Xiong Minghua of Qihai Capital: Bitcoin and other industries should be deployed in advance in the next five years

Abstract: " The best people in this field can see with the naked eye without glasses. Technically speaking, AR technology is at least one order of magnitude more difficult than VR technology. There are only more than 20 teams working on AR in the United States, and more than 2,000 working on VR. It's a bit late for VR now," said Xiong Minghua.

"Angel investment must be planned at least five years in advance." Xiong Minghua, partner of Seven Seas Capital and former CTO of Tencent , recently reviewed the 145 unicorn companies in the world and found that these companies are roughly distributed in six fields, and four of them need to be focused on in the future.

"For the next five years, we should plan ahead in these four areas." He made this statement during the Global Entrepreneurship Week which opened today and the 5th China (Shanghai) Angel and Early-stage Investment Summit.

One is augmented reality and virtual reality. Among these 145 companies, only one is currently engaged in virtual reality and augmented reality. He revealed that they invested in an AR company in San Francisco last week, which was founded by four university PhDs. "The best ones in this field can be seen with the naked eye without wearing glasses. Technically speaking, AR technology is at least one order of magnitude more difficult than VR technology. There are only more than 20 teams working on AR in the United States, and more than 2,000 teams working on VR. VR is a bit late now." Xiong Minghua said.

Another is network security. Xiong Minghua said that future technologies such as driverless cars will require very reliable network security technology to support them to a large extent, and they recently visited a company in this field in Shanghai.

The third one is Bitcoin. Xiong Minghua believes that Bitcoin is actually an ecosystem. People often see it as a trading system, but the core technology is actually the operating system. He revealed that they were recently invited to invest in a Bitcoin company in Silicon Valley. This company has mastered more than 50 of the more than 80 technical difficulties in the field of Bitcoin. LinkedIn CEO Hoffman himself invested $20 million. Seven Seas Capital has increased fivefold in three months after investing in this project. "All large financial companies, including VISA, etc., have to turn in this direction. There is no doubt about this. It's just a matter of time. As an angel investor, if someone around you is doing it, you have to watch it carefully."

Another area is robots. Among the three main areas of industrial robots, service robots and consumer robots, Xiong Minghua believes that the former is not suitable for angel investment, and consumer robots are not mature enough. At present, they will focus on the layout of service robots, such as hotel room service, security patrols in large stores , and robots for washing building glass.

In fact, in addition to looking at trends, Xiong Minghua believes that angel investors also need to grasp the founders and technological barriers.

"When I was communicating with Jerry Yang, he gave an example. Looking at his investment portfolio, none of the companies that he invested in two or three years ago that were doing well were actually doing the same things as when they were pitched two or three years ago." He said that the reason why a project can grow is closely related to the founder, because when doing a project, you will encounter various changes and difficulties in the team, market, and competitors, and the founder must have the ability to swim and bypass reefs and dangerous shoals.

"The third is to look at the technical content." Xiong Minghua believes that the number of group buying companies has decreased from 3,000 to 300 in the past few years, and now there are only three left. Angel investors have thrown too much money. "If you have the opportunity to contact some companies with technical content, it is still worth investing. In fact, whether a company can grow and develop depends on technology, and in a fiercely competitive environment, it depends even more on technical barriers."