Cong Philip Yao

Whether reading or traveling, my body and the soul are always on the road. I was born Chinese and started my adult life full of curiosity. I’ve studied and worked in China, Germany and the UK. I’ve always been interested in innovation, new ideas, concepts and strategies – and the possibility to cross borders in any discipline.

At 30, I founded Skillnet China with Bodo. After more than 100 consulting projects in Germany and China, I shifted my focus to financial advisory and angle fund business in China. Knowing both the Asian and the Western worlds, I defined my very own way of thinking business. China is very different from the US or Europe – a bigger market with much fiercer competition and a totally different culture. Having started with small investment deals of around USD 1.5 million (that’s around RMB 10 million), my favorite deal size expanded into the USD 20 to 100 million range.

In 2012, we founded Easy Capital, a seed and early stage investment fund. While always looking for the next Google, Facebook, or amazon in China, it gives me the opportunity to share my mind, knowledge, experience, service and money with innovative startups. Among the more than 100 Chinese transactions we’ve closed so far, several players have become market leaders in their respective segments: ETCP in the mobile parking solution space; ShopEx as a retail multichannel SaaS provider; 24Tidy, a special interest service provider in the O2O area.