2019.04.15 CoStone Capital 浏览次数:
“The traitorous spirit and inclusive industries make Shenzhen, an immigrant city, the most to Silicon Valley-like in the world, where lies the future of China’s entrepreneurship.”
On April 13th, Mr. Zhang Wei, the CEO of CoStone Capital, said at the First China Greater Bay Area Venture Capital Summit that Shenzhen has been well-equipped with all elements Silicon Valley had when it started: good habitat for businesses created by clusters of prominent companies, great infrastructure, enabling laws and regulations, and inclusive society.
With these, Shenzhen has been the fastest growing city over the past 30 years and it will continue to be in the next 30 years. Silicon Valley makes a Stanford, Shenzhen will also make a prestigious Shenzhen University. And Royole, a Chinese manufacturer of fully flexible displays and sensors, owns world-class original technologies. It is the pride of Shenzhen, Mr. Zhang Wei explained.
Immigrant City’ Traitorous Spirit Fosters Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Shenzhen and Silicon Valley are both immigrant cities with traitorous spirit, said Zhang.
“Those who came to Shenzhen as I did over twenty years ago either resigned from dissatisfactory companies or ended their dissatisfactory marriages in divorce when the great majority of Chinese couples chose not to. They are audacious and crave for making a difference. They need a place for the crazy ones to create a future. They have ethos hardly seen in non-immigrant cities.”
Perhaps, it was the greater entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley that attracted Mark Zuckerberg, a Harvard graduate, to not start his business in Boston but in Silicon Valley.” Just like Silicon Valley back then, Shenzhen has attracted numerous top-notch entrepreneurs. Here they make their ideas happen and create an enabling environment for start-ups.
Inclusive Environment Boosts Entrepreneurship
Shenzhen is as inclusive as Silicon Valley, said Zhang.
Silicon Valley’s success story started with the outflow of talents and technologies from well-established companies.
In the 1950s, the renowned Almaden Research Center was set up by IBM in the southern part of Silicon Valley; William Shockley, a Nobel Prize winning physicist for his creation of transistor, started business in Silicon Valley. These companies attracted numerous first-class scientists and engineers who then left for their own businesses.
Among whom, The Traitorous Eight are the most legendary. They left Shockley Semiconductor and formed Fairchild Semiconductor which then was directly or indirectly involved in the creation of dozens of corporations, including Intel and AMD.
This is how things work in Silicon Valley: you are allowed to start a business with ex-employers’ technologies.
“Many individuals in the core team of SenseTime and Royole, two of our portfolio companies, are from IBM. So, companies like IBM are indeed great contributors to society,” said Zhang.
Such ecology and manufacturing system are already in place in Shenzhen. When tech giants like Huawei, Tencent, and Mindray here in Shenzhen cannot hold all these talents and technologies, many of them will leave for their own business with those technologies, Zhang continued.
Government Provides Great Institutional Environment with Services
The service-oriented Shenzhen government has created an excellent institutional environment for these entrepreneurs. “The most remarkable thing about Shenzhen is the close and clean government-business relationship which is wonderful and hardly be copied,” said Zhang. “The Deputy Mayor of Shenzhen asked what they could do for us in a visit to our company; Shenzhen government has supported many tech startups and talents via Phoenix Project (a project to attract talent overseas sponsored by the local government); the Science and Technology Bureau of Shenzhen provided a pharmaceutical enterprise with two buildings for free. Not all investments return, but some does. The pharmaceutical enterprise mentioned above has made two national Class 1 New drugs”.
A Successful Shenzhen will Enable a First-Tier University
Zhang envisioned Shenzhen University’s supreme future as of Stanford. “Among all first-tier cities in China, only Shenzhen has no top university. However, with a capable president, a top university will emerge on this economic highland with all those energetic companies.”
“It’s not that Stanford made a successful Silicon Valley as many people think; it is the other way around. In the 1950s when Silicon Valley only started to succeed, Stanford was just a low-end university that contributed nearly nothing to the success. Similarly, people in the future may also mistakenly attribute Shenzhen’s success to Shenzhen University.”
