Top 50 Angel Investors in China

Gang Wang

Bob Xiaoping Xu is the founder of ZhenFund and one of China's most celebrated angel investors. Established in 2011 as a joint fund with Sequoia Capital China, ZhenFund is China’s foremost angel fund. Managing USD 600 million, ZhenFund has 500 portfolio companies and offices in Beijing, Shanghai and Palo Alto. It has played a leading role inChina’s rise as a “startup nation”, and is widely considered a beacon of light in China’s vibrant startup environment. Prior to founding ZhenFund, Mr. Xu co-founded China's largest private English training and test preparation group, New Oriental Education, along with Michael Yu and Victor Wang. New Oriental became listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2006 and currently has a market cap of USD 11 billion. The founders’ endeavors, which helped drive Chinese education toward a new global era, was featured in the box office hit “American Dreams in China”. The movie ranked as the #3 Chinese domestic box office hit in 2013. Mr. Xu’s success as an educator and an entrepreneur led him to angel investing, where he has pioneered a unique investment philosophy of investing in exceptional people. He became one of the most prolific patrons of entrepreneurship, as well as a leading mentor to young business leaders. Forbes Magazine has honored him on the Midas List as one of the World’s Top 100 Venture Capital Investors for two consecutive years (2016 and 2017). Mr. Xu currently serves as the Chairman of China Angel Investment Association. Mr. Xu has more than 11 million followers on Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter. He is also a prolific author who has published seven books on career growth and education. His writings, speeches and interviews on entrepreneurship, investment and education have had an immense impact on China’s emerging business leaders, and particularly on those who have studied abroad. He is the president of Committee 2005, an institution that gathers the most influential Chinese overseas returnees, including the likes of Robin Li, Neil Shen and Lee Kai-fu. Mr. Xu is deeply committed to philanthropy. He is a founding donor and the Committee Acting President of the Future Science Award, an annual award of USD 1 million for scientists who have made significant contributions to life sciences and physical sciences in Greater China. Mr. Xu graduated from the Central Conservatory of Music, the Chinese equivalent of Julliard School of Music, with a bachelor’s degree in music. He received his master’s degree in music from the University of Saskatchewan. Prior to that he was a counsellor at Peking University for five years.

Charles Xue, also known as Xue Manzi, is a Chinese-American angel investor and entrepreneur. He is co-founder of UT Starcom and has invested in Chinese internet startups.

Jinbo Yao is the President, Founder and CEO at 58.com.

Bingqiang Gao is the Independent Non-Executive Director of Q Tech.

Frank Li is a former at Ameba Capital. CEO of WaCai. Prior to founding Ameba Capital, Mr. Li worked for Alibaba Group, where he focused on website planning and construction. He developed Alibaba’s biggest paying client base and second biggest income product, 1688 CXT. Mr. Li founded Koubei.com in 2004 and acted as CEO. Alibaba Group acquiredKoubei.com for over 50 million US dollars in 2008. Koubei.com merged with Yahoo China before finally merging with Taobao.

Minhong Yu is the founder, Chairman and CEO of New Oriental, a company providing a comprehensive range of educational services. Yu is also the Vice Chairman of the Beijing Young Entrepreneurs Association and Vice Chairman of the Committee of Education of the Central Committee of the China Democratic League. Prior to founding New Oriental, Yu was anEnglish instructor at Peking University between 1985 and 1991. Yu received his Bachelor’s Degree in English from Peking University. Minhong Yu is the Director of Kidstone.

Xiaoguang Wu was named Senior Management Adviser in June 2015. He joined Tencent in 1999 and was a member of the founding team. Xiaoguang Wu led the development and product planning for the Group’s core product, QQ, and served as project manager for the QQ research and development team. He also served as General Manager of the IM product divisionand General Manager of the internet business division. He was later promoted to Senior Executive Vice President of the internet services division and Chief Executive Officer of Tencent E-Commerce Holdings Limited. Xiaoguang Wu has extensive experience in product research and development, product planning, product operations and marketing internet businesses. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in Weather Dynamics from Nanjing University in 1996 and an EMBA degree from China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) in 2008.

