After 17 years of growth and 7 years of collision and harvesting, Gobi Ventures has found an “invisible champion” suitable for itself in the overlapping range of “high liquidity”, “scaleable” and “imaginary space”.
For the 17-year-old Gobi Ventures, a sense of excitement in the to C era is constantly emerging.
As the growth rate of mobile Internet declines, investors and entrepreneurs are scrambling to go to the battlefield of the industrial Internet. The first-tier market has sought a high point in the B-end project. In 2018, the amount of financing for the B project has turned over compared with 2016. 4 times.
Compared with many investment institutions that temporarily cut into B, Gobi Ventures started planning and layout of the to B project 7 years ago: from 2012 to 2013, Gobi invested in the enterprise service track. , CloudWise, Teambition. Among them, I was acquired by Ali last year, which brought a return of 20 times for Gobi. The case of Teambition made Gobi Ventures’ investment of RMB 4 million in the PreA round more than 25 times. Beyond the corporate service track, such as artificial intelligence and smart manufacturing, Gobi Ventures has already laid out the head players AutoX, Bola Technology, and Magnesium Robots.
The vast majority of investment is finalized in the A round or even the Pre-A round. This is the customary style of the Gobi. Before the project broke out, 80% of the projects were able to exit through mergers and acquisitions and repurchase during the fund’s life. In order to avoid the most fierce and most expensive C-round to Pre-IPO wheel.
In the 17 years since its establishment, it has been stable for more than 20 times a year. Gobi is not radical in the early fund. Although, the steady pursuit of the game made it miss some opportunities, but also avoided the sharing of the economy, the new forces of the car and other minefields. For investment institutions, it is a lucky thing to be able to grab a star unicorn ticket, but always keep restraint and eat the meat that belongs to you is another kind of wisdom.
To B industry’s unique slow-paced, long-term cycle means that the triumphant and sprinting of the To C era is difficult to reproduce, and the stable and stable Gobi has gradually found its best rhythm.
Strategic to B
Gobi Venture Partners Hu Tangjun realized that the number of players on the track is increasing. The mainstream dollar funds are constantly appearing in the list of C, D and E rounds, while the Gobi is at least the latter half a year to one year. Found the project.
The secret of leadership comes from in-depth research and keen pre-judgment!
After 2012, venture capitalists are immersed in the diversification of the mobile Internet. The emerging enthusiasm has attracted a large number of VCs, and the C-project valuation has reached a new high. In this case, Gobi unexpectedly decided to strategically to B, aiming more than 50% of the fund’s plates to the B track.
This is an experience and intuition that spans multiple rounds of cycles – following the 7-year cycle, after the 2008 financial crisisThe market is about to enter the second half. Gobi Venture Capital Management Partner Zhu Xi judged that the mobile Internet will enter the top stage of fatigue, “the next three to five years will accelerate the merger, suitable for selling companies, not for investment.” In 2015, Didi Express, 58 Market, and US Mission Reviews merged one after another, and the first-tier market ushered in the year of mergers and acquisitions.
At the same time, Zhu Xi, who has long been concerned about corporate services, has continuously received signals from the market. Domestically, the underlying IaaS has ushered in a breakthrough. Alibaba Cloud has doubled every year, and Sinopec, PetroChina and Customs have become their iconic users. Microsoft, Google and other giants have come out to compete in the cloud computing market.
A more visible signal comes from the Gobi LP – IBM. After losing the long-term customer CIA bid to Amazon, which began to deploy cloud computing in 2006, IBM’s experience made Gobi more certain: the wave of corporate services has arrived. As a result, Gobi decisively became the first fund to invest in the B project in China. In 2012, Gobi made a “fast copy of the To B version of Evernote” for the notes and the “to B version of Dropbox”.
But Zhu Xi soon discovered that even the team that knows the notes and the fast cloud library are Jinshan and Aliyun, and the product technology is leading the market, but the users are always reluctant to pay, and the project can’t make profits and starts.
He realized the limitations of the simple replication of the US model: the market in the two places is very different, the US enterprise market is a flat structure, the SME with annual income of 20 million to 200 million US dollars is many, and the willingness to pay is strong; It is a narrow, two-headed dumbbell-shaped structure. Although the above-mentioned KA has a strong ability to pay but a small number, the number of small businesses below is large, but the ability and willingness to pay are low, and the SME at the waist is almost non-existent. “There are free SaaS services such as Baidu network disk and 360 network disk in the market. Who else is willing to pay for the paid version?” Zhu Xi said.
The Gobi quickly adjusted its strategy, focusing on the pain points that companies must pay to solve, rather than itching. Based on this logic, they found cloud intelligence. When discovered, Cloud Smart’s monitoring treasure business has achieved the first domestic market share of monitoring services. This product focused on solving IT performance monitoring, let Gobi see the rigid operation and maintenance requirements of large-scale enterprises after the cloud, so Resolutely raise and become the only institutional investor in the A round.
In June of this year, Cloud Wisdom completed a $25 million Series D financing, with a valuation of hundreds of millions of dollars after the investment, and Gobi’s book return exceeded 10 times.
In this process, the iterative cloud intelligence business is Gobi’s cognitive iteration of to B, and this is a self-requirement that runs through the entire Go to Go layout. Cloud Wisdom first monitored the treasures with universal SaaS monitoring tools. In 2014 and 2016, APM management platform Pivot and cloud stress test products were launched, and became the domestic ATOP platform of TOP 3. Subsequently, a full-stack operation and maintenance plan was introduced to shift the business focus from SME to KA.