Chen agreed to an interview after prodding from Lu, her former partner. Despite Chen’s penchant for privacy, Lu argued that women have the best chance to excel by helping each other and sharing experiences of victory and defeat. They sank into brightly colored bean bag chairs, where the partners usually meet with entrepreneurs and investors, and talked over fresh-cut watermelon and mineral water. “I like to bring everyone down to floor level,” joked Lu.
Chen was hardly destined for greatness. She grew up in Hubei Province, in a city famous for its gymnasts. Her parents, a high school teacher and an accountant, were neither rich nor politically connected. She was nonetheless a gifted student who got into China’s top university and won a rare full scholarship for graduate school in America, the chance for a better life.
She nearly blew it. Lonely and homesick, she abandoned the prestigious grant to join Chinese friends at Rutgers University in New Jersey. The only course available was in library science, so she studied to be a librarian. “In my heart, I knew I wouldn’t be an academic,” Chen said.
After finishing her degree, Chen answered a help wanted ad in the New York Times for a librarian at the New York media merchant bank Veronis Suhler Stevenson LLC in 1994. She got the job and in those early Internet days she managed file cabinets full of corporate records. Her meticulous company reports soon drew the attention of CEO John Suhler. “She added new meaning to the word diligent and to the words due diligence,” said Suhler. “She was better than any of our MBA associates.”
Chen was called XC because her colleagues didn't understand the order of Chinese names and she was reticent to correct them. Suhler eventually promoted her to work on deals. “He kept sending me requests after he’d read a clip in the paper,” Chen said. She was the only Chinese woman at the firm.
“It has been much more of a meritocracy for women in China”
Chen gained confidence as she gained experience. She worked on some 45 publishing and education deals, and was promoted again, this time to managing director.
She met Tiger Global founder Chase Coleman in 2003 through mutual connections. He originally recruited her to work at a Chinese e-commerce company he had invested in called Joyo.com. It turned out that Joyo.com’s CEO was her old high school classmate Lei Jun, who would later become one of the most successful entrepreneurs in Asia as founder of Xiaomi Corp. She returned to China in February 2004 to help the company raise money, but the plans changed when the board decided to sell to Amazon.com Inc.
Still, Coleman saw Chen's potential. They began discussions for her to launch an investment fund specializing in education. Even before she was formally hired, she hit the road to meet with about 70 companies. In October 2004, she officially joined Tiger.
It was an opportune time. China under Communist rule had shunned capitalist practices like private business and Wall Street-style finance. But Deng Xiaoping led a wave of market reforms in the 1980s and with the dot-com boom at the turn of the century, entrepreneurs and venture investors were scrambling to make their fortunes. Few Chinese had been trained in finance, men or women, so the field was wide open for Chen and her peers. “When China got going, there just weren’t that many people,” said Qiming's Rieschel.