Henny Sender interviews Zhang Lei:
“When you think about it, it is not a foolish question. What is the function and can it change? Is it, for example, a good place to do grocery shopping? Can it be replaced? Become obsolete, say, because of electric cars? But this person looked at me pityingly and said, ‘Perhaps you don’t have the intellect to be a consultant.’ I had many first round interviews but I rarely was invited for the second round.”
That anecdote reveals much about the investment philosophy behind Hillhouse. “We always focus on what the business will look like in the very long term,” Zhang says. “We ask the most basic questions and that often leads us to different insights.”