Looking Back at 2023: The World Has Really Changed

By Lili Yu, Zhiyan Chen, Muxin Xu, Qian Ren, Jiaxiang Shi

Edited by Lili Yu, Jing Liu

ByteDance's total revenue surpassed its longtime rival Tencent; upstart Pinduoduo's market cap briefly eclipsed Alibaba's; dollar funds kept sinking into depression while Middle Eastern capital rose. The world seemed to have flipped completely upside down. More than ten days into 2024, many stories from 2023 continue to reverberate. For this year's review, we decided to revisit the hot events and figures covered by Waves — to see how Emma, the "leading lady" who scored her first IPO yet endured a rare collision of life's extremes, would summarize her 2023; how Bai Jingwen, the Orillusion founder caught in the Qiming Venture Partners controversy, envisions his company's fate in 2024; what Song Xiangqian, the consumer investor with an unusually strong urge to speak his mind, makes of the Zibo barbecue craze and the Harbin tourism boom; whether Allen Zhu, who sparred multiple rounds with Fu Sheng over his view that ChatGPT was unfriendly to startups, has revised his position; and what changes await Hongshan after its three-way split... In a sense, these people and events reshaped 2023 and, by extension, the future of investing and business. In these follow-ups, we also see the experiences of many individuals — like a consumer investor's anxiety about "tech cred" in this era; like how a dollar fund investor learned to pinch pennies; like why "investors becoming influencers" evolved from skepticism to understanding to emulation in the span of a single year. Time is turning many people into versions of themselves they never could have imagined, and 2023 accelerated it all.

Bai Jingwen, the Entrepreneur at the Center of the Qiming Incident

Some Ventures Really Require Conviction

As exit-driven investment, buybacks, and DPI became buzzwords in the 2023 venture capital industry, the once largely warm relationship between VCs and founders began to shift — even turning confrontational. In September, a self-media outlet reported that during an online roadshow, a founder had been joined without prior notice by a rival company's founder posing as a "partner" of the investing institution, allegedly to extract business intelligence. The implicated firm, Qiming Venture Partners, launched an internal investigation overnight and within two weeks issued its harshest penalties since founding: three members of the deal team were respectively suspended from investment activities, demoted, and had their salaries cut. The entrepreneur at the center of this was Bai Jingwen, founder of Orillusion.

Today, Bai Jingwen shared his "year-end review" with Waves: after that sudden "controversy," what struck him most was the "unity" his entire team demonstrated. Not a single person chose to leave. Everyone underwent sweeping internal reforms together. "There's no need for self-congratulation, but some entrepreneurial projects really do require conviction to sustain."

Orillusion is positioned as foundational infrastructure software for 3D application scenarios. In this year of AI explosion, Bai Jingwen saw the natural advantage of being infrastructure-layer — and watched fellow tech entrepreneurs cycle from manic euphoria at the outbreak to a slower return to calm. "You can't chase every wind, but you can wait for it." In Bai's view, the more practical approach for the future is "flying close to the ground" — proactively lowering expectations to avoid excessive anxiety, finding the right low-growth entry point for yourself. For the new year already underway, his primary goal is simple: survive.

Wu Shichun

Heavy Is the Head That Wears the Crown; Harsh Is the Fire That Forges the Influencer

"We used to drink red wine when fundraising; now it's all baijiu. We used to raise dollars, speak English, play Texas Hold'em. Now we raise RMB, play guandan, talk government招商 and capital返投..." In May 2023, Plum Ventures founding partner Wu Shichun went viral for a stand-up comedy routine. In it, he aired industry realities through self-deprecating humor, alluding to how the pendulum of the times had swung. Wu's transformation into a "comedian" was somewhat accidental. The organizers of an international venture capital festival had wanted to gather investors for stand-up; many initially agreed, but only Wu ended up on stage. Every coin has two sides — Wu was also widely seen as neglecting his proper duties.

Today, Wu Shichun told Waves: "Heavy is the head that wears the crown; harsh is the fire that forges the influencer." He also shared his method for handling others' opinions: always Feng Tang's nine-character mantra — don't rush, don't fear, don't care about face. "To live long, you must learn your attitude toward time — don't rush; toward outcomes — don't fear; toward others' comments — don't care about face."

