Recently, the Global PE Forum and Caixin Data released the 2022-2023 China PE/VC industry selection results. Beihang Investment and Core Medical won the 2022-2023 China Top Ten PE/VC Investment Case Award.
After seven years of development, various businesses invested by Beihang University are intensively entering the harvest period, and the business growth flywheel continues to accelerate, driving the investment of more high-tech, high-barrier, and high-growth projects. Taking the intersection of medicine and industry as an example, in addition to investing in the world's only core medical company that has both implantable and interventional artificial heart products, Beihang Investment has also successively invested in the world's only company with atomic magnetometers, magnetocardiographs, and brain magnetometers. Weimag Technology, a quasi-unicorn company in the field of quantum magnetic field sensing with full industry chain technologies and products such as graphometers, is committed to projects such as Anjieming Medical, which is committed to achieving breakthroughs in domestic high-end ophthalmic diagnosis and treatment equipment and systems.
Every project is good enough and hard enough, and investment cases such as Core Medical continue to win industry awards. With Beihang Investment, early investment seems to have become a more certain thing - even the founders of the invested companies have Very similar in aspects. Is there an unknown investment methodology behind this?
Everything starts with "scientific entrepreneurs".
Scientific Entrepreneur Yu Shunzhou
Dr. Yu Shunzhou, founder of Core Medical, is a typical scientific entrepreneur.
Dr. Yu Shunzhou graduated from Harbin Institute of Technology, and later went to the University of California, Davis, to study mechanical engineering. He was then responsible for research and development at a famous American artificial heart company, and served as the main motor control and magnetic levitation design leader in the team.
In 2016, Dr. Yu Shunzhou returned to China to establish Core Medical.
Two major events happened that year. The first was that his company was merged into Abbott, and the second was that Medtronic initiated a US$1.1 billion merger and acquisition. So far, Abbott and Medtronic have occupied 90% of the global artificial heart market. In the context of international oligopoly, China is completely dependent on imports in this field. There is no domestic artificial heart that has been successfully launched on the market, and the bargaining power and voice of the industry have been further weakened.
Dr. Yu Shunzhou is determined to return to China to break the foreign technology monopoly so that more Chinese patients can use better domestic artificial hearts. In August 2016, Core Medical was launched in Shenzhen Nanshan Intelligent Park, and Dr. Yu Shunzhou was determined to lead the team to develop a new generation of fully magnetic levitation artificial heart. Regarding the product route, he said miniaturization is the key.
With the goal of miniaturization, Dr. Yu Shunzhou led the team to use axial magnetic levitation bearing technology to solve the volume problem of traditional magnetic levitation, and finally successfully developed the world's smallest and lightest fully magnetic levitation artificial heart - the Corheart® 6 implantable left ventricle. auxiliary system. This product has achieved the widest coverage of domestic artificial heart products - from children weighing a few dozen kilograms to overweight patients weighing more than 200 kilograms, with age spans from 12 to 75 years old.
On August 13, the Corheart® 6 implantable left ventricular assist system was officially released. This is the world’s smallest and lightest fully magnetic levitation artificial heart with a diameter of 34 mm and a weight of 90 grams independently developed by Core Medical. It is the smallest domestic artificial heart. A new era of innovation has begun.
Investing is a series of events
Dr. Yu Shunzhou graduated from Harbin Institute of Technology and was founded by Beihang Investment based on Beihang University. How did they find Dr. Yu Shunzhou and invest in such a good project?
In this kind of investment narrative, it seems that the focus of investment lies in a key action, a wonderful opportunity, just like a hunter who finds his prey and needs to squat and watch the probability. At a certain period, the investment logic of hunters did have a market, but now it is obviously unavailable.
Beihang Investment has elaborated on the logic of “farming people” on many occasions, that is, sowing seeds around the field of scientific and technological innovation and accompanying growth. To use a sentence from the famous economist Irving Fisher (Income, is a series of events) to explain this concept, we believe that investment is a series of events.
What is a chain of events? The explanation using economic thinking is this: fruit trees will bear fruit, orchards will produce harvests, and both the fruits and harvests are income. However, income does not come when the fruit is ripe. Fruit trees change every day, and every small change is income (or negative income). This is a series of events.
The same goes for investing.
A successful investment case starts with a series of events.
Take investment in the intersection of medicine and engineering as an example: In 2016, Beihang Investment Co., Ltd. was established. Relying on Beihang’s resources, the company hired Fan Yubo, dean of Beihang School of Medical Science and Engineering and director of Beijing Biomedical Engineering Advanced Innovation Center, and Beihang Robotics Research Institute. Experts such as Wang Tianmiao, honorary director and president of the Zhongguancun Zhiyou Research Institute, formed an advisory group; Beihang Investment has held a series of roadshows and seminars on medical and industrial cross-industry since its establishment; it has held the Beihang Global Science and Technology Innovation Competition for six consecutive years and discovered Hard science and technology projects; entrepreneurship courses have been offered at Beihang University for six consecutive years to enhance students' entrepreneurial awareness and innovation capabilities; the "BEU Beihang Investment·Scientific Entrepreneur Program" has been launched. At the same time, Beihang's medical and engineering interdisciplinary ranking has also risen to No. 1 in the country. 1... Such a series of events is the underlying logic of a successful investment case, that is, using the logic of sowing, gathering resources to build a science and technology innovation ecosystem around Beihang Science and Technology Innovation Field.
Every sowing in this scientific and technological innovation ecosystem is a continuous event for every subsequent investment.
The same goes for investments in core healthcare. Beihang Investment relies on Beihang's disciplinary advantages that rank first in the field of medicine and engineering, and based on its understanding of technology and industry, it has established a deep link with Dr. Yu Shunzhou, who graduated from Harbin Institute of Technology. Moreover, the investment was just the beginning. Beihang Investment continued to invite Dr. Yu Shunzhou to participate in various activities, including the Beihang Global Science and Technology Innovation Competition, and established links with government, industry, academia and research resource nodes.
