31, 2021, capital's shareholding today has increased from 5.1% before listing to 5.9%. Suffering to see the truth, learned that Xu Xin encountered difficulties, Dingdong to buy vegetables if really the first time to help, it is also reasonable.

Has voted two "China's richest men"

Dingdong buying vegetables is only one case in Xu Xin's investment "resume". In her investment career of more than 20 years, she has invested in unicorn companies such as Three Squirrels and Boss Direct Hire, and has also invested in "super platforms" such as JD.com and Meituan. After ding lei, the founder of NetEase, and Zong Qing, the founder of Wahaha, she invested in, have successively ascended to the throne of China's richest man.

The super vision of almost "a hundred hairs and a hundred shots" has also made Xu Xin win the crown of "Venture Queen".

But Xu Xin once denied the title, "I work about 14 hours a day, work for 20 years, and have accumulated 30,000 hours." If there is a small achievement in my investment, it is because I have accumulated thirty thousand hours. ”

The Barings investment in 1998 was the starting point of Xuxin's 30,000 hours. This year, her Hong Kong Baifuqin went bankrupt, and she joined Barings Investment, pushing open the door of venture capital. However, a year later, Xu Xin encountered the "hellish challenge" of her venture capital career: investing in NetEase made her feel like she was sitting on a "crater" that could erupt at any time.

In 1999, Xu Xin approached Ding Lei and injected $5 million at a price of $5 per share. In 2000, NetEase was listed on the NASDAQ, and its stock price rose to $30 at one point. However, the good times were not long, and soon after the listing, as the Internet bubble was punctured, NetEase's stock price turned around and fell from $30 to $0.6. At that time, NetEase's stock price was less than one dollar, so that it had the risk of delisting.

"It's always the most depressing to open his board," Xu Xin recalled in a later interview, "5 hours of meetings, bad news one after another." ”

Under the difficulties, NetEase's investors decided to sell this "troublesome company". The bid was $80 million. One detail is that at that time, NetEase's account was lying on $70 million. "It's a very cheap price," but Xu Xin voted against it on the board of directors, "You can't sell the company cheaply."

(Source: Visual China)

This time finally proved the viciousness of Xu Xin's vision, and in the following years, relying on the online game "Journey to the West 2", NetEase, which bottomed out, took the lead in coming out of the trough. In 2003, NetEase had become an Internet giant with a market value of more than $1 billion, and founder Ding Lei also sat on the throne of China's richest man that year.

Xu Xin also reaped 8 times the investment income. Although the investment process was thrilling, it was not actually the project with the highest return.

Earlier than NetEase, Xu Xin came into contact with the China Talents Network, which is also an Internet company. Initially, china talents network, which was still a small company, had only 5 employees. Through a crude business plan, Xu Xin is optimistic about the future of Internet recruitment. So, she took out more than 600,000 yuan herself and became its angel investor. After that, the China Talents Network, which survived the crisis, became the vanguard of the recruitment market. Xu Xin, who withdrew at a high level, also gained about 800 times in this project.

In 2005, Xu Xin, who was just beginning to emerge, founded Today Capital. Since then, Xu Xin has created more investment myths. The most talked about is its investment in JD.com.

Around 2007, at the Shangri-La Hotel in Beijing, Xu Xin and Jingdong founder Liu Qiangdong talked from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. During the four-hour conversation, Liu Qiangdong impressed her in two places: first, Jingdong did not advertise, but its monthly sales increased by 10% compared with last month, and Xu Xin realized, "This must be a big category opportunity that has come and hit the key to consumers"; second, Liu Qiangdong did not use PPT, directly on the website to talk about his products, "very honest".

That same night, Xu Xin made an investment decision and could not let him go to see other investors.

"How much do you want?" she asked.

Liu Qiangdong replied, "$2 million." ”

"Where is $2 million?" When the category opportunity comes, you have to give up your life to run wild! Xu Xin said, "Running wild with your life requires money and bullets." ”

In the end, instead of $2 million, Xu Xin gave Liu Qiangdong $10 million, which was 5 times more than his own offer.

With this money, Liu Qiangdong began to "expand categories" and "build warehouses", and entered Shanghai, the headquarters of Newegg China. As a result, the two companies that went head-to-head started a market battle. In 2008, Newegg also expanded its product line and announced that "all goods are 4% lower than JD.com", and soon, Newegg's sales reached nearly 1 billion.

