The World Is Out There, and We Have to Go | 8 Young FreeS Fund Entrepreneurs Named to Forbes China "30 Under 30" List
Meet youth. Meet innovation and the extraordinary.
The future belongs to the young.
On July 20, 2017, Forbes China released its "30 Under 30" list. Eight outstanding young founders backed by FreeS Fund made the cut across categories spanning Industry, Manufacturing, Energy & Environment; Finance & Venture Capital; Retail & E-commerce; Consumer Technology; Healthcare & MedTech; and Arts, Lifestyle, Food & Beverage.
From their early days of stumbling through the battlefield to now having shed their greenness, these eight young people have never let go of their ideals. Forbes China called them "young people who have already made a name for themselves in their industries, exerting a certain influence, or demonstrating the immense potential to become leaders of society." The companies and teams they lead are shaping and changing how we live.
As a young VC firm, FreeS Fund will always be curious about passionate, uncompromising young pioneers — they are the reason we dig deep in this industry. We celebrate these eight in the prime of their youth, and look forward to meeting more innovation and extraordinariness in the years ahead.
/ 01 /
Industry, Manufacturing, Energy & Environment
Le Chang, Co-founder & Chief Knowledge Officer of SoundAI, 29.
Chang earned his bachelor's degree from Jilin University and his master's from the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Acoustics. In April 2016, he co-founded Beijing SoundAI Technology as co-founder and chief knowledge officer.
SoundAI is a technology company focused on breakthroughs in acoustic frontier technology and AI-powered interactive applications, dedicated to leading more natural human-computer interaction in real-world environments and fulfilling its vision of "hearing what you say, knowing what you mean."
By integrating acoustic sensing with artificial intelligence, SoundAI has developed proprietary acoustic signal processing algorithms and machine learning models deeply optimized for real-world speech recognition. Leveraging its leading capabilities in echo cancellation, noise suppression, sound source localization, reverberation removal, and directional sound, the company has established deep partnerships with Baidu, Xiaomi, Qihoo 360, ARM, and Xilinx. Its smart cameras, robots, speakers, and children's story machines have sold over one million units.
/ 02 /
Finance & Venture Capital
Yintao Yu (Roger), Founder & CEO of TankWallet, 29.
Roger earned his bachelor's degree from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and his master's from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He won the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest regional championship in the US and placed runner-up in Asia. He holds six US patents and has published 11 papers in top-tier computer science journals including KDD and SIGMOD. He previously worked in quantitative trading at a Wall Street hedge fund in New York and led machine learning systems for Facebook ads at Facebook headquarters.
TankWallet provides consumers with real-time gas prices at nearby stations through its mobile app, and offers oil-price-based financial services such as "lock in today's price" and "fuel price insurance." Users need no financial expertise. The service targets taxi drivers, long-distance commuters, and truck fleets. TankWallet was admitted to Stanford University's Stanford StartX accelerator and has received investment from FreeS Fund, IDG Capital, the Stanford University endowment, and K2VC.
/ 03 /
Retail & E-commerce
Jiujin Ren, Founder & CEO of Particle Fever, 27.
Ren graduated from Peking University and Harvard Law School (Entertainment, Sports and Media Law concentration). She participated in the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) fashion law program. Growing up around the apparel industry, she frequently worked on cross-disciplinary projects as an independent filmmaker and freelance artist. A rower and combat sports enthusiast, she made the leap into fashion.
Emerging activewear brand Particle Fever is an experimental lab for athletic wear. The brand approaches every piece of sportswear with an unconventional, experimental attitude, reconsidering from both craft and aesthetic perspectives what athletic apparel can become. Particle Fever demands more from creativity, shunning blind adherence to mass trends, rejecting meaningless labels, and freely pursuing avant-garde projects related to athletic wear from the diverse perspectives of art, technology, and culture.
/ 04 /
Consumer Technology
Du Zhang, Co-founder of Shunshun Liuxue, 21.
After completing high school in the US, Zhang enrolled at Washington University in St. Louis, dropping out after his freshman year. Following a gold medal at the Global Hackathon, he was invited to join TopOpps, an EPM software sales company. He then returned to China to found Shunshun Liuxue, an internet-plus international education platform that used technology to reshape China's international education industry in just three years.