Wanqiang Li is responsible for the marketing of Xiaomi. He was the General Manager of Kingsoft Dictionary and notable for being one of the earliest UI practitioners in China. Graduated from Xi'an Science & Engineering Institute with a degree in Industrial Design in 2000, he joined Kingsoft’s UI Department and played a key role indeveloping many famous software projects including Kingsoft Antivirus, Kingsoft Dictionary and WPS Office. Wanqiang Li served at Kingsoft in various positions as Chief Designer of UI department, Director of Design Center and Director of Internet Content. Wanqiang Li is also a Co-founder of Xiaomi.

BitFund was founded in the middle of 2013 by Xiaolai Li, started from as little as $3.5 Million, and within one year, BitFund became the most influential Venture Capital related to crypto-currency in China. Xiaolai Li, a middle-aged retired formal teacher, a life-long learner, an individual who has always been curious about innovations andenthusiastic on efficiency, Li is the first individual in China who has been publicly collecting bitcoins without trying to remain anonymous (everyone puts great emphasis on anonymity of bitcoin when they first know about bitcoin), therefore he is well-known in China, and became even more influential after the BitFund founded.

Jun Lei is the Co-Founder, Founding Partner, and Chairman at Shunwei.

Tao Zhang (张滔) is the Founder and CEO of Dianping.com, MBA from the Wharton School. Tao was consultant in an American IT company. After coming back to China in 2003, he founded Dianping.com, the world’s pioneer in offering consumer reviews for restaurant. After 5 years of development, dianping has over 460,000 registered companies in over 340cities across China. More than 10 million regular visitors and 160 million page views per month make it the most popular city life website in China. Dianping has established branches in 5 cities including Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Nanjing and Hangzhou and is still expanding. Currently its service involves various consumption areas in city life, such as restaurant, shopping, reaction and living service, etc. With a favorable business model, Dianping has more than once been considered one of the companies with the most investment value in China by Zero2IPO and China Venture. It also raised funding from global leading venture capital firms, for example, Sequoia Capital. Dianping recorded profit in November 2008 and become the first profitable Web 2.0 Company and a search website centered on city life.

Hayden Zou

Patrick is currently the Founding and Managing Partner of ZWC Partners, which has a strategy to invest in innovative companies with high growth potential in TMT (technology, media & internet) and consumer sectors. His successful continuous entrepreneurial experience has enabled him to establish extensive network resources and diversity industryexperience in many industries.The investment track records of Patrick include Focus Media Group, Tantan, VIPKid, 58 Finance, 4Paradigm, Mobike, Souche, Yunhu Technology, RootCloud, Zebra Prime，Wattpad, Leyan Technologies, etc. Patrick is the alumni of China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) Global CEO Program (class 2010) and the alumni of Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business (CKGSB) China CEO Program (class 2009). Also conducts academic researches as a visiting scholar at Stanford University (2017 – Current).

Ming Lei (雷鸣) is the chief executive officer of Kuwo Science and Technology, a Chinese company providing digital entertainment services. Prior to that, he was a senior engineer at Baidu, a Chinese web services company. Lei holds an MBA from Stanford University, United States and a master’s degree in computer from Peking University, China.

Jason Zeng, one of the Core Founders and Advisor Emeritus of Tencent Group. Jason founded the Group in 1999. As the Chief Operating Officer during 1999 and 2007, Jason was responsible for overseeing the Company's business lines and product portfolios and the managing the Company’s sales and marketing activities across China. Prior toTencent, Jason worked in the Shenzhen Data Telecommunications Bureau and was familiar with the Internet and telecommunications industries in China. Since June 2007, Jason has been the Advisor Emeritus of the Company.

Xiangyang Yang

Eddie Wu is the Co-Founder and Senior Vice President of Alibaba Group. He previously worked at Yahoo as a Heading of Technology Development. Eddie Wu attended Zhejiang University of Technology.

Wei Guo, the founding partner of UpHonest Capital, is an active angel investor in Silicon Valley, focusing on early-stage cross-sector investments. He founded Wei Fund in 2015 and UpHonest Capital Fund I in 2016, invested in well-known companies such as Hims&Hers(NYSE: HIMS), Vicarious Surgical(NYSE: RBOT), Knightscope (NASDAQ: KSCP), Checkr,Lime, Boom, Rescale, Dialpad and more. Since 2015, he has invested in over 400 Silicon Valley startups, over 76 companies with valuations greater than 100 million USD, and 23 portfolio companies that have successfully exited.

