Conversation with "Tanda New Materials" & "Linear Capital": Returning to Business Fundamentals, Advancing CCUS with Mission-Driven Partners

The following is a transcript of this episode, totaling 12,355 words with an estimated reading time of 20 minutes.

1

"Bought a plane ticket and parachuted right in": From R&D to Xprize to Startup

Yijing Wang: I'd like to start by helping our listeners get to know you better, Dr. Yu. You returned from UCLA, pursued academic research, won an Xprize award, and now you're building a company in Shenzhen. Could you walk us through your academic and entrepreneurial journey?

Yingtian Yu: Our team comes from the original carbon capture research group at UCLA — I was a doctoral researcher there. We started very early-stage R&D work back in 2013, then participated in the Carbon Xprize competition in 2016, and won first place in 2021. Throughout this process, we went from a pure research project to what became an industrialized startup — something we never imagined at the outset. But as we pushed forward, we discovered that our ability to industrialize was remarkably strong from an application standpoint. I'll explain later what I mean by "strong industrialization capability" versus something that can't get out of the lab. After graduation, our core researchers initially planned to start the company in the US. We had support from a major infrastructure company in Iowa to do a demonstration project there. But in 2020, my current partner — a former classmate who's now Professor Wei at Southern University of Science and Technology and a key industrial collaborator — and I concluded that China's industrial landscape and future growth potential would be more suitable for our project. So we returned to China and founded CarbonTech New Materials. Including this round from Linear Capital, we've now completed three funding rounds, have actual projects on the ground, and are moving full speed ahead. From 2012 or 2013 to now, it's really been a long journey.

Yijing Wang: Thank you, Dr. Yu. This round comes amid challenging market conditions, and the pandemic has affected a lot of infrastructure and factory projects. Do you have any stories from this past year of building the company that left a particularly strong impression?

Yingtian Yu: From the very beginning of this journey to now, it's been a massive shock to my capabilities and understanding. I spent over ten years in the US. Though I'm Chinese, returning to China's business environment and project execution methods was a real jolt. For example, with one of our larger projects, our chief engineer and I essentially bought plane tickets and parachuted into the location — we had no real connections or established channels there, no partners on the ground, no relationships with local government or company leadership. To make matters worse, we barely had experience dealing with state-owned enterprises or domestic government bodies. Despite all that, we gritted our teeth and pushed the project forward. Now the local government and SOE leaders not only understand what we're doing, they're actively helping us advance it. For me, the greatest satisfaction is seeing something go from zero to fully executed — that's the biggest rush, so this experience really stands out.

Can Zheng: I actually met Dr. Yu before this investment round. We really like his style — he's like us, very technical, very direct, telling you straight what's OK and what's not. We appreciate that because communication is easy and smooth, and we're the same way. Looking back, China's energy and dual-carbon sectors have relatively traditional partners. You need to navigate complex commercial and even non-commercial environments to push things forward. Initially I did wonder whether Dr. Yu was the right founder for this. But watching him throughout this journey — including visits to partners' sites with us, seeing how he interacts with leadership and works on the factory floor — we've been pleasantly surprised. I'm glad to see how much he's grown and learned since I first met him. Because in China, to build a great company in this space, a founder must have the willingness and ability to drive collaboration across all stakeholders. And he needs to get his hands dirty — no longer in the lab, but inside the factory. When we were at that plant, I felt like Dr. Yu was completely in his element, like he was home.

Yingtian Yu: That's such an apt description, haha. I really do feel that way — like watching your baby grow.

2

On Technology

What Will Drive the CCUS Technology Cluster to Truly Scale?

Yijing Wang: Since we just talked about being in the factory, let's discuss the technology. Over the past couple years, major TMT companies, SOEs and central SOEs, and investment institutions have been paying close attention to and strategically positioning around CCUS. Dr. Yu, looking at the past few years, among the different technological routes within C, U, and S, what developments and changes have you observed? In your specific segment, is there anything particularly notable, or any industry shifts we might see ahead? (Note: CCUS refers to Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage.)

