Xu Xin got in the car.
It's been a long time since Xu Xin was last seen.
According to a Bloomberg report, on Wednesday, in a fierce auction of ByteDance's old shares among as many as seven institutions, Capital Today, led by Xu Xin, finally won with a bid of nearly $300 million.
As a result, ByteDance's corresponding valuation is about $480 billion. The investment community also confirmed this information from ByteDance's investors.
Actually, Xu Xin and Zhang Yiming talked about financing in the early years, but she had doubts about the $7 billion financing terms proposed by Zhang Yiming at that time and didn't make an investment. "I understood too late and missed this opportunity." Since then, missing out on Zhang Yiming has become a great regret in her heart.
Although it's late, she finally didn't miss it - Xu Xin still chose to get on board. This is also one of the few remaining opportunities in the primary market to participate in ByteDance.
Investors scramble for ByteDance's old shares, and Xu Xin joins in
How popular are ByteDance's old shares?
According to Bloomberg, this ByteDance equity transaction attracted many potential buyers. At most, seven bidders participated together, so the final price also soared -
The shares sold by BOC Group, an early institutional investor of ByteDance, were initially priced at about $200 million (corresponding to a ByteDance valuation of about $360 billion). By the time of the final transaction, the price had climbed to nearly $300 million, corresponding to a valuation of $480 billion (about over 3.4 trillion RMB).
This time, Xu Xin got involved as she wished.
Actually, as star old shares in the secondary trading market, the premium transfer of ByteDance's old shares is almost the norm in the market. Since 2021, the demand for purchasing ByteDance's old shares in the market has become more and more frequent, and the price has been soaring all the way. People like Capital Today who missed the early investment opportunities are all looking for a ticket to enter ByteDance in the secondary market.
The report cited people familiar with the matter as saying that the intense bidding in this auction was largely because the shares sold by BOC Group were a rare opportunity to obtain a large number of existing ByteDance shares at once.
Obviously, ByteDance's old shares have become a "hard currency" in the market.
Back to Xu Xin's transaction this time, although a single and relatively small - share transaction cannot fully represent ByteDance's overall valuation, a valuation of over 3.4 trillion RMB is still astonishing.
Making up for the regret of missing Zhang Yiming back then
With this move, an old story is brought up again.
Xu Xin met Zhang Yiming in the early years, and they talked about financing. Zhang Yiming directly asked for $7 billion. "I was shocked when I heard that. As an early - stage venture capital fund, we've never seen such an expensive deal." For an early - stage venture capital fund, such an amount is obviously too large.
Ultimately, Xu Xin missed out on ByteDance.
As we all know later, ByteDance grew into a global Internet giant at an astonishing speed. Countless VC investors who missed it beat themselves up, losing a glorious chapter in their investment careers.
"Actually, I didn't understand it." In a conversation with the Alumni Association of Nanjing University, Xu Xin rarely reflected, "There's a saying that you can't earn money beyond your cognition."
She revealed that she didn't understand the content - and - advertising model until she studied the Winner Pattern later. In particular, a sentence said by Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, gave her a deeper understanding of this model - in the future, content will no longer be in the form of Search but will be distributed to everyone in the form of Feed streams. It means that even an advertisement should be well - made because it will be seamlessly integrated into the content Feed stream.
"But I understood too late. By that time, the valuation of Douyin had multiplied by five, and I missed this opportunity." Xu Xin said regretfully.
A similar situation also happened when deciding whether to invest in Pinduoduo founded by Huang Zheng. An intern at Capital Today printed out all of Huang Zheng's speeches back then, but they still missed Pinduoduo. It wasn't until many years later that Xu Xin re - studied Pinduoduo and completed the mental journey from doubting Pinduoduo to understanding it and finally becoming an investor in Pinduoduo - by building a position in Pinduoduo in the secondary market.
Looking back on recent years, the eagerness to invest in ByteDance in the primary market has never stopped, but the regular "boarding" channels have long been closed. Until this time, Xu Xin led Capital Today to win in the particularly fierce competition for old shares, even though ByteDance's valuation is now far different from before.
Timing
Almost everyone is waiting for ByteDance to go public.
To date, the shareholder structure behind ByteDance is complex, including SIG Asia Investments, Source Code Capital, DST Global, Sequoia China, Hillhouse Capital, Carlyle Group, General Atlantic, Coatue Management, SoftBank Vision Fund, KKR, Yunfeng Capital, Primavera Capital, etc.
Once it successfully goes public, it will surely be recorded in the history of the venture capital circle.
But what's even more noteworthy is that the increase in ByteDance's valuation in this transaction is a vivid portrayal of the re - evaluation of Chinese technology assets at present.
As we've all felt this year, international capital, which used to take a wait - and - see attitude, now shows a "fear of missing out" (FOMO) mentality again and doesn't want to miss the opportunity of China's technological rise. Internet giants represented by ByteDance have seized this wave of the AI boom and started a new technological narrative.
After all the twists and turns, the best assets are still in China.
This article is from the WeChat official account “Investment Circle” (ID: pedaily2012), written by Yang Jiyun and Zhou Jiali, and is published by 36Kr with authorization.