In the final days of 2025, my partner and I were on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.
Up here, altitude compresses oxygen and filters out noise. Standing at a 4,200-meter mountain pass, listening to the wind thread through prayer flags, facing the vast silence between glaciers and sky, I looked back on the past eight years.
In this industry full of noise, bubbles, and uncertainty, I asked myself: as an investor, what kind of certainty should I deliver to founders in such an extreme environment?
The answer is four characters in Chinese: Unity of Knowledge and Action.
This letter is written for founders striving to become part of that elite 0.3%.
Photographer: Summer
From "Founding Intern" to VC Fund CEO
In the blink of an eye, this is my eighth year at FutureX.
In 2018, I joined as FutureX's very first intern. I often joke that I was the "Founding Intern" — an experience that stripped away my ego entirely.
Before joining, I was at CICC and Bank of America, accustomed to precise division of labor behind the gleaming glass facades of Central. But in FutureX's tiny startup office, I remember countless late nights — crouching on the floor sorting expense receipts, watching the printer spit out hundreds of pages of legal documents. From carrying tables for events to pulling all-nighters writing ten-thousand-word industry reports, these granular experiences let me touch the roughest, most authentic textures of business for the first time.
These eight years of building blocks seemed chaotic, but ultimately assembled the complete panorama of fund operations: fundraising, investing, managing, and exiting.
Fundraising Empathy (Raise): I know firsthand that "selling dreams" is the hardest sale in the world, because truly great visions often transcend current understanding — they can look like lies at first. I know the feeling when you walk into a conference room, speak passionately for thirty minutes, only to see the investor across the table checking their phone, ending with a polite "let's keep in touch" — the awkwardness frozen in the air. I've endured the self-doubt of facing 100 cold rejections. But I know deeply that winning that 101st yes comes not from learning to please, but from choosing unwavering conviction in the darkest nights when no one is cheering.
PE's End-to-Beginning Thinking (Exit): This experience taught me to "begin with the end in mind." I've seen too many companies pay devastating prices for fundamental design flaws: some fell into endless zero-sum games between founders and investors due to imbalanced equity structures; others spiraled into death traps of "the more you invest, the less value you create, the greater the losses" due to misaligned business models. These lessons built my habit of working backward from the endgame. Strategy without clear outcomes is just sailing without a compass.
VC's Non-Consensus and Restraint (Invest & Manage): I returned to where innovation lives. Here, financial statements are often silent — the only compass is insight into the future. I'm dedicated to capturing ideas that appear marginal, rough, even controversial today, but whose core could reshape the world tomorrow. At critical junctures — key talent recruitment, financing strategy design — I go all-in mobilizing resources. But when it comes to decisions, I always leave the final signature to the founder.
Photographer: Summer
At the end of 2024, I was appointed CEO of the FutureX VC Fund. This appointment completed the most important piece of my identity puzzle: from executing tasks to carrying a mission. When the weight of decisions truly rests on your shoulders, you realize you're not just an investor hunting for unicorns — you're also a founder building from zero to one within FutureX itself.
The "Common Sense" We Believe In
Investing has no complex theories, only a few pieces of plain common sense:
1. Respect the Brutality of the 0.3%
We maintain a clear-eyed view of business's brutality.
This brutality is historically validated in public markets: Baillie Gifford, citing Bessembinder's research, showed that across 90 years of U.S. stock market history (1926-2016), only 4% of listed companies created all net wealth, and the top 0.3% contributed over half of all value.
This pattern is precisely mirrored in private markets: Correlation Ventures' analysis of 21,000+ financing deals shows 65% of investments fail to return principal, and only 4% of companies deliver 10x+ returns.
This tells us: mediocrity is the norm; excellence is extremely scarce.
The entire purpose of FutureX VC Fund is to precisely identify that 4% spark early on, pour all our resources in, and help them evolve into the legendary 0.3%. Mediocrity is normal. Extreme is "abnormal." We only walk the extreme path with "abnormal" people.
2. Stay Within Your Circle of Competence
Duan Yongping said: "Keep doing the right things, and stop doing the wrong things." Some might ask: you seek "non-consensus" while emphasizing "only doing what you understand" — isn't that contradictory? Not at all. We seek non-consensus in market perception, but hold consensus in values.
What we're looking for (non-consensus): We seek founders who've discovered massive unmet needs in technology. Even if that need seems marginal or radical today, as long as it aligns with the megatrend of AI enhancing productivity, we're willing to bet.
What we uphold (understanding): We only invest in founders whose eyes are on the user, dedicated to creating long-term value. If a founder's values are misaligned (e.g., chasing short-term arbitrage), or the opportunity strays from our core technology lane — no matter how tempting — it's a zone we "can't understand" and "must not touch."
No gambling outside our circle of competence. No investing in success with flawed values. This is our bottom line.
3. Post-Investment Service Is Critical
Some VCs think the job ends after writing the check. We believe it's just beginning.
