Dialogue with Yikai Capital Wang Ran: Waiting Alone

Text | Yu Lili

Edit | Liu Jing

On the first day after the eleventh holiday, Wang Ran, CEO of EKai Capital, sent a self-question and answer about the metacosm.

His wife, actress Tong Yao commented in the circle of friends: 19370 words, it seems that the eleventh holiday is very idle. He obediently replied: It's not because you went to work.

Nearly 20,000 words, no title, a topic related to an inconclusive outlet, and the public sprinkling of dog food in the circle of friends are all very wangran.

As the first generation of returnees to study at Harvard in the 1990s, Wang Ran founded China's first real new economy investment bank. In 2000, when EKai Capital was founded, Tencent was 2 years old, Ali was 1 year old, Baidu was just born, and even the word "Ekai" was derived from the most popular combination of "E" and "Capital" representing the Internet at that time. Starting from the first generation of portals such as NetEase and Sina, Yikai has served many star companies in the first generation of China's Internet.

Leading the way, Yi Kai was not the one who picked the biggest fruit. In the then barbaric TMT era, a key decade that has shaped China's new business landscape to a greater extent, Yi Kai has not maintained its leading position, missing some major deals that have "changed the landscape". Its competitors have quickly established their roots, and some up-and-coming stars have risen rapidly.

Most business successes and failures are attributed to the strategic vision, execution ability, or unspeakable luck of the person at the helm. However, in the face of Yi Kai, people tend to think that this is a certain "nature" of Wang Ran: in the primary market investment bank, which pays attention to the convergence of contacts and long sleeves, he is somewhat distant and not good at scrambling. Although he has always been a gifted expressor – from print to blogging to today's social media age, he can effortlessly write a hot business observation.

This "special hobby" also happens to show Wang Ran's character. Jin Peng, who has known him for many years and has been deeply involved in Yi Kai's early entrepreneurship, believes that Wang Ran has a strong "literary popularity", which is undoubtedly an obstacle in the business world: "Businessmen want to maximize the efficiency of achieving goals, and literati care about the path and posture to achieve goals." The businessman has no self, and the literati have to be themselves. ”

But Wang Ran is still the same as me. On the afternoon of Christmas 2019, 36Kr interviewed Wang Ran once. When we were about to summarize something for Yi Kai, Wang Ran took the initiative to mention "success or failure": "Failure is at a node that should go left, you go to the right, but in the long-distance running competition, the decision-making mistakes in the process cannot be called failure."

From today's point of view, this statement may not be Wang Ran's "spiritual victory method." In the past few years, Yi Kai has found a medical health field that is more suitable for its unhurried and unhurried temperament and rhythm, a recognized "10 trillion-level market" and has emerged in it.

By 2020, in China's medical and health industry, yikai is the first among investment banking institutions in the primary market, regardless of the total number of transactions or the amount of transactions. As of now, the number of transactions in the health industry of Ekay Capital has been 150% of last year.

They have also set some industry records: Genting Shinyao, with a transaction amount of US$310 million, is the largest primary market transaction ever made in China's biomedical field; Sanbo Brain Science has become one of the largest single transactions in the medical service field in recent years with a financing amount of more than 800 million yuan; and the acquisition of Suzhou Yongding Hospital by Ekay Capital's Haigia, which also has a huge transaction volume of nearly 1.8 billion yuan, or the largest M&A transaction in China's medical service sector in 2021.

In the field of large consumption, Yikai Capital has completed a series of star transactions such as Wenheyou, Peak Sports, M Stand, Fauvism, Chali, Zhongbai Rosen, colorkey Andaki.

But the achievements of the stage did not change Wang Ran's understanding of success or failure. In a rambling conversation about the metaverse, he simulated those possible questions in the form of questions and answers:

"Six years ago, you wrote an article titled 'A'Ocolas' Future – Why I Believe VR Will Change the Entertainment Industry and the World, but VR hasn't made a big splash yet..."

