"in silicon valley, if you ask an investor for money, he will give you advice; if you ask for advice, investors will usually give you money."

arts｜"chinese entrepreneurs" reporter yan junwen

edit｜yao yun

image source｜visual china

the entrepreneurial wave is spreading in silicon valley, and this atmosphere has infected many young chinese who graduated from stanford, berkeley and other universities.

in 2023, 25-year-old li yuqi graduated from carnegie mellon university, the top 2 university in the united states for computer science. after graduation, li yuqi joined amazon, but he left the company in april this year after working for less than half a year to start his own business. li yuqi chose to make an ai product in the b2b field in silicon valley, lookr.fyi (luoling). this product is designed to help small and medium-sized enterprises in the united states to efficiently purchase cross-border goods, connect with chinese manufacturers, get quotes within 24 hours, and get samples within 14 days.

silicon valley, redwood shores, california, usa.

currently, li yuqi's team has 7 people. he got the financing by chance. after an event in silicon valley, he stopped satyajeet salgar, a senior executive of google, and asked him about entrepreneurship and technology. after a 3-minute chat, he decided to invest. this was li yuqi's angel round of financing.

the process of another round of financing was similar: li yuqi and former baidu search engine cto zheng zibin met for vietnamese rice noodles, and the more they talked, the more they got interested. zheng zibin then decided to invest in li yuqi and serve as a consultant for the startup.

"in silicon valley, if you ask an investor for money, he will give you advice; if you ask for advice, investors will usually give you money."li yuqi told "china entrepreneur".

li yuqi's experience is just a microcosm. according to statistics from research firm pitchbook, in the second quarter of 2024, us start-ups received a total of $55.6 billion in venture capital, the highest amount in a single quarter in the past two years. and about half of this was invested in ai start-ups. for example, musk's xai announced in may 2024 that it had completed a $6 billion series b financing.

this money has also flowed to some chinese entrepreneurs. on the list of ai startups of silicon valley investors, the chinese names that have surfaced are:stanford university professor fei-fei li, "genius girl" guo wenjing, heygen founder xu zhuo, deepin medical founder gong enhao...they are very likely to be the future jerry yang, jen-hsun huang, steve chen or yuan zheng.

at the same time, the founding team of openai is flowing to various places to start businesses, and they have also become the target of investors. in the first half of this year, macropolo, a think tank under the paulson institute, released a survey called "global artificial intelligence talent tracking", which showed that among the core contributors of the gpt-4 team, about 20% of the researchers are from china.

the chinese community is becoming more active than ever in silicon valley, especially chinese entrepreneurs. among li yuqi’s friends, at least five are working on ai travel assistants, ai e-commerce, or ai psychological counseling.

in may and august this year, peng jiarong, founder of north american communications, attended several events and conferences. he found that chinese people accounted for 50% of the audience. after an event, he could add 20 to 30 entrepreneurs on wechat. he said, "chinese people are very hardworking and have an international perspective from the two largest markets, china and the united states. they understand technology and have cross-cultural and cross-national business capabilities, which is very rare."

the above-mentioned "global ai talent tracking" survey found that, specifically in the computer field, chinese graduate students accounted for 14% of the total number of computer science graduate students in the united states, and more than a quarter of the total number of international students studying in the united states.

silicon valley's fei-fei li

first, the "geniuses" came on stage to perform.

stanford university professor fei-fei li is from chengdu, sichuan. she moved to the united states with her parents when she was young. she was the director of the stanford university artificial intelligence laboratory and is known as the "ai godmother." fei-fei li was once very wary of technology giants, but she later joined google as the chief scientist of google cloud artificial intelligence and machine learning. technology giants have unlimited gpu resources and a large number of talents, which made her feel that"artificial intelligence is becoming a privilege, a highly exclusive privilege."

stanford university.

in february this year, fei-fei li founded the spatial intelligence company world labs. she believes that "machines will soon be able to recognize visual objects like humans." the company's valuation exceeded $1 billion in three months, and its investors include silicon valley's well-known venture capital a16z and ai fund radical ventures. in addition, fei-fei li is also a scientific partner and lp investor of radical ventures.

the other is guo wenjing, who is regarded as a "genius girl". she grew up in hangzhou and then studied at harvard and stanford. in november 2023, guo wenjing founded the video generation product pika, which became popular. it has completed a us$80 million (approximately rmb 580 million) series b financing and is a well-known startup in silicon valley.

the other is heygen and its founder xu zhuo. in december 2023, heygen moved its headquarters to los angeles. it received a round of financing led by silicon valley benchmark. it is reported that heygen asked its chinese investors idg capital, baidu ventures, sequoia china, and zhenfund to sell their equity to american investors.

