Our Unpublished Conversations with 88 Investors | Waves Anniversary

Interview | Waves Editorial Team

Our world is constructed through language. This is especially true of the business world, and of the primary market in particular.

In this industry — a "people business" — language shapes how we understand a person, an event, and ourselves.

In March 2022, Waves published its first article. Over the past year, we've interviewed numerous investors, giving us the chance to hear how they describe themselves, others, and the world around them. Perhaps because journalism and investing share certain similarities — both revolve around conversations with people, though the end goals differ — their words have always caught our attention.

To mark our first anniversary, we're launching a special project: we invited 88 investors to recall the defining sentence they heard — or spoke — this past year. Many of these quotes also come from our daily interviews.

Our thanks to everyone who has spoken with Waves, and to our dearest readers. Let's stay in touch in the year ahead.

Neil Shen

Founding and Managing Partner, Hongshan

A venture capitalist's job is to allocate capital and resources to the most creative people.

David Zhang

Founding Managing Partner, Matrix Partners China

Self-improvement is the root of all strength — a creed worth living by in the past, present, and future.

Liu Qin

Founding Partner, 5Y Capital

Resonating with people is the primary path to leadership. Resonance born of success comes easily but runs shallow. It's in moments of setback and failure that leadership is truly tested — deep resonance forged through negative feedback yields far more profound and lasting influence.

Xiaojun Li

Partner, IDG Capital

Many quotes pale next to Fitzgerald's classic: "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function."

Hurst Lin

Founding Partner and Managing Director, DCM China

Are you a hero or a zero? Always remember: being a VC means I dare to be a zero for the opportunity to become a hero.

Li Jiaqing

President, Legend Capital

What we're experiencing isn't merely a cyclical downturn but a paradigm shift in the global economy itself. The once-unified global market and system is gradually fragmenting into diverse, separate systems. The primary market may be entering a decade-long paradigm transformation. For Chinese investors, sustained and steady returns will only come from anchoring ourselves in China while simultaneously attending to technological innovation and the global trend toward localization — and playing the long game.

Jixun Foo

Global Managing Partner, GGV Capital

I often imagine what the world will look like in the future. This doesn't happen overnight; it's the product of riding the right wave.

Yi Cao

Founding Partner, Source Code Capital

Depth beats breadth.

Annabelle Long

Founding and Managing Partner, BAI Capital

AI says: I'm still a child. Some are raising it with lavish care, hoping it will become a dragon; others are rushing to put it to work as child labor. The poor man's child matures early — may reality not crush the ideal.

Li Liang

Founding Partner, Hillhouse Capital

We hope to be more than investors who simply "show up where innovation happens" — we want to participate more deeply in innovation, to accelerate it.

Zhou Wei

Founding Partner, CCV Capital Partners

Don't obsess over the macro. So what if you know nuclear fusion is inevitable? Can you actually invest in that company?

Wang Ran

Founder, E-Capital

Investing without a worldview is barely distinguishable from gambling in Vegas — and less fun.

Shao Jun

Founding Partner, DT Capital Partners

Many masters tell you to be a friend of time, but they don't mention that 99% of the time, time is not your friend — it's your enemy. Yet if you befriend time in that remaining 1%, the returns will far exceed everything else.

Liu Erhai

Founding and Managing Partner, Joy Capital

China has plenty of money, but not much patient capital willing to take risks.

Yan Li

Founding Partner and CEO, Zhongding Capital

In a discontinuous environment, it's even more essential to "master the fundamentals thoroughly and adapt to change."

James Mi

Founding Partner, Lightspeed China Partners

Someone has to invest in projects that most people believe have a low probability of success, but that would bring tremendous societal benefit if they succeed.

Xi Cao

Founding Partner, Monolith Management

The fox knows many things, the hedgehog knows one big thing.

Cao Yonggang

CEO, Hony Capital

I prefer to look at a company's positive operating cash flow. You can't count on someone five years down the line who loves this company, this story, this bubble even more, and will take it off your hands at double the price.

JP Gan

Founding Partner, INCE Capital

While great companies are often forged in winter, investors shouldn't turn the AC up too high — or entrepreneurs won't dare approach you.

Wang Chen

CEO, Ubiquant

There must be patterns that persist through history's long river, hidden beneath the confusing surface.

Li Feng

Founding Partner, FreeS Fund

Whether today marks the beginning of a new cycle for investing or entrepreneurship depends on whether you're looking ten years back or ten years forward.

Huang Mingming

Founding Partner, Mingshi Capital

Tech investors who lack a perspective that stretches ten years and beyond into the future don't deserve the power to choose and pull the trigger in the present.

Anna Fang

Founding Partner and CEO, ZhenFund

It's an exciting time to be an investor.

Zheng Xuanle

Founder and CEO, Lighthouse Capital

We must protect entrepreneurial spirit and the ambition of founders and investors as zealously as we protect giant pandas.

