Mit 24 Jahren kam er nach Peking und schickte spontan eine Bewerbung an Zhang Yiming.

When talking about the early investors in Zhang Yiming and Toutiao, people often first think of Wang Qiong.

Among them, there are always some figures rarely mentioned. This year, well - known overseas investor Matt Huang (Huang Gongyu) rarely shared one of the luckiest investments in his life in a podcast conversation - 13 years ago, he accidentally invested in Zhang Yiming.

After listening carefully, one can't help but sigh at the element of luck involved.

As early as 2010, he graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and founded the social media analytics company Hotspots. Two years later, the company was acquired by Twitter. He quickly completed his initial capital accumulation and joined Twitter himself.

At that time, on the other side of the ocean, the wave of China's mobile Internet was in full swing. Sensing that many American VCs were flocking to China to seek investment opportunities, 24 - year - old Huang Gongyu took a one - week leave and flew to Beijing with some friends familiar with China's venture capital and technology circles.

Unexpectedly, an investment that would yield ten - thousand - fold returns in the future was born.

Thirteen years ago, an unexpected investment with ten - thousand - fold returns

The trip to Beijing lasted only a few days. They went from one meeting to another, meeting many Chinese startups. Huang Gongyu admitted that at that time:

“I didn't plan to make any investments. I was just trying to learn.”

Then they came to the office of Toutiao, located in a shabby residential building in Beijing. Huang Gongyu remembered the scene: he was pulled into a small kitchen and saw an old refrigerator, a simple set of IKEA - style tables and stools, and Zhang Yiming, who he was meeting for the first time. Toutiao had just been founded about half a year ago. Sitting there with the translator, several people had a conversation.

With the help of the translator, he understood that Zhang Yiming was going to create a personalized news app. Similar projects had been attempted in the United States before but had not succeeded. “It was a very unique experience. When he was speaking, I might not understand what he meant. Then the translator would translate it for me, and I could understand.”

Although Huang Gongyu didn't quite like this startup idea, he was attracted to Zhang Yiming. Due to the language barrier, when Zhang Yiming was elaborating on the company's vision, Huang Gongyu would focus on observing his non - verbal cues and could feel his ability and dedication.

Moreover, there was another thing that impressed Huang Gongyu: from the very beginning, Zhang Yiming could see the end - game, that is, the global attention and media market. From day one, he was focused on building an international business. “After that meeting, I felt that, oh my god, I had to find a way to support this guy.”

After returning, Huang Gongyu immediately contacted an intermediary to invest in Zhang Yiming and finally obtained some different types of shares in Toutiao. Huang Gongyu revealed that the valuation at that time was approximately between 20 million and 30 million US dollars.

As we all know, Toutiao has now become ByteDance, a global powerhouse. Huang Gongyu mentioned a figure in the interview. Currently, in the secondary market, ByteDance's valuation is approximately between 200 billion and 300 billion US dollars. In other words, that investment back then would bring a ten - thousand - fold return. Because he firmly believed that ByteDance could become the largest company in China, Huang Gongyu still holds most of his shares to this day.

It seems that fate plays its part. Because he sold his company to Twitter that year, Huang Gongyu had the funds to become an angel investor. In fact, besides Toutiao, he also invested in companies like Instacart and Plangrid and joined Sequoia Capital as a partner in 2014. In 2018, he co - founded his own investment institution with Fred Ehrsam, the co - founder of Coinbase.

Looking back, this seems more like a kind of “luck” - “Let's not pretend this is some great skill. It was a good investment, but like many early - stage investments, it was just an opportunity to say yes.”

But this is exactly the opportunity that many people fail to seize.

They were the earliest investors in Zhang Yiming

Zhang Yiming's financing story has always been a topic of great interest. Looking back, in the early days, Toutiao was rejected by most investment institutions and couldn't raise funds.

It wasn't until a few investors stepped forward that several classic early - stage investment cases were created.

Wang Qiong, a partner at SIG Asia Investments, created a legend. In the early years, she invested in Kuxun, where Zhang Yiming worked, and 99fang, which he founded. In September 2011, Zhang Yiming approached Wang Qiong and expressed his distress. He thought that the mobile Internet was a great opportunity and wanted to do something, but he hadn't figured it out yet.

On January 29, 2012, the seventh day of the first lunar month, Zhang Yiming, who had made up his mind, invited Wang Qiong to meet at a coffee shop. A classic scene occurred: on a napkin in the coffee shop, Zhang Yiming drew and explained the prototype of the product he envisioned, which was roughly what Toutiao is today. Wang Qiong was impressed and immediately decided that SIG would participate in both the angel round and the A - round.

