The investment legend behind Pop Mart: How Mai Gang navigated through the two cycles of trendy toys and cryptocurrency

Author: Shenchao TechFlow

Labubu has taken the world by storm, and the market value of Pop Mart at HKD 340 billion has made founder Wang Ning the richest person in Henan.

A joke that has been brought up again:

Before Pop Mart went public, investors described Wang Ning as: "average education, never held a proper job, speaks calmly with no charisma, and the team lacks elites." After Pop Mart went public, investors described Wang Ning as: "Wang Ning is calm, speaks little, shows no emotions, and possesses many excellent qualities of a 'consumer entrepreneur.'"

Another person who received the same treatment is Pop Mart's angel investor—Mai Gang.

Before this giant in trendy toys rose to prominence, Mai Gang humorously referred to himself as an "alternative investor" who was "kicked out of the mainstream capital circle's group chat"; however, when Pop Mart's market value soared, he was invited onto the "altar," transforming into a legendary figure in the investment world.

However, Mai Gang's legend extends far beyond the trendy toy sector.

Little known is that Xu Mingxing, the founder of the global leading crypto trading platform OKX, is also an investor in Pop Mart, reaping thousands of times returns, all thanks to Mai Gang.

Mai Gang was also Xu Mingxing's mentor, having invested in his earliest entrepreneurial project, Dou Ding Wang, and later co-founded OKCoin.

Moreover, Mai Gang was also the crypto guide for He Yi, co-founder of Binance.

In 2014, at a private gathering organized by Mai Gang, he introduced He Yi, who was then a TV host, to Xu Mingxing, facilitating He Yi's entry into OKCoin. Subsequently, He Yi recommended Zhao Changpeng (CZ), the current founder of Binance, to join the team, thus unveiling the saga of global crypto exchange rivalries.

His investment portfolio spans two seemingly unrelated fields, yet in each sector, he has nurtured giant enterprises that have changed the industry landscape. It can be said that Mai Gang not only made Pop Mart successful but also, to some extent, changed Bitcoin.

Early Bitcoin Evangelist

"In 2013, I was kicked out of two mainstream VC WeChat groups for discussing Bitcoin. The members of the groups were all highly educated individuals, and I thought my teaching method was very professional, but some still thought I was selling something. At that time, I felt very lost; after all, as social animals, everyone hopes to gain recognition.

This was the first time I felt 'abandoned' by the VC circle, and it made me realize the existence of mainstream and non-mainstream circles, as well as the differences in individual cognition."

In 2021, Mai Gang expressed this during an interview with "Family Office New Intelligence."

By 2025, an article titled "Mai Gang: The Years I Was 'Abandoned' by the VC Circle" went viral on social media.

At this moment, Pop Mart's market value exceeded HKD 340 billion, rising more than 20,000 times from Mai Gang's angel investment valuation (RMB 10 million).

At this moment, Bitcoin's price surpassed USD 100,000, increasing more than 5,000 times from its price of USD 20 at the beginning of 2013.

Mai Gang never shies away from his identity—he is one of the earliest evangelists in China's investment community to invest in and promote Bitcoin knowledge.

In 2013, when most people were unaware of or still viewed Bitcoin as a financial bubble, he tirelessly promoted Bitcoin knowledge and his understanding nationwide.

OG of the crypto industry, Shen Tu Qingchun recalls, he met the famous angel investor Mai Gang in July 2013 and casually talked about Bitcoin.

"Mai Gang studied finance, and his views on Bitcoin were very insightful and ahead of their time. For example, he mentioned that national reserve currencies would be like Bitcoin, which has now become a reality. I must say, Mai Gang is a powerful Bitcoin evangelist; he greatly reinforced my desire to work in Bitcoin. He said he invested in OKCoin and introduced me to Xu Mingxing. I immediately withdrew all my funds from the stock market and bought 800 Bitcoins from OKCoin at a price of USD 90."