In this regard, his reply was: "In fact, the progress of VR in the past six years has exceeded most people's imagination, but it has not reached the point where quantitative change produces qualitative change... We could have waited another six years. If six years later VR and the metaverse are still the way they are today...

"Count you out, don't you?"

"No, no, then wait another six years..."

For results-oriented people, this may be a kind of cunning. But it is indeed part of The Ran-style values. He likes to look at things for a long time, and he is more concerned with what is really happening, rather than a short-term immediate result.

In the change of Yi Kai, he also pays special attention to the path and posture. At Yi Kai's annual meeting earlier this year, when talking about the most proud thing he had done in the past 21 years, he said emotionally: Not how many billion dollars of major transactions, but never bribed any investor or CFO.

Xu Huaze, another partner of Wang Ran, even believes that Wang Ran is a "natural banker" because he is easy to gain trust, "He is a reader, which means that saying one is one, saying two is two, not casually agreeing to you, not bragging, not exaggerating, and not making small moves behind his back." ”

Also judging Goldman Sachs' winning magic weapon, Jin Peng believes that it is a historical opportunity (market environment) and transaction matching ability, but Wang Ran prefers to classify it as a victory of culture and values.

This kind of value is probably also the spiritual basis for him and Tong Yao together. In a sense, they are similar, and they are all willing to "wait a long time". In Wang Ran's view, Tong Yao's most attractive place for him is precisely that :"This is an actress who is not in a hurry."

Thus was born between them this marathon love that had been running for 11 years and was considered "god-like" by friends. It wasn't until 2019 that the two had a wedding in a castle in Italy. In June 2021, Tong Yao won the Best Actress Award for Magnolia. After Tong Yao won the award, Wang Ranfa's circle of friends ridiculed that he finally washed away the crime of "dragging his legs".

In the business world, the thinking and behavior of literati are undoubtedly obstacles, but in a sense, they have also achieved Wang Ran. Aside from the scrutiny of some utilitarian dimensions, there are certain qualities in him that are scarce in our time. When EKay Capital was at its loneliest, some people worried about whether it would sink to the bottom of the sea – of course, this is undoubtedly a misreading of Ekay now. But those who are familiar with Wang Ran will complete the next sentence: even if the ship really sinks one day, Wang Ran will stand at the bow of the boat and gracefully play his violin.

<h2>Here's the conversation:</h2>

<h3>"The true metaverse is only when all the galaxies, kingdoms, and tribes are connected together." </h3>

36Kr: You recently posted a long article about the metaverse with the title "No Title", which at first glance seems like a oolong.

Wang Ran: Haha, the core idea of metaversals and NFTs (non-homogeneous tokens) lies in "human artificial objects", so it is better to give the right to "create headlines" to the reader.

36 Kr: Nowadays everyone is talking about the metacosm, what is your definition of it?

Wang Ran: The metacosm is a universe with digital life as the basic form. Here people can play roles they might not be able to play in the real world, and in this capacity interact with other people in the metaverse, generate collaboration, and create value.

36 Kr: Is an extension of Internet life.

Ran Wang: Zuckerberg likens the metaverse to an Internet in which you "sit in it" rather than just "watch and use." In this sense, it can also be said that the metacosm is the next generation of the Internet, the immersive Internet, and even the ultimate Internet.

You can "fly" from Beijing to New York in a minute and perceive everything there, you can appear at the same time with tens of millions of people at the same time as tens of millions of people to support idols, you can build a restaurant that is no different from a restaurant in the real world in an hour, and you can even meet people of different dynasties in the same time and space.

36 Kr: But role-playing games aren't new. In the blogging era, you once wrote a foreign community game called "Second Life", is the metacosm a new wine in an old bottle?

Wang Ran: Previous games still followed the logic and rules set by the operator in advance to promote character development, but the first purpose of the metaverse was: unmanuable and unpredictable.

