China is the future, many believe, despite recent signs the company’s economy is slowing down. In this context Hugo Shong, as the man who has developed US-based media group International Data Group’s (IDG) corporate venturing operations in China is a man to watch.
In 1993, as managing editor of Electronic Business Asia Magazine, Shong assisted IDG’s founder, Patrick McGovern, in establishing the $50m IDG Capital venture fund in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong, when the Chinese venture market was largely overlooked by investors.
McGovern said in a Global Corporate Venturing profile: “Everyone laughed at me for backing them [Chinese entrepreneurs] as there was no stockmarket and companies could not issue stock, so they said it was not the right environment.
“But I talked to China’s then president, Jiang Zemin, and he promised stockmarkets by the end of the 1990s and we were encouraged by that and started investing in 1994. These investments included Tencent, where we invested $1.2m and sold it for $200m, Baidu where $2m turned into $700m, Soufun where we invested $1m for 10% that was worth $100m and Ctrip where $1m became $26m.”
Shong, now 52, led many of these deals and oversees IDG’s businesses in 15 Asian countries. The company has established a partnership with top-tier Silicon Valley venture firm Accel to back both China-based entrepreneurs and US companies wanting to expand into China, such as Razer and BlueSprig.
At the time of the BlueSprig and Razer deals in December last year, Shong said: “China has the world’s biggest number of internet users at more than 600 million people and large numbers of mobile phone users and we are now in the mobile internet age, which is creating very exciting opportunities, especially for China. The mobile internet will be the prevailing technology that will drive economic development in the next five to 10 years.
“The Chinese entrepreneurial community is very sophisticated, not just those that have studied abroad, so we will invest more there than outside of China.”
Before travelling to the US to study, Shong was a reporter for China’s Xinhua News Agency – a background similar to venture capital firm Sequoias chairman, Michael Moritz, who was a reporter for Time magazine.
Shong also studied at Hunan University before gaining a masters degree at Boston University and finishing graduate programmes at the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy in 1987and the Harvard Business School in 1996.
His boardroom seats include dentistry company Glamsmile, Media China Corporation and Mei Ah Entertainment Group, according to news provider Bloomberg.