But our understanding of "post-investment" is restrained. For a VC fund, scripts rarely survive contact with reality — shit happens, and we understand this is the norm of entrepreneurship. When plans go off track, we don't blame; we solve problems alongside the founder.
We hold one bottom line: the final decision always belongs to the founder. We're not here to grab the steering wheel. We're in the passenger seat, helping the founder read the map. We go all-in only when the founder actively needs us, at critical bottlenecks like key talent acquisition or financing strategy. Present but never overstepping.
Photographer: Summer
Field Notes: Walking with the Resilient
Over these eight years, what I'm proudest of isn't the numbers on paper — it's that we stood shoulder to shoulder with founders in the headwind.
2019 — "The Lonely All-In": It was a fundraising winter. To support a cloud services company, we carried detailed analysis reports to over a hundred LPs, getting rejection after rejection. In the end, only one investor believed our judgment. We didn't give up because we saw the trend behind the data. A year later, this investment proved that truth often rests in the persistence of the few.
2021 — "The Non-Consensus": When we invested in NIO Power, it was ignored because its model was too new. We weren't deterred by the market's indifference — instead, we spent time studying every link in the battery lifecycle. Four years later, it has grown into an industry giant. Great companies are often seen as outliers at first.
2022 — "Preaching Against the Current": When overseas capital retreated en masse, we became evangelists, telling the world about Chinese tech's resilience again and again. In early 2023, the moment borders reopened, I organized a Tech Tour. When overseas investors stood in Wuhan factory floors, watching highly automated robotic arms dance, hearing the rhythm of production lines roar — I saw the shock in their eyes. This "seeing is believing" effort helped us raise critical capital against the tide. And as Unitree and DeepSeek went global in 2024-2025, we were grateful we'd already been on the road before consensus formed.
2023 — "Foreseeing the Future": When we angel-invested in an AI hardware company, it was still in early growth with annual revenue of just tens of millions — at its darkest moment. Facing skepticism about "AI hardware," the founder didn't argue but ground through perfecting the product experience. We firmly believed in AI's edge-side revolution and placed our bet. Today, the company's revenue has broken hundreds of millions with profitability, attracting top long-term capital. We're honored that before the wind came, we were already standing with the future.
Photographer: Summer
2026 Vision: Removing the Invisible Table
Wang Yangming said: "Knowledge is the beginning of action; action is the completion of knowledge." Investing isn't about giving directions from the shore — it's about jumping into the water.
In 2026, I want to do something simple yet profoundly difficult: remove that invisible "table" between investors and founders.
After years in this industry, I've seen this scene too many times: at opposite ends of a long conference table, investors scrutinize like judges, founders perform like actors, the air thick with guardedness and probing. But as a startup CEO myself, I know how pointless this adversarial dynamic is. In the new year, I hope we're not counterparties but comrades on the same ship.
I can't promise to solve every problem, but I promise to approach you with a "co-founding" mindset in three ways:
An Unguarded Listener: Entrepreneurship is a lonely practice. When you're lying awake at night anxious about cash flow, or struggling with a difficult personnel decision you can't voice to your team — I want to be the person you reach for first. I don't judge. I just listen.
Someone Who Jumps In: I adhere to the principle of "present but never overstepping." But when the hull springs a leak, when the storm is at its worst — I'll jump into the water without hesitation to help patch the hole. Whether it's a sudden PR crisis, a tough fundraising negotiation, or persuading key talent — if you need me, I'm there.
A Friend Who Speaks the Truth: As an outside observer, when your passion blinds you to what's in front of you, I'll share my perspective without reservation. I won't just say what you want to hear. I'll engage in the kind of fierce yet honest debate that only happens between friends who trust each other deeply.
What we offer isn't just capital — it's the certainty that "I'm right behind you."
Photographer: Summer
Looking for Souls Built for High Altitude
Finally, what truly separates the top 4% from the legendary 0.3%? On an oxygen-thin night on the Tibetan Plateau, gazing at the brightest star in the sky, I found the answer. It's not about technique. It's about constitution.
We're looking for these rare beings:
Extreme "Strategic Hygiene": Even when starving, you refuse to swallow poisoned temptation. You know that clean equity and pure conviction are the baseline for the long march.
Remarkable "Escape Velocity": You don't worship static moats — you believe only in acceleration. You strive to break free of gravity before the giants react, to define new rules.
Fierce "Oxygen-Deprivation Tolerance": Entrepreneurship is fundamentally an oxygen-deprived sport — short on cash, short on people, short on resources. The mediocre suffocate. You breathe freely in extreme scarcity.
Founders with these traits are destined to be lonely. But believe this: on the path up the cold, towering snow mountain, there will always be kindred spirits ready to hang colorful prayer flags alongside you.
We hope to walk that path with you.
Simon Xu December 31, 2025 — Qinghai-Tibet Plateau
