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Yes, it’s that time of year again: the time when Forbes actually has some content interesting enough to make you wait through their obnoxious “Quote of the day” intro page. The American magazine has just released its “Midas list” of the world’s top 100 investors.
As you might expect given the nature of both Forbes and venture investment in general, the list is mostly white, Western men. But there’s one Asian country that has a pretty major presence on the list: China.
Technically, if you’re only counting citizens of China or Hong Kong, then there were six that made the list:
- #7 Neil Shen, Sequoia Capital China, Hong Kong
- #30 Zhou Kui, Sequoia Capital China, China
- #32 Li Xiaojun, IDG Capital Partners, China
- #62 Stephen Ji, Sequoia Capital China, China
- #90 Richard Liu, Morningside Ventures, China
- #94 Xu Xiaoping, Zhenfund, China
But that’s a little misleading because a number of other Midas list investors are heavily focused on investment in China, even though they’re not technically Chinese citizens. These include:
- #21 Hans Tung, GGV Capital, USA
- #38 JP Gan, Qiming Venture Partners, USA
- #40 Jenny Lee, GGV Capital, Singapore
- #44 Zhou Quan, IDG Accel, USA
- #50 Hurst Lin, DCM, USA
- #65 Allen Zhu, GSR Ventures, Canada
- #68 Scott Shleifer, Tiger Global Management, USA
GGV’s Jenny Lee (left) and Zhenfund’s Xu Xiaoping.
In total, then, the Chinese VC scene has about 13 representatives on the list (I say “about” because many of the other investors have also worked with Chinese companies, though they’re not as focused on China as the 13 above). That sounds reasonable at first, but it may not be: China’s venture capital market accounted for 25 percent of all global venture capital investment as of Q3 2015, yet Chinese investors have barely half that in terms of presence on Forbes’s list.
Then again, the Midas list isn’t about total investment sums. According to Forbes, the list is constructed by weighing the past five years of an investor’s portfolio, with special weight placed on big exits and on investors who made successful early bets with high returns.
Anyway, if China’s investors thought they weren’t well represented on the list, they’ve got nothing on women. The Forbes Midas List for 2016 includes just five female investors.
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