VC Powers Shenzhen, Key & Core Technology is Promising
As Mr. Zhang said, VC has been key to Silicon Valley’s development. Fairchild Semiconductor is certainly a case in point. And in the US, 30-40% of angel investment, as well as venture capitals, are in Silicon Valley now. And in Shenzhen, a hub of innovation and entrepreneurship, the best angel and venture capitalists will also grow. By taking root in Shenzhen, we hope to serve China’s “innovation engines”.
Among these engines, Co-Stone prefers companies with key & core technologies for investing in them is to serve both innovation and higher return. “We have invested heavily in companies like SenseTime and Royole because what they have are world-class platform technologies not common applied technologies.” He then explained how to distinguish key & core technology companies from others, “many of today’s auto companies are merely system integrators without true core technologies.”
Zhang recommended venture capitalists to invest more in key & core technology companies, “over more than a decade since its founding, Tesla had never profited and never produced more than 10,000 cars until last year. Tesla’s success today should be attributed to the respect showed in the US capital market to these zero-to-one companies.”
By saying so, Zhang also supported Royole in the dispute over it. In his idea, Royole’s success is determined by two barriers: to put their technology into production, and to let the production be a profit on its financial report. Royole has not lied, they have overcome the first obstacle by translating flexible display technology into consumer electronics that can be mass-produced. And what they should do next is to prove that this mass production can be a sound performance on the financial report.
Royole and other key & core technology companies who rise to challenges and insist on independent R&D should be certainly the pride of Shenzhen, said Zhang.
Rewritten by: Chen Cong, Edited by: Du Zhixin, Wei Yiyi
过去一年，牛市重启，科技领航。
正如我在2024年10月所说的那样，“924”的行情并不是一个反弹，而是一个反转，自那以后，中国资本市场经历了一个从低估到价值回归的过程。
当上证指数来到10年最高点，“易中天”一年翻几倍，“寒王”市值一度突破6000亿，其他科技股也动辄百倍PE、百亿估值，有人贪婪，有人恐惧，还有人问我：科技股存在估值泡沫吗？
我说，这是一个时代的饥渴与焦虑，在资本市场中的投射。如果你理解这一点，你就不会对当前科技投资的热潮感到困惑。
投资与宏观经济无关，但确与地缘政治有关。
中美关系决定了未来几十年的投资，地缘政治极大构建了我们这个时代的饥渴与焦虑，深刻重塑了我们的投资行为。
中国的饥渴与焦虑是什么？第四次工业革命的大幕已然开启，第三次工业革命的短板却还未补齐，时不我待！
所以当有人疑惑，为什么国产算力芯片企业，技术难以望英伟达之项背，却有这么高的估值？为什么英伟达的PE只有50倍，“中国版英伟达”却有300倍？
我说，逻辑刚好反了，正是因为短期内追不上英伟达，这些企业才被赋予了更高的战略性定价，而且差距越大，战略价值越高。越得不到越饥渴，越追不上越焦虑，如果有一天，我们的算力芯片完全突破了，估值反倒会下来。
中国最美的自然风景在哪里？我认为很大一部分分布在横断山脉及其周边，梅里雪山、玉龙雪山、贡嘎山、四姑娘山、九寨沟等等都在这里。巨大的落差，结构性断裂，形成了壮丽的风景。
硬科技投资就是这样，技术代差、能力断点、体系缺口——难度的跃迁，带来了估值的跃迁，成功之后也将带来回报的跃迁。
这一逻辑，除了算力芯片领域，在存储芯片、商业航天等中国与外国差距比较大的领域，也都有所体现。
正因如此，从2016年开始，基石资本就果断将投资重点聚焦到硬科技、新兴产业和生命科学与健康三个领域——在这个语境下，“硬科技”特指那些与美国有代差的重要产业。
得益于这样的前瞻性，基石资本很早就在半导体、人工智能和机器人等关键领域实现了全产业链布局。
展望未来，科技进步与产业升级是无尽的前沿，硬科技产业差距的缩小亦无法一蹴而就，技术创新和国产替代的双重机会之窗才刚刚打开，任重道远，未来可期。
作为投资机构，基石资本将继续投身于每个时代的饥渴与焦虑，顺着时代的张力前行，向最难、也最重要的方向延伸。