Chapter 352: Shocking Trip to Silicon Valley
On Monday, at around 10pm local time in San Francisco, USA, an inspection team led by Li Xiaofan arrived in San Francisco.
In addition to the company’s investment assistants Wang Danrong, brother and sister Tang Xinyi and Tang Jiaming, the group also included five local entrepreneurs in Singapore, including Chairman of Star Cruises Lam Cathay and Vice President Huang of Singapore Hong Leong Group.
The next morning, under the arrangement of SoftBank Group, everyone went to inspect Kingston Company in Fountain Valley, California, and visited Kingston founders Du Jichuan and David Sun.
Du Jichuan and David Sun introduced that they founded Kingston ten years ago and subsequently invented the single in-line memory module si patent to expand memory on computer systems.
After nearly ten years of development, the entire Kingston company’s sales last year exceeded US$1.3 billion...
When inspecting the world's largest independent memory product manufacturer, the members of the inspection team were shocked. A small technological invention and innovation actually increased the company's annual sales to an astonishing US$1.3 billion!
After coming out of this company, Lin Guotai curiously asked Li Xiaofan: "Director Li, this company looks very mature. Should our future venture fund invest in this company?"
Li Xiaofan smiled: "The Kingston project is currently being negotiated for acquisition by Japan's SoftBank Group. Mr. Masayoshi Son plans to purchase Kingston 80's shares from the two founders, Du Jichuan and David Sun, for US$1.5 billion."
He continued: "Director Lin, our fund will not participate in the acquisition of this Kingston project for the time being. Firstly, the acquisition amount of this project is too large, and we do not have that much money. Secondly, as you just said, this The project is very mature, the company valuation is very high, and the space for future growth is limited. It is not an ideal investment target for Yifan Venture Capital Fund. Today I will take you to inspect this Kingston project, mainly to learn. If we could go back in time, the best time to invest in this Kingston project would be around 1990, when they had just invented this memory product and the product had not yet been put into large-scale production. The valuation is not that high, which is the best time for venture capital investment. Our future venture capital funds will be looking for dark horse projects like the early Kingston!”
Vice President Huang of Hong Leong Group in Singapore said: "Well, Director Li, what you said makes sense. I inspected Kingston Group this morning and it was quite impressive for us as a company in traditional industries! If we can find early When it comes to projects like Kingston, our venture fund will definitely have great returns!”
On the side, Tang Jiaming continued: "When it comes to investment vision, I have to admire our Director Li. The Yahoo project he invested in last year increased an astonishing forty times in one year, and his personal worth exceeded 200 million US dollars. !”
Li Xiaofan smiled and said: "Brother Ming, this is all in the past, history has turned over, and now what we are looking for is the next Yahoo!"
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After lunch, Li Xiaofan led the team to Sunnyvale, California to visit onivision OmniVision Technology.
At the end of November last year, Li Xiaofan invested US$2 million in Weihao Technology, accounting for 15% of the shares. He is currently one of the directors of this company.
Dr. Chen Datong, co-founder of OmniVision Technology, received the delegation and introduced in detail the os image sensor cis chip project currently being developed by his company.
Last year, under the leadership of Dr. Chen Datong, OmniVision Technology has developed the first-generation cis image sensor product sample.
Dr. Chen Datong introduced that last year, only two companies in the world, OmniVision Technology and British vvl, developed cis image sensor products. But today at the World Solid State Electronic Circuit Conference ISS event in February, the organizer organized an introduction to cis products, which attracted great attention from global giants. These giants are very optimistic about the future of this cis product and judge that it will explode in the future. growth potential.
Therefore, more than 20 companies around the world have entered this field, including some industry giants such as Intel, HP and Japan's Panasonic. Each of them has formed a team of hundreds of people and invested hundreds of millions of dollars in development. cis products.
"Dr. Chen, now that the competition is so fierce, what level are your Haowei products at now, so how can you compete with these industry giants?" Lin Guotai asked.
Dr. Chen Datong smiled confidently:
"Fortunately, our Haowei company started to develop this cis chip product last year, and now we are ahead of these giants. Moreover, our R&D team dominated by men from Tsinghua University has two characteristics: first, we are not afraid of hardship. , we work 12 hours a day We work six and a half days a week, so the development progress is extremely fast. Secondly, we don’t believe in evil. We are all newbies who are eclectic and dare to innovate. The products we have developed so far are outstanding in terms of performance, cost and functionality. The consumption has far exceeded those of big European and American companies!”
Dr. Chen Datong continued: "Currently, we are working hard to develop a new generation of single-chip color os image sensor cis products. Compared with the traditional 4-chip set d image sensor, our cis products will have better performance in terms of cost, volume and power consumption in the future. There will be dozens or even hundreds of times improvement on the above. If everything goes well, by the end of this year, This single-chip color os image sensor cis product will be available for mass production in the future. Mobile phone manufacturers can use this cis product of ours to realize the camera function on mobile phones, and it is high-pixel. Currently, there are already many world-famous products! Mobile phone manufacturers are keeping an eye on our products, hoping to mass-produce them and put them on the market as soon as possible..."
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After inspecting Howe Technology Company, while driving to the Yahoo headquarters in Santa Clara, members of the inspection team including Lin Guotai, Hong Leong Group Vice President Huang, Tang Jiaming and other members of the inspection team started a heated discussion.
"Director Li, comparing the two projects of Kingston and OmniVision Technology, we feel that the OmniVision Technology project has greater potential, and it is a very good investment node now!" Lin Guotai said. His business acumen is very high. Although he was an outsider in electronic technology, he intuitively felt that Haowei Technology was a good project.
Vice President Huang of Hong Leong Group also said excitedly: "Yes, Director Lin, I agree with you. Director Li, after we return to Singapore, you should quickly set up a venture capital fund to invest in good projects like Weihao Technology. I also feel that now It’s a good time!”
Li Xiaofan smiled and said: "Director Lin and Director Huang, you are all very discerning! Currently in my plan, our first phase of Yifan Venture Capital Fund, this Howe Technology, is one of our key investment projects in the future. Last year The US$2 million I invested in them has almost been burned. Now is the critical time when capital investment is most needed. If we can increase investment in this project now, we can accelerate the mass production of the single-chip color os image sensor cis product they are developing. with speed and time to market!”
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At around five o'clock in the afternoon, the inspection team arrived at Yahoo's headquarters in Santa Clara.
Jerry Yang, Chairman of Yahoo!, personally received the delegation, briefly introduced the current development of Yahoo, and went with them to Tangyuan Chinese Restaurant in the center of San Francisco to have dinner with everyone...
This day's inspection itinerary made the members of the inspection team feel very fulfilled.
In one day, I inspected three of the most representative companies in Silicon Valley, including Kingston Technology, which makes hardware storage, Yahoo, the most popular Internet search engine portal, and Weihao Technology, which has great potential.
Being able to communicate face-to-face with the founders of these high-tech companies, as well as having dinner and communicating with founders like Jerry Yang, made everyone feel that the trip was very rewarding and worthwhile!
When everyone returned to the hotel, it was almost ten o'clock in the evening.
In the hotel lobby bar, Hotail founder Sabir Badia has been waiting for Li Xiaofan for a long time.