Jiawei Gan

James Robertson

O.D. Kobo is an accomplished entrepreneur with over twenty-years of demonstrated history working in the financial services and technology sector.

Wang Huiwen is the VP of Product and Marketing at Meituan.com. He attended the China Academy of Science.

Cui Xinxin - Partner and Co-Founder @ Share Capital

Cross-border angel / early stage investor with portfolio of 40+ startup companies and as of currently 4 exits, 4 unicorns & counting.George invests in companies helping people lead a longer, healthier and happier life - keywords sustainability, ESG, impact investing. In addition to investing he likes to be hands-on in hisportfoliocompanies, either helping China / SEA based teams to internationalize or global teams to break into China / SEA or support them in outsourcing, sourcing and manufacturing. Typically angel, seed and occasional Series A stage investments. Industry focus and selected startups in his portfolio: - E-Commerce e.g. Web2Asia, Grana, Mercato - SaaS e.g. Jimdo, Blush, Anduin Transactions - Marketplaces / crowdfunding Republic.co - Education / Training e.g. Vantage Point, Dexter, - IoT e.g. Mila, Cafe-X, Lyte charging, The Light Phone, Density.io - Fitness e.g. FitXR, Trainersvault, Overhand Fitness, Salut, Guavapass (exit via sale to ClassPass) - Health / Nutrition e.g. NutriSense, Blue Mesa Health (exit via sale to Virgin), Compass Therapeutics (exit via IPO) - Insurtech e.g. The Care Voice - Medtech / Biotech e.g. Life Biosciences, Sequencing.com, MycoWorks - Sustainability / Infrastructure e.g. Blokable, U.S. Bitcoin Corp, Hardt Hyperloop - Deep tech / frontier tech e.g. Rain Neuromorphics, ZaiNar, Massive, Protocol Labs (Filecoin) - On-demand / sharing economy e.g. Yassir, Truck it in, misterbnb, Delivery Hero Austria & China (exit via sale / IPO)

Yinan Li is a partner at Plum Ventures and is known for being the founder of luxury electric bike maker Niu Technologies Group.

Xiaochuan Wang has been Chief Executive Officer of Sogou since 2010. Under his leadership, Sogou has developed many strategic products, including the Sogou Search Engine, Sogou Pinyin Input Method and Sogou Browser. From 2010 to 2013, he also served as the Chief Technology Officer of Sohu. Wang joined Sohu in October 2000, when we acquired theonline alumni website Chinaren.com, and has played an integral role in establishing a technology-driven culture through a focus on team building and product innovation. Prior to Sohu, Wang worked as a technology manager at Chinaren.com. Wang received a Gold Medal in the 11th International Olympiad in Informatics ("IOI"). Wang received his bachelor and master degrees in Computer Science from Tsinghua University.

Yao Song

Boquan He

Simon Szewach - Managing Partner @ The Legats Group

Anyi Shengyin

Wang Qiang (Victor Wang) is a Co-Founder of ZhenFund and New Oriental Education & Technology Group (NYSE: EDU). He designed the oral and practical English and computer science courses. Prior to co-founding of ZhenFund and New Oriental, he was an engineer in the software division of Bell Communications Research and former lecturer of Englishlanguage and literature at Peking University.He received an M.S. in Computer Science from State University of New York, and a B.A. in English from Peking University. He is the Chairman of the Board of Juzi Entertainment.

Hu Zemin is a Chinese investor.

Lucas Driggers

Adrian Cheng is the Executive Vice Chairman and General Manager of New World Development, Executive Director of Chow Tai Fook Jewellery Group, founder of K11 Group and co-founder of C Ventures. Based in Hong Kong and Europe, he is heading the operation of the family company New World Development, a $55bn infrastructure-to-retail group with holdingsin China and worldwide. Cheng is reinventing the family business as a “cultural enterprise” and expanding ownership to new areas including AI, entertainment and e-commerce, with a focus on China’s millennial and Generation Z audience.

