KATHY XU

Kathy Xu did not start out picking startups. She trained as an accountant and worked early jobs in finance, including at the Bank of China.

In the late 1990s she moved into private equity at Baring Private Equity Asia. There she led the deals for NetEase and Ctrip, two of the biggest early Chinese internet winners.

Those wins gave her the reputation and the confidence to go out on her own. In 2005 she founded Capital Today with a first fund of around $280 million.

Her signature move came soon after. She met Richard Liu, who was running a small electronics business, and wrote him a check.

That business was JD.com. It made her career.

Capital Today is Kathy Xu's firm, founded in 2005. It is a China-focused venture and growth fund.

Its most famous bet by far is JD.com, the online retailer she backed early and rode all the way to its 2014 Nasdaq listing. Before starting her own shop, she led the NetEase and Ctrip investments at Baring Private Equity Asia, both huge early internet winners.

Over the years her portfolio has included consumer names like Miniso, the cheap-and-cheerful retailer. She likes consumer and internet businesses she can actually picture using.

Kathy Xu invests in people first. She has said again and again that she is really betting on the founder, not the spreadsheet.

Basically, she looks for entrepreneurs with huge ambition and the grit to grind for a decade. Once she is in, she does not rush for the exit.

She acts like a long-term partner, sometimes staying on a board for years and adding money round after round. She sticks to what she knows, mostly consumer and internet businesses where she can imagine the customer.

Find a great founder in a big market, then be patient. That is the whole game to her.

JD.com, and it is not close. In the late 2000s Kathy Xu put roughly $10 million into JD, then a small online electronics seller run by Richard Liu.

She pushed him to expand across China and to build his own logistics network, an expensive and risky call at the time. When JD.com listed on Nasdaq in 2014, Capital Today's stake was reported to be worth over $3 billion.

That is a return most investors only fantasize about. It also made her the name everyone in Chinese venture capital knows.

The honest hard part of Xu's career is that nothing has matched JD.com. One legendary win that returns over $3 billion is a blessing and a trap.

It sets a bar almost no follow-up deal can clear, and it means her reputation rests heavily on a single outcome. Her concentrated, hold-forever style also cuts both ways.

When she commits to a founder who stalls, the money is locked in for years with little to show. The lesson is one every big-swing investor learns.

A career-defining win can quietly become the thing you spend the rest of your career trying to repeat.

Her rules are unfashionably plain. Back the person, not just the idea.

Pick a market big enough that a winner can become enormous. Then hold.

She has said the best returns come from doing very little once you have picked right. She is skeptical of chasing whatever is hot and buying into hype.

Understand the business or stay out. It is basically old-school value investing dressed up in venture clothing.

Xu guards her personal life closely, and there is little public detail about it. What is well documented is her place as one of the most prominent women in a Chinese venture world long run by men.

She is regularly named the most successful female venture investor in the country. Founders she backs tend to describe her the same way, as demanding, direct, and fiercely loyal once she is in.

Kathy Xu studied at Nanjing University. She trained and worked as an accountant early on before moving into finance.

That grounding in reading a company's actual numbers shaped how she sizes up a business. She cut her teeth in traditional finance, including at the Bank of China, before finding her way into private equity.

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