Yingtian Yu: Looking at the industry overall, the composition and proportions of C, U, and S are actually quite different between Western plans and actual implementation versus China's. SOEs and private enterprises need to work together for CCUS to develop well. Capture and storage require state investment or SOE effort to achieve social impact. Utilization mainly relies on private enterprise development. Because among these three, only utilization can be driven by profit motives — capture and storage don't align with private companies' profit goals. So overall, if C and U, SOEs and private enterprises, social benefits and economic returns can be well coordinated, CCUS has a very bright future ahead.

On CCUS development, I think China and the West are advancing quite differently. China is mainly top-down, government-driven. So compared to Europe and the US, CCU or CCS may be more suitable for growth in China, because government-driven execution is extremely powerful. You really need the government to invest early, build platforms, take the lead in execution to form an industry — then the whole sector can develop much more rapidly.

Yijing Wang: Dr. Yu just mentioned that the private sector may have more room to grow in U. Within U, do you see a priority ranking of specific technological routes? For example, mineralization or other applications?

Yingtian Yu: For U (CO₂ utilization), the key question is how to embed CO₂ as a raw material into existing industrial production processes for various materials — to truly turn CO₂ into a raw material that can be accepted cost-wise. Only then does CO₂ consumption become genuinely feasible and scalable. Without this intrinsic quality, I think a complete transition to new energy or future nuclear transition would be more appropriate. The path we're pursuing — using CO₂ as a raw material to produce active materials that replace cement — and paths like producing methanol or upstream chemical raw materials from CO₂, logically become part of the industrial process itself. I think these are viable.

Yijing Wang: What do you think, Can?

Can Zheng: From our perspective, two points will probably come up repeatedly today. First, different scenarios are completely different because carbon sources differ and downstream applications differ too — so adapting to local conditions matters enormously. East and west China are entirely different scenarios. If you factor in transportation and storage costs, you need to find ways to consume it nearby, at low cost, with high value. So you see typical large-scale oil industry consumption for enhanced oil recovery, local utilization. This is highly scenario-dependent, so multiple technological routes will definitely emerge — various technologies each solving for one specific scenario's problems.

But I particularly want to emphasize the economics of this, especially today. When the economy isn't booming, all enterprises become extremely sensitive to additional costs. Carbon prices won't rise — there's a huge gap between China's carbon prices and the EU's. Many technologies are too costly; telling stories about profitability when carbon prices rise in the future doesn't work. At least for today, we focus much more on direct economic value. There are two directions here: one is larger-scale consumption with lower premiums but positive unit economics, the other is high-value products — ideally both. We care deeply about whether a technology can pencil out without counting, or only counting today's relatively low carbon prices, because that determines whether you can grow. We don't want something that only becomes profitable when China's carbon price hits 50 euros. So the economics itself, and how many scenarios your product can apply to — these are what we particularly care about when evaluating technological routes.

3

When Will True "CCUS as a Concept" Take Off?

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Wang Yijing: CCUS technology is still in an early stage. The country has its 30·60 targets, but given economic volatility, carbon prices, time horizons, and other factors — if we look at the overall industry technology development path, what's your forecast? When do you think the industry might hit a real inflection point, or enter a completely new phase? Especially over the past two years, we've seen so many investment firms come in saying they want to look at new things, everyone's seeing CCUS policy support in various documents everywhere, but after everyone piles in, they find the companies and technologies are still so early. There's still a big gap between what people understand about this and the scenarios it can hook into, and the current output and results. So I wanted to ask what year you think the next industry phase might arrive, and what milestone we'd see then?

Yu Yingtian: Actually, across different technology routes and different industry application scenarios, the manifestation is different. For us, we don't generate economic benefit by producing carbon emission rights, so our pace of development isn't completely intertwined with dual-carbon progress. We don't rely on dual-carbon policy advancement to grow the company.

Wang Yijing: But if cement enters the next wave of CCER, do you think that's a major milestone? (Note: CCER refers to China Certified Emission Reduction)

Yu Yingtian: That's certainly a very significant milestone, because revenue from carbon is basically zero-cost income — why wouldn't we take it? But for us, we're more of a materials-type project. We're directly tied to downstream cycles, the ability to open up new application scenarios, and so on. Actually, policy doesn't have a very large impact on us right now. But on a very long-term scale, policy will have a subtle influence on the company's large-scale expansion, though it shouldn't be a decisive factor.

