is different from the majority of venture capital siting CBD office, source capital is located in Zhongguancun, there are several companies it invested, on the same floor. There are not enough workplaces and borrow their offices from time to time. On the wall of the source capital, photos of Jobs, Buffett, Disney, Ma Yun, Ma Huateng, Bezos, Google Gemini, WAL-MART old Watson and others are displayed on the wall of the source code. Cao Yi inspired his team and his company.
the top student of the college entrance examination in Jinhua, Zhejiang Province, into the computer department of Tsinghua University, Cao Yi recalls that there seemed to be only two pursuits in his college age: the first is to get first, second as full as possible. Wang Xing said to "the financial world" Weekly: "so, Cao Yi is a VC with ten years of investment experience at the age of 30, and Cao Yi's strength, intelligence and strength are very strong. I would like to bet that he will become a leader in the new generation of VC. "
investment is also a kind of "bandwidth sharing"
from the University, Cao Yi showed a keen interest in resource docking. It seems inevitable that in Tsinghua High Performance Research Institute, his subject is related to resource matching: the main direction is called bandwidth sharing. In
2004, Cao Yi met Tsinghua brother and Sogou CEO Wang Xiaochuan. Still reading senior Cao Yiwen Wang Xiaochuan: "when do you start your business? I'll help you find someone. " Wang Xiaochuan and Tsinghua computer department 96 grade Zhou Feng returned home from Berkeley to build a laboratory in Wudaokou, and several members of the early team were all Cao Yi's help. In order to improve the efficiency of resource docking, he also founded a Tsinghua employment and entrepreneurship Association.
during the school period, Cao Yi began to participate in the investment, 2004-2006 years inauguration of LIAN CE source, PPStream is the first project he saw. He created an industry: Anime brand, Ali. But when Ali was founded soon, Cao Yi realized that he was not suitable for starting a business. He invited a Tsinghua alumni to be CEO and quit.
can't be a poker player and invest in poker players. After graduating from Tsinghua University, Cao Yi worked in a consulting firm and made two level market quantitative investments. He also went to UC for half a year BD and was invited by Zhou Kui to join Sequoia. In those five years, Shen Napeng and Zhou Kui had great influence on Cao Yi's work and way of thinking. More than once, he has mentioned Shen Napeng's "100 drawer theory": Shen's ability to manage time is very strong. He seems to have 100 drawers in his mind. Every day, he opens to see how things are going, closing a drawer and reprocessing the next one, without interference from each other, very clear and straightforward.
during the Sequoia, every time there was a project decision meeting, Cao Yi took the opportunity to observe the investment and decision-making ideas of several big guys. "Our project will be open, Lao Shen how to ask questions, what the angle of concern is, everyone can see it, but learning more and less is their own problem." What impressed Cao Yi by
was that there were 6 projects on the same day when Sequoia invested in vip.com. Shen Napeng clearly judged that it was far above the value of other projects and gave unusual attention. After that weekend, Shen Napeng called vip.com CEO Shen Ya to get straight to the point: "give me a reason not to vote?"
Cao Yi later learned that many institutions were bidding for vip.com and Sequoia did not have absolute advantage. Shen Napeng's overweight contributed to this financing. "He can always say the right words at the right time, and make the right decisions." After leaving Redwood, he meets Shen Napeng regularly, and Sequoia is also one of the cornerstone investors of the source code.
New VC often admired several new models of Silicon Valley: hatching dozens of "unicorns" YC, Peter Tell from zero to one, Reid Hoffman, founder of the Paypal gangs, the Internet legend Mark Anderson and Ben Hogg Watts. Cao Yi has a special love for A16Z. The family successfully invested in the top VC of Skype, Facebook, Instagram, Airbnb, and so on. In the team of dozens of people, only 6 people were investing in the daily life, and all the others were concentrating on helping the entrepreneurs.
A16Z pays great attention to post management, and has a special marketing team to help the entrepreneurial team get attention. The talent team helps the startup companies recruit new recruits, and the market development team helps the venture to get customers. In Silicon Valley, A16Z downplayed the concept of hierarchy and expanded nodes to the periphery of their interpersonal networks.
this kind of play is precisely the details that Cao Yi has smelled the VC industry may be overturned in the past few years. The new generation of entrepreneurs is very aware of the interests of founders and venture capitalists. It is hard for a single type of investment organization to get their favor again. In the daily communication of
, Cao Yi did not often depict the vision of the source code to the invested enterprises, and rarely mentioned the institutions such as A16Z and YC that he praised. But at the strategic and operational level of the fund, their impact on source code is imperceptible. In the current 12 people's team, there are 6 investment managers in charge of daily front stage investment business. There are no lack of media, product manager and investment bank background in the 6 people, but they have no first-line experience in the past. This is Cao Yi's intention.
this strategy may be equally flawed. The source team chose to spend a lot of time on post investment service. This year's goal is to help 200 people in the investment company. This is very different from other institutions in terms of time and energy expenditure, and it can not be verified whether a lot of energy can be invested to get good returns. Cao Yi's confusion comes from the daily management of the company itself. On the other hand, it comes from the outside of the industry. "Sometimes I wonder if we are enjoying ourselves. Or we may spend too much time protecting them too.
Cao Yi began to feel uneasy about running too fast. For example, what kind of rhythm should we grow with? Is it necessary to recruit more people? What are the opportunities for A shares and new three boards? Investor Cao Yi is starting to face the same problem as entrepreneurs. If the source code is accelerated, the PR strategy is more radical.
"there is a difference between commanding others to fight and fighting themselves." Cao Yi admits, "when I manage an institution as a founder, I inevitably have inertia and subjectivity, and I always want to do more when I expand the field in the industry. Too smooth development can make people swollen, so entrepreneurs will be "schizophrenic". Cao Yi's style of playing Dezhou poker was much more in the first hand and the first three cards, and the back followed very little, and the amount of participation dropped sharply from the fourth, but he often sneaked into the last two bad situations when he won the big money.
almost nobody remembered that Cao was one of the founder of the aaver ten years ago - the anime image of the healing department was far away from the VC industry he was engaged in today, but he is Cao Yi's WeChat head.