青锐创投 | 寻找即将改变世界之人

About EdgeVentures

EdgeVentures is a fresh and highly-motivated investment firm founded in 2015.

We were born with two missions

First, we look for a new generation of founders filled with entrepreneurial sprit and spare no efforts in helping their companies succeed.

Second, we are dedicated to generating higher-than-market rate of financial return for our limited partners.

We are highly aligned with the interest of our founders, because we’ve been entrepreneurs too. With rich experience and top-level background in entrepreneurship，our management team are skilled in scouting the entrepreneurship spirit of outstanding candidates. Regardless of short-term rewards, we fight alongside our portfolio companies and fully support them in a long-term basis.

We are highly aligned with the interest of our limited partners, because we invest in ourselves too. With commitment of more than 20% self-funded capital in each EdgeVentures’ investment fund, we’ll control the fund size with intention of promising rate of return.

Instead of merely targeting at early stage investments, we’ve owned nearly 50 portfolio companies at different phases from Angel to Round B. We are more interested in finding the best domestic entrepreneurs, despite the stage of development they’ve achieved.

Strategies of investment

EdgeVentures concentrates on discovering new economy entrepreneurs marked with outstanding teams and innovative business model. We emphasize on investments from Angel to A round, and being funding participant of late-stage investments.
EdgeVentures focus to be the investors of choice for disruptive, innovative and well-executed businesses in Internet, high-tech and consumer services. The typical investment size ranges from RMB 2M to 20M or common dollar accounting. For some distinguished hard-technology enterprise, we make investments with a hard cap ceiling at RMB 50M per company from EdgeVentures’ special tech-fund.

Philosophy

Instead of blindly pursing the fund size, EdgeVentures is committed to building a boutique of early-stage investments. We are very selective in the investments with a very high quality bar. We invest only in individuals or companies which are potentially to become industry leaders. Our investments would only be executed after practical and scrupulous evaluation
The entrepreneurs we admire are elites at right industries with strong ability to think independently. Compared to peers, They have deep and thorough understanding over the essence of complicated questions. These outstanding entrepreneurs are valuable assets to the society as well as the constructor for all of our prospective returns. EdgeVentures ultimate goal is to sustain mutual trust and establish lifelong friendship with our entrepreneurs. Therefore, we are committed to supporting our founders throughout the entrepreneurial careers.

Value-added services

EdgeVentures is dedicated to developing close relationship with founders and management teams. We are collaborative in our approach and won’t get involved in the day-to-day details of company operation. We understand that founders are doing heavy-lifting everyday and it is our obligation to help them succeed. With abundant hands-on experience, our whole team will help entrepreneurs stay focused on those critical issues rather than get distracted by those nonessentials.
We sincerely care about our portfolio companies and are dedicated to helping them to achieve or accomplish goals. We’ve built a full-equipped post-investment management team which are very helpful and instructive not only in legal, finance and PR issues, but also recruitment, follow-up financing and even product design and content rights protection. With access to abundant hands-on experience and excellent industry resources, our partners can help in dealing with core contradictions, improving strategic blueprints as well as introducing critical industry resource.

Strategies of investment

Philosophy

Value-added services

Hui Cao

Founding Managing Partner

Withdrawing from insurance agent business at the late 20th Century, Mr.Cao and his partners determined to start from scratch and threw themselves into real-estate service industry. Intending to create a name associated with house purchasing, traditionally known as a lifetime choice for millions of Chinese people, Mr.Cao racked his brain and came up with Lianjia, which means linking house in Chinese.
Real-estate service in the late 20th Century was historically considered as a savage and chaotic territory, intruded by varied grey operations such as completely non-standardized management and individualistic brokerage. Especially, the reselling market was chronically poisoned by misguided house info as well as pocketing the price difference. To rectify the state of chaos, Mr.Cao organically combined both his family background of scientific research and education background of computer science, pointing out Lianjia’s methodology of management, known as standardized, systematized and informationized. Furthermore, his proposed operational philosophy of Lianjia is labeled as persistence of genuine information and neutralized price difference. However, this costly reform of real-estate marketplace resulted in straight loss. While venture capital was still an unfamiliarity to Chinese entrepreneurs at that time, Mr.Cao had to back the property resale through constantly draining out the positive cash flow coming from brokerage business. Eventually, Lianjia earned reputation for integrity and efficiency not only in the industry, but also among clients from all lines of business. Mr.Cao stick to his own business principles by refusing to go with the flow and go after short-term returns. He follows the right path in the long run, no matter what it takes.
In 2010, Mr.Cao stood down from the chief executive of Lianjia after ten-year’s serving and founded another enterprise known as Shanghai CSD car rental. He embarked on a new adventure in life service and successfully turned Shanghai C SD into a top-tier professional car rental service supplier. Since Day One, CSD was exposed to intensified price-war brought by China Auto Rental, leading player in Chinese car rental industry. The advantageous position of marketplace was gradually comprised, despite CSD still had the most optimized management efficiency within the industry. In 2014, Shanghai CSD was sold through M&A, Mr.Cao and other pre-dilution shareholders got their benefits from the exit. This adventurous journey has brought Mr.Cao two lifelong friends and business partners, Bin Wu as the VP of CSD and Jianhua Qiao as the financial advisor in CSD’s M&A case. On basis of mutual recognition of outlooks on life and value, the three founded EdgeVentures, focusing on helping entrepreneurs build promising businesses in China. As a founding managing partner since 2015, Mr.Cao regards EdgeVentures as last entrepreneurship of his life. The management philosophy behind EdgeVentures is deeply influenced by his past managing experience. For example, Mr.Cao prefers to recruit young talents instead of industry insiders and he firmly stands by investing through systematic methods instead of individual proposals.
Mr.Cao is not only a successful entrepreneur in business, but also a great husband and father in life. He enjoys and cherishes the time spent with the family. He loves soccer and organizes competitions with friends every week at the young age. Nowadays, he’s having a good time teaching kids playing soccer.

Founder

Hui Cao

Administrative Director

Bachelor of Literature from Heilongjiang International University. Master of Management from University of Nottingham. Previous working experience: Centre for Language Education and Cooperation, PwC.