Your First Check: Start with People You Know
The very first thing when starting a company is money. Lei Jun's answer is simple: angel investing is just pooling money from acquaintances. The real question is why anyone should trust you. This lesson covers where your first funding comes from, how to build credibility, and why a hundred-page business plan gets ignored.
Angel Investing Is Just Pooling Money
Lei Jun once saw an American startup that raised from twenty angel investors—totaling a few hundred thousand dollars, each putting in ten to twenty thousand. Among personal networks in China, that amount is absolutely raisable—probably more. The money was never the problem.
The Real Question: Why Should Anyone Trust You?
If they don't know you well enough, why would they hand you tens of thousands? Never treat fundraising as an isolated event. You have to build friendships first—earn people's trust first. If you can't even convince your parents, siblings, or closest friends, then going to Xue Manze or Lei Jun asking for money—"are they crazy?"
Only Invest in People You Know—and Their Trusted Friends
Lei Jun is explicit: "I only invest in people I know personally." Real angel investors are people from your circle. Extend one degree: a reliable friend of a reliable friend is roughly 90% reliable—and a 90% reliable bet is still worth taking, because startups never come with a 100% guarantee.
Don't Count on Cornering Xue Manze at a Conference
Handing your resume to an investor you ambush at an event—will Xue fund you? Maybe, but you're one of the ten thousand pitches he sees. Without a lucky break falling from the sky, start with the people around you. The credibility-building phase begins long, long before you ever ask for money.
The second company Lei Jun ever invested in was Li Xueling's YY. That 8.3 million RMB in 2005 was the product of a decade of trust-building. Click "Next" to see how credibility compounds into a check.
Lei Jun says he almost never reads business plans—and neither do most VCs. This contradicts everything business schools teach. When he was building Zhuoyue (Amazon China), he "naively wrote hundreds of pages of a bilingual business plan," beautifully printed, spent at least three months on it, visited dozens of investors—and got nothing, nearly falling into despair. Two reasons: VCs are extremely busy, and they assume everything in the document is made up.
A recommendation and endorsement from a credible person is the decisive factor in the entire investment world. VCs ask for materials only after they are already interested. Materials are not the door-opener—credibility is.
Below is the table of contents from a typical business plan. Click each item to see what VCs actually read, what they ignore, and what actively hurts you.
The "angel round" for a one-person company starts the same way—with people around you. An indie developer's first paying users almost always come from friends, communities, and readers who have followed you for a long time. They're not buying the product; they're buying their belief in you as a person.
- Build credibility years in advance: building in public, finishing every side project without abandoning it, and genuinely helping others in communities—these are all credibility deposits made without expecting a fee.
- Don't count on a big influencer to save you: hoping one retweet from a KOL rescues your product is the same as cornering Xue Manze at a conference—you're just one of the ten thousand posts they scroll past.
For an OPC, the BP is the Landing Page—same rule applies: nobody reads your long document. One sentence that clearly states what problem you solve is all that matters.
Writing "an intelligent knowledge management solution powered by large language models" says nothing. Writing "turn your WeChat favorites into a searchable notebook" is what gets people to pay. If you can't explain it in one sentence, you probably haven't fully figured it out yet.
Fundraising is entirely about who you are as a person: "I've always tried hard to be a good person and a hard worker, earning the trust of so many people. When I decided to start a company, they were willing to bet on whether I could win. It's really that simple."
Find your first funding among people you know: angel investing is just pooling money. The shortage is never money—it's a reason for others to believe in you.
Credibility-building starts years before you ask for money: the longer your credibility runway, the bigger the check.
Articulate the people clearly, and the business in one or two sentences—that's worth far more than a hundred-page business plan.
Source: adapted from Lei Jun's public entrepreneurship lectures