Someone may provide scenes and tools, but no one will set the plot and rules for you in advance, and everything will be pushed forward by yourself, feeling the stones to cross the river. Moreover, the development of AI and blockchain in the past decade has provided the soil for the development of this value of autonomy, automation, and dehumanization. This was a condition that was not available at that time.

36Kr: Once you were very optimistic about VR, and even posted like today. But at least for now, it's more like a wind that ends in nowhere.

Wang Ran: In fact, VR has made more progress in the past six years than most people imagined, but it has not yet reached the point of quantitative change to qualitative change. Most people still see 2016 or 2017 as the first year of VR. In this sense, it wasn't too early to come up with the CONCEPT of VR at the time. But in the past few years, VR has been subject to the development of hardware, and there has not yet been enough content to detonate the entire industry.

36Kr: But 6 years have passed since 2016, isn't it long enough?

Wang Ran: You can wait another six years.

36 Kr: Compared to ordinary people, you have a special optimism about time.

Wang Ran: Everything needs to be clear about what is short-term and what is long-term. We tend to get tied up in something that seems strong in the short term, assuming it terminates or breaks something that is more in line with the long-term trend. But in the long river of history, you will find that those seemingly powerful forces in the short term cannot stop the long-term trend.

36Kr: Some investors have said that as long as they see the three words "meta-universe" in the entrepreneur BP, they will not read it.

Wang Ran: This is similar to saying in 2000 that when you see entrepreneurs in BP, you don't look at the three words "Internet", or in 2010, you say that you don't look at the five words of "mobile Internet".

36 Kr: So you think the metacosm will be an Internet or mobile Internet-style opportunity?

Wang Ran: It may be bigger than the Internet and the mobile Internet, because the Internet and the mobile Internet are essentially doing things to connect the world, and the metacosm is essentially to recreate a world, or recreate a universe.

36 Kr: What is the biggest challenge of achieving this day?

Wang Ran: Only when all galaxies, kingdoms, and tribes are connected together to achieve boundary interconnection, mutual identity, mutual sharing of information, and mutual recognition of value, will a truly complete metacosm be formed. Of course, between 0 and 1, there will be countless transition zones and intermediate states, which can also be called metaversms, just incomplete and thorough.

36Kr: Will policy regulation be the biggest risk?

Wang Ran: The development of human history has never been only a single line of technology, but also dimensions such as social governance models. The metacosm will require everyone—including businesses, governments, and nations—to have a new "metacosm," but this is not something that can happen overnight. In this new universe, connectivity is better than isolation, and interconnectivity is better than independent kingdoms. Of course, the metacosm does not exclude government or national characteristics.

36 Kr: In short, this concept fascinates you. Your colleague told us that you would even use the term "cosmology" to describe entrepreneurs.

Wang Ran: Haha They are talking about Wen Bin of Wen Heyou. He is colorful, legendary, and has a strong Street Smart (street smart). When he was selling skewers on the street, the two cars were next to each other, and he could sell ten times as many people. He has a good sense of business smell, and he also loves to think about it, and he knows how hot the oil is to fry what things are better than others. I talked to WenBin twice, each time late. I can't talk to him about things that are too specific, but there are many things at the level of cosmology.

36 Krypton: What does it mean in your opinion to have a cosmology? Sounds a bit vain.

Wang Ran: Having a cosmology means that he has a systematic understanding of the phenomena or changes in the world, and it is logical and self-consistent, and behind this cognitive system, there are underlying value judgments or scientific judgments.

36 Kr: What is the connection between "street wisdom" and the cosmology?

Wang Ran: Street smart is actually good at achieving short-term results through adaptation. How to adapt and how flexible you want to come often comes from your cosmology and values.

36Kr: For you who love writing, you are better at communicating with such founders?

