Monolith Turns Three: A Mountain of Ten Thousand Fathoms — Climbed One Step at a Time
Only the best is good enough.
Without exceptional founders, there are no successful investors.
In 1997, Steve Jobs wrote the iconic tagline Think Different — words that still resonate today: "Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently." You can praise them, doubt them, oppose or vilify them. But you cannot ignore them.
Three years ago, on November 11, Monolith was born. From day one, we've been searching for founders like these — "perhaps they seem crazy to others, but to us, they're geniuses." The truth is, such outliers are extraordinarily rare. So when we find them, we get genuinely excited, throwing our full weight behind everything we can offer.
The external environment of the past few years hasn't seemed particularly kind to entrepreneurs. But flip the coin, and cutthroat competition has thinned out too. Exceptional founders continue to thrive and grow. Even in these conditions, our VC fund has deployed over $100 million, backing more than ten companies at very early stages — across leading domestic large language models, AI applications, and smart hardware.
We're grateful for these founders' creativity and hard work, and thankful they chose us as partners.
It's because these exceptional founders create value that a young investment firm like ours has had the chance to earn some interim recognition from authoritative third-party institutions. On the primary market front, we ranked #1 on Preqin's 2024 list of best-performing Greater China USD VC funds. On the secondary market front, our hedge fund's year-to-date 2024 returns ranked #1 among Asian USD hedge funds in a recent Bloomberg report (see Note [1] at the end).
This recognition — far from a final verdict — doesn't belong to us alone, and we still have a long way to go before delivering sufficient returns for our LPs.
If there's anything we've truly gained, it's the hard-won lessons from the twists and setbacks of these three years — reflections painful enough to leave a mark.
We've made rookie mistakes in retrospect on talent, organization, information gathering, and timing — paying tuition in all kinds of ways.
This deepens our empathy for the daily rollercoaster founders ride, and intensifies our gratitude toward the LPs and partners who chose us.
Through this process, our principles for how we operate have gradually crystallized from repeated collisions and trial-and-error —
Whether in primary or secondary markets, we only want to invest in the best companies amid the biggest changes, becoming their long-term shareholders. As Lego carved into its motto back in 1936:
"Only the best is good enough"
We believe more than ever in the strike zone, the punch card, and the 10,000-hour rule — staying focused and drilling deep only in our areas of greatest strength.
We believe more deeply in long-termism and the power of compounding, and in the benefits of integrity and equanimity.
Most importantly, we've been lucky to discover that for what we do every day — seeking out outliers, uncovering value — we feel genuine, bottom-of-our-hearts curiosity and love.
Today marks Monolith's third anniversary. For us still at the mountain's base, the climb has just begun. However high the peak, however arduous the path, focusing on each step, walking each step well — that is the only thing.
The mountain rises ten thousand feet — yet we climb only this one step.
Note [1]:
Monolith Ranked #1 on Preqin's Best-Performing Venture Capital USD Fund List
https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/g5VhnGOIYGjkwh9zRiot4w
Asia Hedge Funds Outperform Global Peers on September Rally
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/asia-hedge-funds-outperform-global-015710426.html
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