"One-Person Fund" completes tens of millions in initial funding; will the era of large VC armies come to an end? | Entry

Ask AI · Why did Ruan Fei choose the Solo VC model to challenge traditional venture capital firms?

「Solo, AI, Globalization.」

「Entering the game」 is a regular column of 「Dark Currents Waves」. It originates from our observation that the once-effective operating models are facing new challenges, and the industry rules inherited from the West to the East have been shattered. People are eager for a new map and order of innovation and capital. And “entering the game” is a most precious posture.

「Entering the game」 is born amid upheaval. To summarize the target of this column in one sentence: we aim to find new players and new ways that better adapt to changing environments. The following is the sixteenth article of this column.

Text | Ren Qian

Editor | Chen Zhiyan

AI is reconstructing the organizational forms of all industries. From software development to content creation, the “super individual” revolution and the OPC (one-person company) wave are sweeping the globe.

This shockwave has also impacted the venture capital industry. By 2025, Silicon Valley VC Elad Gil’s independently managed fund earned 130 billion dollars. Amid the global VC fundraising winter, he single-handedly raised 3 billion USD for the fourth fund, three times the size of the third fund in 2023, and even surpassing many Mega Funds last year. This fund, established in 2020, has no team; all decisions are made by Gil alone, yet it has invested in industry-changing infrastructure companies like Instacart, Figma, and others.

As a former Twitter strategic VP, ex-Google product manager, and co-founder of Color Genomics, Gil personally built billion-dollar-valued tech companies from zero to one, and has never been a nobody. But from another perspective, his attempt may also prompt us to think: under conditions of extremely high individual cognitive density, combined with AI leverage and flat decision-making, can de-organization VC truly be established in bulk?

In China’s primary market, there have also been sporadic attempts at Solo VC in recent years. Recently, 「Dark Currents Waves」 exclusively learned that veteran investor Ruan Fei has established a “one-person fund” focused on global investment — Captain Vanguard Capital (锋领资本). Fengling Capital is a VC institution operating with dual currencies and a solo GP model from day one, with a RMB fund recently closing its first tens of millions. Meanwhile, a USD fund targeting hundreds of millions of dollars is also being raised simultaneously.

Ruan Fei holds dual degrees in Electronics and International Relations from Peking University, and a graduate degree in Physical Electronics. He has been engaged in VC investment, especially cross-border globalization investments, for over ten years, serving as Investment Director at Innovation Works, Senior Investment Director at Fosun Ruilian Capital, and head of outbound business at RiChu Capital.

Over the past decade, Ruan Fei has almost exclusively focused on China’s companies’ globalization. From experiencing the “Bantan Five Tigers” era of grassroots, delivering express packages in Bangalore at dawn for research, to surviving the darkest hours of Amazon account bans, Ruan Fei has traversed the entire cycle from mobile internet tools going overseas, cross-border e-commerce, DTC brands, to smart hardware and AI globalization. He has invested in projects like Zhongli Shares (SH603194), Uniuni, HeSheng Innovation Dreo, YuanDing Smart Aiper, WanYiTong overseas warehouses, DaYu Unlimited, Velotric, Voila, and more. He has worked, researched, and lived in markets such as India, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and the US, with a total investment of 400 million RMB in outbound fields, an exit amount exceeding 500 million RMB, and remaining on the books several times the principal as returns.

In the future, Fengling Capital’s investment focus will be on outbound and globalization industries, mainly targeting high-consumption markets in Europe and America for brands and services. Ruan Fei told 「Dark Currents Waves」 that he pays more attention to how traditional “clothing, food, housing, and transportation” needs change and create opportunities under new technologies, with his investment direction and focus on “AI and the connection with the physical world + globalization.”

For today’s Ruan Fei, choosing the Solo VC form is more like a metaphor — a proactive self-evolution by a seasoned global investor. Using a decade of accumulated vertical market cognition to capture structural opportunities, this is the ideal testing ground for OPC mode — with a long outbound chain, requiring deep local understanding, naturally suitable for “cognition-intensive” super individuals rather than “capital-intensive” large armies.

「Dark Currents Waves」 recently spoke with the newly embarked Ruan Fei about his journey through cycles and his view of a different future from the mainstream.

