The Indefatigable Zheng Xuanle

By Zhiyan Chen

Knocking on the Door to a New World

Sitting in a spacious conference room at No. 18 Kechuang Tenth Street in Beijing, Zheng Xuanle stared absently at the characters on the wall.

It was 2019. For the past six years, as a financial advisor (FA) to companies including Bilibili, Kuaishou, Zhihu, Huolala, and Dewu, Zheng and his firm, Lighthouse Capital, had risen to considerable prominence.

The business world of the previous decade-plus had been dubbed the "new economy" — a world where Zheng thrived. In many investors' contact lists, he was the most frequently dialed name: Leo, his English name.

But now, he was about to knock on the door to another world entirely.

"Hello, Little Zheng!"

An elder gentleman pushed through the door — silver-haired, black-framed glasses, moving with startling speed. Zheng quickly shifted his gaze from the three characters on the wall: "ESWIN." Standing before the 34-year-old Zheng was 62-year-old Wang Dongsheng, chairman of chip company ESWIN Group, more commonly known as the "founder of BOE" and the "father of China's semiconductor display industry." Wang seemed to notice where Zheng had been looking. "Yi means light; wei means greatness. ESWIN means to create great endeavors with a heart of light."

Wang had just stepped down from BOE to found ESWIN and was planning to raise external funding. This star entrepreneur attracted a flood of investors and FAs. Top-tier players in the field were among them. Even by Zheng's own assessment, Lighthouse was merely "one of many who had crossed ESWIN's threshold."

So why did Wang ultimately choose Zheng, a man 28 years his junior?

In a later conversation, Wang finally gave Zheng his answer: "Passion and professionalism." At that first meeting, Zheng had spoken at length about BOE's history from the book The Transformation of Light, the state of the entire chip industry, and ESWIN's funding prospects. It was the result of thorough preparation. His state of mind — "wanting to accomplish something great" — moved Wang immediately. "In Chairman Dongsheng's words, he saw his younger self," Zheng told An Yong Waves.

This "passion" was perhaps something two entrepreneurs at heart recognized in each other. You might call it "the desire to influence others and realize oneself," or simply, ambition.

Li Hao, a newly promoted partner at Lighthouse Capital, describes Zheng as a "typical alpha male." It's a biological term for the leader of a wolf pack. "This type of species possesses absolutely dominant genes, with an extremely strong sense of existence — born to be a leader."

This may be Zheng's most immediately visible trait. In the industry's current gloomy atmosphere, he is everywhere: in media interviews discussing AI, stimulating consumption, full registration reform, and industrial upgrading; at the Yabuli Forum, the Shanghai Hong Kong Chamber's livestreams, the Wenzhou Venture Capital Conference — his presence felt at many of the industry's "influence events." And Zheng is eager to bring industry players together. When he becomes a guest at an industry summit, Lighthouse staff proactively approach the organizers: "Could Lighthouse help with inviting guests, setting agendas?"

Zheng loathes blank spaces on his calendar. He seems to want every minute, every second, every person he meets, every meeting he holds to carry sufficient value. His colleagues provided An Yong Waves with Zheng's schedule for one week in May: six consecutive cities, meetings large and small, client visits, discussions with entrepreneurs about funding and strategy — barely any free time.

Then there's that almost magical ability common to certain CEOs: seemingly no need for sleep. Whether you message Zheng at 6 a.m. or 2 a.m., "instant reply" is the norm. But Zheng's explanation is: "I can skip sleep when clients are sleeping; I absolutely cannot sleep when clients are awake."

During his first stint advising on ESWIN's funding, Zheng averaged just four hours of sleep daily. It was early 2020, and the capital markets' rhythm, still vigorous, had been completely disrupted by the sudden pandemic.

Several times, Wang called at 6 a.m. sharp to check on funding progress. Zheng would spring from bed and report the previous night's updates from across his team. For months, from night until dawn, the slightest vibration of his phone would jolt him awake, fully alert.

In May 2020, with COVID-19's shadow still lingering, Lighthouse Capital coordinated across multiple fronts against the entire primary market's downward pressure and helped ESWIN complete a funding round exceeding 2 billion yuan. After this battle, Lighthouse Capital became the exclusive FA for all of ESWIN Group's business segments.

Zheng had knocked on the door to this new world.

The One Charging Ahead

2020 was a watershed for Lighthouse.

Before that year, its label was internet, social, pan-entertainment — representative cases being Bilibili, Kuaishou, Zhihu, and Huolala. Afterward, technology, consumer, carbon neutrality, and industry all became part of its map. Standing behind ESWIN, Sany, and GCL, it became a truly comprehensive boutique investment bank.

Throughout 2022, Lighthouse helped companies complete over 60 financing, M&A, and other industrial transactions, with cumulative value exceeding 30 billion yuan. It also currently handles the most large-scale RMB transactions (over 1 billion yuan) of any FA in the market. Even in years unaffected by the pandemic, this figure would be a source of pride among primary market FAs.