Regarding his side hustle, Wu said his content doesn't directly seek commercial conversion, and stand-up won't become his second career. In 2023, beyond comedy, he launched a video channel and published a book titled Self-Adaptability. For angel investing, he sees this as a way to escape homogenized competition and sharpen his IP — a distinctive tag that can save the various costs of sourcing deals. Returning to his main business: in 2023, Plum Ventures focused on internal strength, neither expanding nor laying off, maintaining the same headcount. The mechanism shifted to "using exits to drive investments to drive fundraising" — using exitability to determine whether to invest in a project, then using invested projects to facilitate fundraising. Additionally, landing capital返投 was given equal weight to project evaluation in performance reviews. On the industry overall, Wu believes everyone definitely invested in fewer projects this year than last, yet still pulled out all the stops to promote their funds, track records, and case studies. He thinks "people can't always have a victim mentality, constantly making excuses for why they didn't get things done" — instead, they should "roll with the survivor's mindset," because "rolling is the better state."

Emma, the Leading Lady

This Year's Physical: All Indicators Normal

In February 2023, ZhenFund's Yin Le (Emma) scored her first IPO — Hesai Technology. What began as a conversation about this milestone unexpectedly captured the dramatic moments in Emma's life: at a dinner in early 2022, just as everyone raised their glasses in unison to congratulate 30-year-old Yin Le on becoming ZhenFund's youngest partner ever, what had arrived even earlier was cancer and divorce — just months prior, Yin Le had been diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer. She then ended a marriage. The article published on March 8 triggered deep, collective empathy. Not only because this particular day more easily illuminates women's lived experiences, but because this was a life story of someone young who had already weathered too many twists and turns at too high a concentration. Perhaps because of this, after publication, Yin Le also gained some precious friendships across generations.

On this, Yin Le told Waves: "After experiencing several major earthquakes in life, I spent the entire year healing." In 2023, through attending Burning Man, doing stand-up comedy, and cultivating a meditation practice, Emma got her health into excellent shape — beyond all physical indicators testing normal, her mental and spiritual state improved over last year. Daily, she spends half an hour in stillness to center herself, and even brought ZhenFund colleagues to Aranya to feel the power of half an hour's meditation together, listening to the sea breeze. From a partner's perspective, she began leading ZhenFund's campus event series and welcomed seven new investment colleagues together with the team. On investing specifically, she grew more resolute in her "bet on people" methodology. Because she discovered that "whether in good times or bad, opportunities exist. And excellent entrepreneurs seize the moment, constantly adjusting and iterating themselves, turning ideals into reality." Emma describes her 2023 as "rebuilding on the ruins after a personal earthquake" — and such moments are often precious ones for discovering our inner voice.

China Renaissance

Involved in Multiple Major AI Deals

In February, Fan Bao's sudden disappearance stunned the venture capital world. In early October, China Renaissance announced its new helmsman: Xie Yijing, previously group executive director and co-founder, was appointed acting CEO. Because of this, the past year was inevitably pressurized for China Renaissance, yet clearly all business lines continued normal operations.

China Renaissance told Waves that in 2023, in the large model space, it participated in funding rounds for Zhipu AI and Baichuan Intelligence as well as the acquisition of Light Year Beyond. Additionally, in AI infrastructure it helped SiliconFlow, and in embodied intelligence it helped Star1AI and other companies complete their latest funding rounds. The continuing reverberations of the Fan Bao incident lie in how he and China Renaissance functioned as a coordinate system for the new economy. Over the past decade-plus of the mobile internet era, the personality of financial entrepreneur Fan Bao and China Renaissance under his leadership — expanding from FA origins into investment and securities — was also a microcosm of the new economy's growth, maturation, collision, and integration with the world.

Weng Binbin, the Entrepreneur Caught in the SVB Crisis

Be a Pig, Wait for the Wind

In March, just three days after being named one of America's best banks by Forbes for five consecutive years, Silicon Valley Bank — which had always styled itself as "the only bank in the world dedicated to the innovation sector" — collapsed within 48 hours due to insolvency, becoming the largest U.S. bank failure since the 2008 financial crisis. Because SVB offered strong services and support for dollar VC-backed and VIE-structured startups, the fallout quickly rippled through China's venture capital ecosystem. Numerous Chinese CEOs who had parked funds in SVB faced the predicament of being unable to withdraw. LemonBox founder Weng Binbin was among them.

