One day in September 2009, on the edge of West Lake in Hangzhou, there was a clear breeze on the green shore, and the water and sky complemented each other, creating a charming scenery. Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, and his friend Yu Feng, the founder of Juzhong Media, have just met with foreign investors

One day in September 2009, on the edge of West Lake in Hangzhou, there was a clear breeze on the green shore, and the water and sky complemented each other, creating a charming scenery. Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, and his friend Yu Feng, the founder of Juzhong Media, have just met with foreign investors. This time, the two made up their minds to establish a large joint investment fund, but lacked a managing director.

Compared to the unwavering determination he had when he founded Alibaba six years ago, Jack Ma now has a lot of strength and choices, but he is a bit hesitant.Like the original establishment of "18 Arhat", Ma Yun and his friend Yu Feng analyzed several suitable candidates. Finally, their eyes lit up and they remembered a young woman, Li Ying, who was later called "female Buffett".

Later facts proved that Jack Ma's choice was very correct,This young woman, named Li Ying, later became the co founder of Yunfeng Fund and fully expanded in the fund market. In just ten years, she helped Yunfeng Fund, which initially invested 3.73 billion yuan, develop to a scale of 100 billion yuan and become the "10 billion dollar trader behind Jack Ma".

Due to the mysterious background, I am extremely low-key, and the public has a lot of curiosity about Li Ying, who is good-looking and still single. So, what kind of person is she?

A female academic bully who doesn't like ease

Li Ying is a Hakka person born in Meixian, Guangdong. Her parents are business owners and have been extremely strict with her education since childhood. They demand that her daughter not only be strict in her words and actions, but also not fall behind in her studies.

Unlike other children who were forced to grow up under the high demands of their parents, Li Ying clearly never rejected their demands. According to her own later explanation, firstly, the parents themselves were "perfect" enough, so she believed she should do the same. Secondly, her father often told her about the hardships of the Hakka family and their extraordinary backgrounds.

At that time, Li Ying knew that on Earth with different countries and ethnic languages, the Hakka people were almost the only Han ethnic group scattered across the six continents and five oceans.

From Suriname in South America to Northern United States in North America, from Australia in Oceania to Singapore in Asia, from South Africa in Africa to Britain in Europe, there are traces and achievements of Hakka people everywhere. Father said that the Hakka people are a typical ethnic group of the most powerful Chinese nation, so they should not lose face to their ancestors wherever they go in the future.

Li Ying, who had her parents as role models, had high expectations of herself since childhood. Coupled with her talent and intelligence, her studies were quite smooth. From elementary school to junior high school, she skipped grades. In her second year of junior high, because her parents had brought business from Shenzhen to the United States, Li Ying followed her to the United States. In American schools, Li Ying is also not lagging behind, only jumping to high school in the first half of junior high school.

At this time, she was already pursuing the goal of "not wasting time on everything she already had", coupled with the influence of American culture, and her nature of not liking ease was completely unleashed. In addition to completing high school courses at an extremely fast pace, she also participated in the research and development of numerous projects specifically open to students at prestigious schools.

In the process of exchanging achievements with various schools, Li Ying gained the attention of several famous schools. After graduation, I first received admission notices from my beloved Yale University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and then received admission notices from Stanford University.

After consideration, Li Ying believes that she should first complete her further studies in science, lay a solid foundation, and then consider further studies in humanities at Yale or Harvard University.

But later onLi Ying was unable to fully fulfill her vision because she was too eager to approach new things and accept different challenges.

Li Ying spent three years finishing two bachelor's degrees that other students need to complete in twice the time - Massachusetts Bachelor of Computer Science, Bachelor of Economics, and a master's degree - Electronic engineering and Master of Computer Science. After that, she directly received offers from McKinsey Management Company, which many people dream of.

At this time, she had just turned twenty and was already very interested in the internship position of investment and management. After joining McKinsey, she even doubled her efforts. Not long after, Li Ying, due to her outstanding work performance, became a management consultant responsible for observing market trends and providing strategic decisions to various enterprises, along with most of McKinsey's elite men in their fifties and sixties.

In the later words of Li Ying, the only thing that could make clients doubt professionalism at this time was her age. Therefore, at that time, Li Ying worked very hard to approach "mature women in their thirties" in terms of clothing, hairstyle, and style.

Afterwards, Li Ying used her accumulated marketing and investment management experience in her work to continuously update and upgrade her network resources. From June 2000 to the end of 2009, she achieved a "three-level leap" in three investment management companies, including McKinsey, and created impressive results in each company.

