As a former VC investor, how do you view the current discourse on CT that 'VC is dead'? Regarding the payment issue, I will answer it seriously. I had many thoughts about this argument Let's start with the conclusion- It is an undeniable fact that some VCs have died 2. Overall, VCs will not die, they will continue to live and drive the industry forward 3. In fact, like projects and talents, VC has entered a stage of "clearing" and "sweeping the sand", which is a bit similar to the Internet foam in 2000. This is the "debt" of the previous mad cow. After spending a few years to repay it, it will enter a new stage of healthy growth, but the threshold will be much higher than before Next, let me elaborate on each one 1. Some VCs are dead - Asian VCs should be the most miserable in this round. Starting from this year, the top few have basically shut down, dissolved, and may not see a single move in the remaining months, focusing on the exit of the current portfolio and facing difficulties in raising new funds The second and third tier companies in Europe and America have been relatively good in the first half of the year, which is related to their LP structure and capital volume. However, in the second half of the year, especially in the past one or two months, there has been a clear trend of Asian VC investment, with a decreasing frequency of investment. Some have simply stopped investing or transformed into pure liquid funds. Some investment managers/partners started saying to me on TG, 'It's too difficult, it's not easy to quit.'. The impact of the 1011 tragedy on the liquidity of shanzhai is fatal, and now it is beginning to spread to the confidence of VC The first tier companies in Europe and America seem to have little impact, at least on the surface In fact, the "bear market" of VC in this round is the "delayed effect" after the Luna explosion in 2022. At that time, the secondary market was bearish, but the primary market was not greatly affected in terms of project valuation or the amount of funds raised by VC. There were also many new VCs established after the Luna explosion (such as ABCDE). At that time, there was no problem with the thinking. Several star projects such as MakerDAO and Uniswap by Defi Summer were built during the bear market in 18-19. The VC of the 18-19 wave also made a lot of money during the 21 year bull market. Being a VC in a bear market and investing in good projects, it's great when the bull market comes! But ideals are full, reality is tough, for three reasons One reason is that the narrative stacking and water release in 2021 was too crazy. The difference between investing in good and bad projects by 18-19 venture capitalists was not significant. At that time, every project was tens or even hundreds of times better. This also allows the valuation and financing amount of new projects in the primary market in 22-23 to remain relatively high even in bear markets due to the anchoring effect, without being greatly affected by the secondary market. This is what I referred to as the "delayed effect" of bear markets in the primary market The second reason is that the four-year cycle has been broken, and there has been no so-called "shanzhai season" in 25 years. There are macro reasons for this, such as too many shanzhais and insufficient liquidity, the gradual loss of narrative charm and no longer paying for PPT and VC endorsements, the outbreak of AI, and the siphon effect of "real value investment" in the US stock market on cryptocurrency funds... Anyway, the previous pattern is no longer repeated. It is impossible to replicate the dream of investing in good projects in 2019 and exiting 100 times in 2021 Thirdly, even if the four-year cycle repeats, the terms of this round of VC are completely different from the previous round. Some of our portfolios invested in early 2023 have not been issued after 2-3 years, and even TGE still needs to be locked for another year and released for another two or three years. For a project invested in 2023, it may take 28-29 years to obtain the last batch of tokens and directly cross one and a half cycles. How many projects in the cryptocurrency industry can survive the cycle well? phoenix feathers and unicorn horns 2. VC as a whole will not die - there is actually nothing to worry about. If the industry cannot die, VC cannot die either. Otherwise, who will provide the resources to implement new ideas, new technologies, and new directions? Can't it be said that we rely entirely on ICO or KOL rounds? ICO is mainly aimed at bringing some retail investors and communities on board and creating momentum, while KOL rounds are mainly responsible for dissemination, which all happen in the later stages of the project. In the early stages of one or two Founder+PPT, only VCs could truly understand and give money. I talked about over 1000 projects at ABCDE for more than two years, but ultimately only invested in 40. Of these carefully selected 40, it is estimated that another 20-30 will die. Many of the