Wang Yijing: Is this connected to what you mentioned earlier about Carbon New Materials' industrialization strength being a core priority?

Yu Yingtian: For startups, especially in the dual-carbon industry, I think the goals must be profitability and rapid market capture as first and second priorities. Only when all companies in the dual-carbon industry reach this consensus will dual-carbon have real hope. If we startups, or other large-scale enterprises, don't implement technology, don't push to capture market share, don't do resource integration, then dual-carbon advancement will absolutely be weak and listless, without real drive or momentum.

Zheng Can: In other words, it'll stay stuck at "the pilot project ended." For CCUS, I think there are a few key points. First, the overall carbon market needs to take off — but thinking about it carefully, when does the carbon market take off? When the economy has high growth and high production demand, right? Another point is that new energy needs to be utilized at scale before there's any possibility of energy structure transformation; without that possibility, no matter how high carbon prices go, China will still be burning coal for power. So these two are preconditions, and you can see this probably won't happen that quickly, or not as quickly as people imagine. Although there are accelerating factors — for example, external pressure from Europe on China, which in some sense can help our development — but looking back, I think you have to wait for that time point before you can welcome true "CCUS as a concept" large-scale development. But before that, companies with economic viability that can be profitable in the broader environment are the ones that can capture market share at the present moment.

I very much agree with Dr. Yu's point — this is actually also a very important reason why we particularly like Carbon New Materials. Before that time point arrives, I can use my inherent economic viability to help enterprises solve problems, reduce costs and increase efficiency, and then tell them they can also reduce carbon. Especially for many of our partners today, which are state-owned and central enterprises — why not? But if you tell them these carbon reduction measures will cost extra, then it flips, and they'll say you do me a pilot project and we'll talk about the rest later, and very likely nothing happens after that.

4

Direct Air Capture

What Road Still Lies Ahead in China?

Wang Yijing: Yes, we've seen in many projects that if something relies on back-end trading revenue, it definitely doesn't have its own competitiveness — that's a big question mark. Speaking of which, I'm very curious: do you two think DAC landing in China is viable?

Yu Yingtian: Based on my understanding of DAC technology, the technology itself is currently relatively stable. In the future, the space for cost reduction and the cost itself shouldn't be fundamentally different from now. I think the point where DAC can be industrialized mainly depends on how to solve the economic viability of the downstream utilization end. If the cost of captured CO2 can be well accepted and utilized by downstream enterprises, converted into higher-value products, then it can generate profits together with downstream. But DAC as a standalone project is very difficult to generate positive economic returns, so the focus for DAC is still how to solve its downstream utilization pathways.

Wang Yijing: Many early-stage DAC R&D teams domestically are also realizing this, gradually cooperating with downstream utilization partners. But regarding standalone DAC business models, people in the industry have different views — some think this could work in China but would be very difficult, others are very direct in saying "DAC won't work in China."

Zheng Can: I think Dr. Yu is absolutely right, I very much agree. DAC as an industry form can work — the question is whether downstream develops. Once U develops, I'll build it for you, I can still be a partner, but separated from U it has no meaning. At the same time, the high-value utilization technologies that can cover DAC costs today may not be that numerous, so I'd lean cautious.

Yu Yingtian: Because DAC also has several different competing technology routes. For example, ammonia-based capture systems at power plants or other carbon sources — this system is very mature technically, has been operating for a very long time, and there are successful running examples in different places worldwide. Its cost should be far below DAC costs. From the perspective of downstream utilization enterprises like ours, if we were to choose such raw materials, we would of course choose the lowest-cost raw materials. We don't care where the raw materials come from, we only choose the lowest cost, even zero-cost solid waste or gas waste raw materials. So compared to these very low-cost commercial raw materials, DAC still has a long road ahead.

Zheng Can: Because today utilization often happens within large chemical and large energy enterprises, and they don't lack CO2. So perhaps in the future, in distributed chemical product production or end-product direct production scenarios, there will be some distributed DAC demand — that's possible.