Yet Zheng prefers to share another set of numbers: Lighthouse provided human resources and organizational development consulting to industrial enterprises over 300 times; recommended over 400 domain experts; assisted over 10 founders in building core teams and introduced over 20 senior management talents; provided brand strategy and services over 40 times; linked industrial and client resources over 50 times; helped enterprises establish government cooperation dozens of times; and helped companies bring in industrial and government-backed investors over 70 times.

"We've genuinely helped industry, promoted efficient integration of capital and industry, improved the efficiency of resources flowing into industry through capital, and made industry develop faster. When industry develops faster, that's driving progress of the era, right?" Zheng says. When entrepreneurship and capital both converge on industry, practitioners should "dance with industrial players." "Leaving some mark in this industry — that's the source of a sense of achievement."

In 2017, investor Ji Xing joined Lighthouse as its first managing director in history; in 2023, he was promoted to partner. At Lighthouse, Ji has led fundraising, investment, management, and exits for growth funds and multiple specialized funds, while also co-leading the acquisition of a Hong Kong securities license and multiple US and Hong Kong IPOs. Now, he holds another important role: head of Lighthouse's IDA team.

IDA stands for Industry Development Advisor — an empowerment team Lighthouse established specifically for enterprises' increasing engagement with government. Talent recruitment, government relations — these "post-investment" services that even mature investment institutions may not have dedicated teams for — are considered by Zheng as things Lighthouse "has to do, must do."

"In early 2022, Leo predicted that government would become a very important participant in China's investment structure. So Lighthouse began building the IDA team to help enterprises bring in government resources, including land, funding, and policy," Ji says. "The core is finding enterprises a good 'in-law family' where they can actually land."

One could say Zheng's ever-broadening understanding of what FA means has pushed all of Lighthouse forward — and he himself is the one charging furthest ahead.

In 2017, he established a technology group internally, with the explicit goal of becoming an "all-industry investment bank." In 2018, he entered chips and semiconductors, obtaining an overseas listing underwriting license. In 2019, he told colleagues: "Let's do industry!" In 2020, he began working on new energy projects. In 2022, he started helping enterprises engage with government, established an M&A team, and put forward Lighthouse's latest positioning: a rapidly growing "industrial investment bank" serving global enterprises with international vision.

Since FAs emerged in China over 20 years ago, they have largely evolved through two phases. In an era when both investors and entrepreneurs remained relatively "hidden," Phase 1.0 FAs mainly matched assets with capital, earning from "information asymmetry." Around 2014, with the birth of a wave of boutique investment banks, FAs began emphasizing industry research and model refinement, doing the work related to startup financing with greater granularity and precision. This was also where Lighthouse's previous strengths lay.

However, as the era shifted from mobile internet to industrial upgrading, Zheng arrived at Lighthouse's formula for FA 3.0: the industrial investment bank.

Zheng told An Yong Waves that an industrial investment bank means "a new-generation investment bank that deeply understands industry, co-creates value with industrial players, possesses diversified product integration capabilities for capital instruments, has industrial empowerment attributes, and builds strategic and value communication bridges for innovative enterprises, industry leaders, industry-university-research systems, and capital providers."

A more accessible explanation: while helping enterprises secure funding, effectively connect them with upstream and downstream industry resources, government, universities, and other multiple parties. This also explains why Lighthouse established the IDA team.

Zheng's 2019 meeting with Wang Dongsheng, and the subsequent cooperation with ESWIN, was the most important turning point in Lighthouse's transformation and the first milestone in its path toward becoming an "industrial investment bank."

From Lighthouse's founding as its most junior analyst all the way to managing director, Lou Yang has worked with Zheng for nearly a decade, watching many FA heads depart or step back while Zheng remains tirelessly building Lighthouse's future.

"He went to Tsinghua for an EMBA, actively offered policy suggestions to government departments; to solve Lighthouse's organizational upgrading, he interviewed no fewer than 50 HR candidates in three years." Lou feels Zheng's hunger for the FA industry, for company development, for influence has always remained in a "hungry state." "There's persistent insecurity."

Zheng says industry development has its own laws and cycles, and the addition of various innovative elements accelerates this process. "Valuable FAs" can accelerate the integration of industry, capital, and innovative elements — sometimes this participation might advance an industry by "1-2 years fast-forward."

He greatly admires that line from Captain America in the Marvel universe: I can do this all day. In this industry, whether in boom times or downturns, letting this work occupy his every day — "being able to participate more broadly and deeply in society's transformation, that's what excites me most."

Amplifying Presence

At the end of 2019, when partner Xue Ling heard Zheng tell her to look at industry, she was completely stunned.

"Everyone was still looking at internet. We didn't even know what industry specifically meant." At the height of Wuhan's pandemic, Xue entered the industrial sector with two people and reviewed 200 projects in a year. In less than six months, she closed Rootcloud's Series C funding.