projects that you think are "junk" in the market have already been screened many times to be relatively "high-quality". Otherwise, these over 1000 projects would all have launched ICOs and KOL rounds. Can retail investors and even KOLs distinguish them? Just think about the phenomenon level projects from the last round to this round, except for a few rare cases like Hyperliquid, which one has no VC behind it? Whether it's Uniswap, AAVE, Solana, Opensea, PolyMarket, Ethena... no matter how emotional Anti VC is, the industry still needs to rely on Founder+VC to push forward together A few days ago, I talked about a market forecasting project that is completely different from most Polymarket/Kalshi Copycats on the market, extremely differentiated. These days, I have pushed some VCs and KOLs, and everyone's feedback is very interesting. They are willing to chat. You see, good projects never die, and so do good VCs 3. VC， The threshold for projects and talents will increase, tending towards Web2- VC - reputation, funding, and professional level have clearly entered the stage of strong and strong. The most important thing about the reputation and brand of a VC is not how famous you are among individual investors, but whether the developers or founders are willing to take your money. Why choose to take your money instead of another VC's money? This is the true moat of VC. In this round, VC is clearly similar to CEX, shifting from the previous pyramid structure to a pushpin structure Project - We have transitioned from looking at narratives and whitepapers in the previous round (even not looking at whitepapers, such as Li Xiaolai's Idea financing of over 100 million in 2017), to looking at TVL, VC endorsements, narratives, and Traction in the previous round... to looking at real user numbers and agreement revenue in this round... It feels like we are gradually approaching the direction of the US stock market. Hyperliquid's Jeff once said in an interview that the only business model for the vast majority of projects in the cryptocurrency industry is selling coins, because TGE had nothing but a mainnet, no ecosystem, no users, no revenue... so they could only sell coins. Imagine when a company goes public on the US stock market, it only has one main body and a group of employees, perhaps with factories and workshops, but no customers or income. It's no wonder Nima was able to get you listed on NASDAQ! Why can we directly TGE or Listing on Web3?! This round of Polymarket and Hyperliquid has played the best role, one of which is to first spend a few years to achieve a large number of real users and revenue, and even establish a new track, and then consider issuing coins. One of them did attract early users by offering token airdrops as an incentive, but their product was unbeatable and everyone continued to use it after issuing coins. The project itself is a cash cow, and 99% of its revenue is used to repurchase tokens. When will the project have non Farmer real users and real income, then talk about TGE, then talk about Listing, and our circle will be considered truly on track Talent - A big reason why I have always had confidence in Web3 is because this industry gathers the smartest people in the world. I have written before that for the over 1000 projects I have talked about, nearly half of the Founders and core teams graduated from Ivy League universities. The domestic founders are almost exclusively from Tsinghua University, with occasional 985 universities such as Zhejiang University, Jiaotong University, and Xiamen University. Of course, it's not just about academic qualifications, and I myself am not from any prestigious school. But it cannot be denied that from a statistical perspective, with so many highly intelligent talents gathering here, even due to the wealth effect, they can definitely create some useful/fun things So before, I said that although the market is bearish, the direction of this round of entrepreneurship is actually quite clear, stablecoins, Perp， Everything on the blockchain, predicting the market, and Agent Economy all have a definite direction for PMF. A good Founder+good VC can definitely make really good things. Polymarket and Hyperliquid have set the best example, and I believe we will see more star products emerge in the coming years For ordinary people, Web3 is still the most promising place for you to transform from nobody to someone - of course, this is the most promising compared to the hellish difficulty of Web2, which is so overwhelming that it can no longer be rolled up. Compared to the previous round or cycle, this difficulty has changed from Easy to Hard. I remember reading a tweet from a Web3 VC partner a few days ago about hiring a junior intern. Within a few days, I received over 500 resumes, many of which were graduates from prestigious universities. I was so scared that I immediately turned off the job advertisement. So in the end, it's still the same sentence - pessimists are always right, optimists always move forward