Through its self-developed CRP system, Shunshun integrates massive datasets on students, overseas institutions, and programs, breaking study abroad services into 37 standardized steps to define a new generation of standardized, data-driven, personalized service. Through an innovative partner compensation system, it offers broader career paths for industry practitioners. Founded in 2014, Shunshun built out a full international education service chain covering counseling, test prep, soft skills enhancement, and leadership training within three years. In June 2015, it raised a $2 million angel round from FreeS Fund, followed the same month by an $18 million Series A from TAL Education Group (NYSE: TAL). In June 2016, it completed a share swap with TAL to go public, becoming part of TAL Education Group. Shunshun currently operates 16 branches nationwide with over 1,000 employees.
Yujun Wu, Founder & CEO of Beijing Junlin Guzhong Technology, 27.
Wu holds dual bachelor's degrees from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Purdue University, and a master's from Stanford University in design methodology. A serial entrepreneur, his first project — a fashion Q&A platform — was one of two selected for Tencent's North America incubator. He later co-founded education technology company PalmDrive.
Beijing Junlin Guzhong Technology builds next-generation information aggregation and recommendation systems. Its AiLingual system organizes and curates high-quality text and audiovisual content across the web, providing semantic-based thematic aggregation and tracking updates, plus personalized recommendations powered by knowledge graphs and user behavior. AiLingual serves NetEase, Hundun Academy, and China Record Corporation, generating over one million RMB in revenue within six months. In May 2017, the company launched "Zhidekan," a mobile app delivering high-quality personalized content recommendations for working professionals.
/ 05 /
Healthcare & MedTech
Weini Qiu, Founder & CEO of Haalthy, 28.
Qiu holds a master's in environmental engineering from MIT. She worked on data analysis and visualization for the largest environmental lawsuit in history, and participated in numerous health-related initiatives including the MIT Global Startup Workshop. In 2015, she returned to China to found Haalthy (haalthy = happy + healthy), an oncology big data company.
Haalthy aims to improve lung cancer cure rates and elevate domestic access to lung cancer medical information and treatment methods. Its flagship product, "Feiteng Assistant," is a one-stop service and data platform that helps patients find suitable clinical trial enrollments. By 2017, the platform had accumulated data on over 10,000 lung cancer patients and family members in China, and established data research partnerships with physicians and researchers at Mayo Clinic, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Cancer Hospital Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Shanghai Pulmonary Hospital, and Guangdong Provincial People's Hospital.
/ 06 /
Arts, Lifestyle, Food & Beverage
Xiao Guan, Founder of Guancha, 25.
Xiao Guan graduated from Tsinghua University's School of Economics and Management, Finance Department, in 2014. While studying in France, she enrolled at Le Cordon Bleu to learn French pastry. She then went to Japan to study tea and source the finest matcha. In early 2016, she returned to Beijing to found Guancha. She is also the author of the bestseller Take One Step Forward, and You Won't Be Afraid Anymore.
The Guancha team is exploring "ten thousand possibilities for matcha," with a dream of reviving matcha culture in China — selecting pure matcha and premium ingredients, independently developing creative matcha snacks rich in tea polyphenols. Core products include matcha milk spread, matcha latte, matcha nougat, and matcha nama chocolate, covering scenarios from meal replacement and fitness to office afternoon tea and home DIY. Guancha insists on all-natural, additive-free products with no artificial flavors, colors, or creamers. It has received millions in angel funding from Tiantu Capital partner Kanglin Li and FreeS Fund, and completed a tens-of-millions Pre-A round in January this year. With over 40 SKUs online and offline, its first matcha experience store combining packaged snacks and freshly made drinks and ice cream opened in June at Beijing's Sanlitun Yingke Center, turning profitable in its first month.
Weiqiang Huang, Co-founder of Sexy Salad, 26.
Huang previously worked at renowned international consumer brand Okamoto, serving as China brand lead, before co-founding Sexy Salad, a consumer brand focused on meal salads. In less than two years, Sexy Salad raised over 100 million RMB cumulatively from IDG, HONY Capital, FreeS Fund, and Hongdao Capital, and has become a leading domestic brand in the meal salad category.
Sexy Salad advocates a sexy, healthy lifestyle. Each meal salad follows scientifically balanced nutrition with only 300–600 calories, developed collaboratively by hundreds of thousands of "sexy" users, five-star chefs, and sports nutritionists. Now wildly popular across South China, it is beloved by young consumers.
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