Li Wei

Founding Partner, Pineapple Capital

In the cyclical rise and fall of economies, prosperity and decline are inevitable. The more an industry struggles, the more we must keep playing and cultivating our inner strength — true skill lies beyond the poem.

Xu Xiaolin

Founding Partner and Chairman, Huagai Capital

A founder's value accounting for 99% of a company's worth wouldn't be an exaggeration.

Zhou Zhifeng

Partner, Qiming Venture Partners

A person's greatest happiness is to discover their life's mission in mid-course, in the creative prime of life.

Hu Boyu

Partner, XVC

Entrepreneurship, like raising a child, is a one-way road. Once you start, there's no turning back. Your own needs become utterly unimportant.

Wu Haiyan

Managing Partner, China Growth Capital

If "society" is a large organization, then venture capital and entrepreneurship represent the "appropriate foolishness" that the organization needs for its uncertain future.

Zhang Jinjian

Founding Partner, Oasis Capital

Making money is the result; spending money is the wisdom. All investment decisions are essentially about spending money wisely.

Shi Xuesong

Managing Partner, Chuanliu Investment

Buffett, Forrest Gump, and Guo Jing are the same kind of people — success that appears accidental is the inevitability of long-term focus.

Wang Huai

Founder and CEO, Linear Capital

Investing is like driving at night: you can only see 100 meters ahead, and can't tell whether there's a pit or clear road 500 meters out. But even if you make mistakes, you have to stay in the game.

Wu Xiaofeng

Founding Partner, Canaan Capital

Sometimes slow is fast. If you're in Shenzhen with Guangzhou as your destination but pointing your car toward Xiamen, the harder you step on the gas, the farther you get from Guangzhou.

Yan Yisheng

Founding Partner, Yuanyi Capital

The best way to overcome the fear and anxiety of uncertainty: live in the present, and pour your heart into what you're doing right now.

Chen Feng

Managing Partner, Ruchu Capital

In both entrepreneurship and investing, keep your soul on shore while your body stays in the water.

Xie Xiaoyang

Founder, Tianyan Capital

Investment is an interrogation of your understanding of the world: dare to make judgments, and dare to admit what you don't understand.

Jin Ming

Founding Partner, GoHigh Capital

Most things are meaningful, but not everything produces results. To do things the right way and achieve decent outcomes — that's one of life's great fortunes.

Gao Chao

Founding Partner and CEO, Yunxiu Capital

History is what you're immersed in without noticing; only in retrospect do you see the earth-shattering waves.

Wu Shichun

Founding Partner, Plum Ventures

If you have a 100-million-yuan dream, you need 100-million-yuan mental strength, cognition, adaptability, and vision.

Zhou Hua

Managing Partner and CEO, Challenger Capital

In a world that changes by the day, we don't understand "science fiction stories" — we only believe in "history stories."

Wang Mingyao

General Manager and Managing Partner, Legend Star

What is cognitive alpha? Invest early when a sector is cold; pull back when it heats up.

Mao Chengyu

Founding Partner, Yunqi Partners

Entrepreneurship is like scientific exploration: you must penetrate the surface to find the essence, and persist long-term based on underlying logic — the former requires resolve and acuity, the latter demands courage and resilience.

He Yu

Managing Partner, BA Capital

Only belief enables persistence; only persistence enables vision — undercurrents are stirring, transformation has arrived.

Fang Yuan

Founding Managing Partner, Astral Capital

To make as much money as possible, direction matters more than speed.

Xu Shi

Founding Partner, Shanchuan Capital

Time itself doesn't necessarily make you grow. What makes you grow are the experiences that frighten you, grind you down, and cause you pain. Learn to enjoy thinking through pain, and changing through thought. If your thinking patterns and cognition don't change, time is powerless.

Xu Siqing

Founding Partner and CEO, Alpha Startups

Seeking Alpha Founders.

Ji Wei

Founding Managing Partner, Huaying Capital

I compare venture capital to viewing Chinese ink painting: "Observe the momentum from afar; grasp the texture up close."

Han Rui

Partner, Gaorong Capital

If your purpose is someone else's means, you've been dimensionally reduced.

Tong Jie

Founding Managing Partner, SCVC

Cycles are uncertainty that everyone agrees on; transcending cycles is excavating certain non-consensus from uncertainty.

Zhao Lei

Senior Managing Director and Head of Growth Investment, CITIC Capital

"If you take care of the downside, the upside will take care of itself."

Zhao Penglan

Partner, BAI Capital

The world's best investors are first and foremost good psychologists; only secondarily are they experts in finance, industry, operations, or product.

Wu Xing

Founder, Kaifeng Investment

Watching the sea from shore: turbulent waves. Watching the sea from a plane: calm waters.

Lu Zhengzhe

CEO, High-Flyer Quant

All sciences are more or less related to human nature. No matter how distant a discipline seems from human nature, it will eventually find its way back through some path.

Tu Zheng

Founding Partner, FirstBe Capital

Immersed in the flood of information where scale is uneconomic, simplicity and purity open a skylight.

