The investment legend behind Pop Mart: How Mai Gang travels through the two major cycles of trendy toys and encryption

Author: Shenchao TechFlow

Labubu is popular all over the world, and Pop Mart's market value of HK$340 billion has made its founder Wang Ning the richest man in Henan.

A joke is mentioned by everyone again:

Before Pop Mart went public, investors' evaluation of Wang Ning was : his education was mediocre, he had never been to school seriously, he spoke calmly, he had no infectiousness, and his team had no elites. After Pop Mart went public, investors' evaluation of Wang Ning was: Wang Ning was calm, didn 't talk much, didn't show his emotions, and had many excellent qualities of a "consumption entrepreneur".

The same treatment is also received by Pop Mart Angel Investor - Mai Gang.

Before the rise of this trendy toy giant, Mai Gang ridiculed himself as an "alternative investor" who was "kicked out of group chat" by the mainstream capital circle; and when Pop Mart's market value soared, he was invited to the "altar" again and turned into a legend in the investment world.

However, Mai Gang's legend goes far beyond the trendy toy field.

What is little known is that Xu Mingxing, the founder of OKX, the world's leading crypto trading platform, is also an investor in Pop Mart, and has achieved thousands of returns, and all of this is inseparable from Mai Gang.

Mai Gang is also Xu Mingxing's Bole. He founded and invested in his earliest entrepreneurial project, Douding.com, and later co-founded OKCoin.

Even Mai Gang is also a crypto guide for Binance co-founder He Yi.

In 2014, at a private party organized by Mai Gang, he introduced He Yi, who was also the host of the show, to Xu Mingxing, which led to He Yi joining OKCoin. Subsequently, He Yi introduced the current Binance founder Zhao Changpeng (CZ) to join the team, thus opening the prelude to the disputes in the global crypto exchanges.

His investment map spans two seemingly unrelated fields, but has spawned giant companies that have changed the industry structure on their respective tracks. It can be said that Mai Gang not only made Pop Mart, but also changed Bitcoin to a certain extent.

Early Bitcoin Evangelist

"In 2013, I was invited to two mainstream VC circle WeChat groups because of discussing Bitcoin. The members in the group are all highly educated people. I think my teaching method is professional, but some people still think I am selling something. At that time, I felt very disappointed. After all, as a social animal, everyone wants to be recognized.

This is the first time I feel like I'm "abandoned" by the VC circle, and it also makes me realize the first time that there are mainstream and non-mainstream circles, as well as individual cognitive differences. ”

In 2021, Mai Gang said this in an interview with "Home-run New Smart Point".

In 2025, this article titled "Mai Gang: The Years I've Been "Abandoned" by the VC Circle" once again flooded the circle of friends.

At this moment, Pop Mart's market value exceeds HK$340 billion, up more than 20,000 times from Maigang Angel Investment's valuation (10 million yuan).

At this moment, the price of Bitcoin exceeds US$100,000, up more than 5,000 times from the price of US$20 at the beginning of 2013.

Mai Gang never hides his identity - the earliest preacher in the Chinese investment community who invested in and vigorously popularized Bitcoin knowledge.

In 2013, when most people didn’t know, or regarded Bitcoin as a financial bubble, he had spared no effort nationwide to promote Bitcoin knowledge and his cognitive understanding.

Shentu’s youthful memories of OG in the crypto industry, he met the famous angel investor Mai Gang in July 2013 and accidentally talked about Bitcoin.

"Mai Gang is a finance student. His views on Bitcoin are very well-established and advanced. For example, the national reserve currency is what Mai Gang said at the time, and it has become a reality now. I have to say that Mai Gang is a very powerful Bitcoin master. He greatly strengthened my idea of ​​working in Bitcoin. He said that he invested in OKCoin and introduced me to know other than celebrities. I immediately withdrew all funds from the stock market and bought 800 Bitcoins from OKCoin, which was priced at $90 at the time."

In Mai Gang's view, Bitcoin can be clearly explained in two sentences: 1. Bitcoin is a property of a mathematician, geek, and network scientist using distributed algorithms to simulate the properties of a perfect currency; 2. This property is maintained by the computing power of a distributed and extremely powerful computer .