In Mai Gang's view, Bitcoin can be summarized in two sentences: **"First, Bitcoin is a perfect currency attribute simulated by mathematicians, geeks, and network scientists using *distributed algorithms*; second, this attribute is maintained by the *computational power* of distributed and incredibly powerful computers."**

He categorizes the forms of currency in human society into three types: the first is the currency system represented by precious metals like gold; the second is credit currency supported by government credit. The emergence of Bitcoin has ushered humanity into the third currency era. He emphasizes that these three forms of currency will coexist for a long time, just as the internet did not completely replace fax machines and telephones.

Regarding Bitcoin, Mai Gang made a prediction in 2014: "Bitcoin will become a tool for great power competition."

"I am not an anarchist, nor do I advocate that we should use Bitcoin instead of RMB today. But I can tell everyone that in the future, in as short as 10 years and as long as 30 years, the United States will rebuild a global currency system, and in this global currency system, the U.S. will likely link the dollar to a new series of assets, including virtual currencies represented by Bitcoin. To achieve this, the U.S. only needs to do one thing: gain a voice in the Bitcoin realm, which could be through computational power, reserves, or pricing power. Why does the U.S. have an advantage in this? Because the U.S. has Wall Street, which is the elite of the global elite."

Such expressions may not sound unfamiliar now, but note that this statement came from Mai Gang's speech in 2014. He actively promoted Bitcoin, hoping that Chinese entrepreneurs, companies, and ordinary Chinese people could gain a voice in the Bitcoin field.

"I hope everyone, including government agencies, should realize the greatness and complexity of the Bitcoin competition, which truly concerns our descendants. Americans used the power of the dollar in the last century to gain the minting rights of the dollar, making the whole world work for them. If Americans gain the voice of Bitcoin in the coming decades, they will continue to make the whole world work for them."

Perhaps it was this understanding that led Mai Gang to choose to invest and incubate at the beginning of OKCoin's establishment in 2013.

Xu Mingxing and Mai Gang had known each other since 2011 when Xu Mingxing was the CTO of Dou Ding Wang, and Mai Gang was the angel investor of Dou Ding Wang.

Mai Gang and his partner, Tim Draper, founder of DFJ in the U.S., jointly acted as Xu Mingxing's angel investors, investing RMB 5 million. Tim Draper is a well-known American investor who invested early in Baidu, Tesla, and others.

During the Spring Festival of 2014, Mai Gang approached He Yi, who was still a TV host at the time, and asked her to post a Bitcoin red envelope for OKCoin on her social media. He Yi gladly agreed.

From that moment, the wheels of fate began to turn, opening the door to the Bitcoin world for He Yi and changing the history of the crypto world.

After the Spring Festival, Mai Gang organized a "thank you gathering" with OKCoin founder Xu Mingxing, inviting everyone who helped send red envelopes to the party, where He Yi and Xu Mingxing met.

Xu Mingxing has a technical background, while He Yi excels in marketing. At the gathering, Mai Gang suddenly said, "Hey, Mingxing, isn't your company looking for someone for marketing? This is perfect!"

The week after the gathering, He Yi joined OKCoin as Vice President, responsible for brand building and market promotion. He Yi utilized her previous media resources to promote OKCoin on the show "Non-You Can't Be Boss," and planned for OKCoin to appear in Times Square, New York. The common method of attracting KOLs for promotion is also a marketing strategy that He Yi used a decade ago.

Additionally, He Yi recruited Zhao Changpeng, who had previously worked at the Tokyo Stock Exchange, to become the CTO of OKCoin.

Mai Gang's seemingly casual introductions and connections ultimately rewrote the competitive landscape of the entire cryptocurrency exchange market.

Afterward, Zhao Changpeng left OKCoin to establish Binance, and He Yi soon joined, together building Binance into the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, while OKCoin has become the leading trading platform OKX today.

The First Investor of Pop Mart

In June 2020, six months before Pop Mart's listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, Mai Gang published an article on the Entrepreneurship Workshop WeChat account titled "The Story of Pop Mart: From 10 Million to 100 Billion," where 10 million was the valuation when Mai Gang made his angel investment in Pop Mart, and 100 billion was Mai Gang's expectation for Pop Mart at that time.