Wang Ran: Between people, there will indeed be a suitable aura. But more importantly, we have knowledge and understanding of what they do. We proposed the concept of "new space" very early on, and did not see Wen Heyou as an offline catering.

We are interested in bringing together offline traffic by injecting content, temperament and spiritual underpinning into the space, and the various business possibilities that come with it. Whether offline or online, whether it is experiential consumption or brand incubation. Wen Heyou's sense of spatial form has been constantly iterating, but the core lies in seeing space as a carrier of content, not just a carrier of catering or retail.

In a way, Wen Heyou is not an isolated project, it represents an economic phenomenon. Wen Heyou, TX Huaihai and Talk mei Harmay all reconstruct entertainment, experience and retail for specific groups of people by creating space and spatial content. It's not about the ping effect and the store effect, but about the people, the content and the brand.

36Kr: You're telling a bigger story to investors.

Ran Wang: That's because we do see a bigger story.

36 Kr: Will the future Wen heyou still focus on catering?

Wang Ran: There will always be catering in Wenheyou, but it has never been a catering brand. The continuous iteration of Wen Heyou must present more content, and the current popular script killing, escape room, situational theater, future VR, metaverse, why can't they be part of Wen Heyou?

36 Kr: Well, it's metacosm again.

Wang Ran: For today's Wen Heyou, the meta-universe should not be the focus for the time being. Because there is so much more to be done in the real "original" universe.

<h3>"I'm not actually resistant to socializing, but I don't have social cattle X." </h3>

36 Kr: When was the most difficult moment in IKay's history?

Wang Ran: One night in the summer of 2011, the news suddenly said that Huaxing helped JD.com get a large investment from DST. I can't remember the specific amount, it seems to be 500 million US dollars, that amount is not a large amount today, but it was quite shocking at the time. This means that that day may have been a watershed in the competitive landscape of e-commerce.

36Kr: As one of the earliest batch of local FA, someone once commented that you and Bao Fan were "both Shengyu and He Shengliang", but later it seemed that Huaxing ran faster.

Wang Ran: At the beginning, basically you do a project, I do a project, the amount is very small, thirty or fifty million US dollars is a big order. The impression is that the first time we talked to Huaxing PK, it seemed to be a project to do campus advertising. In the end, we gave a more conservative valuation, and they chose Huaxing. But the real watershed is JD.com. That battle gave them a great advantage when they took the head e-commerce project, and e-commerce was the biggest outlet of TMT at that time.

36Kr: What is your analysis of Ekay's failure on TMT?

Wang Ran: Failure is at a node where you should go left and you go to the right, but in long-distance running competitions, decision-making mistakes in the process cannot be called failure

36 Kr: It sounds a bit like self-identification.

Wang Ran: In the TMT field, we have indeed taken some detours and missed some opportunities. But a real Kai may not be as strong, but it is also not as conservative or weak as competitors hope.

36 Krypton: How to understand the second half of the sentence?

Wang Ran: As early as 2013 and 2014, we realized that the scale of the health industry was large enough, and from 2015 and 2016, we spared no effort or even desperately to build a team. Other groups have plans for how many people to recruit each year, but the health group does not, and there is one to recruit.

Despite the logic and data behind it, our determination in this regard is a bit like a faith-driven one. Today, the yikai medical team has a scale of 70 people, which is no second in the whole market - there is no close one. The status may be similar to when Huaxing was at its best in the TMT field. In addition, in the consumer sector, in TMT and especially in the hard technology sector, we are not absent.

36Kr: But most medical projects don't raise as much as TMT projects?

Wang Ran: When I first did the health industry, even if a project raised two or three hundred million yuan, it is not a big project today, and today's two or three hundred million US dollar projects are nothing, which is only five or six years. That's how TMT came about back then. Although there are not many single transactions in the health field today that exceed $1 billion, and there are more intersections in the fields of innovative drugs and health and TMT, in the future in the field of health, one is AI+, one is pension-related, and it must be a trillion-level opportunity.