Below is Ruan Fei’s self-narration, edited —

Part****01

Traditional VC is failing

Looking back from 2026, China’s venture capital industry has gone through 34 years. If 2015’s “Mass Entrepreneurship and Innovation” was the fiery starting point, now, traditional VC has reached a crossroads where it must answer the question of survival.

Before I decided to establish a “one-person fund,” I repeatedly pondered: are current VC institutions really more advanced than a convenience store?

The conclusion is disappointing. Most existing VC funds’ overall management levels are even inferior to convenience stores. In convenience stores, essential items are always in the deepest shelves, profit items (cigarettes, gum, etc.) are always at the checkout, and systems automate inventory and profit sharing. But our VC institutions often still manage projects with Excel sheets, with serious information silos, and high management costs under the “wolf pack” tactics.

Deeper crisis lies in the internal consumption caused by the “large army” model.

Earn management fees or carry?

For a normal VC model, the main income comes from two parts:

First, management fees, usually 2% per year of the fund size, mainly used to cover operational costs; and the excess profit share — Carry. Typically, following mainstream domestic practices, once the fund’s returns exceed a certain fixed annualized return, 20% of the excess goes to the fund manager, and 80% to the investors.

Funds often last 8 to 12 years, and carry is usually realized after 5 years. This leads to two paths: one is to desperately grow large to earn the 2% management fee and sustain a large team; the other is to carefully select investments to earn carry.

In a booming capital market, large funds can rely on high management fees to attract talent, maintaining visibility through survivor bias. But when the market downturns, performance becomes unstable, and anti-investment pressure increases, large funds fall into mediocrity.

GPs and LPs shift from a community of interests to a paradox.

“Carving flowers on manure” is meaningless

In traditional VC structures, the people who know the most about projects often have no decision-making power, while decision-makers are often not on the front line.

This results in many investment managers becoming “internal FAs” — to prove a project worth investing, they spend a lot of effort making various exquisite reports, which I call “carving flowers on manure.” Besides self-validation, these do not contribute to final returns, and with AI’s proliferation, these tasks are being perfectly replaced by machines.

Even worse is the disconnection of incentives. Due to high personnel turnover, non-partner staff rarely stay until the project exits and carries are realized. Their income is essentially salary plus bonus. This leads many to just “invest and move on”: if the project profits, they update their resumes and switch jobs; if it loses money, they walk away with a shrug.

The long-term dilemma of the “big pool”

Apart from AI, the market lacks a C-side investment direction capable of accommodating numerous opportunities like mobile internet once did. So, mega funds built on mobile internet need to continuously add new investment fields to maintain their scale.

As projects become more “hard tech,” requiring vast vertical knowledge reserves, large generalist funds tend to become mediocre and trend-following. Originally, VC earned money from asymmetric cognition, but the homogenization of cognition among the masses inevitably leads to mediocre returns.

Therefore, I believe VC institutions need a thorough reform. This reform is not just about what to invest in, but a revolution in organizational form.

Part****02

Solo decision-making, AI assistance, focus on globalization

I decided to create a test bed: Captain Vanguard Capital (锋领资本). Its core formula is: Solo VC + AI Management + Globalization.

This is not a spur-of-the-moment decision but based on a judgment of productivity transformation.

In the past, management fees needed to support dozens or even hundreds of people, because gathering information, organizing data, and writing post-investment reports required a large team. But now, apart from two ends — facing entrepreneurs and LPs — the middle links can all be reconstructed.

I have developed my own “post-investment management assistant” and “post-investment war room.” Through AI agents, I can organize data on invested companies in specified formats, generate professional reports, and even break down the storylines of next-round financing pitches. Tasks that once required a team, I can now handle entirely myself, making decisions simple and efficient, directly responsible for performance.

Twenty years ago, someone could become a “mobile internet expert” and seize the era’s dividends, but today, no one can be a “generalist in all categories.”

I choose to focus solely on “Chinese companies’ globalization.” The outbound chain is extremely long, involving different countries’ cognition gaps and resource integration, which naturally suits “cognition-intensive” super individuals rather than “funds-intensive” large armies.

