Chris Xu

Chris Xu — 许仰天 — is the founder of SHEIN, the fast-fashion e-commerce company founded in 2008 and headquartered in Nanjing, which 暗涌Waves described as a company built by an "'80s-born grassroots guy from Shandong" that went from $600M to $10B+ in revenue in just four years . In investor lore he's famously low-profile: IDG's Lian Meng met him in Guangzhou in 2016 and decided to invest essentially on the spot — the two are also Shandong hometown fellows, and Xu is said to collect ancient coins as a hobby . Sequoia China's Zou Jiajia met him around October 2017 — after hearing SHEIN's name from everyone during a month-plus field trip to Guangzhou's Zhongda fabric market — and closed the deal in summer 2018, later calling him "the best player in the crowd" . Per a cross-border investor quoted by 暗涌Waves, Xu represents a new archetype: "a founder from China who does global business from day one" .