Ning Wang

Ning Wang is the founder of Pop Mart (泡泡玛特), the designer-toy company that went public in 2020 and whose market cap at times exceeded HK$370 billion—more than triple its IPO value . He was an early believer in building an IP platform around designer toys; as one of his investors, He Yu of Black Ant Capital, described it, Wang had already gone overseas to scout toy exhibitions and saw the fan intensity before most Chinese investors took the category seriously . His first institutional backer was Mai Gang at Pioneer Works (创业工场), who provided angel funding after Wang and his team waited roughly three months for a response to their cold email—a deal famously celebrated at a Wudaokou bar where Wang compared their relationship to Jay Chou and his mentor Jacky Wu, a reference that left Mai Gang baffled . He Yu and Black Ant Capital came in later, in early 2018, after He Yu spotted Wang in a *CBNweekly* cover story and rode a shared bike to Pop Mart's Beijing Financial Street mall store to investigate . Wang has described Fan Bao of China Renaissance as an investor who "doesn't just want money, he wants to change the world" , and more recently has consulted with David Zhang of JiaYu Capital about global expansion strategy—Zhang advised him to avoid "short-term labor" or "long-term labor" businesses and instead build a "landlord business" around IP .