5

Solving Customers' "Difficult Cases"

Market Dominance Through Dimensional Reduction

Wang Yijing: You mentioned large chemicals, steel, cement industries. In our current customer relationships, looking downstream, what do you think are their biggest needs and pain points? In the current economic environment, when customers come to us for cooperation, what do you think are our biggest demonstrated advantages?

Yu Yingtian: They think about it simply — two things. First, whether your product quality can replace or supplement their existing production process. Second, whether your cost can reduce expenses, save spending, and increase their efficiency. These are their main considerations, the same as what all enterprises consider. In the current macro environment, downstream infrastructure-related industries like cement are actually experiencing a certain degree of crisis. But in the process of landing projects, we actually see this as an opportunity. Because they're now more sensitive to profit margins and raw material costs, or rather at a very sensitive stage, so they become very interested in the value our value proposition of materials can bring them. And at our project sites, generally they're the ones pushing us to move faster and get the materials produced. So to come back to it, in a crisis situation, there are actually also great opportunities.

Wang Yijing: Understood. Looking to the future, Dr. Yu and Can, how big do you think this can get? In our vision, if we could maximize it, what would it look like?

Yu Yingtian: What we actually want to do is take all solid waste output from industry and recycle it back into upstream industrial raw materials. We're a technology route that can replace downstream construction material raw materials at lower cost. So it's actually a very important part of the industrial transformation process (including dual-carbon transformation, green production transformation). How can we help the transformation at low cost without affecting existing production methods — this is what we think about. Our downstream includes construction, infrastructure, mining, environmental remediation, and other application pathways, which are also our new directions. The downstream infrastructure market itself is nearly a trillion-RMB market, and we're potentially a technology route that can completely replace it.

Zheng Can: For CCUS or an integrated technology solution, you need to have — or as much as possible have — other leverage points, because every enterprise cares about different things. Honestly, very few enterprises care about "utilizing carbon." So while I can use carbon to produce some high-value products, are there other points to cooperate with partners on? For example, difficult-to-utilize solid waste — this is actually something that really gives them headaches. If we go to the factory and look, it's really just piled up there, and they're running out of space, there are many places with this problem. Today we're discussing CCUS, but solid waste utilization itself is also an industry, and its environmental benefits are of course very good — it's inherently a positive environmental benefit thing. When enterprises pitch to customers, if the enterprise has multiple touch points, several leverage points, then it can more flexibly solve customer problems according to local conditions. Within the enterprise's technology system, you can originally help customers solve additional problems — perhaps the customer chooses me for another reason, but the secondary gain the enterprise brings to the customer is positive environmental benefit, carbon capture, and so on. So everyone should as much as possible consider what other points in their technology can generate economic benefit or solve enterprise problems. Actually, such enterprises are very few — among the CCUS enterprises we've looked at, Carbon New Materials is probably the first. Speaking of the whole market, solid waste utilization itself is also a market of several hundred billion RMB. It stratifies — different solid wastes have different utilization difficulties — but let's just say the most difficult-to-utilize solid waste, it's still a hundred-billion market. Dr. Yu may be understating it at hundred-billion, because in the future we can expand — if I've done the hardest things, why wouldn't I do the easy ones? That's of course more consideration for enterprise development. So I think the market is enormous; the key is how we rapidly capture it.

Wang Yijing: Speaking of how we rapidly capture it, Dr. Yu, could you share strategically how you'll go about capturing it going forward?

Yu Yingtian: For an early-stage startup like ours, our resources, manpower, capital, and time are all extremely limited. To put it vividly — in the midst of battle, if you're a very small unit, you must concentrate all your resources, manpower, material resources, and even your direction from the very beginning. Only then can you achieve maximum leverage. In our initial phase, we focused intensely on executing one to two highly successful, replicable projects. Our partners are very large, representative enterprises, so our projects carry strong technical weight and soft influence, which then allows us to rapidly capture other markets. The solid waste we're currently handling is extremely difficult to treat — existing technology simply cannot utilize it at all, and this is precisely what has created such massive demand. By starting with these most difficult industries, we'll have a dimensional-reduction advantage in the future. Our current partners are primarily large-scale industrial state-owned or central enterprises, mainly in chemicals, power, steel, and mining. We hope to present a relatively complete project before our next funding round. Once the project is fully operational, we'll start turning, generating returns, and actually pushing forward several new application scenarios including traditional cement industry applications. At that point, when we begin expanding to other enterprises, things will go much more smoothly — or rather, the timeline will compress dramatically.