Entrepreneurs don’t need a rookie investment manager to pass messages; they need veterans who can truly help solve local pain points. I hope to let friends in the outbound industry know through media IP and professional articles that I am an “investor who helps without adding chaos.”

Specifically, how do I plan to do it? Essentially, primary market investing is a game of win rate and odds, seeking the maximum of the function: win rate × odds across different stages and industries. Based on this, Fengling Capital focuses on two segments in outbound industries:

****1. Early stage (maximize odds): Preferably first-round financing, valuation within 300 million RMB. I am even willing to co-create ideas with founders, leveraging my ten years of outbound experience to empower comprehensively. This part aims to capture potential excess returns.

2. Maturity stage (maximize win rate): Projects with scaled revenue and profit, valued by PE. This is the bottom layer of the fund, expanding categories and markets for steady growth.

From an asset allocation perspective, individual projects cannot avoid risks, but if a fund diversifies its investments and has a well-designed top layer, carefully balancing core holdings and high-risk, high-reward projects, it can significantly reduce overall losses through a vertical industry portfolio.

I do not chase market hot spots. When a project’s valuation skyrockets but the product isn’t out yet, the odds decrease and the win rate doesn’t improve — I’d rather miss it.

Source: Company supplied image

In specific directions, I devote 70% of my energy to brands, 30% to infrastructure.

In the AI era, I focus on how new technologies meet the most fundamental, ancient human needs of “clothing, food, housing, and transportation,” and pay more attention to how AI connects with the physical world.

For example, I recently invested in RIC building robots. The US faces a huge labor shortage in construction, with wages at $30/hour still unable to attract enough workers. RIC uses AI and 3D printing technology to not only improve efficiency but directly address labor shortages. They have already been validated in Walmart warehouse construction.

Below are three specific directions I define:

1. Helping humans understand themselves: Using sensors and data monitoring, help humans better understand their health, behavior, and other data, and accumulate this data, leveraging AI’s growing capabilities to process it;

2. Helping humans improve work efficiency: As tools, to enhance human productivity or as machines, to reduce human participation in work;

3. Helping humans live more comfortably: The long-term productivity explosion in the AI era will lead humans to spend more time “lying flat” and enjoying life. In the more enjoyable aspects of life — whether companionship, entertainment, or basic daily consumption — the future will be about “living better.”

Part****03

Going overseas, seize the moment

Many ask me, with the current complex environment, why go all-in on outbound?

By 2025, China’s import-export surplus reached a historic $1.2 trillion. Behind this is China’s resilient supply chain. But we must be clear that the era of “commodity export” relying on population dividends and cheap manufacturing, which lasted for the past 25 years, has ended. As per capita GDP hits $13,500, our cost advantage is disappearing, and we must find new growth points.

This means we need to complete two transformations:

1. From “selling goods” to “building brands”: Earning more profit margins.

2. From “low-end manufacturing” to “tech outbound”: Using our engineering talent dividend to export tech-enabled products.

Over the past 30 years, the biggest opportunity in the world was “Invest China,” with China’s annual GDP growth reaching an astonishing 13.6%. But today, we need dual circulation — internally relying on independent innovation to boost productivity, externally steadfastly pursuing globalization, transforming excess capacity into global dividends.

Conquering the oceans means expansion, and trade based on “comparative advantage” benefits global welfare. From Spain and the Netherlands to the UK and US, the shift of maritime hegemony is a historical pattern. The next thirty years will be China’s “Great Age of Navigation.” While many are pessimistic about globalization, only through globalization can China unite more developing countries and forge its own path.

Reflecting on my ten-plus years, delivering express packages in Bangalore’s early mornings, finding solutions amid account bans, I increasingly realize that venture capital is fundamentally a process of fighting alongside like-minded people.

The entrepreneurs I admire are honest (this is the foundation of cooperation), have long boards in verticals, possess global organizational cohesion, and have the capacity to embrace others’ opinions.

The establishment of “one-person fund” is my proactive evolution. It’s a metaphor: in this variable-filled era, only extreme focus and reverence for technology can capture real structural opportunities.

Going overseas and pursuing globalization is a game for the brave — a mission for our generation, even the next. We either succeed or fail, but we must participate. After all, this great voyage has only just begun.

Layout | Yao Nan