He divided the monetary forms of human society into three types: one is the monetary system represented by precious metals and gold, and the other is the credit currency supported by government credit. The emergence of Bitcoin has brought humanity into the third era of currency. He stressed that these three currency forms will coexist for a long time, just as the Internet has not completely replaced fax machines and telephones after the emergence of the Internet.

Regarding Bitcoin, Mai Gang made a prediction in 2014: Bitcoin will become a tool for the game of great powers.

"I am not anarchist, nor do I advocate that we use Bitcoin today and don't use RMB. But I can tell you that in the future, in the short term, as short as 10 years, the United States will rebuild a global monetary system. In this global monetary system, the United States is likely to link the US dollar to a new series of assets, including virtual currencies represented by Bitcoin. Before doing this, the United States only needs to do one thing, which is to gain a voice in the field of Bitcoin. This voice may be computing power, reserves, and pricing power. Why does the United States have an advantage in doing this? Because the United States has Wall Street, which is the elite of the global elite."

Such an expression may seem familiar now, but please note that this expression comes from Mai Gang's speech in 2014. He actively popularized Bitcoin, hoping that Chinese entrepreneurs, Chinese companies, and ordinary Chinese people will gain the right to speak in the Bitcoin field.

"I hope that everyone, including government agencies, should realize the greatness and complexity of the game of Bitcoin, which is truly related to our descendants. Americans used the power of the US dollar to obtain the right to mint the US dollar in the last century, allowing the whole world to work for him. If Americans use their decades to gain the right to speak for Bitcoin, they will continue to let the whole world work for him."

Perhaps it is also out of this understanding that Mai Gang chose to incubate when OKCoin was first established in 2013.

Xu Mingxing and Mai Gang met as early as 2011. At that time, Xu Mingxing was the CTO of Douding.com, and Mai Gang was the angel investor of Douding.com.

Mai Gang and his partner, founder of DFJ in the United States, invested 5 million yuan as an angel investor of Xu Mingxing. Tim Draper is a famous American investor, and has invested in Baidu, Tesla, etc. in the early stages.

During the Spring Festival in 2014, Mai Gang found He Yi, who was also the TV host at the time, and asked her to post OKCoin's Bitcoin red envelope on her Moments, and He Yi happily agreed.

The gear of destiny began to rotate from then on, which not only opened the door to the Bitcoin world, but also changed the history of the crypto world.

After the Spring Festival, Mai Gang brought OKcoin founder Xu Mingxing to form a "Thank you Bureau" and invited all those who helped send red envelopes to a party. In this way, He Yi and Xu Mingxing met.

Xu Mingxing has a technical background, and He Yi is good at marketing. At the party, Mai Gang suddenly said, "Hey, isn't your company looking for someone to do marketing? Isn't this just right?"

In the second week after the end of the show, He Yi joined OKcoin and became vice president, responsible for brand building and marketing promotion. He Yi used his past TV media resources to join the "You're the BOSS group to promote OKcoin, and also planned the OKcoin exchange debut at Times Square in New York. The popular KOL publicity that is commonly used now is also a marketing method that He Yi often used ten years ago.

In addition, He Yi also dug up Zhao Changpeng, who once worked on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, to be the CTO.

Mai Gang's series of seemingly random recommendations and connections eventually rewritten the competitive landscape of the entire cryptocurrency exchange.

After that, Zhao Changpeng founded Binance after leaving OKCoin, and He Yi later joined to jointly build Binance into the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, and OKCoin has also become the world's leading trading platform OKX today.

Pop Mart's first investor

In June 2020, in the first half of the year before Pop Mart's Hong Kong stock listing, Mai Gang posted on the official account of Entrepreneurship Factory -"The Story of Pop Mart: From 10 million to 100 billion", of which 10 million was the valuation of Mai Gang's Angels investing in Pop Mart, and 100 billion was Mai Gang's expectation for Pop Mart at the time.

"One hundred billion is a number and a goal. I believe that the Pop Mart team led by Wang Ning has the opportunity to challenge this goal and become an international company."

As a result, Pop Mart's market value exceeded 100 billion on the day of its listing. Now, in its 5 years of listing, Pop Mart's market value has exceeded 300 billion, ranking among the star companies in Hong Kong stocks.

