Women in tech: GGV Capital’s Jenny Lee reflects on investing in China’s technology market

Jenny Lee, a managing partner at private equity firm GGV Capital, says being a venture capitalist (VC) in China can veer from analysing companies and deals to being a psychiatrist or even a marriage counsellor when needed.

Based in Shanghai, Lee said in an interview that she once had to call up a start-up founder’s wife, who thought her husband was neglecting their family, to explain that the man frequently slept at the office because he was working hard to raise a new round of financing to keep their company afloat.

“Sometimes female investors are more emotional and sensitive than male investors,” Lee said. Still, she considers that trait as a strength because “VC [deal making] is a people business”.

Such insights have served Lee well since 2005, when she established Menlo Park, California-based GGV’s first office in China. At GGV, she has been instrumental in investing and helping eight early stage start-ups go public on the New York and Hong Kong stock exchanges as well as on the Nasdaq-style ChiNext board of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange.

Lee, 47, is widely considered to be one of the most respected VC investors in the world’s second largest economy, according to the 2019 Midas List, the annual ranking of the world’s top tech investors published by Forbes magazine in partnership with TrueBridge Capital Partners.