NextFin News -- All of a sudden, there is hardly anyone in the investment world who didn’t know the name Zhang Xue.
It's already been seven days since Zhang’s motocycle took the championship at the WSBK Portugal round. But the story is still gathering momentum.
On social media, clips from the video “If you have a dream, go after it” -- Zhang's famous quote -- were reposted millions of times, and the comments section was packed with young people who’d been fired up. Zhang’s personal growth story—and the full process of leading his team into competition and winning the title this time—was etched with a biting satire of meritocracy.
Someone with no connections, no degree, no stroke of luck, and no money reached technical heights that even engineers at big companies—born into privileged families, educated at elite schools, “gilded” by top labs, and backed by virtually unlimited R&D budgets—had never touched. And his team, likewise, fought through layer upon layer of constraints—being thrust into the spotlight at the last minute, running short on funds, working with basic equipment, and lacking experience—to defeat the long-dominant traditional powerhouses with deep pockets, advanced gear, and ample staffing.
This was a real-life “Born to Fly.” Winner takes all, exhilarating and uncompromising—so much so that, in a daze, it brought to mind some long-missed stories from the boom years of the internet.
But on the flip side of this nationwide frenzy, one group fell into collective silence—venture capital.
“Do you have Zhang Xue’s contact info?” After the news of the championship broke, messages like that flooded Zhang Ying’s (a pseudonym) phone. The awkward part was that although Zhang Ying was one of the few investors who actually knew Zhang Xue, he hadn’t invested in him. In fact, throughout Zhang Xue’s eight-year entrepreneurial journey, mainstream VC firms were entirely absent.
Zhang had said that in the early days of his startup he did try to approach capital, but without success. And most of the money he used over the course of building the business came from selling off his own equity, funds he raised on his own, and loans he borrowed.
VCs who had begun scrambling to make up for it searched everywhere for Zhang Xue; some even booked overnight flights to Chongqing to try to intercept him in person. This “belated recognition” felt more than a little ironic, and once again pulled VC institutions into the whirlpool of criticism for being “short-sighted” and having “frozen aesthetics.” One VC partner publicly reflected in his WeChat Moments: “We missed it.”
The doubts spread: Why did venture capital miss Zhang collectively?
But it also seems hard to blame investors for being “slow on the uptake”—because without this victory, Zhang Xue might still not have matched the profile that VC firms ideally look for.
We concede that if China has a million entrepreneurs, then there ought to be a million paths—and endings—to entrepreneurship. But in reality, choosing one founder to bet on and then growing alongside them is always a long process—at every “present moment” when the cost of trial and error remains stubbornly high, one workable approach is to find, within an increasingly clear framework, the person who best fits the criteria.
When we trace how Chinese venture capital’s “understanding” of founders has shifted over the past two decades, we may find part of the answer to what this history has caused people to “miss.”
“Returnee Elites” Versus “Repair-shop Apprentice” (2005–2010)
In the early 2000s, venture capital was almost synonymous with “returnee investing.” Investors such as Neil Shen, IDG’s Hugo Shong, and Bob Xu were looking for entrepreneurs with elite overseas university backgrounds, who had seen Silicon Valley internet models up close, and who could replicate proven products in China.
This kind of “anchoring” wasn’t entirely deliberate. As venture capital—an imported concept—was just taking root in China, it naturally came with a Silicon Valley filter. Investors needed a quick yardstick that balanced localization with their comfort zone, and “returnee” status happened to fit the bill—often implying language skills, a global outlook, firsthand exposure to mature business models, and, to some extent, network-based credibility.