Jeff Olyniec has been the CEO of New Vision Display since the company formed in 2012. He has a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration- Marketing from Mississippi State University.Jeff previously worked at International Display Works (which was later acquired by Flextronics and is now the current NVD) in senior management roles includingsales and supply chain. He then moved on to Solar Power Inc, a worldwide leader in the design and construction of solar power generating facilities, overseeing all of the company’s operations in Asia as the EVP of the company.Jeff has lived and worked in China since 1996 and speaks fluent Chinese.

Gan Jie, is the vice dean of the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business, professor of finance, and director of the Center for Finance and Economic Development.

Zhengdong Ni is a joint partner at QianHai FoFs and the founder of Zero2IPO Group.

Su Hua

Thibault Villet

Mingming Zhu is the founder and CEO of Rokid. He previously worked at University of Louisville as an Instructor. Mingming Zhu attended Washington University in St. Louis.

Lei Ming

Dr. Qi Lu works for Microsoft as president of the Online Services Group. Dr. Lu leads Microsoft’s efforts in search and online advertising and all the company’s online information and communications services. Dr. Lu reports directly to Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer.Dr. Qi Lu has also served as executive vice president ofengineering for Search and Advertising Technology Group at Yahoo where he leads development efforts around Yahoo's Web search and monetization platforms. Prior to joining Yahoo in 1998, Dr. Lu was a Research Staff Member at IBM Almaden Research Center. Before that, Dr. Lu worked at Carnegie Mellon University as a Research Associate, and at Fudan University in China as a faculty member. He holds 20 U.S. patents, and received his B.S. and M.S. in computer science from Fudan University and his Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University.

Ron Zuckerman is the Co-Founder and Director of TV Time.

Li Kanglin

Wu Tianhua is the founder and CEO of Tiger Brokers.Prior to his current role, Wu Tianhua was one of the early-stage founders of Youdao, a search engine released by Nasdaq-listed internet technology company NetEase Inc. Wu Tianhua has been at NetEase since his graduation from Tsinghua University with a master's degree in computer science in2009.

Yang Shoubin is the Founding Partner of FH Capital.

