Xiaolin Hou, GMBA Class of  2018

This article is part of a series covering Tsinghua Student Dialogues with Advisory Board Members. These dialogues took place on October 20, 2016, in association with the larger Tsinghua SEM 2016 Advisory Board Meeting.

The SEM Advisory Board Meeting was a key event for many Tsinghua SEM students. To everyone at Tsinghua X-elerator, especially Tsinghua-MIT Global MBA (GMBA) students, it was a particular privilege to meet distinguished venture capital investor Jim Breyer. 

Tsinghua SEM Advisory Board Chairman and Breyer Capital Founder and CEO Jim Breyer hosting a dedicated student Q&A session. 

Mr. Breyer is the Founder and CEO of Breyer Capital and has invested in more than 40 consumer internet, media, and technology companies that have completed public offerings or successful mergers.  Several of these investments, such as that in Facebook, have returned over 100 times their investment, and many more have returned more than 25 times their cost to investors.  

Perhaps most notably to students, Mr. Breyer is this year’s Tsinghua SEM Advisory Board Chairman. His commitment to help Tsinghua SEM become a world-class business school is evident. At the student dialogue, Mr. Breyer was generous with his time and devoted the entire session to Q&A. Students seized the opportunity to pick the brain of such a seasoned investor. 

Ankang Ni, a GMBA student in the Class of 2018, hosted the event with professionalism and humor as GMBA students batted about a range of thought-provoking questions. Xin Guan posed a question about opportunities in digital health in China. Mengzhen Sun inquired about Mr. Breyer’s decision-making process during his early-stage investment in Facebook back in 2005. Jia Cui explored the characteristics of successful start-up enterprises. Mr. Breyer also graciously answered many queries related to investment strategies, industry, and career advice for passionate GMBA students. Mr. Breyer stayed on his feet and consistently accompanied his answers with a broad smile and a sincere “谢谢” (xiexie: “thank you”) in Chinese at the end of every response.

A special part of this dialogue event was the “elevator pitch.”  CEOs from Tsinghua-incubator startups each had 30 seconds to deliver a short business pitch to Mr. Breyer. Then Mr. Breyer gave them a personal evaluation and advice. The CEOs were from a range of industries such as VR, robotics, and education. GMBA students enjoyed the pitches, as Mr. Breyer was tremendously generous in sharing his advice for improvement and feedback. We learned a great deal from these lively real-world case discussions. 

Post-Q&A group photo.

Year after year, the GMBA cohorts greatly treasure opportunities like this one to learn in such intimate settings with global business leaders. We were grateful that Mr. Breyer spent a fulfilling afternoon with us and left us with such precious memories.