In the crisis, Xu Xin supported JD.com to fight back and helped JD.com borrow 5 times, totaling about $20 million. "We make early investments, we invest in a company, and the goal is definitely to want it to go public independently, to become the number one brand in the industry." Xu Xin thinks.

JD.com won the contest. In 2010, it was reported that JD.com's sales exceeded 10 billion yuan, while Newegg only had 1.8 billion yuan. In 2014, JD.com was listed with a market capitalization of US$28.6 billion, and today's capital has earned US$2.2 billion, equivalent to 10 billion yuan. Zhang Ying of Jingwei Venture Capital commented that Xu Xin was "a mess of cattle". After all, both Jingwei and Sequoia missed the early JD.com.

It was also after the battle of Jingdong that Xu Xin became the "queen of venture capital" that attracted everyone's attention.

In addition, Xu Xin also invested in many "star" projects. Behind Ctrip, Zhihu, Noah Zhou, Vipshop, Three Squirrels, Yonghe King, Deqingyuan Egg, True Kung Fu and other companies also have Xu Xin's figure. Among them, it is reported that she invested more than 50 million yuan in the good shop, with a return on investment of about 40 times; invested about 90 million yuan in three squirrels, with a return on investment of about 50 times; in 2021, BOSS directly hired to be listed on the NASDAQ, bringing more than 10 billion yuan of returns to Xu Xin.

With such a report card in hand, Xu Xin's net worth has also gone all the way up. According to the 2022 Hurun Rich List, Xu Xin's net worth increased by 9% to 16 billion yuan.

Good companies can't sell too soon

After becoming famous in World War I, all kinds of investors found Xu Xin with strange entrepreneurial ideas. Some reports described the scene, with someone proudly saying: "You invest money in me, I promise to become the richest man in China in 3 months!" Someone shook his fist and shouted, "Believe me, if the company's performance does not double, I will immediately jump from the stairs!" ”

In this regard, Xu Xin mostly gave a negative answer. She said in multiple interviews that whether she can become the "first brand" is the key to investing or not investing. And the first is often meant by trailblazers and innovators who want to break new ground in untouched territory. In her view, the core is the founder's vision, pattern, and boldness.

Xu Xin believes that founders should have "killer intuition" and be able to see things that others can't see. For example, Ding Lei, in the long trough of NetEase's stock price hovering at $0.6, he saw a market that had not yet exploded - massively multiplayer online games, and he also sent a vision to Xu Xin: to become the best game company. In 2002, with "Journey to the West 2", NetEase successfully turned around.

Founders also need to have super learning ability, such as Wang Xing of meituan. Among the many entrepreneurs he came into contact with, Xu Xin gave the highest score to Wang Xing. In 2015, after the merger of Meituan Dianping, Today's Capital stepped in, and in order to win this investment, Xu Xin even needed to "obtain special approval".

"We are heavily positioned in the US group, and the position ratio is so high that many investors cannot understand it," Xu Xin said, which requires investors to make judgments about the market and the founders.

It should be pointed out that in the takeaway market, Meituan is a latecomer. But when Wang Xing decided to enter the game, he first imitated, and then quickly copied this set of playing methods to the third- and fourth-tier cities, and then returned to the first-tier market, and the hungry mo that returned to God was already "overwhelmed".

If the rapid market grab is only to equalize the share, then Wang Xing's decision to build a self-built distribution system is regarded by Xu Xin as a "strategic choice to really open up the distance". This creates barriers, and when the order density reaches a certain level, the cost can be reduced. Xu Xin believes that "it is not enough to maintain the state of learning at all times, we must learn fast in order to learn and do at the same time." ”

The market is another dimension that affects Xu Xin's judgment.

After the merger of Chaji.com and 58.com, Yang Haoyong founded Guazi Used Car and Edamame New Car Network. In 2017, Yang Haoyong announced that he would integrate his existing business, upgrade it to Chehaoduo Group, and implement the dual brand operation of Guazi used car and Edamame new car network. This year, the market outlet quietly changed, from second-hand cars to new cars direct rental.

In Xu Xin's view, the auto consumer service field is "the market is big enough, and the pain points are big enough." The time has come for the Internet to subvert traditional industries, and this field has the opportunity to build a large enterprise of tens of billions of dollars.

For those enterprises that have already invested, Xu Xin believes in the concept of "long-term holding".