6

Transforming Industries with Frontier Technology

— Linear Capital's Investment Philosophy

Wang Yijing: Let's talk about this round now. I'd like to ask Can — currently in the market, especially for dual-currency funds, many are adjusting strategies. From an investment perspective, when laying out sector allocation in this year's market, what core strategic considerations have you gone through? For instance, you mentioned economic factors as an important support for the CCUS sector's rise — what strategic considerations did you experience in this investment, or internal deliberations during the investment process?

Zheng Can: What we've always emphasized is using frontier technology to transform industries. Linear Capital's overall investment direction is data intelligence and frontier technology. The half-sentence we don't always say out loud is: we want founders' new technologies to find commercially viable scenarios that can dramatically reduce costs and increase efficiency — what we call categorical improvement. Only then can you build a large enterprise. Of the 130 companies we've invested in to date, we've looked at all of them through this lens.

At this point in time, our broad direction hasn't changed at all. We still seek applications of frontier technology in industry. Of course, in a relatively weaker economic environment, what adjustments should we make? Or what kinds of companies do we hope to find that can adapt to these conditions? From our perspective, the bar has probably gotten higher. In our investment decisions, we hope that once we decide to invest, we can give them enough capital for two years. We also want companies to pursue what we call profitable growth — as they develop along their path, they should be able to make money first. And they may need to figure out how to make the business profitable earlier than before — this is something we'll care about and discuss more.

When we were looking at utilization earlier, we were already considering whether this was a utilization business that could make money. In fact, quite a few utilization pathways have no real economic benefit to speak of — those were never in our direction or consideration to begin with. It's just that today we may emphasize more, and hope earlier, to find companies where technology can be industrialized and generate economic returns. That's where our thinking is today.

7

In Early-Stage Investment,

Founder-Investor "Chemistry"

Wang Yijing: When Dr. Yu and Can first met, what were your first impressions of each other?

Yu Yingtian: My first impression of Linear Capital was that they focus on finding technological moats and technological advancement. They really can grasp the few critical points within a technology and achieve complete understanding on those points. And the Linear Capital team has the capability to understand these points. As Can just described their investment strategy — you need this kind of hard capability to identify good hard-tech companies. So from their focus, I could sense that Linear Capital would be a partner that could be enormously helpful to us in the future.

Wang Yijing: We've said before that chemistry in early-stage investment is extremely important. Can, you mentioned some small points earlier — for instance, seeing some of Dr. Yu's growth, how handling things was different from when he first returned to China. What else stood out or moved you during your interactions?

Zheng Can: When we went to Dr. Yu's project site together, seeing how he communicated, engaged, and pushed things forward with all the different parties — that left the deepest impression. It actually showed that Dr. Yu is a very multifaceted person, not completely the same as our initial impression. His ability to perform across many directions is a very important point. Additionally, we saw that Dr. Yu approaches driving collaboration with all parties with tremendous passion — and we particularly like that. We have our own standards for evaluating founders, and passion is a very important component.

Yu Yingtian: Speaking more generally, the relationship between founder and investor should be a very good match. On my end, it wasn't about deliberately trying to impress. What's more important is finding a very suitable investor. I'm very grateful for Can's comments just now, but regarding some of my traits — passion, for instance — if an investor isn't very technical, or isn't the type that focuses on technological advancement, then to them I might be too much of a bookworm. Including everyday speech and conduct, ways of doing things, project推进 approaches — they might find me overly academic. Everyone's judgment is different. For me, my feeling about Linear Capital is that they first of all really get technology down thoroughly. Their understanding of technology reaches a level of obsession, or perhaps偏执 (single-minded fixation). I think this is a very good thing, because for our country, only enterprises with genuinely过硬 (rock-solid) technology will be able to truly capture the market over the next three to five years, or ten-year timeframe. Over the next 30 years, the development model for our country's enterprises has reached an inflection point — I think their (Linear Capital's) judgment is exactly right. Then another thing — when you combine technological advancement with a very large market, that can ignite exponential growth, rapid growth. I personally very much identify with this way of thinking.

