Kaifu Lee and other investors announce new training program for startup founders

Interested in doing a startup in China? Investors and startup gurus Kaifu Lee, Xu Xiaoping, and Cai Wensheng want to help. At a meeting in Beijing on Thursday, the three announced a new training program they’re calling “Young CEO Club” aimed helping startup founders.

The new program will draw on the combined resources of Kaifu Lee’s Innovation Works, Xu Xiaoping’s ZhenFund, and Cai Wensheng’s Longling Capital. It will provide founders with early-stage funding, but it will also offer guidance on strategic decision-making, product direction, marketing, branding, operations management, building a team, and more. Young CEO Club will also bring in founders whose companies are worth more than US$100 million to share their stories of success and failure. And it won’t just be help with the theory; Young CEO Club plans to be hands-on in helping founders with things like recruitment and valuing their company.

Applicants can be from anywhere, but they’ll need to be able to get to Beijing for weekend training sessions, and (obviously) they’ll need to have a genuine early- or development-stage startup with either no funding or funding of less than US$10 million. Unsurprisingly given the investors involved, the program will be looking mostly for tech startups in fields like internet, mobile, smart hardware, and B2B services. The first round of students will be limited to 40.

If you’re interested in signing up, visit this page on the official Young CEO Club site for the details. Applications will be accepted through April 10, and the sessions will run at least once a month on weekends from May to September. The program is free for accepted students.

(Sources: Sina Tech and Young CEO Club site)

UPDATE 3/16: Changed the valuation of visiting CEOs from RMB 100 million to US$100 million.