In March 2012, ByteDance Technology Co., Ltd. was established. Wang Qiong, on behalf of SIG, invested 80,000 US dollars. Later, Zhang Yiming visited a number of investors, but the financing didn't go smoothly. At the end of 2012, SIG invested another 1 million US dollars in Toutiao and provided a 1 - million - US - dollar bridge loan.

Thanks to its angel investment in Toutiao, SIG is expected to set the record for the project with the highest return in China's primary market.

Zhou Zijing also joined in the angel round. He met and invested in Zhang Yiming in 2012 as well. Zhou Zijing had started businesses, worked as a product manager, and had two stints at Huaxing. He valued Zhang Yiming's background as an engineer and was also frustrated by the lack of good news apps on the market. Therefore, after learning about Zhang Yiming's startup idea, he invested without much hesitation - he borrowed a sum of money and gave Zhang Yiming 2 million RMB.

Toutiao was also Liu Jun's first angel investment project. He was once the deputy director of content at Sina, then the vice - president and editor - in - chief of Hexun.com, and the vice - president of Qihoo 360. At Hexun.com, he had developed a product called “personal portal”. In 2012, in a restaurant called Zui'ai in Zhongguancun, Zhang Yiming told Liu Jun that he could use technology to filter out good content from social networks. Liu Jun was convinced and became his angel investor.

These are Zhang Yiming's several angel investors, which also highlights the regrets of those who missed out. For example, Wang Qiong once took Zhang Yiming to raise funds from Zhu Xiaohu of Jinshajiang Venture Capital. However, Zhu Xiaohu thought Zhang Yiming was too gentle - “This young man looks so listless. He's not my type of investment target” - and didn't invest.

Later, when Toutiao was struggling with its B - round financing, Wang Qiong found Yuri, the head of DST, for Zhang Yiming. In 2014, Sequoia China got the opportunity to lead the C - round investment and continued to increase its investment in the D - round in 2016. In addition, General Atlantic, Source Code Capital, SoftBank Vision Fund, Tiger Global Management, CCB International, KKR, Primavera Capital Group, Yunfeng Capital, Hony Capital, etc. made investments at different times, and more and more people tried every means to get involved in ByteDance's financing.

However, the legendary era of angel investment is gone.

Casual luck

Looking back, many angel investment stories seem rather casual.

In 2016, Wang Xingxing had just graduated with a master's degree from Shanghai University. The robotic dog XDog he developed won a prize in a startup competition in 2015, which once made him consider dropping out of school to start a business. Then he approached several investors he met in the startup competition, but no one was willing to invest. So Wang Xingxing went to work at DJI.

It wasn't until August 2016 that Wang Xingxing received his first investment of 2 million RMB. He revealed in an interview that the money was invested by an individual from Beijing. “He approached me on his own initiative and transferred the money without even signing an agreement.” Business registration information shows that Yin Fangming invested 2 million RMB in Unitree Technology in August 2016. The investment community also learned from informed sources that Yin Fangming has been active as an angel investor in the robotics industry.

An even more classic example is Song Tao and Mihoyo.

In 2012, Cai Haoyu, Liu Wei, and Luo Yuhao had exhausted their entire 100,000 - RMB startup capital and were repeatedly rejected by many VCs. In a desperate situation, Song Tao from Skymobi invested 1 million RMB in this startup team, relieving the young men's urgent need. It's hard to believe that Song Tao decided to invest the money even before contacting the Mihoyo team.

Many years later, Genshin Impact became a huge hit, and Mihoyo has become an unparalleled force in the Chinese gaming industry. Song Tao is the angel investor of this phenomenon - level company and the only external investor.

The return is astonishing. Song Tao's investment earned him a 15% stake in Mihoyo. Based on Mihoyo's valuation of approximately 160 billion RMB at the beginning of this year, the return on this investment has reached 24,000 times.

“Most of the 'Six Little Dragons of Hangzhou' don't have a startup background, but there is always someone called an angel investor willing to give them that money, and finally, they create some technological innovation myths in our eyes.” Gong Hongjia, the chairman of Jiadao Private Capital and the angel investor of Hikvision, once said. In the early years, his classmates from Huazhong University of Science and Technology founded Hikvision. Generous Gong Hongjia invested 2.45 million RMB without much hesitation, and unexpectedly, the return in the future exceeded 20,000 times.

It is these acts of generosity that have enabled great companies to survive in desperate situations.

“Angel investors often seem to casually give a sum of money, which may give birth to a great startup project and a great era.”

This article is from the WeChat official account “Investment Community” (ID: pedaily2012), written by Yang Jiyun and published by 36Kr with authorization.