"Mr. Zhu, I want to stay too, but the table is gone."

If you look at the Chinese venture capital circle as a class, Wu can be described as a "conspicuous bag", with the best grades, but he can appear in the center of every activity. Shen and Zhang are studying gods, and learning gods only competes with them, and others can't talk to them, and they don't need to communicate with others. Next to Xueshen, there are usually scholars:

To outsiders, they are only one position away from learning gods, and it seems that they can catch up as long as they work hard, but they always seem to be not working so hard.

Therefore, compared with Xueshen, scholars are usually more willing to "look at the world", and are willing to tilt the volume a little bit, so that you can look at the answer - there is a bit of sympathy here, how crooked, how much crooked, how long it is crooked, and the initiative is still in the others. When you are in a bad mood, or "unwillingly" to make trouble again, the top students have no patience to wait for you to align the granularity: "You don't know this question?"

In my opinion, Zhu is a typical top student. He is willing to repeatedly lecture on the topic of China venture capital to his classmates on different occasions, the language is popular, full of emotions, and when listening, it is easy to be substituted into the rhythm. But whenever it comes to the key, there is always a feeling of "you first do this, this and this, and then that and that, you understand".

What is the result, as soon as you learn it, you will be wasted as soon as you write it.

The difference between a scholar and an ordinary person is in this cheesy "eight words". The temperament of a scholar is too easy to become the protagonist, and we happen to be in an era where we are extremely obtuse with the unevenness of the world. The ensuing reality is that a small number of people who can't experience the joys and sorrows of most people have become the spokesperson of the group, and the joys and sorrows of most people have become "grave wishes".

"Is there a chance I won't get off the table?"

The reason why I got entangled in this matter is mainly because Zhu was on an issue of "Super Investor" on ChinaVentures.

I won't repeat what Zhu said specifically. In short, what you need to know is that this article is very popular - according to the editor of ChinaVenture.com, it has created a record for the fastest growth in reading volume in 2024 - Mr. Zhu talked about the things that everyone is most concerned about, and has achieved considerable agreement or disagreement.

Perhaps most recognizable is his mantra repeated several times by the editors who asked the difficult questions: stay at the table, stay relevant.

Many people in my circle of friends quoted this sentence as a retweet copy, praising this as an admirable and most needed investor spirit at the moment, suitable for self-encouragement.

I know the editor surnamed Dong who voted for him. This person is cunning in nature, he put this sentence into the title, and repeated it three times, and the visual error formed is: Zhu is shouting, don't get off the table, don't get off the table, don't get off the table.

The more I emphasize this sentence, the more I mutter: Who is this sentence for?

If "don't get off the table" is simply and crudely interpreted as "don't get cleared", there is obviously an implicit premise in this sentence: we have a choice - but for most of us, it's a luxury.

Japanese finance writer Kuwabara Minoru chronicles this history in her column "Heisei Blues: Japan's Financial Industry Struggling in the Post-Bubble Period":

The most emblematic event of the Japanese economic bubble that is now known today occurred on December 29, 1989, when the Nikkei index reached an all-time high of 38,915 points, and people's confidence was so inflated that there was no such thing as "corporate credit risk" in Japan's venture capital market at that time, because everyone believed that risk was covered by Japan's "three-stage system" (banks committed to providing protective support to large companies and the government ensuring that financial institutions did not fall into a systemic crisis).

However, just nine months later, on October 1, 1990, the Nikkei fell directly below 20,000 points, and the index returned to about half of the peak of the bubble. By 1992, the number of non-performing assets held by Japanese financial institutions had reached 8 trillion yen, 13 trillion yen in 1993, and $4 billion in 1995. This exponential growth has focused the main work of the financial industry on "disposing of non-performing assets", but "disposing of non-performing assets" was ultimately a non-rewarding business in the cycle at that time, which consumed a large amount of the bank's existing assets.

Eventually, marked by the successive bankruptcies of Hokkaido Takushoku Bank, Sanyo Securities, and Yamaichi Securities in November 1997, the financial industry began to collapse, forcing the Japanese government to decide in 1998 to use public funds to support the banking industry under tremendous public pressure.

To put it bluntly, after 1990, Japan's financial industry was not a "good table". But the subtle thing is that this set of data emerges at this point:

From 1990 to 1995, the number of people employed in Japan's financial industry continued to climb to a record high of about 2.63 million. It wasn't until 1997 that the number of people employed in the financial industry experienced a "cliff-like decline".

More subtly, as mentioned above, after 1990 Japan launched a series of measures to try to revitalize the financial industry, including but not limited to fiscal stimulus, monetary easing, and deregulation, and to some extent effective:

There were brief recoveries in 1996 and 1999, with GDP growth reaching 5% in 1996, making it the fastest growing economy in the G7. However, the number of people employed in Japan's financial industry has shown a "no return" decline, and as of 2023, the number of people employed in Japan's financial industry has decreased to about 1.55 million.