Today, Weng Binbin told Waves that he had thought the SVB collapse might be yet another "familiar darkest hour" in his entrepreneurial journey. Fortunately, it didn't come to pass. After SVB's failure, U.S. regulators announced action and restored account access. Weng is a very "Silicon Valley" founder. After eight years studying and working in the U.S., he founded LemonBox, a cross-border personalized vitamin pack brand, in Silicon Valley. In late 2018, LemonBox was selected for one of YC's first China-invested cohorts. YC partner Eric Migicovsky, founder of first-generation smartwatch brand Pebble, was Weng's entrepreneurial mentor. But emerging from this entrepreneurial mecca didn't mean mastering entrepreneurship itself. Over the years, as a cross-border company, LemonBox weathered consecutive headwinds: COVID-19, shifting international dynamics, and the rise and fall of new consumer investment. After being "educated" by reality countless times, Weng's confidence once hit rock bottom. Yet despite this alarming start, 2023 became the most mentally peaceful year in his five years of entrepreneurship. The generative AI explosion helped his team find the direction to fulfill LemonBox's founding vision: no longer simply selling supplements, but using technology and data to transform how people pursue healthy living. In May, LemonBox launched its pocket AI nutritionist. Weng quit smoking, started running marathons, and temporarily closed his fundraising window. He says the ship that found its direction "has set sail." "The gears of fate keep turning forward. Is AI a new core technology? How many years until it blows into every household? I don't know when, but I know it certainly will. AI-powered health is mine and my team's original aspiration, and we'll choose to hold to it. Be a 'pig,' wait for the wind."

Xi Cao

Became More Frugal

In the 2023 capital winter, Monolith Management completed fundraising for its VC Fund I — for a first-time fund, securing over $300 million in oversubscribed interest was no small feat. Waves had previously interviewed Cao and many around him to reconstruct this figure who may be the most bellwether mid-generation talent of China's dollar fund era.

Today, by Waves' observation, Cao's biggest shift from investor to founder may be that he "became more frugal." Recalling two striking moments from this year: first, at a gathering with an LP, Cao spent considerable time enthusiastically introducing two recent investments, only for the other party to ask how much was invested in both combined. Cao replied: "Very early stage, about four to five million dollars total." The LP suddenly exclaimed: "Wow, founding a fund really does change you. You never used to pitch two small deals with such passion for so long." Another moment: on a business trip to Hong Kong, discovering that flying back via Shenzhen was much cheaper than direct, Cao spent considerable time calculating before ultimately booking the cheapest early morning flight from Shenzhen, then rushing from Hong Kong to Shenzhen at dawn the next day. A friend watching this penny-pinching remarked: "You've changed." By year-end, Cao presented his new fund's report card: "invested in several of the best AI startups in China from 2022 to 2023, such as Moonshot AI, Wonder World, and Infinigence-AI," with "individual check sizes of $3-15 million." Cao said they always focus only on the best companies in the biggest changes. On 2024 plans, his answer was: "Time is actually continuous, so just keep doing things properly and investing with平常心 [a normal heart]."

Li Guofei

Largest Investment in Recent Years: Microsoft

In July, because of publishing his new book Jobs, Zen, and Investing, the rarely seen secondary market investing master Li Guofei shared with us much thinking on the underlying framework and methodology of value investing. After publication, a reader posed a soul-searching question: wanting to know which company Li, who had previously bet big on Vanke, Tencent, and Ping An, made his largest bet on after 2021, and how the returns were.

Today, Li Guofei told Waves: the answer is Microsoft.

This investment involved two position adjustments. Li had long felt that cloud was a business with high barriers, high switching costs, and large future runway. Because Microsoft Cloud was growing ~30% while Amazon Web Services grew ~12%, he had previously estimated that by 2025 at the latest 2026, Microsoft Cloud would leap from second to first place — and because of its larger SaaS proportion, Microsoft Cloud's gross margins were significantly higher than AWS's.

In the first half of last year, as the U.S. kept raising rates, Microsoft kept falling, dropping to the 200s with a PE of roughly 23-24x. When the margin of safety was sufficient, he built a large position. At end-2022, ChatGPT 3.5's stunning debut led Li to deploy his remaining dry powder entirely into Microsoft.