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

As a result, on the day of Pop Mart's listing, it surpassed a market value of 100 billion, and now, five years after its listing, Pop Mart's market value has exceeded 300 billion, firmly ranking among the star enterprises of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

Looking back to 2012, Pop Mart was just a small company located in a shabby residence in Beijing. In May of that year, founder Wang Ning sent an email to Mai Gang, which lay quietly in the recipient's inbox for three months before being discovered.

This accidental discovery led to a precious investment opportunity.

In August 2012, 25-year-old Wang Ning met Mai Gang for the first time. The young Wang Ning wore a pair of trendy shorts that had not yet been launched in China, a detail that made Mai Gang keenly aware of his unique sense of fashion. From their first meeting to signing the investment, the entire process took only five days.

On August 10, 2012, Mai Gang made the first investment payment 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, and amidst the noise, the always "calm" Wang Ning suddenly raised his voice: "Mai Ge, you invested in me today; if I were Jay Chou, you would be Wu Zongxian."

Later, when discussing the reasons for his investment, Mai Gang stated that what truly moved him were the qualities exhibited by Wang Ning: "composed, calm, clean, and not deceptive."

At a time when most investors and entrepreneurs were focused on e-commerce, believing that the offline retail environment was counter-trend, both Mai Gang and Wang Ning firmly believed that there were still huge opportunities in the offline retail market, especially for trendy products that were well-designed and could resonate emotionally.

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

As an investor who is usually stingy with praise, Mai Gang highly praised Wang Ning a year after the investment, stating, "young and promising, ambitious, he will definitely have a place in China's future retail industry."

However, apart from Mai Gang, there were not many people in the capital market who truly believed in Wang Ning and Pop Mart.

Wang Ning had met with nearly all investors and financial advisors, visiting not only financial institutions but even industrial capital like Light Media and Aofei, but each time he left with high hopes only to return disappointed.

A typical example is a fund under Hunan TV, which, after a long due diligence process, still did not invest. During the last meeting, they even told Wang Ning: "How could such a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity fall to you?"

The continuous setbacks in financing also led Pop Mart to be in a state of long-term financial strain, with the company once having less than 1 million yuan left in its account, making it difficult to even pay salaries.

"The financing information circulating online is inaccurate; many numbers are merely share transfers among shareholders after the company developed smoothly, not actual financing. The total amount of funds raised from external sources during Pop Mart's development was actually very small. In the early stages of Pop Mart's development, financing was very difficult. Basically, most well-known investment institutions had looked at this case, and I don't know why they did not invest."

Mai Gang later recalled that he could empathize with Wang Ning's inner turmoil during the financing setbacks, but in the face of difficulties, he could still feel Wang Ning's inner confidence and 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: A Collective Miss by China's Big Funds" went viral in the investment circle, expressing a sentiment and attitude.

This scene resembles an inspirational plot in a fantasy novel—the male protagonist, once regarded as "useless," ultimately surprises everyone, making all those who once looked down on him feel ashamed.

In Mai Gang's view, Wang Ning's multiple financing setbacks may have been a crucial training process for Pop Mart's development; without this training, Pop Mart might not have reached where it is today.

"First, because of the lack of financing, Pop Mart was very cautious with every penny spent; second, the company was always looking for breakthroughs, forcing the founder to constantly think."

Mai Gang has always been a skeptic of the "windfall" theory; he believes that because Pop Mart did not receive large-scale financing, it had minimal media exposure and never became a company in the spotlight, but instead became a myth that created the spotlight (pioneering the industry).

About Mai Gang

Having read this far, you may be even more curious about what kind of person Mai Gang is, and why this "outlier" in the eyes of mainstream VCs can achieve such great results with Pop Mart, Bitcoin, and OKCoin.

In 1996, after graduating from Renmin University of China, Mai Gang entered the venture capital industry, becoming one of the earliest practitioners of venture capital in China.

