Kai Gu

Kai Gu is a veteran of China's private-equity and venture-capital industry with a career that reaches back into the earliest days of the country's capital markets. He graduated from Beijing Business College (北京商学院) in 1994 and later completed executive study at Tsinghua University's PBC School of Finance (the "Wudaokou" 五道口 program). His early career spanned both the trading floor and the buy side: he worked as a floor trader at the Shanghai Stock Exchange, served as assistant general manager at an investment-advisory firm, and was deputy general manager of the asset-management arm of a securities house. He went on to found and run Beijing Hongdao Investment Advisory (北京弘道投资顾问) and served as vice chairman of a Shanghai investment company.

Gu entered venture capital in the late 1990s. A formative role was as general manager of the Henan branch of Fortune Capital (深圳达晨创投 / Dazheng-Fortune), one of China's best-known homegrown VC firms, where he built a top-performing regional team and worked closely alongside Fu Zhekuan (傅哲宽). In 2014 the two reunited to co-found QF Capital, with Fu as chairman/founding partner and Gu as a co-founder and founding partner. Gu's mandate at the firm covers the Northern region of China and the firm's blockchain / digital-asset investing.

QF Capital itself was established in October 2013 by Fu Zhekuan, a former partner of Fortune Capital, and has grown into a recognized early-stage "white horse" fund. It concentrates on two principal tracks — industrial internet (产业互联网) and new materials (新材料) — alongside TMT, modern services, and new consumption, and has backed 240+ early-stage companies with assets under management reported at roughly RMB 6 billion. The firm delivered at least three IPOs per year from 2019 onward. Gu's stated experience emphasizes corporate financing, restructuring, and the IPO process, reflecting his roots on the public-markets side.

• Stage: Backs companies at angel, angel+, and Series A — genuinely early, seed-stage entry points.
• Sectors he personally leads: finance/fintech, education, and healthcare, plus blockchain and the "token/value economy."
• Regional mandate: responsible for QF Capital's North China deal flow in addition to his thematic (blockchain) coverage.
• Value over speculation: On blockchain, Gu has argued for value investing rather than hype-chasing — "真正优质的项目，无论采取何种方式融资，通道都会较为顺畅" ("a genuinely high-quality project will find smooth financing channels regardless of how it raises money").
• What makes him say yes: He has publicly stated that founders should "tear off the labels and look at the essence," and that direction and team matter more than valuation (方向、团队比估值更重要) — he weighs market direction and team quality above headline price.
• Blockchain framework: He looks for three categories — (1) infrastructure/foundational tooling, (2) blockchain enabling traditional industries, and (3) equity/rights digitization — and distinguishes crypto assets into currency-type (e.g., Bitcoin), network/platform tokens (e.g., Ethereum), and application-specific tokens.