As for how he views the 2023 A-share market, Li observed that companies with "dragon" in their names performed quite well, and small-cap companies significantly outperformed the market average. These seemingly amusing phenomena actually reflect the difficulty of value investing in China. In Li's latest article on Bayesian Thinking, Zen, and Investing, he notes that value investing is merely one of countless methodologies for explaining market movements — "the most essential driver of market rises and falls is the movement of capital, not value investing."

In his view, when it comes to making money, many philosophies, taken to their extreme, can make money. So value investing, like survival style, is really just a choice. For Li Guofei personally, what matters more is that value investing allows him to have a calmer, happier life. "Buy the best company, and you can sleep soundly every night."

The AI Debate Between Allen Zhu and Fu Sheng

Nothing More Terrifying Than a Sudden Silence

In June 2023, investor Allen Zhu threw cold water on large model entrepreneurship. Fu Sheng, who was then pushing to integrate ChatGPT with his existing robotics venture, quickly fired back on Moments: "Half of Silicon Valley's startups have already begun orbiting ChatGPT, and our investor can still be so ignorantly fearless." Behind this disagreement lay the extremely brief window for general large model entrepreneurship: barely twenty days after GPT-4's release, most players who could be bet on had already been bet on. Pessimists believed there was almost no startup opportunity in general large models; optimists believed that what large models couldn't fully solve meant opportunity existed.

Today, Allen Zhu told Waves that chasing when the large model technology iteration curve is still very steep carries great risk in today's domestic funding environment, with very high trial-and-error costs — once the iteration curve flattens, China will rapidly catch up.

He believes that in the AI era, technological innovation isn't necessarily the key to victory; what matters is first having the ability to monetize落地 in the short term. "China has 200-plus large models all holding hammers looking for nails. Hammers aren't valuable now; nails are."

Fu Sheng told Waves that "the coming 2024 will definitely be the wave year for large model applications, and there will definitely emerge applications like Didi and Meituan that never existed before." He maintains his optimism. Just yesterday, he not only announced the release of Orion Star's large model, but also, because of "the power of AI," buried a sixteen-year feud with Zhou Hongyi on stage at the launch event.

In fact, this uneven temperature of large model entrepreneurship ran through nearly all of 2023. In an investment theme-starved 2023, whether the hundred-model war of the first half or the several-fold valuation increases of leading large model companies within a year, many sides confirmed the heat AI brought — yet undeniably it was cold in many dimensions. To date there are almost no落地 products; after August, AI investors also rarely made moves.

Wang Cen

I'm in the Mountains

In October, former Sequoia Capital China partner Wang Cen's iconic bald head appeared on a billboard at Shanghai Hongqiao Airport Terminal 2. Discussion of Wang in investment circles has been unceasing since. Wang becoming an influencer didn't happen in 2023, but for someone like Wang to become a self-media influencer — evolving from self-mockery to envy — did happen in 2023. This year, people discovered the viral "question, understand, become" meme fit Wang uncannily well.

Today, Wang Cen told Waves that he was in the mountains (poor signal), using this to twice decline our interview request.

From a macro perspective, this strange mutation stems from the broader confusion about where investing ends up after industry-wide business contraction. A few years back, investors becoming influencers was still an alternative or even downward choice; this year it began becoming an unsurprising one. Many mid-career investors, whether employed or between gigs, have become quite common on social platforms like Xiaohongshu, Douyin, and WeChat Official Accounts, building their personal media IP. Many gain fresh business leads and even additional income while outputting content.

From a micro perspective, he's also become a kind of exemplar for psychological adaptation that this era needs. When a seemingly downward choice arrived, Wang — who years earlier had shed his "long gown," lowered his stature, and pivoted to short video influencing — suddenly took on motivational overtones. Recall that before switching to short video, Wang was already middle-aged and a Sequoia Capital China partner who had participated in investments in brands like Zhou Hei Ya, Pagoda, and Wu Ye Ban Mian.

The changing times have caught many off guard. Perhaps many have already realized they are becoming someone their past selves couldn't comprehend.