Rootcloud was an industrial internet platform company spun off from construction machinery giant Sany Heavy Industry. Two years later, Lighthouse helped Sany Heavy Truck complete a nearly 1 billion yuan Series A round — the first subsidiary within Sany Group's asset system to seek external funding.

The composition of Sany Heavy Truck's investors reveals the deal-making logic under Lighthouse's "industrial investment bank" positioning: led by YingShan Capital, China Merchants Capital, and SDIC Capital, with follow-on from Rosefinch Asset, Huaxu Fund, and others. YingShan Capital is the PE arm of logistics giant GLP; China Merchants Capital's parent, China Merchants Group, is one of China's largest logistics industry groups. These two meant orders. SDIC Capital represented the "national team" endorsement.

"This is a well-matched funding combination, and it's the kind of value that industrial players like Sany truly need from an FA," Zheng says.

Focusing only on top-tier projects has also fueled a certain industry criticism of Lighthouse's capabilities: after all, good projects sell themselves. Negative voices surrounding Zheng have never truly quieted in the industry. Regarding industry rumors about Lighthouse, Zheng was once genuinely furious. The young man even harbored an obsessive desire to have PR scrub all false information about Lighthouse Capital from search engines.

Just as Zheng cannot understand how rumors and misinterpretations about Lighthouse began, people in the industry also struggle to comprehend: how did someone as young as Zheng stand shoulder to shoulder with Bilibili's Chen Rui and Kuaishou's Su Hua in just a few short years? And now there's a new question about Lighthouse: how did Zheng, who grew up in the internet era, rapidly transition to the industrial era?

"Early-stage FAs often say they want to accompany entrepreneurs. But true accompaniment isn't just chatting with entrepreneurs. For truly exceptional entrepreneurs, too many people want to accompany them — often, they don't need that emotional value. What they need is for FAs to help them succeed. That's the truly core value."

Zheng's understanding traces back to his university days. The day before he became president of Xiamen University's Guitar Association, he asked the outgoing president: how do we get everyone to join our club? The answer: use every possible means to make people feel it's valuable.

So Zheng transformed the Guitar Association's "teaching system." He stratified students by skill level from beginner to proficient, so peers at the same stage would have more to talk about — he called this "guitar socializing." Beyond that, he formed an underground band that would later become quite well-known across Xiamen. "An organization attracts people not by taking value from others, but by providing value to others. That was my first lesson in understanding value."

When Zheng persuaded Ji Xing to join in 2017, he said: "FA is just a tool; the core is how to help others succeed." This became the reason Ji could stay at Lighthouse for six years in an industry notorious for high turnover.

Li Hao left "the big brother of the FA industry," China Renaissance, to join Lighthouse in 2017. Sensing Zheng's "passion" for FA was one of the most important factors in his decision. And in five years at Lighthouse, through all environmental changes, Li has barely perceived any wavering in that passion: "Leo has a pursuit of amplifying his personal presence in society."

This mindset of actively seeking social influence is uncommon in the FA industry. As an intermediary in primary market financing transactions, the "hard need" for enterprises hiring financial advisors is funding — meaning anyone with certain connections can do FA. The industry has always been in a state of fragmentation: few scaled institutions, many individuals and small shops. Meanwhile, as the "third party" beyond enterprises and capital, combined with low barriers to entry, taking this line to the extreme isn't understood by ordinary venture capital practitioners.

Thus, two relatively common development patterns in the FA industry: either treating FA as simple business, enough to make a living and get rich; or, after scaling up, the founder quickly exits the battlefield, achieves financial freedom, and starts something new.

Zheng's approach: do FA well, then infinitely expand its boundaries. In his view, this presence doesn't mean personal fame, but truly being able to "influence important players in industry and help them succeed."

For example, when the industry generally regarded FA as purely a service provider, he saw investors as "buyers" and FAs as "channels with two-way service properties" — FAs bear some responsibility for enterprise value discovery. "We very much hope investors make money on the projects we serve." Or take Lighthouse's positioning, emphasized for years: being enterprises' strategic and capital partner. "Transactions are a tool; the core is participating in the top-level design of enterprise development, participating in the top-level design of industry development."

When An Yong Waves asked Zheng to trace the roots of this "amplifying personal presence in society," he mentioned growing up in the 1980s-90s, watching historical events that shaped the era on television: Deng Xiaoping's Southern Tour speech, the Hainan Island incident, China's WTO accession... He calls himself part of the "dividend generation" without historical baggage, pushed forward by a rapidly developing era.

"Post-80s are a special generation. The era gave us a spiritual imprint: to get involved, to bear the responsibilities assigned by the era and society. I want my career to relate to the era — that's a form of self-actualization for me. It's the choice of some in our generation, but absolutely not an extreme minority."

At this point, Zheng suddenly circles back to something Wang Dongsheng said during their 2019 meeting. That entrepreneur of his father's generation told him: "With a heart of light, create great endeavors."