8

Driving Carbon Neutrality Transformation from First Principles

Dual-Carbon Entrepreneurship Must Return to Business Fundamentals

Wang Yijing: At this point in time, if other entrepreneurs are looking to raise funding, what advice would you two give?

Yu Yingtian: I think first, do your own job very solidly. Second, meet more investors, and find a partner whose thinking and perspectives align very closely with yours — because investors are coming to collaborate with and empower you. Alignment is extremely, extremely important.

Zheng Can: Given the angle we care about, from our perspective, we actually hope founders or prospective founders can think more about the fit between their technology, product, and problem — how to productize it, how to create its proper commercial value, and try as early and as much as possible. Focus more on how technology can combine with the right problem, how to productize the technology, and then find your proper market. Of course fundraising is very difficult — abandon fantasy. And at the early stage, don't overthink it. If it's a fit, move quickly to get the funding done and develop the enterprise. Only by developing the enterprise is the hard truth. There may have been other approaches before where you could focus mainly on fundraising, but in today's market environment, what you should most do is return to the enterprise's proper mission — it should conform to business fundamentals.

Yu Yingtian: Carbon neutrality should actually be a very large external force for the industry, and it will persist for a very long time. In our day-to-day project推进, we don't necessarily feel the impact of carbon reduction on the market. But dual-carbon is fundamentally different from other industry风口 (fads) — it's something very objective, actually happening, with a driving force behind it that will last for a very long time. So how to build an enterprise in such an environment — I think everyone should actually反过来 (conversely) return to what enterprises themselves should do: get technology, profitability, and market right first, then look up at the sky to see what feedback the broader context can give us at that point, and continuously adjust our own strategy. I think this is my personal view on how to推进.

Wang Yijing: This really resonates with me. Actually, our firm 2060 Advisory works on financing services for dual-carbon and climate upstream and downstream. Looking at this theme, the core still comes back to business fundamentals, industry and industrial scalability, costs between upstream and downstream — ESG investing, impact investing looks at things the same way as all investing. Just because you're related to carbon doesn't mean requirements should be lower elsewhere. It may not be lower — it might actually be higher. We talk about "Additionality" — meaning you first have to get your own fundamentals right, while also solving social or environmental problems. And ideally, the best case is positive correlation between the two. Like what we discussed earlier: CarbonTech's environmental benefits, solving these difficult solid waste and CO2 problems, while also bringing more economic returns. From an impact investing perspective, the best scenario is seeing correlation between the two in a dual-return model (environmental and economic benefits). People often think that because they're related to dual-carbon, they should be treated with differential preferential treatment — it's really not like that at all.

Zheng Can: I very much agree. We've talked a lot about economic points, and we've discussed how overseas there are many policies, right? We actually hope for domestic policies too. From our perspective, we hope policies can truly encourage enterprises and projects that can use technology to generate economic effects. From another angle, we also hope it can more sustainably, more enduringly help solve carbon neutrality problems from底层逻辑 (first principles). For instance, carbon marketization has some底层逻辑 — can policy make the economy truly work? This is actually a longer, harder, bigger question: how to genuinely drive marketized economic and market supply development. On the other hand, how to truly help energy achieve economically viable transformation within capacity, and truly help new energy marketize. When these things develop, carbon neutrality or carbon marketization can develop. This is actually a very long process, but only by doing it this way can this truly be accomplished.

Of course, I have a personal stake in this too — I want the technologies we've invested in, the companies that can generate real economic returns, to genuinely thrive, rather than just getting swept up in some flood of indiscriminate funding. I understand this is actually the intended meaning of the policy itself. Our carbon neutrality goal isn't simply about the environment; we genuinely hope to achieve healthy economic development and transformation, to help a new generation of companies emerge — companies with new technologies that can bring new, additional economic benefits. That's actually the real purpose. Because when people often discuss policy issues, subsidy issues, and then worry about what happens when subsidies get pulled, a truly long-term approach would look quite different. That's what we most hope to see.