Xin Xu

Wang Rui

Richard Qiangdong Liu is the founder of JD.com (NASDAQ: JD) and has been their chairman and chief executive officer since the company’s inception. Born in a small rural village and raised in relative poverty, Liu’s commitment to operating his business with honesty and integrity has seen it grow from a tiny stall in a shopping bazaar to the thirdlargest retail company globally by revenue. The company reported an annual revenue of $82.9 billion for 2019, and while Liu’s net worth himself is estimated to be upwards of $12.7 billion he remains humble -- when Fortune magazine identified him as one of their “World’s Greatest Leaders” they singled him out as having “few of the trappings of a celebrity CEO.” With heavy investments in technology such as AI, big data, and drones, Liu’s vision for the future of his company is one that continues to break the mold of traditional retail and ecommerce businesses while staying true to its roots in customer loyalty and trust.Liu was born and raised in a village called Chang’an in the eastern coastal province of Jiangsu, China. A part of the Suqian prefecture-level city system in the northern area of the province, Liu’s family had been forcibly resettled there after the rise of communism in the late 1940’s. In fact, prior to the revolution his family had been wealthy shipowners who transported goods along the Yangtze river and the ancient imperial canal from Beijing in the north to Hangzhou in the south. However, by the time Liu was born his parents were poor farmers, struggling to make ends meet and support both him and his grandparents who lived with them. Although Liu was born in the 1970’s, his village still lacked the modern day conveniences that were readily available in other parts of the country such as running water, electricity, and even paved roads. Nutritious food was also scarce, and from June to September they had access to corn which they would stretch to make meals such as cornmeal porridge, corn pancakes, and dry cornbread, all of which were so tough that Liu has said they could make your throat bleed. The rest of the year the family would eat sweet potato, either boiled, formed into pancakes, or dried. In his final year of secondary school, Liu applied to universities located in Shanghai and Beijing, believing only large cities would give him the platform he needed to do more and see more. He excelled in the rigorous college entrance exams he took, and was accepted to Renmin University -- then known as the People’s University of China -- in Beijing. However, the trip to Beijing was going to cost him around $75, an exorbitant sum to rural farmers at the time. His family was unable to afford the train ticket on their own, but thankfully his friends and neighbors had full faith in his ability to achieve and contributed whatever they could spare towards his education.At Renmin University, Liu studied sociology with the thought that he may enter politics, but he soon found that even with his classes and homework he had a considerable amount of free time in Beijing. He got a job at a small business who couldn’t afford a photocopier hand-copying letters, and also began to teach himself computer programming. The latter endeavor turned out to not only be a fun way to pass the time for Liu, but also one of his very first entrepreneurial ventures. The recent policy shift in China toward market reforms and embracing some aspects of capitalism created an influx of businesses that needed computer programmers. With Liu’s calm demeanor and trustworthy nature, he quickly became a popular choice and had soon made more money than he had ever dreamed of in the lucrative business. With the funds, he purchased a personal computer and cell phone -- two very expensive items at the time -- and was even able to have a new house built for his parents in the village. On June 18th, 1998, Liu took his 12,000 yuan (about $1,760) he had saved during his two years at Japan Life and used it to purchase inventory and rent a 4-square-meter booth in one of the many technological bazaars in Zhongguancun. Calling the company Jingdong, this was the start of what would eventually become JD.com, and the date on which he opened up shop has become known as “618” day and accompanies a promotional blitz that has become a nationwide phenomenon rivaling the United States’ Black Friday. Before all that though, he was simply a one-man booth selling magneto-optical drives, a type of optical disc drive similar in appearance to a floppy disk capable of having data written and rewritten upon it. In 2003, Liu’s business hit a snag when the SARS epidemic caused widespread fear and panic, with most consumers electing to stay home in order to avoid catching or spreading the virus. This had a devastating effect on China’s economy, and many retail stores including Liu’s were forced to temporarily shutter. In an effort to continue generating revenue and keep himself in business, Liu began posting his products to online bulletin boards, and after one of his customers happened to find him and vouch for his decency and honorableness he was able to keep his business alive by selling his electronic goods online. After Liu was able to re-open his stores, he also designated one employee to work full-time posting his products on the internet. By the time the year was over, it was clear to Liu that the burgeoning e-commerce industry was the perfect match for his business aspirations, and began plans to move his company entirely online. At the time, the internet was still a place people were wary of purchasing items from, but Liu’s work building a trustworthy brand enabled him to get a head start in gaining the trust of the consumers. Nonetheless, he worked extremely hard to build JD.com into a premiere e-commerce service, launching JD.com in early 2004. He elected to live in his office in order to save money on rent, and wrote the initial code for the website himself. He wanted to get to know his customers and their needs as closely as possible, and so he alone answered all of the customer inquiries that came through. In order to make sure no questions went very long unanswered, Liu would set an alarm clock for himself to go off every two hours during the night so that he could wake up and answer any questions that had been asked. He even handled much of the deliveries himself. For Liu, having control over the quality of his service was one of the key differentiators between his business and his competitors. Liu extended this idea in 2007, when he made the decision to take his entire logistics network for the e-commerce site completely in-house. For Liu it was an imperative step towards not only being able to curate his e-commerce service to tailor-fit his customers, but also open up previously untapped markets such as third and fourth-tier cities whose consumers previously had to travel miles in order to purchase the goods they needed. This strategy has proven to be a key to the company’s atmospheric rise, with 90% of its deliveries now arriving either the same or next day. Liu has frequently been recognized for his work on JD.com and the Chinese online ecommerce industry as a whole. China’s largest television network CCTV awarded him the “2011 China Economic Person of the Year” and he has also been named the “2011 Chinese Business Leader” and was noted as one of Fortune China’s “2012 Chinese Businessmen.” According to Forbes, Liu is currently #165 on the list of 2020 billionaires, #40 on China’s Rich List of 2020, and #25 on the Richest in Tech 2017 list, and was also ranked #48 on Fortune’s “World’s Greatest Leaders” list. In reference to Liu’s ranking, Fortune remarked that Liu had “few of the trappings of a celebrity CEO” and little corporate ego. Liu is often invited to speak at some of the largest forums in the world such as the World Economic Forum in Davos on topics such as the ecommerce industry, technological advancements, and to share his business development story as a means to inspire others, but even with this and working 16 hour days, he still spends one day a year working as a delivery person for JD.com.