Why did you suddenly give Liu 300 million dollars? I really think that after reading it.

To some extent, although Liu is in one of the most competitive industries in China-e-commerce, he is very lucky. Because although the enterprise has been short of money, he can always meet investors who support him very much at key nodes, and even give him more money when he needs it most. When Liu wanted to raise $2 million before, the capital gave him $654.38 million+million today. Later, the story happened again.

The protagonist of this story is Zhang Lei of Gaoying Capital.

This fund and its founder are also very legendary. Gaoling Capital is now the largest private equity fund in China and has had many successful investment experiences. About the story of Gaolin Capital and Zhang Lei, we will talk about it in a later column.

At the end of 2009, I met Liu at an industry forum. At that time, it was the audience and Liu was the speaker. Both of them graduated from Renmin University and have alumni relations.

After the meeting, I took the initiative to find Liu and asked him if he needed financing. Liu said that the company definitely needs money, but he doesn't like to talk to venture capital institutions because he talks too much and few people understand him. Almost every investor will ask Liu: What's the difference between you and Taobao? Does it make sense for you to burn so much money on logistics? Why is your model so heavy?

So, Liu He talked for two hours in the office of Gaolin Capital and decided to invest.

Ask Liu, how much will it cost The figures cited by Liu are 50 million to 75 million dollars. As a result, Zhang Lei said, "I either don't invest a penny or invest $300 million."

At first, Liu refused because $300 million would make him the largest shareholder. However, in the end, the two sides compromised, with Gao Yan contributing $265 million, followed by an additional $50 million. However, Liu has the control of the board of directors, and the capital entrusts all the voting rights of its own shares to Liu, so the whole company is still in his charge. In the end, the investment of more than $300 million returned several billion dollars. This is the most successful investment in the history of the whole fund.

In this seemingly "extraordinary" investment, several points are particularly worth mentioning.

First of all, this investment has been planned for a long time, and it is not that after meeting Liu, the mind is hot and the bid is raised.

In fact, Gaoling Capital is a research fund. Their mode of operation is to spend a lot of time and resources to inspect various industries and determine their own investment themes in their research.

At that time, they were very optimistic about e-commerce in China. Since 2008, Zhang Lei has been looking for several large traditional enterprises, trying to persuade them to spin off e-commerce and let Gaoxian invest. As a result, all traditional enterprises say that you children don't know anything, and then there is nothing. Finally, I met JD.COM and hit it off, so there was a story of "Don't vote, but vote for $300 million".

Secondly, before investing in JD.COM, Zhang Lei and his high-tech capital made a long-term study of Amazon.

At that time, Zhang Lei watched an interview with Bezos. Bezos said that the biggest regret after Amazon was founded for so many years was that there was a logistics giant like UPS in the United States when there was Amazon, so he didn't have the opportunity to integrate the supply chain and logistics infrastructure. But for JD.COM, it has no rival like China, and even faces a better historical opportunity.

So I told Liu: "I have to invest 300 million dollars, because this enterprise itself needs to burn money." If you don't burn enough money, you won't see the effect in the logistics and supply chain system, and these are your core competitiveness in the future. "

In fact, $300 million was the largest single investment made by an early Internet company in China at that time, and Yin Gao was once ridiculed as "many people are stupid with money", but this investment not only enabled JD.COM to quickly establish its position in China's electricity business in a very short time, but also shocked potential competitors in the future to some extent. Over the years, Zhang Lei's vision has been completely proved.

Third, Zhang Lei said that his investment must have the founder's control clause. If the founder cannot control the company, he will not invest.

Because although the founder may not be able to successfully control the company, if he loses control, then failure is inevitable. Moreover, in order to ensure that the founder always has the right to speak, Gao Xian was very attentive when he helped JD.COM to select the follow-up investors. I hope all their shareholders can be like Gao Xian, without the pressure of short-term withdrawal, and can really look to the future and support the long-term development of the company.

Zhang Lei said, "We call the risk that other investors sell stocks in a hurry, which leads to the company's turmoil' neighbor risk'. Just like buying a house, you have to see what your neighbors are like. "

Finally, when talking about why he wanted to invest in Liu, he said that he also took a fancy to Liu's frankness.

Because Taobao was already very big at that time, most internet entrepreneurs were talking about taking a light asset model, which was actually loved by investors. But only Serina Liu kept saying that he wanted to build an asset-oriented model, build his own logistics system and integrate the industrial chain, so they hit it off.