Silent No More, Then Booming

Yes, it's the first startup camp BlueRun Ventures has built in 20 years: three months of deep, hands-on collaboration with 20 founders. On September 2–3, the Silent-to-Booming Camp kicked off its first cohort.

Let us first tell you what this camp is not. It's not celebrity mentors delivering verdicts from on high. It's not abstract strategy frameworks disconnected from reality. It's not about "networking your way in." This is a camp that refuses to be defined.

So what is the Silent-to-Booming Camp? We can't give you a definitive answer yet. Because this is a generative camp — every participant is inputting their own prompt. In three months, we'll turn in our answer alongside our 20 campers. That said, Jui Chan, managing partner at BlueRun Ventures, offered a framing at the opening ceremony that explains why BlueRun set out to do this. We've excerpted his remarks below —

Welcome aboard the Silent-to-Booming Camp.

Many people have asked us: Why launch a camp now? Why "Silent" (不鸣)? What does "Booming" mean? Let me start with two stories.

One year I went hiking in southern China and saw all these tender, tiny bamboo shoots poking out of the ground — I assumed they had just sprouted. But the locals told me that once a shoot breaks the surface, it's ready for harvest in about six days. Do you know how long it grows underground before that?

Nearly 60 days.

That means the time you actually see the shoot is less than one-tenth of its entire growth cycle. For those 60 days, it's alone underground — pressed by rocks, gnawed by insects, desperately absorbing nutrients just to break through.

After the hike, I looked up bamboo shoot cultivation. Most of what I found was about how to harvest them, how soon after sprouting to cut them down.

Those 60 days are the main act of its life, yet almost no one cares about them — everyone just wants to know how to reap the harvest. That immediately brought today's venture capital market to mind.

The vast majority of deep-tech projects today are like that bamboo shoot. The R&D phase from zero to one is the hardest, the most silent period. Once they surface, they enter the booming phase. But if you weren't there to accompany and support them through that grueling 60 days, you won't get to share in the harvest either.

Yet many founders are still living in yesterday's world. I want to tell you to face reality: domestic primary-market assets can no longer simply track US stock pricing. In this new world, growth and net profit matter more than revenue scale. Looking ahead, you'll need to think in terms of A-share and Hong Kong stock market logic from day one.

More importantly, stop reaching for low-hanging fruit. Return to first principles: founders must get their hands dirty and cultivate the land; investors in this new environment must step forward and nurture different soil — only then can we create real value in the future.

That's the first meaning of the Silent-to-Booming Camp logo. That horizontal stroke is the earth; the arrow below represents upward force — that's all of you, sitting here. For 20 years, BlueRun has done only one thing: accompany early-stage tech founders from zero to one. In today's environment, we too must iterate and explore alongside you, finding the path from silent underground growth to breaking through, from silent to booming.

Now, a bit about myself. My early career has often been tagged with the label "silent."

When I interviewed at IBM, I told the manager: just let me in, I'll take any job. He offered me a role around PC products — back then, PCs were a marginal product, nobody cared about them. Everyone wanted to work on mainframes. Later I joined Singapore Telecom, thinking I'd work on voice or satellite projects, only to be assigned to the then-obscure, understaffed internet division. At first I thought my future looked bleak.

But then you all know how the PC and internet stories unfolded.

It was precisely that PC and internet background that allowed me to transition into VC investing with BlueRun in Silicon Valley. I returned to China in 2005. Back then, tech entrepreneurship and venture capital here were just getting started — still in a silent phase. The miracles that tech founders would go on to create, some of you have even lived through firsthand.

Silent no more, then startling everyone with a single cry. What BlueRun cares about most is the "ambition" of the silent ones: What was my original intention in starting this? What triggered my decision to pursue this idea? Is this something I could devote my entire life to? Is this initial vision a dream big enough — and what does "big enough" mean?

At BlueRun, we believe "undefinable, daring to be first" is the essence of entrepreneurship. Grounded in original intention, courage, continuous iteration, and redefinition to achieve your dream.

So the second meaning of the Silent-to-Booming Camp logo is the character "不" (bu / "no"). You need the courage to say no to the old world. But don't fear being alone — in your climb, BlueRun hopes to be your best companion.

That was my original intention in returning to China to found BlueRun Ventures. I believe the silent understand the silent. So for two decades, BlueRun's investment philosophy has always been about helping silent people boom — that is our greatest source of pride.

For an individual or a team to go from silent to booming, beyond unwavering original intention, you need to leverage momentum for弯道超车. [curve overtaking / leapfrogging] Something ten times faster than a horse-drawn carriage won't be a carriage. To pull off a curve overtake, you must ride the wave of underlying technological transformation and shifting demand.

Without the breakthrough in lithium batteries, there would be no transition from gas to electric vehicles, no lithium boom you've witnessed. Without photovoltaic technology breakthroughs, there'd be no possibility of clean energy replacing coal power. Without chips evolving from FPGA/CPU to GPU, there'd be no AI wave. Without 4G, e-commerce wouldn't have progressed from directory-based to video livestreaming. Without computing power advances, we wouldn't have evolved from search engines to OpenAI.

One of the biggest momentum waves we see today is AI. That's why we've made AI the theme of this camp's cohort. Today is the first day our inaugural silent ones meet. I believe that in three months, we'll turn in an answer that refuses to be defined.

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Originating in Silicon Valley, BlueRun Ventures was established in 2005 as a venture capital firm focused on early-stage startups.

Currently, BlueRun Ventures manages multiple USD and RMB dual-currency funds in China, with assets under management exceeding RMB 15 billion, making it one of the largest early-stage funds domestically. The firm invests primarily at Pre-A and Series A stages, with coverage across hard tech and innovative interaction, enterprise technology, new consumer, and healthcare. It has backed over 150 startups, including Li Auto, Waterdrop, QingCloud, Guazi.com, Qudian, Songguo Mobility, Ganji.com, Energy Monster, Yuntou Semiconductor, Machenike, Cloud Saint Intelligence, Anxin Netshield, and BioMap.

BlueRun Ventures has been ranked #1 on Zero2IPO's "China Top 30 Early-Stage Investment Institutions," #1 on ChinaVenture's "China Best Early-Stage Venture Capital Institutions TOP30," and named among Preqin's Top 10 VC fund managers globally for consistent high-return performance.

The firm has also received consecutive honors from Forbes China, 36Kr, Cyzone, Caixin Media, CBNweekly, Jiemian, and other media, including "China's Best Early-Stage Institution of the Year," "China Top-Tier Venture Capital Firm," "Most Founder-Friendly Early-Stage Institution of the Year," and "Most Influential Early-Stage Institution of the Year."