36 Kr: Investment banks are a product of the times. Compared with TMT and consumption, is big health enough to make Yikai an investment bank with long-term influence?

Wang Ran: We don't just rely on a single engine to pull. In the health sector, M&A and M&A investment are important growth engines. Since the beginning of the previous year, we have set up a health industry M&A team, and today we have more than a dozen people, and this year we have completed seven or eight large-scale and influential transactions. I would say internally that I wouldn't be surprised if one day our health industry M&A team was as big as our health industry financing team (there are more than fifty people today).

We also try to apply our experience in the field of health to the construction of hard technology teams, hoping to use three years to make hard technology teams and health teams the same as the frontrunners.

Overall, we prefer the track with long slopes. Because then we have the opportunity to be more patient, more determined than perseverance, more than the ability to build a moat in loneliness. The opportunities that rise and fall quickly may not be suitable for us, and we may not be able to seize them.

36 Kr: There are some of your old subordinates and old friends and we mentioned that you are resistant to many social events. Do you think your personality will be an obstacle to the development of the company?

Wang Ran: In that era, we did not form a closer bondage or alliance with some of the new generation of excellent institutions in the market — I mean completely legitimate business alliances, not crooked under the table. This is indeed related to our lack of initiative, somewhat high-minded, always feel that if my project is good enough, rely on the project to speak, do not need to deliberately make friends.

But then again, you see the most bullish Bankers on Wall Street, and they are very different. Someone might be particularly social, and someone might even look a little eccentric. From an institutional point of view, in the end you still need different types of people to collaborate on a platform. Of course, I'm not really resistant to socializing, but there is no "social cow X syndrome" really.

36 Kr: If personality is not the most critical, then what do you think is the key?

Wang Ran: If there is a biggest deficiency, it is that there is a problem with the middle-level talent reserves on the TMT and consumption side, which leads to the disconnection of the middle generation and the possibility of losing the inheritance.

Investment banking is an industry that requires a master and an apprentice. If there is a problem with the composition of the team and the internal culture is not formed, it is a big problem. This is the factor that has affected us the most in reflection.

The first generation of VC and PE founders in the market are my friends. This relationship has always existed. But gradually you will find that this group of people are far away from the front line, the following friends or children, and not very good docking, there is a break.

36 Kr: In the field of big health, is this problem solved?

Wang Ran: It can be said that the lack of TMT consumption, the health and medical team has completed it - the talent structure of the two teams is completely different. Look at how many partners, how many MDs, how many VPs, pyramids are different.

<h3>"Tong Yao is an actress who is not in a hurry. I'm one of those people, too. ”</h3>

36Kr: I heard that at Yi Kai's annual meeting this year, when you reviewed the past, you said that the most proud thing is that you have never paid a bribe to an investor in 21 years.

Wang Ran: Today, some new FA were established by acting as white gloves for some investors who want long money and short money, which seems to work quickly, but it will be easy for them to ignore the real, threshold, and irreplaceable value creation.

On the other hand, the reason there are so many gray under-table trades is because you have no value. Your only way to manifest value is to rearrange the benefits.

36 Kr: It's hard to maintain moral purity in the business world, isn't it?

Wang Ran: I don't think this is cleanliness, this should be the most basic professional ethics in the industry. I respect people who have moral purity, but I can only say that we have a bottom line at best, far from being clean.

In a business society, you can't be tall and low forever, and you can't be black and white forever, all we can do is stay away from certain black and beware of possible gray. But we're on black (which should be "gray" here, right?). ) is defined more strictly than some of its peers.

36Kr: Last year, many FA also made intensive adjustments, and now that I think back to the past with Huaxing, will I feel that I always have a peer coordinate, which is also very lucky?