In 2001, he went to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) to pursue an MBA, during which he won first place in the California University Entrepreneurship Competition and fifth place in the National University Entrepreneurship Competition. While in the U.S., he met his "Wu Zongxian," the godfather of Silicon Valley venture capital, Tim Draper, thus entering the Silicon Valley venture capital circle.

"Tim Draper is my mentor, my former boss, and my earliest angel investor. I am very grateful to him for nurturing me and investing in my company back then."

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

Unlike mainstream VCs, Mai Gang chose an "alternative" investment path.

He has never raised funds externally and has always insisted on using his own funds for investment. In his view, the current venture capital industry suffers from a "scale curse"—many large funds adopt a "spraying money" model to increase investment hit rates, which often reduces LP returns. The best operating model in the venture capital industry is a small team "workshop" approach—led by one leader with three to five elite members, digging deep to strive for three to five successful projects out of twenty.

He holds a cautious attitude toward trends. He believes that entrepreneurs and investors should focus more on the essence of opportunities rather than blindly chasing them. He has summarized three verification "formulas" to judge projects:

1. What problem does your company solve?

2. Who are your competitors?

3. Why will you win?

Based on his rich entrepreneurial and investment experience, Mai Gang categorized internet entrepreneurship into different models and proposed the famous "Mouse and Cement Theory."

The first type is the "Mouse Model," which is a pure internet model, represented by early search engines and community websites, characterized by entrepreneurs being able to conduct business primarily through computers;

The second type is the "Mouse Plus Cement Model," such as 58.com and Qunar, where these companies acquire traffic through the internet and then convert that traffic into commercial value in traditional industries;

The third type is the "Cement Plus Mouse Model," with typical representatives like Xiaomi and Huang Taiji, where these companies are essentially traditional industries but fully utilize internet characteristics for innovation.

You might think that Mai Gang, who became a VC right after graduating from university, is more of a theorist lacking entrepreneurial experience, but he has another identity—a serial entrepreneur.

In 1999, during the Pudong Science and Technology Innovation period, Mai Gang invested in Yide Fangzhou, which won first place in that year's China College Student Entrepreneurship Competition. It was this project that allowed Mai Gang to build connections and embark on a journey of continuous entrepreneurship with many entrepreneurs.

In 2003, Mai Gang co-founded Yiyou with one of the founders of Yide Fangzhou, Jack Ma, and served as CEO. The company received angel investments from Silicon Valley mogul Tim Draper and the chairman of Japan's KDDI, and was later acquired by the French public company Meetic.

In 2005, Mai Gang invested as an angel in Chinese Online, founded by one of the founders of Yide Fangzhou, Tong Zhilei, which successfully went public on the A-share Growth Enterprise Market in January 2015.

In 2006, Mai Gang co-founded Tongka, which later became China's largest O2O customer relationship software company, and was subsequently acquired by Tencent. In 2007, he co-founded Dou Ding Wang, once the world's largest Chinese document sharing website, with Jonathan Lin, who had interned at Yiyou.

In 2010, he co-invested with another founder of Tongka, Deng Yu, to establish the largest smart TV content aggregation service provider in China—Taijie.

In 2013, he co-invested with Xu Mingxing, CTO of Dou Ding Wang, to establish the Bitcoin trading platform—OKCoin.

His seemingly magical entrepreneurial experience actually follows a clear thread: "Treat others well and build good relationships."

"Life is a continuation of the entire relationship with the friends around you, so treat friends and others well to achieve yourself. Of course, you must recognize people; associating with bad people harms yourself. I believe that whether in entrepreneurship or investment, in the end, what you receive is actually your character, or the amplification effect of your character." Mai Gang once said.

However, what moves me the most is a detail.

Twenty years ago, when Mai Gang founded VenturesLab, he designed the logo himself, built the website, and wrote this passage on the company’s official website: "Perhaps your lifelong goal is to establish a successful enterprise, but ultimately what will be left on your tombstone are 'a kind father (mother),' 'the partner you loved most in life,' 'a generous friend,' rather than 'a great CEO.' You will find that what cannot be taken away are fame and wealth; what remains are emotions and memories."

Today, this passage still remains on the homepage.