Back in 2012, Pop Mart was just a small company living in a simple house in Beijing. In May of that year, the founder Wang Ning sent an email to Mai Gang, but he was lying quietly in the other party's email address for three months before he was found.

This accidental discovery has created a precious investment fate.

In August 2012, 25-year-old Wang Ning and Mai Gang met for the first time. The young Wang Ning was wearing a pair of trendy shorts that were not listed in China at the time. This detail made Mai Gang keenly notice his unique sense of trend. From the first meeting to the signing of a contract for investment, the whole process took only five days.

On August 10, 2012, Mai Gang paid his first investment with a total of 2 million yuan, becoming the first angel investor of Pop Mart.

According to 36kr, after signing the investment agreement, the two went to a bar in Wudaokou. Amid the noise, Wang Ning, who was always "very peaceful", suddenly raised his voice: " Brother Mai, you invest in me today. If I were Jay Chou, you would be Wu Zongxian."

Later, when talking about the reasons for investment, Mai Gang said that what really touched him was the characteristics that Wang Ning showed: " calm, calm, clean and not fooling".

At that time, most investors and entrepreneurs focused on e-commerce and believed that offline retail was a counter-trend environment, but Mai Gang and Wang Ning firmly believed that there were still huge opportunities in the offline retail market, especially those trendy products that were full of design and could touch people's emotions.

For Wang Ning, this investment is of extraordinary significance. After getting the investment, he called his father immediately: "Dad, from today on your child is a millionaire because the shares I hold are worth 10 million."

As an investor who is stingy with praise, Mai Gang highly praised Wang Ning in his circle of friends after investing for a year, " Young and promising, with great ambitions, China's future retail industry must have his place."

However, except for Mai Gang, not many people in the capital market are really optimistic about Wang Ning and Pop Mart.

Wang Ning has seen almost all investors and FAs, not only visited financial institutions, but also even experienced industrial capital such as Light Media and Aofei, but he always left with excitement and returned in disappointment.

A typical example is a fund under Hunan Satellite TV, which has not invested for a long time after due diligence. During the last meeting, he even said to Wang Ning: " How could it be your turn for such a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity?"

The continuous setbacks in financing have also led to Pop Mart being in a state of shortage of funds for a long time. Once the company's account was less than 1 million yuan, and even paying wages became a problem.

"The financing information circulating online is inaccurate. Many of the figures are equity transfers between shareholders after the company's later development is smooth, not the company's financing. The total amount of funds raised from the outside during the company's development history is actually very small. In the early stages of Pop Mart's development, financing was very difficult. Basically, most well-known investment institutions have seen this case, and I don't know why they did not invest."

Mai Gang later recalled that he could empathize with the torment Wang Ning had experienced during the financing setback, but when facing difficulties, he could still feel Wang Ning 's inner confidence and firm belief in the company's value.

On the night of Pop Mart's listing in 2020, an article titled "Behind Pop Mart's market value exceeding 100 billion yuan: a collective mishap of a big Chinese fund" flooded the entire venture capital circle, which is also a kind of emotional venting and an expression of attitude.

This scene is like the inspirational plot in a fantasy fairy novel - the male protagonist who was once regarded as a "boring" ended up making a big splash, making everyone who once looked down on him ashamed.

In Mai Gang's view, Wang Ning's repeated financing setbacks may be a very important training in the development of Pop Mart. Without this training, Pop Mart might not be able to reach this point.

"First, because there is no financing, Pop Mart is very cautious when spending every penny; second, the company has been looking for breakthrough points, forcing the founders to keep thinking."

Mai Gang has always been a person who is in the anti-hot theory. He believes that because Pop Mart has not received large-scale financing, it has basically not been exposed by multimedia, and has never become a company in the hot spot. Later, it has become a myth of creating hot spots (creating the industry).

Mai Gang's man

After seeing this, you may be even more curious about what kind of person Mai Gang is, and why the "alien" in the eyes of mainstream VCs can get the big results such as Pop Mart, Bitcoin, and OKCoin at the same time?

In 1996, Mai entered the venture capital industry just after graduating from Renmin University of China and was one of the first people engaged in venture capital in China.

