Mr. Shangkong | Money may make the world go round but a philanthropic mission makes tech start-ups more likely to stick around

I have a personal story to share with you about the development of private equity, which may offer some indication of how fast the industry has grown over the past decade.

Many years ago I was appointed by my former employer Reuters as the British news agency’s Asia private equity (PE) correspondent. When I tried to introduce my job to friends in China, I was a little surprised that some thought PE stood for “physical exercise”.

When I relayed this experience to acquaintances at KKR, one of the world’s biggest private equity fund houses, they told me they had encountered similar misunderstandings on the mainland in recent years. They had to keep explaining to local entrepreneurs that they weren’t a gang on in anyway linked to the Ku Klux Klan.

Nowadays people in China, and elsewhere, have a better understanding of what private equity and venture capital are all about. Some may not have heard of Sequoia Capital, but almost everyone knows Google and Apple, two high-profile examples of companies that Sequoia helps to build and grow.

On the other hand, private equity and venture capital managers are often dubbed “gods of fortune” by the media. As long as you can get funding from VCs and PEs, your start-up will grow, or at least there is no need for you to worry about surviving in a tough market in the early stages.