Jixun Foo

Still Need to Lower Expectations for 2024

It has been 20 years since that world-top dollar VC institution inspection trip that shaped China's venture capital industry — in early 2004, 25 partners from world-leading venture capital firms including Sequoia Capital, KPCB, Accel Partners, NEA, Redpoint, and DCM squeezed into business class on a flight to China. That six-day itinerary opened the 20 years of dollar fund-dominated Chinese primary markets.

In 2023, the representative institutions among them reached a new historical juncture: multi-region independence.

Following Sequoia, on September 22, GGV's dollar fund also announced independence for its two major regions — going forward, the Asia-active entity would be "GGV Capital" co-led by Jenny Lee and Jixun Foo.

Today, Jixun Foo told Waves that money remains very "expensive," and the pressure it brings is greater than he imagined.

Please note: Foo's precise title at this moment is: Managing Partner of GGV Capital.

Foo added that more expensive money means valuation logic has shifted, and market investment choices have trended toward lower risk. And exit will be something they need to think about for some time to come.

About the future, some things are certain: technology and environmental changes will continue, and enthusiasm for entrepreneurship and innovation will persist. Of course, much uncertainty also exists. Foo told Waves that the best response is to lower expectations, keep a level head, and gradually observe market changes.

"Perhaps 2024 will be a good time for fundraising, but even so, we still need to lower expectations," he said. "In a state where it's nearly impossible to predict changes in coming years, dynamically adjust yourself to adapt to change, because equity investment is a marathon."

Song Xiangqian

Reiterating: Don't "Create False Dichotomies"

From interpreting why Pinduoduo won, to demographic peak shifts, to even weighing in on Zibo barbecue and other hot topics — Jiahe Capital chairman Song Xiangqian was probably the primary market investor with the strongest expression and output urges in 2023. This year, he gave at least 7 media interviews, penned multiple articles, and even produced over 130 video episodes.

Running through these expressions was a consumer investor's anxiety beneath the frenzied wave of tech investment. Song was the first (and possibly only) investor to directly state that tech investment was overheating while consumer investment was too cold.

Today, Song Xiangqian told Waves: "(Still) can't pit consumption against tech, making the market do a 'choose one' multiple choice," "Consumption creates application scenarios for tech. Discriminating against consumption is反向遏制 tech, because tech becomes marketless."

He doesn't oppose effective market equilibrium management, and supports resource tilting toward tech, demanding productivity from technology. But he believes consumption and tech are two sides of the same coin of economic and social development, and the two most important elements in the national economy. Why did last year's Zibo barbecue and this year's Harbin tourism resonate so deeply? In his view, this reflects people-centered, livelihood-focused attitudes — the众望所归 [collective aspiration] of welfare-oriented human development.

He believes contemporary China, after 40 years of high-desire development since reform and opening, is gradually entering a low-desire society and the "downward-flow society" development mode that Miura Atsushi depicted in Japan. In an era where population and various production factors have peaked, the era of simple factor-input-driven growth where big waters raise big fish is gone forever. And quantitative, price-based economic regulation tools and policy measures are also mostly inadequate.

"Propping up the economy, powering底层民生福利 [bottom-layer livelihood welfare] — only this can possibly stabilize the economic decline and revive consumption expectations."

Hongshan

A Straighter Redwood Tree

In June 2023, the long-anticipated three-way Sequoia split was finalized: Sequoia U.S./Europe would retain "Sequoia Capital," Sequoia India/Southeast Asia would adopt the new brand "Peak XV Partners," and Hongshan — managing over RMB 300 billion, with full-chain, full-stage, full-cycle investment capabilities — would use "HongShan" as its new brand name.

What changes after the split? Hongshan made no further response. But observant watchers noticed its brand logo underwent a refresh: from the previous redwood leaf to "彡" — the right half of the character for redwood (杉), carrying the meaning of lush vegetation.

While the website style remains similar, Sequoia's homepage opens with "We help the daring build legendary companies," while Hongshan's reads "Hongshan is committed to discovering and nurturing 'towering trees' in industry" — phrasing more aligned with Chinese investment discourse, and better matching Hongshan's replaced brand logo: a straighter redwood tree.

As the saying goes, the most successful internationalization is the most thorough localization. Over the past 19 years, Hongshan's victory owed much to its better localization practice. And now, this is an ending of mixed emotions.