Treat investment as a series of events, work hard every day, and achieve success over time. Plant a seed around the field of scientific and technological innovation and grow with it. This is the underlying logic of Beihang Investment in creating successful investment cases.
Looking for scientific entrepreneurs
Gathering resources and building an ecosystem is just the first step in a journey of a thousand miles.
When the mobile Internet is advancing rapidly, the "track theory" of China's VC industry is rampant. After hard technology became popular, "invest early, invest small, and invest hard" became mainstream again. However, serious investment never focuses on the trend. It has its own inherited investment logic and investment philosophy.
The investment logic of Beihang Investment is to discover and cultivate “scientific entrepreneurs”. Regarding the concept of scientific entrepreneurs, Beihang Investment has such a formula, "Scientific entrepreneurs = outstanding engineers + Four Thousand Spirits".
Why not "scientific entrepreneur = scientist + entrepreneur"? This requires answering another question first, which comes first, the idea or the concept? If we break it down from the concept, the combination of scientists and entrepreneurs is naturally scientific entrepreneurs. This is almost a perfect formula.
The problem is, this formula cannot help you find scientific entrepreneurs.
This is why everyone knows that we need to invest in hard technology and scientific entrepreneurs, but at the methodology level, there is not necessarily a systematic approach.
Having ideas first and then concepts is a more pragmatic and scientific path. The investment philosophy of Beihang Investment is directly related to Beihang Investment. Beihang University has always had an engineering culture. From the early days of its establishment, it cultivated red engineers to cultivate outstanding engineers in the new era. The integration of industry and education has been consistent.
The graduation project of the 1958 Beihang students was a light passenger aircraft named "Beijing No. 1". This was also the first passenger aircraft independently designed and built after the founding of the People's Republic of China. "Beijing No. 1" was made by Beihang students of that era, with a passion to serve the country, and despite the lack of production workshops and equipment, it was basically made by hand. The successful test flight of "Beijing No. 1" has trained a group of talents familiar with aircraft design and construction engineering for our country.
This is the engineering culture and spirit of Beihang University.
Entering a new era, Beihang University proposes to cultivate outstanding engineers. They are present in many major projects such as domestic large aircraft. Many outstanding engineers have also entered enterprises under the background of the integration of industry and education, and gradually transformed into entrepreneurs.
They are brilliant engineers first and entrepreneurial second.
Regarding the definition of entrepreneurship (Entrepreneurship), academic circles have always had different views, including Schumpeter and Peter Drucker. Specific to China, in fact, entrepreneurship has mature and widely spread expression samples. This is the Four Thousand Spirit originated from Zhejiang.
The Four Thousand Spirit refers to "traveling through thousands of mountains and rivers, speaking thousands of words, thinking of every possible way, and enduring countless hardships." Xia Wei, vice president of the Zhejiang Entrepreneurs Association, president of the Shenzhen Zhejiang Chamber of Commerce, and chairman of Beihang Investment, found that entrepreneurs with outstanding engineering backgrounds have these things in common. On this basis, he further proposed to look for those who have the following characteristics:
Have a sincere original intention and a lofty mission
Possessing a knowledgeable and professional engineering background, precise positioning, and ten years of hard work
High IQ, high EQ, and perseverance
Traveled across thousands of mountains and rivers, spoke thousands of words, tried every possible means, endured countless hardships
That is, "Excellent Engineers + Four Thousand Spirits". On October 31, 2022, in an entrepreneurship class at Beihang University, he publicly and systematically explained the origin and thinking of the concept of "scientific entrepreneur = outstanding engineer + Four Thousand Spirit" for the first time to Beihang students.
The background of outstanding engineers and the Four Thousand Spirit are not exclusive to Beihang entrepreneurs. A number of scientific entrepreneurs with these characteristics have also emerged from top domestic science and engineering universities. The concept of scientific entrepreneurship has been continuously verified in actual investment business.
The Tao and Techniques of Learning Organizations
Success comes from talent, and every widely recognized investment case is inseparable from a team of professional investment talents.
Wang Jianfei, general manager of Beihang Investment, believes that the biggest variable in an organization is people, and the most important and core asset is talent. Beihang Investment actively builds a learning organization and has cultivated a group of professional investment talents in the five major fields of future aerospace technology, medical and industrial intersection, new energy, advanced manufacturing, and new generation information technology.
In the four major aspects of talent selection, employment, training and retention, Beihang Investment has systematically done a lot of specific work. Beihang Investment believes that "selecting people" is the way to go, and should be ranked first. We must find hard-core talents with integrity, sincerity, a learning and growth mindset, and the ability to specialize in one skill. The key is to promote selection through education. Real talents do not need to work hard. The best talents are not cultivated, but selected.
In the "education" aspect, Beihang Investment organized various forms of training activities, including company study sessions, internal department training sessions, corporate visits, etc. At the study meeting, Chen Hongying, deputy general manager of Beihang Investment, who is also an important investor in the core medical project team, shared the ten principles of investment due diligence with colleagues in the company’s technology investment and scientific innovation service sectors. These ten principles also run through the core investment projects such as medical care.
Focusing on scientific entrepreneurs, we establish correct investment concepts, adhere to long-termism, and have professional investment talents screen projects through rigorous process management. At the same time, the post-investment department continues to provide various services. These are core medical and other investment cases that have gained wide recognition in the industry. The whole secret of recognition. When investing in Beihang University, these are not special, they are just “routine actions”. We also believe that investment is a series of events. With the power of ecology, every time we cultivate and sow seeds, we are preparing a golden gift for the future.