lin hao (pseudonym), an investor who has been stationed in silicon valley for a long time, told china entrepreneur:what a founder and his chinese team can do in half a year can catch up with what the local team can do in three to five years. the engineering capabilities of the entire chinese team are relatively strong.the applications made by entrepreneurs from china are very thin (referring to applications for a certain scenario, without integration and dispersion), but they quickly explored a path for traffic matrix. for example, how to achieve the transition from these tools to content, they all have lessons learned from success or failure.

chinese people have become more sensitive than ever to new technologies, and the various active acceleration camps, startup camps, and incubators in silicon valley have directly helped young people to boldly practice. for example, the famous yc startup accelerator (y combinator),its founder graham requires that if you want to get yc's investment, you have to live in silicon valley for three months.

this type of acceleration camp usually provides support to entrepreneurs, such as cloud resource coupons, free cloud resources for half a year, or invites some successful entrepreneurs to preach, so that entrepreneurs can share what they have and what they don’t have. this also leads to the prevalence of various "forces", and each gang has its own style.

li yuqi told china entrepreneur: "you need to meet the right people at events, and then go to the right occasions to meet the right people. in fact, you need some connections."

in order to obtain financing, some entrepreneurs will hold up signs directly on sandhill road in silicon valley (where the most important venture capital institutions in the united states are gathered), stop every car they see, and use 30 seconds of "elevator time" to explain their entrepreneurial ideas. often, all that is left for these entrepreneurs is the dust and the backs of the cars speeding by.

the density of talent in silicon valley directly intensifies competition, making entrepreneurship a volatile thing.

li yuqi did not decide on the idea of ​​starting a business in the b2b tool field from the beginning. he wanted to start a product like midjourney, but there were too many similar products. later, he wanted to make an ai photo app, but it was too difficult and costly, so he decided to start a product tool business in the b2b field.

investors in silicon valley prefer entrepreneurs with technical backgrounds. they like to ask entrepreneurs two questions:1. your technical background and work experience; 2. what kind of feedback you get after talking with customers.investors hope to get unique answers from entrepreneurs.

currently, li yuqi's team consists of 7 people, but their ambition is not small - to make imagination the main driving force of productivity and connect china's manufacturing with ai. at present, the most important thing for li yuqi is to run the product, obtain seed users, and make profits as soon as possible.

encouragement from venture capitalists

in the face of ai, silicon valley investors have become fanatical and restless. lin hao was immersed in it and felt it directly. he found that these investors' emotions have also become extreme. when faced with a single application with a very thin point, they can bet 5 million to 10 million us dollars. "some investment institutions' helmsmen drank and slammed the table the night before and said they would make a double investment, but the next day they had to inform that the double fund could not invest." lin hao said.

china's venture capital institutions also changed from waiting and watching in 2023 to entering the market in 2024. for example, in 2024, jiayu capital, founded by wei zhe, established jiajia capital in silicon valley, focusing on the innovative application of ai in vertical fields such as medical care, and the key investment group is chinese.

recently, jiajia capital disclosed an investment. the investment project is called shenzhen zhitouyi. jiajia capital and other investment banks have provided nearly 10 million us dollars in b+ round financing. it is understood that the shenzhen zhitouyi team is mainly distributed in silicon valley and shanghai. among them, the silicon valley company was established at the end of 2017, and the shanghai company was established in 2021. the founders are gong enhao, a doctor of electronic engineering at stanford university, and a professor at stanford university. gong enhao graduated from tsinghua university with a bachelor's degree in biomedical engineering.

wei zhe declined china entrepreneur’s request for comment, saying, “considering the current international situation, our overseas layout needs to remain low-key.”previously, he said in an interview with other media that he would no longer set up an investment institution spanning china and the united states. it must be a completely legally independent entity and it also needs a professional team based in the united states.

in april this year, the well-known silicon valley venture capital firm a16z announced that chinese jennifer li will be promoted to general partner. a16z manages approximately us$42 billion in assets. it is also the most active and aggressive ai investment institution, with its presence in almost every star project.

the increasingly active chinese community requires corresponding investment agents, and the investment institutions' advice has also increased this potential.

an investor who has been stationed in silicon valley for a long time told china entrepreneur that "almost every week, we receive several groups of listed companies, quasi-listed companies and unicorn companies from china, especially ai application layer and aigc companies."

the investor said that the saas industry chain in north america is very mature. on average, a medium-sized enterprise has more than 140 different tools to solve its saas needs, so the ai ​​to b-side landing scenarios are very rich, which gives ai companies room to build their muscles.