Tang Yi, Executive Director of Qiming Venture Partners: Optimistic about the long-term development of Web3, supports Chinese entrepreneurs

Qiming Venture Partners is a globally leading venture capital firm with 17 years of experience in the VC field. Since 2019, the company has started investing in cryptocurrency and the Web3 space, having invested in 16-17 projects to date. Qiming Venture Partners' Web3 investment strategy mainly focuses on supporting Chinese entrepreneurs, with a wide range of investments covering various aspects such as infrastructure, application layer, and middleware.

Tang Yi stated that Qiming Venture Partners is optimistic about the long-term potential of the Crypto/Web3 industry. He believes that, from a technical and talent perspective, this market is very attractive, with many excellent engineers and developers engaged in product development and research across different fields. The original intention of Crypto is to build a value network where users can own their digital assets, value, and identity, and can quickly exchange these values.

Regarding investment strategies, Tang Yi stated that Qiming Venture Partners will flexibly adjust based on project circumstances. Traditionally, 70% of investments occur in Series A or B rounds, but considering the characteristics of the Web3 industry, they will also make some early seed and pre-seed investments. Meanwhile, for projects that have entered a growth stage or have a higher valuation, Qiming Venture Partners also has the capability to make larger-scale investments.

In terms of investment direction, Qiming Venture Partners focuses on user entry and infrastructure projects, such as the self-custody wallet imToken. They have also invested in some projects leaning towards traditional centralized finance (CeFi) or compliant projects that combine CeFi and DeFi, such as the crypto financial company Matrixport. In terms of underlying infrastructure, they have invested in projects like staking service providers.

Regarding the current market situation, Tang Yi expressed a relatively optimistic attitude towards a market improvement by the end of next year, but also emphasized that the market trend is difficult to predict accurately. He suggested that the invested companies maintain sufficient long-term capital reserves, preferably with sustainable income and value capture capabilities, to weather a possible market winter.

Tang Yi believes that Web3 still faces some challenges in achieving large-scale adoption. These include the acceptance of the cryptocurrency payment experience by users and the inadequacy of the underlying infrastructure. He pointed out that there is still a significant gap between Web3 and Web2 in terms of user scale and experience, which will require more time to address.

Regarding the background of entrepreneurs, Tang Yi stated that they tend to favor talents with Web2 entrepreneurial experience. Such entrepreneurs usually possess strong technical and execution capabilities, as well as a deep understanding of products. As long as they are willing to invest time in learning about the characteristics of the Web3 industry and user needs, they can quickly adapt and achieve success.

Regarding the phenomenon of some Web3 entrepreneurs turning to the AI field, Tang Yi expressed understanding. He believes this is due to the current lack of new application scenarios in the Web3 industry, while there have been significant breakthroughs in the underlying technologies of the AI field. However, he also cautioned entrepreneurs that both AI and Crypto face numerous challenges at the application level, requiring long-term exploration. He suggested that entrepreneurs should choose their direction based on their interests and abilities, and be aware that both fields contain uncertainties.