Wang Xiao

Founder, Unity Ventures

Don't magnify short-term quantitative change, and don't underestimate future qualitative change.

Zhang Ye

Founder, Blue Lake Capital

If you find your path lonely, congratulations — the scenery will be seen by few.

Qing Yong

Founder, Tomato Capital and ZM Group

Remove emotion from investing.

Chang Bin

Founding Partner, QiCheng Capital

Good demand doesn't equal good product; good product doesn't equal good business; good business doesn't guarantee good investment.

Hong Jing

Founding Partner, Gaocheng Capital

Command the heights with vision; the sincere complete themselves.

Sun Yelin

Founder, Huaye Tiancheng

If we were speculators, we wouldn't appreciate the steadfast ascetic who advances day by day.

Jiang Haotian

Founder, Zhilin Capital

In an era where newcomers replace the old, your circle shapes your cognition, and cognition determines your future.

Li Yuhui

Founding Managing Partner, Panlin Capital

For early-stage investing, industry consensus brings a margin of safety, but non-consensus formed through advanced cognition is what lets you catch underwater targets and pursue excess returns.

Gao Feng

Founder, Fengshang Capital

Silence can still shout; hibernation isn't surrender — resilient strength.

Tian Dongsheng

Founding Partner, Index Capital

Completing cyclical transformation requires experience, but not empiricism.

Yuan Liu

Partner, ZhenFund

You won't make better investments in one world simply by having enough money for two.

Yuan Ye

Partner, 5Y Capital

"Always remember, your focus determines your reality."

Liu Yiran

Partner, Vision Plus Capital

If you can't articulate it, you haven't thought it through. Explaining something clearly in 5-10 sentences is genuinely difficult; doing so with better rhythm and situational awareness is even harder — this too is a form of "appearance reflecting inner mind."

Ye Chunyan

Partner, Loyal Valley Capital

Investment is a reflection of worldview and values. Be your true self, invest authentically, hold to your beliefs, and dare to be different.

Tian Jiangchuan

Managing Partner, Chuxin Capital

Too many bad decisions come from projecting your own fantasies onto mismatched people. Let yourself go — one thought, heaven; one thought, hell.

Ding Yameng

Founding Managing Partner and COO, Healthray Capital

Even the best innovation story, if it can't deliver good clinical results, will eventually see its bubble burst.

Jiang Ke

Managing Partner, Taihe Capital

Do not insist, do not speculate, do not be obstinate, do not be egotistical.

Zhuang Minghao

"Notable VC Deserter"

In an industry where you eat what the weather provides, doing your human best is already no small feat.

Xia Zhijin

Managing Partner, Vertex Ventures China

There is no permanent moat, only perpetual bloodied foreheads.

Xu Wei

Partner, ZWC Partners

As MOSS says in The Wandering Earth II: "To make humanity remain rational is indeed a luxury."

Shi Mao

Founding Partner, Changlei Capital

The difference between investment and speculation is sometimes merely that between Mandarin and Cantonese.

Zou Guowen

Founding Partner, Kairong Capital

Financing is always searching for buried hope in desperate scenarios; investing is always searching for concealed despair beneath hopeful surfaces.

Gao Qi

Investment Director, Warburg Pincus China

A McKinsey article title: "The next China is China."

Wang Han

Partner, Access Technology Ventures

Concentrate on what we really know, create real value.

Liu Dawei

Founding Managing Partner, Capital O

Technological breakthroughs deserve far more attention than market turbulence.

Wang Yu

Founder and CEO, Ruiyu Capital

The secret of life is less competition.

Zhang Yuhan

Managing Partner, CITIC Venture Capital

A problem, thoroughly understood, is half solved. But truly understanding a problem is extraordinarily difficult.

Xu Ruicheng

North America Chief Representative, Grand View Capital

In today's world, the greatest thing each of us can do is to bring the world closer together so that our human community can develop rapidly; the smallest thing is to find a job in a city that sustains ourselves. Those with more energy should do more — this is the mission of all global entrepreneurs.

Zhao Yang

Partner, Xianfeng Changqing

People easily forget one thing: what's coming in the next year is hard to predict, but the next ten years are actually quite certain.

Liu Dan

Senior Partner, CDH Investments Innovation and Growth

A good investor is a good entrepreneur; a good entrepreneur is a good investor.

Ren Bobing

General Manager, Sinovation Ventures Frontier Tech Fund

In the era of technological "Great Navigation," grand narratives and future predictions more easily lead people astray. Understanding the present and doing things right is an investor's proper duty.

Li Zhu

Founding Partner, InnoAngel Fund

A lucky successful investment may bring financial freedom; but success across cycles requires continuous cognitive upgrading.

Chen Linhua

Partner, Huanhe Capital

Only businesses that can transcend cycles hold value; those that can't are merely drifting with the cycle's current.

Bai Bo

Chairman and Founder, Greenovation Capital

"Waves often favors the talented voyager."

Image source: The School of Athens (Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, 1509), Vatican Museums, Vatican City State

Layout | Du Meng

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