The Executive Director of Qiming Venture Partners Discusses Web3 Investment Strategies and Industry Prospects

Qiming Venture Partners is a globally renowned venture capital firm with 17 years of experience in the VC field. The company began investing in the cryptocurrency sector in 2019 and has currently invested in 16-17 projects. Qiming Venture Partners' investment strategy primarily focuses on supporting Chinese entrepreneurs in expanding into the global cryptocurrency market.

The Executive Director of Qiming Venture Partners in the Web3 field stated that the company is optimistic about the long-term development potential of the cryptocurrency and Web3 industry. From a technical and talent perspective, this market brings together many excellent engineers and developers who are developing innovative products and conducting in-depth research in various fields. The vision of Web3 is to build a value network where users can own and quickly exchange digital assets, value, and identity. This industry exhibits some characteristics similar to the early days of the internet and has already formed some de facto standards globally, such as digital asset formats and interaction rules.

In terms of investment strategy, Qiming Venture Partners has made some adjustments based on the characteristics of the Web3 industry. Since many projects are in the early stages, the company also engages in seed and pre-seed round investments. At the same time, for projects that have entered the growth stage or have a higher valuation, the company is also capable of making large investments to support their ecological development. Overall, Qiming Venture Partners' investment strategy in the Web3 field is relatively flexible, covering all stages from early to mid-late stages.

The executive director believes that the Web3 industry still faces some challenges in achieving large-scale adoption. Compared to Web2 products, the user scale of Web3 products is at least two orders of magnitude lower, and there is a significant gap in user experience. The main reasons include: most users have a low acceptance of cryptocurrency payment experiences; there are still many shortcomings in the underlying infrastructure, such as issues related to the details of encrypted data. He expects that these problems will take a long time to resolve and may not be completed in the short term, within two to three years.

Regarding the current market conditions, the executive director expressed a relatively optimistic attitude towards a market improvement by the end of next year, but also prepared for the unpredictability of the market. He suggested that investing companies should maintain sufficient long-term capital reserves and ideally have sustainable income and value capture to weather a possible market winter.

In terms of entrepreneur selection, Qiming Venture Partners prefers entrepreneurs with successful Web2 startup experience to enter the Web3 field. These entrepreneurs typically possess strong technical skills, execution capability, and product awareness. As long as they invest time in learning about the Web3 field and understand user and industry needs, they can grow rapidly.

Regarding the phenomenon of some Web3 entrepreneurs turning to the AI field, the executive director expressed understanding. He believes this is partly due to the lack of new application scenarios in the Web3 industry, and on the other hand, there have indeed been some exciting breakthroughs in the AI field. However, he also pointed out that whether in AI or Web3, there are many challenges and uncertainties at the application level, and entrepreneurs should make choices based on their own interests and abilities.