Wang Yijing: And at the core of it, what's really needed are these green technologies. Only they can truly drive the carbon neutrality transformation.

Zheng Can: Exactly. We support these companies because we hope they can genuinely help achieve these goals from a perspective that's beneficial in the long term.

Wang Yijing: I'm also very grateful to both of you — our collaboration this time went very smoothly. At 2060 Advisory, we've always hoped to direct more effective capital toward sustainable and climate transformation. This is what we believe in and what we're doing.

Zheng Can: Actually, I think 2060 Advisory is a very special organization. At least from what I know, it's the most specialized firm in China working on dual carbon and climate tech overall. I've known Yijing for quite a while now, and I actually learned a lot about impact investment philosophy from her earlier on. We've had many exchanges along the way, and I've gained tremendously, so I'm especially grateful to Yijing.

Wang Yijing: Thank you, thank you, Can!

Yu Yingtian: My initial impression of 2060 Advisory was that they don't try to cover every industry. They're really a firm focused specifically on carbon neutrality. So in the process of pushing things forward, they're very targeted in connecting with people at institutions that have a stake in or interest in this industry. It actually feels quite similar to what I mentioned earlier about Linear Capital's style or sensibility — they're also very focused on one point, and also a very persistent organization. So I have a lot of respect for that. Also, Yijing and I actually resonate on many things. We were both international students who returned to China, and they (2060 Advisory) also started from scratch and kept pushing forward. So there's a lot of common ground, and actually an added sense of familiarity. Overall, the collaboration has been very pleasant.

Zheng Can: In our evaluation of founders, one criterion is whether the founder has a sense of mission. We just talked about Dr. Yu's passion for this, and we feel he has a sense of mission about the problem he's trying to solve. What I want to say is, I feel Yijing is also someone with a sense of mission about the work she does. Actually, we feel Linear Capital is too — we have confidence that technology can transform Chinese industry. So we genuinely feel it's more enjoyable to work alongside friends who share these commonalities.

Wang Yijing: Wonderful, really thank you all so much! I think in terms of working style we're all actually quite similar — everyone is focused on talking about the substance of things, all communication is very smooth, and every time we chat we get very thorough, whether it's about mission and what comes next, or how to actually accomplish things from fundamental changes and logic. So I'm very happy to have this funding collaboration with all of you, and I hope we can have more and better cooperation going forward.

Low-Key Tanda New Materials Is Hiring for Market Roles!

Wang Yijing: Because Dr. Yu's company is quite low-key overall — Tanda doesn't do much PR — people will ask us what Dr. Yu's plans are next, and whether he might want to recruit for certain team roles. We can talk about that so people can reach out.

Yu Yingtian: Here's how I understand PR: we're actually very targeted in what we do. Our current projects are mainly focused on working with state-owned enterprises, central SOEs, and local governments, so our PR is primarily done locally where the projects are. If you're among the enterprises we target with our projects, you'd feel that our PR is continuously advancing. It's still that logic — with limited resources and time, we focus our energy very specifically on a few points. This probably reflects back on our working style and methodology; we're still very utility-oriented in how we push forward.

Going forward, we'll still put a lot of energy on the R&D side — we're mainly a R&D-driven team composition. But we're also preparing for a very rapid expansion phase, so we're currently looking for market development personnel who have strong understanding of technology and strong market capabilities. I actually met with a prospective candidate last night, so we're very actively searching for this type of team member.

Wang Yijing: Thank you again to Dr. Yu and Can for joining this episode of 2060 Movers! I hope anyone interested in market-related roles and potentially joining Tanda New Materials will take a closer look at the company. I also hope Tanda can continue to develop better and better, and that the core milestone of customer deployment can be completed smoothly. I also hope Linear Capital can invest in more and better projects going forward. Thank you both again for your time!

At the end of the program, we'd also like to thank all our listeners for tuning in. We welcome you to continue following and listening to future episodes of 2060 Movers, as we join you in paying attention to entrepreneurs and investors at home and abroad who are focused on solving social and environmental problems, and exploring the stories behind those pioneers of "carbon neutrality & sustainable development." See you next time, bye-bye~