Afterwards, when she thought she was already strong enough in terms of experience accumulation and actual achievements to start a business, she encountered Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba and Taobao, during a chance meeting and once again received an olive branch from Jack Ma.

A giant who demands' zero failure '

At that time, Ma Yun, who thought of going to talk to Li Ying on the embankment of Hangzhou, had full confidence. However, what he didn't expect was that Li Ying had considered it for more than three months before deciding to accept the offer he had submitted.

The first time Jack Ma met Li Ying was because KPCB's investment business in China was aligned with Alibaba. As a result, Jack Ma met the legendary "youngest KPCB partner" who rarely failed.

KPCB is the largest risk fund company established in the early days of the United States, with its main business being to invest in major universities around the world. The company established a venture capital fund of approximately $360 million in China starting from the second quarter of 2007, and its philosophy is very similar to that of Jack Ma who later set up Yunfeng Fund:

Mainly used to support Chinese entrepreneurs and emerging entrepreneurs to promote the high-speed operation of ongoing industrial innovation.

However, there are still significant differences between funds. As excellent fund investment companies, Jack Ma and Yu Feng later jointly invested in the innovative Yunfeng Fund, which is clearly more suitable for China's national conditions and development path.

So when Jack Ma and Li Ying first talked about the development and innovative philosophy of the foundation, he found that this young partner from the top Silicon Valley fund company in the United States,He has the fund investment philosophy that coincides with him, that is, not only the basic model of VC and PE, but also to become a real business strategy incubation consultant on this basis.

To put it bluntly, both of them believe that the most ideal fund company is not just investing money in mature companies or supporting emerging ones, and then waiting to receive dividends. Instead, they need to showcase all their experience in the industry to help these companies grow and mature until they enter the high-speed track and become industry leaders.

At that time, Jack Ma had a blue eye towards Li Ying. Later on, he flew to Silicon Valley three times and repeatedly persuaded Li Ying to join the "Yunfeng Fund" jointly founded by him and Yu Feng. Later, Li Ying was moved by Ma Yun and expressed her concerns to him.

Firstly, Li Ying was preparing for her future entrepreneurship when she was at McKinsey, which is also the reason why she switched jobs three times:

The first time was when the founder of Ikanos company poached her, because they heard that Li Ying wanted to start a business. Therefore, they suggested that she go to her new startup company to learn and accumulate experience, which can make up for the lack of market training in mature companies like McKinsey. And the founder of the company promised her the position of Marketing and Marketing Director, which helped Li Ying rise again.

The second time was after working in Ikanos for more than a year, Li Ying met Zhou Shangning, the boss of UTStarcom at that time, during the business development. After talking with Li Ying, Zhou Shangning thought that although she had accumulated the market experience and risk awareness required for entrepreneurship, she still lacked the necessary management experience for entrepreneurs.

As a result of this conversation, Li Ying was invited to become the deputy general manager of UTStarcom. The company has R&D centers as branches around the world, which is also the biggest reason why Li Ying later became a direct partner of KPCB.

That is to say, every job hopping by Li Ying is prepared and not aimless.

Secondly, Li Ying proposed to Ma Yun that if she wants to persuade her to switch jobs, there must be conditions that can truly impress her.

If Jack Ma's preference for her lies in persuading the three leading telecommunications equipment manufacturers in China to adopt the company's VDSL broadband equipment during Ikanos, helping the company successfully go public, and directly becoming the overall manager of its global focus business after KPCB, directly rising to potential power on Forbes' list and other impressive achievements, then what Li Ying demands is a true co entrepreneurial identity.

Jack Ma was already prepared to be challenged by genius. He learned from Liu Bei's three pleas and three persuasions to show enough sincerity. After hearing that Li Ying was willing to leave Silicon Valley, he directly agreed to the terms and offered his position as the founder and managing director of Yunfeng Fund.

But Jack Ma also proposed a condition, which is that compared to other fund companies' investment practices of "investing in ten companies can guarantee three out of ten",Yunfeng Fund needs to achieve "zero failure".

In fact, this has also become an important reason why Li Ying is truly willing to agree to Jack MaBecause for her, job hopping without sufficient challenges will not be considered at all, and if she wants to achieve zero investment failure, Yunfeng Fund will definitely participate in the entire operation of the enterprise.

This is very in line with Li Ying's entrepreneurial plan:

Facing the global market, invest in enterprise operations in multiple fields. Firstly, such challenges belong to the top, and secondly, for natural investors, all industries actually adhere to a business logic - combining the most basic investment laws of the market with the richest practical experience of investors to complete the game of collective market evolution.