In 2001, he went to the University of California (UCLA) to study for an MBA, and during this period he won the first place in the University of California Entrepreneurship Competition and the fifth place in the National University Entrepreneurship Competition. During his time in the United States, he met his "Wu Zongxian, who was connected with Tim Draper, the godfather of the Silicon Valley venture capital industry, and thus entered the Silicon Valley venture capital circle in the United States.

“Tim draper is my mentor, my former boss, and my earliest angel investor. I am very grateful to him for cultivating me back then and investing in my company back then.”

In 2005, he and Tim Draper co-founded VenturesLab, one of the earliest entrepreneurial incubators in China.

Completely different from mainstream VCs, Mai Gang chose an "alternative" investment path.

He has never raised funds from the outside and has always insisted on investing with his own funds. In his opinion, there is a "scam curse" in the current venture capital industry - many large funds adopt the "money-spreading model" to increase their investment hit rate, which often reduces the return rate of LP. The best operating model in the venture capital industry is the "workshop-style" approach of small teams - a leader leads three or five elite soldiers, works hard, and strives to have three or five out of twenty projects to run out.

He is cautious about the wind. He believes that entrepreneurs and investors should pay more attention to the nature of opportunities than blindly pursue them. He summarized three verification "formula" to judge the project:

1. What problems did your company solve?

2. Who is your competitor?

3. Why do you win?

Based on his rich entrepreneurial and investment experience, Mai Gang divided the model of Internet entrepreneurship and proposed the famous "mouse and cement theory".

The first is the "mouse mode", that is, the pure Internet model, which represents early search engines, community websites, etc., and is characterized by entrepreneurs being able to conduct business mainly through computers;

The second type is the "mouse plus cement model", such as 58.com, Qunar, etc. This type of enterprise obtains traffic through the Internet and then converts traffic into the commercial value of traditional industries;

The third type is the "cement plus mouse mode", which is typical representative such as Xiaomi, Huang Taiji, etc. These companies are essentially traditional industries, but they make full use of the Internet characteristics to innovate.

Maybe you would think that Mai Gang, who is a VC after graduating from college, is more of a theorist and lacks entrepreneurial experience, but he has another identity - a serial entrepreneur.

In 1999, Mai Gang invested in Yide Ark, which won the first place in the China College Entrepreneurship Competition during his Pudong Science and Technology Innovation. It was precisely because of this project that Mai Gang became a close friend and embarked on a continuous entrepreneurial journey with many entrepreneurs.

In 2003, Mai Gang and Jack Ma, one of the founders of Yide Ark, co-founded Yiyou and served as CEO. The company received angel investment from Silicon Valley tycoon Tim Draper, chairman of Japanese rich Optical Communications, and others, and was later acquired by French listed company Meetic.

In 2005, Mai Gang invested in Chinese Online, founded by Tong Zhilei, one of the founders of Yide Ark, as an angel. In January 2015, the company was successfully listed on the A-share GEM.

In 2006, Mai Gang and Lu Jun, one of the founders of Yide Ark, founded Tongka, the later largest O2O customer relationship software company in China, and was later acquired by Tencent. In 2007, Mai Gang also co-founded Douding.com, the world's largest Chinese document sharing website, with Jonathan Lin, who once interned at Yiyou.

In 2010, Deng Yu, another founder of Tongka, jointly invested and founded China's largest smart TV content aggregation service provider - Taijie.

In 2013, he jointly invested and founded the Bitcoin trading platform - OKCoin with Douding.com CTO Xu Mingxing.

There is actually a clear clue behind the seemingly magical entrepreneurial experience: " Be kind to others and make good friends."

" Life is the continuation of the entire relationship between you and your friends. Therefore, only by treating your friends and others well can you achieve yourself. Of course, you must know people. Giving bad people will harm yourself. I think whether it is entrepreneurship or investment, in the end you will find that what you give back to you is actually your character, or the amplification effect of your character." Mai Gang once said.

But what moved me the most was a detail.

20 years ago, when Mai Gang founded a startup factory, he designed his own logo, built a website, and wrote this passage on the company's official website: Perhaps your goal in life is to start a successful company, but in the end what is left on your epitaph are "a kind father (mother)", "a favorite partner in your life", and a generous friend", rather than a "great CEO". You will find that what you cannot take away is fame and wealth, and what you leave behind is emotions and memories.

Today, this passage is still on the home page.