CZ looks back on his first entrepreneurial experience: What mistakes did I make? Binance founder CZ @cz_binance shared his first entrepreneurial journey on the ALL-IN Podcast. In 2005, he brought his Wall Street experience and a group of foreign friends to Shanghai, planning to dive into fintech. They rented a fancy office and aimed to provide tech services to Chinese brokerages and exchanges. But after launching the company, they realized they had registered as a Wholly Foreign-Owned Enterprise (WFOE), which couldn’t serve Chinese financial institutions at all. Before their core business even started, they hit a dead end. To survive, the team repaired printers, implemented SAP systems, and took on outsourcing projects in the automotive industry… and kept at it for 8 years. This seemingly “off-track” experience taught him survival, management, and transformation.