As Buffett said: Recognize your circle of abilities and only earn money within your cognitive range.

If a Buffett like character cannot be placed in its most suitable position, then either extravagance or disaster will occur. Li Ying's collaboration with Yunfeng Fund precisely helped the most suitable person find the most suitable position.

The low-key look of the female version of 'Buffett'

Since April 2010, Li Ying has been mainly responsible for the basic investment of Yunfeng Fund in the fields of technology, energy, culture and entertainment, and consumer goods services. As the behind the scenes operator, Li Ying helped Yunfeng Fund expand quickly from its initial investment of less than 4 billion yuan in the first phase, and by the time the first phase was completed, Yunfeng Fund had made a net profit of over 12 billion yuan.

From then on until 2022, Li Ying operated multiple US dollar funds, RMB funds, and special funds, making multiple rounds of investments with different expectations in various fields including finance, healthcare, internet, entertainment, logistics, and consumption, earning a lot of money.

According to relevant financial report data,By the beginning of 2023, Li Ying's net worth was conservatively estimated to be in the tens of billions. However, due to her low profile and unwillingness to appear in various headline pages or become a bargaining chip outside of working for a fund company, her specific net worth has not been disclosed.

But as the "billionaire beauty behind Jack Ma" that the media is fond of talking about, Li Ying seems to be constantly mentioned, including Jack Ma himself who has repeatedly emphasized that "women are the secret to Alibaba's success".

But in fact, the secret that Jack Ma refers to, apart from the well-known "female consumers guarding shopping carts" and co entrepreneurs like Li Ying, also refers to all the women in Alibaba's entire construction, such as:

When Alibaba started its business from "18 Arhat", one third of them were women, including Ma Yun's wife Zhang Ying; Nearly half of Alibaba's employees are women, with 34% of them in the executive level.

By 2023, Li Ying will be nearly 40 years old and still remain single. Many people think she is more beautiful than Zhang Zetian, but her feelings seem to be much slower.This reminds people of the 2012 online rumor that "Li Ying is someone's daughter-in-law in Zhejiang"... Perhaps a person who is too outstanding will always attract some unfounded discussions.

Li Ying, in her daily life, will become more immersed in real-life work by 2023, which is also in line with what she mentioned to a Forbes Chinese website reporter: I hope to be in my thirties or forties, still like my idol Buffett, to be able to do the investment career that I am most suitable and truly love.

In addition to the investment of Yunfeng Fund, which has never made mistakes in operation and operation and achieved zero failure, she has collected many luxury cars from Bentley and Rolls Royce within her own asset management ability, of which Bentley Bentayga and Rolls Royce Phantom series are her favorite.

The car that Li Ying often mentions belongs to the Rolls Royce Phantom series, which is said to sell for nearly ten million yuan in China.

In addition, Li Ying still enjoys sitting with good friends in the investment industry and people with higher levels of cultivation and knowledge to listen to or reason for Zen meditation, engage in simple spiritual relaxation, or engage in some deep meditation during holidays.

This is a habit that Li Ying has developed many years ago: firstly, influenced by her father, she has been fond of participating in topics related to emotions, philosophy, and traditional Chinese culture since childhood, which is also beneficial for her to think in her work. Secondly, the accumulated spiritual experience and material gains in her life have given her sufficient conditions to achieve her desired lifestyle.

It should be mentioned that, as before, Li Ying has never expressed herself as a "celibate" or regarded herself as a successful person in public.

End:

Taking Zhang Ying, Ma Yun's wife, as an example, behind Ma Yun are countless "women who have helped him achieve success", such as Peng Lei, Jiang Fang, Dai Shan, and others. They are famous Iron Maidens who share similar characteristics with Li Ying in terms of business intelligence and internal political skills:

Do things with a high profile, never be vague, maintain a low profile, and rarely show off.

It is also these remarkable women who not only make the career created by Jack Ma more exciting, but also become the most pragmatic new force for the development of Chinese enterprises and society.

Reference:

Yunfeng Fund: A New Game for Big Boss "," Talent ", written by Wang Ying, 2010

Li Ying, Co Founder of Yunfeng Fund: A Wind like Woman "by Chen Shuzhe in Business, 2012

Persisting in Doing a Good Job in the Cold Winter - Interview with Yu Feng, Cofounder and Chairman of Yunfeng Fund ", China Investment, written by Yang Haixia, 2019

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Author: Ru Wish

Editor: Lin Yan

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