I have always wondered why there is such a clear mismatch between the financial employment curve and the development curve of the economic bubble? Didn't the Japanese financial clerks in 1990 really fail to perceive that "things seem to have changed"? Why did they suddenly lose confidence collectively in 1997? Isn't it a proper thing for financial people to be more predictive than ordinary people?

Thinking about it, the most reliable answer to "don't play the table" is what Zhu said to himself and the team. Just like Wang Jianguo said, "A sentence that rhymes very much will become very reasonable", these words seem to be such a slogan, which has the effect of entering the brain, what you want is an instant sense of identity, and what you want is a simple emotional identity.

As for ordinary people, it would be nice to be able to go all out to find a table. If it weren't for the table being removed, who would want to come down?

It is also worth pondering such a conversation.

ChinaVenture: At that time, we made a summary and said that your general logic is:

Q: Can you vote? A: I'm quite comfortable.

Q: Have you raised any money? A: I still have money.

A: I don't want to raise a lot of money.

A: I have a profit dividend.

Q: When can I get a refund? A: Let's talk about interest rate cuts.

As a bystander, I don't want to talk about whether these two people are "sincere" or not. But reading between the lines is precious, because this is a state that multi-fund managers cannot have.

I have worked as an LP and an IR, assisted many guidance funds to do GP interviews, and have been exposed to a lot of underwater information. The most intuitive feeling is that many IRs have complained to me that they have not opened a new fund for three years, and they have been trapped in a cycle of raising and yellowing, and then starting to raise again.

The scale of fundraising is discussed, and the initial 30 billion will usually become 10 billion after a communication, and 50% of the 100000000000 will not be able to handle the market-oriented funds, and it will be rounded off, and it is also yellow.

I saw a set of data before, the number of private equity managers who have been cancelled will be 327 in February 2024 alone, and the number of liquidations is more intense than I thought. Even though there are more than 20,000 stocks in the market, there are still an average of 2 shots, but the investment range is in the top 30 range, and it is impossible to even create a field for dialogue.

What a luxury to stay at the table?

I also thought about another possibility, Mr. Zhu's vague Q&A can be popular, including whether the vague phrase "don't play the table" can be popular, whether it is the rise of a "investment philosophy":

It is a kind of vigilance against "certainty" and a kind of awe of "possibility", so that it begins to pursue the perception of "rhythm", and finally does not seek to understand it has become a new requirement that needs to be adhered to.

You see, he has mentioned many times that consumption cannot be abandoned, and that the pet economy and the silver economy are still possible - these words have been fresh in recent years? So why is it that what everyone has recited many times can become the focus of being crossed out after Zhu stamps it?

Perhaps it can only be said that we are too wary of the so-called common sense – this is an era of pseudo-common sense. Or to illustrate, this is a time when people generally underestimate themselves.

By the way, after yesterday's explosion, Zhang from Jingwei refuted three long circles of friends in a row from the perspective of "art". If you haven't watched, I'll give you some excerpts:

1) Unless the scale of your fund is very, very small, and you can invest in high-quality companies with income and profitability in the middle and late stages, and you can force them to sign this kind of dividend clause on the basis of people's excellent ability, and then through dividends, through growth, more and more profits, after 5 years, maybe you and I will be sad to divide back the size of a small fund...... If that's the case, then what's the point of institutionalizing this kind of investment?

2) If a fund is still of normal size, even if it is only 300 million to 400 million US dollars to invest in consumption or a certain industry with a high profit margin, and there is income and good profits in the middle and late stages of investment, then if people are high-speed and benign development companies, or they want to invest money in development, why should they pay dividends? Even if he agrees to the terms of this dividend, then his dividend is not 100% In fact, a small part of the profits can be divided, distributed to a lot of investors in this relatively healthy company, he will have a lot of investors, that is a drop in the bucket for you, you add up all these companies, assuming that your success rate is 100%, these money will not return your principal for 5 years. So how can it be calculated?

Zhang is a person who is more truthful about everything, a person who will assume the possibility according to experience, and he instinctively hopes that the conclusions will be controllable.

It's a blessing to be able to see the confrontation between the two investment philosophies in this way, but I remember that when I was a child, every time I finished the exam, the teacher didn't let me answer correctly, even with the top students.

Xueba, you sit down

When I was a child, I asked Xueba, how did you study?

Xueba said, I just play every day!

I'm waiting for a scumbag, and if I believe it, it's broken.

Student Zhu, don't say it, sit down!

In the face of macro changes, everyone should see what cards they have in their hands and what cards they can play. You have to admit that you are an ordinary person, and when the tide of the times comes, you may not be able to bear it.

Xueba's homework is not something that can be copied if you want to. He writes 100 points, and if you copy it, maybe it will be 0 points.

Li Yu: Contributing author, investor and best-selling author