Wang Ran: For any industry, competition is a good thing. Whether it is Huaxing or us, we all need to face all kinds of new players. New players continue to emerge, indicating that the threshold of the industry is indeed not high enough, all called new economy investment banks, in fact, everyone plays very differently. Some are not the same species at all.

Here, there are two things that can distinguish between different types of players. The first is whether to adhere to long-term doctrine, and the second is not to adhere to institutionalization. Our first generation of FA, on the whole, is more insistent on long-termism and institutionalization. In the middle of this wave, they have some unique experiences in local methodology. The third generation is not very good to evaluate because the time is too short.

36Kr: When a big business wave comes – such as the big consumption of the past year or two, bubbles and irrationality are inevitable, how does the FA as the intermediary balance returns and reputation?

Wang Ran: Out of the rationality of the general situation, we need to know what is not sustainable, but this does not prevent us from racing against the clock on specific projects and taking advantage of a favorable market environment. After all, we represent financing customers, if you can get a good valuation why not?

However, it is important to be wary that if the valuation is too advanced, it may not be beneficial to the company, because it will lead to the next round of financing. In fact, there are already a number of companies today that are becoming more and more difficult to get the money behind because the valuation of the previous round is too high.

36Kr: Now almost all investment banks are also doing investment, is this an inevitable choice?

Wang Ran: If you look at the valuation of global investment banks, compared with many industries we serve, the valuation is very low because the model is backward. We discuss the business model with customers every day, but in fact, our own model is manpower-intensive, not a good model. You don't necessarily make money with your eyes wide open, let alone when you sleep. Therefore, in terms of model, the linkage between FA and asset management is a natural choice.

We started investing 10 years ago, initially with our own balance sheet, with our first USD fund in 14 years, the first RMB fund and a full-time asset management team in 17 years. At present, our RMB fund with a total size of 2 billion yuan and focusing on the health industry should soon complete its first closure.

36 Kr: Finally, I want to talk about your love life. Before getting married, you and Tong Yao were in love for 11 years, and the average person may feel that it is too long, not to mention that one of you is in the financial industry and the other is in the acting industry.

Wang Ran: Tong Yao is an actress who is not in a hurry. Ever since I met her, she's lived at her own pace: peaceful, less social, and rarely at entertainment showbiz parties. In her circle, it was almost a state of incompatibility.

Maybe I am also such a person: whether a single business has or is not as influential on me, and I am more concerned about whether some interesting long-term trends can be captured in advance.

36Kr: Some people previously questioned that Tong Yao's best actress in the Magnolia Award was the product of her husband's capital operation.

Wang Ran: She was interviewed not long ago, and the host asked her this question, and she said at the time, "We have been together for 13 years, if it is the power of capital, why did capital go before?" Where is the capital not to take advantage of the early praise, but to observe more than ten years and then praise. You can't wait so long for Apple and Tesla stocks.

In fact, from the time I know her, she has always been the kind of person who is relatively light and breezy, filming every year when there is a suitable scene, and not resting to do what she likes to do.

36 Kr: How has she changed you over the years?

Wang Ran: Hairstyles are definitely one of them. When I first met her many years ago, I used to be one or nine minutes old, and I needed to spray hairspray every day.

36 Kr: Your colleagues and friends have expressed their appreciation for your writing ability without any objection, and some have even said that if you did not go to the investment bank, but went to the New York Times or The Times, you might be a good writer in this life. If you were to summarize the more than twenty years of business life you have experienced, what would you most like to express?

Wang Ran: I think it may still be related to the experience of our generation, that is, no matter what, we will still be willing to believe in the market economy from the bottom of our hearts.

36Kr: Many of your contemporaries are mostly nearly retired, what is attracting you to this industry today?

Wang Ran: What really attracted me was to be able to stand on the bridge and watch social change, and participate in it with capital and transactions. The sense of accomplishment of being an investment bank ultimately comes from these senses of participation, even if it is somewhat levitating and illusory.

(Thanks to Hong Hu for his special contribution to the text)