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China’s highest-flying technology startups are struggling to stay afloat after the coronavirus outbreak threatened to paralyze critical venture capital funding.
Investment in an industry that runs on face-to-face contact and gut instinct has fallen off a cliff since the epidemic erupted in January. Venture capital funds slashed startup investment by 60% in January from a year ago, London-based consultancy Preqin estimates. That’s because angel investors and venture capitalists accustomed to road-testing new technology or grilling entrepreneurs in person now shun interaction and work from home.
China’s tech industry -- which prides itself on honing online communications from social media to mobile payments -- is thus ironically stumbling thanks to the lack of the most basic forms of human contact. If the situation persists -- and there are few signs that stringent nationwide quarantine measures will unwind soon -- that jeopardizes a swath of the millions of startups that collectively represent an important growth driver for the world’s second largest economy. It’s a double-whammy for an industry that in 2019 grappled with volatile capital, a slowing economy and U.S.-Chinese tensions.
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“As an entrepreneur who went through SARS in 2003, I fully understand the challenges entrepreneurs face,” Neil Shen, the founding partner of Sequoia Capital China, said in a statement. “We will fully stand by to provide help and support to the companies we backed in any way possible,” said Shen, regarded by many as one of the country’s most prominent tech investors.
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A backlash against China’s tech champions in 2019 had begun damping a decade or more of go-go optimism and investment that fueled one of the fastest and largest creations of wealth the world has seen. Trade curbs imposed by Washington soured investor interest, suppressing deal flow. On a global stage, WeWork’s implosion fanned caution around potentially overblown tech valuations. The euphoria that created more than 100 unicorns, or billion-dollar firms, in China dissipated toward the end of last year.
The outbreak was the last thing China’s tech sector needed.
“This hasn’t been the start to the year of the rat that China was hoping for,” said Ee Fai Kam, head of Preqin Asian operations, adding that the setback is “coming on the back of a bruising 2019 when trade and tech tensions with the U.S. caused investors to exercise an abundance of caution.”