Xu Xin believes that good companies cannot sell too early. "If you're lucky enough and you're working very hard and bump into a couple of great companies, then you really have to hold on to it for a long time and make a lot of money on it." For example, she said that when Capital invested in Yifeng Pharmacy today, there were only 70 stores, but after the investment, the number of stores has reached 100, and sales have increased from 300 million yuan to more than 2 billion yuan. In the future, Yifeng Pharmacy will also achieve tens of billions of yuan. "The older the pharmacy, the more valuable it is, so why should I sell it?"

She also shared the joy of holding Tencent shares in the circle of friends, "16 years have passed, I have not sold a share, as soon as I have money, I will increase my position, and the return of more than 500 times is gratifying, which makes me more firmly believe in the power of brand and the power of compound growth." ”

I haven't invested in a big project in a long time

Xu Xin, who has always been regarded as the "female version of Buffett", has a similar investment logic to Buffett and has many star projects that can be handed. But after combing through her investment events in recent years, she found that it was becoming more and more difficult for her to invest in large projects as well-known as JD.com and NetEase.

Open the official website of Today Capital, showing that the investment cases of investment transcripts, including JD.com, Meituan, Liangpin Shop, Three Squirrels, Ctrip, etc. were invested many years ago, and most of the projects invested in recent years are still in the stage of obscurity.

(Source: Today Capital official website)

In the first three months of 2022, Today Capital completed only two investments, namely the strategic financing of children's cheese brand Dr. Cheese and the A+ round of financing of technology company Xinxingji. According to statistics, from 2017 to 2021, Xu Xin's capital investment events at the helm today were 13, 17, 8, 6 and 11 respectively. Although the number of capital investment firms today has increased in 2021, most of them are still in the early stages.

In 2017, in today's capital investment cases, the unicorns that can be counted as running out are Weilai, Zhihu, Mafengwo, and others like Piggy Homestay, I am at home, artificial, U treasurer, etc. have not run out so far, whether in brand awareness or in the field of the share is not high.

This phenomenon also showed in 2018, in addition to chasing old projects, the projects invested in this year have still not been able to run out of unicorns in the past four years. In 2019, today's capital investment of Miao Life, Beibei Group, And Neighbor One have all collapsed, and the fresh e-commerce platform Miao Life has failed as early as the end of that year, closing all stores and leaving the market; after the merger of Linlin One and Tongcheng Life Strategy in 2020, it finally filed for bankruptcy in July 2021 and became a member of the community group buying down; in August 2021, Beibei Group also went to bankruptcy, leaving a number of debt collection suppliers.

The most famous case of today's capital investment in 2021 is the Mo Mo Dim Sum Bureau, which was not expected to be established less than two years ago, and also broke the news of layoffs at the beginning of this year.

It can be said that the investment events of today's capital in recent years are generally not large, except for the Dingdong grocery shopping and the sudden coffee brand Manner, which has been investing, there are no other familiar brands. In Manner, unlike the long-term holding of shares in jd.com, Zhihu and other companies, Xu Xin retired his shares early.

According to the data, in May 2021, Today Capital withdrew from Manner's shareholder list, accounting for about 35% of the shares withdrawn, and the return amount was about $700 million.

It is worth noting that in the past two years, the focus of today's capital investment has also shifted, and from 2020 onwards, more of the track has been invested in hard technology. According to statistics, since 2020, Xu Xin has invested in a total of 6 technology companies, accounting for nearly one-third of the total investment.

As can be seen on the official website of Today Capital, the last two investments are not the consumption areas that Xu Xin once excelled at. In November last year, Today Capital invested in the C round of financing of Gaoxian Robot, and the joint SoftBank Vision Fund led an investment of 1.2 billion yuan. Earlier in September, Today Capital invested in Hairou Innovation, which is a warehousing and logistics robot, and led the D round of financing.

It is not that Xu Xin is unwilling to invest in the consumption field, but in the past year, the overall performance of the consumption field is not very optimistic. Tsingshan Capital issued a text shouting entrepreneurs in the field of consumption, to recognize the facts, the current industry is facing multiple difficulties such as product sales can not be sold, traffic dividends disappear, capital wait-and-see and even divestment, the only thing that can be done is to forget the past, reduce psychological expectations, reduce food and clothing, and return to the original intention.

Of course, it is not only the consumption track that is in the cold, in the context of the collapse of the entire Chinese stock market and the successive retirement of Internet celebrities, starting a business and succeeding is a hundred times more difficult than before, which also makes it much more difficult for investors like Xu Xin to invest in great companies than in the past.

Because that turbulent era has become a thing of the past.

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