Winston Ma - The Hunt for Unicorns: How Sovereign Funds Are Reshaping Investment in the Digital Economy

1. Chapter 1
2. Chapter 2
3. Chapter 3
4. Chapter 4
5. Chapter 7
6. Chapter 8
7. Chapter 10

1. Chapter 1
2. Chapter 2
3. Chapter 3
4. Chapter 4
5. Chapter 5
6. Chapter 6
7. Chapter 7
8. Chapter 8
9. Chapter 9
10. Chapter 10

Winston Ma and Paul Downs

FOREWORD by

Margaret Franklin, CFA President and CEO, CFA Institute

Russell Read former CIO, CalPERS, GIC-Kuwait, and APFC

Ajay Royan Co-founder with Peter Thiel of Mithril VC Funds

This edition first published 2021

2021 by Winston Ma and Paul Downs. All rights reserved.

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The right of Winston Ma and Paul Downs to be identified as the authors of the editorial material in this work has been asserted in accordance with law.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is Available:

9781119746607 (paperback); 9781119746614 (ePDF); 9781119746621 (epub)

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State-owned investment funds are the new frontier investors, larger in size, influence, and power than the traditional Wall Street of investment banks, asset managers, and hedge funds. They are the unicorn-makers behind the scene. Offering a series of in-depth case studies that combine broad perspectives on the tech investment world with specific national examples, this highly original book examines a vital and increasingly important relationship between governments and globalizing VC tech markets.

Anthony Scaramucci, Founder & Managing Partner of SkyBridge

Ma and Downs' clear and expansive insights into these disproportionately important and yet little-known institutions will prove critical, both to practitioners in the field of investing as well as to the general public seeking answers to the big picture questions of why the new unicorns transforming their lives arose from the modern financial system.

Russell Read, CFA, Ph.D, former CIO for CalPERS, GIC-Kuwait, and APFC

The private sector doesn't have the answers to a growing list of the world s problems. It is the State, working through powerful institutions such as sovereign wealth funds, that has taken a key economic and investment role. Investors need to understand these state-controlled wealth funds - what they do and how they do it and this book provides a timely update that fills a gap in the literature on global finance.

Dato Seri Cheah Cheng Hye, Co-Founder and Co-Chairman, Value Partners and Non-Executive Director, Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Ltd

Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) lie at the intersection of finance, politics, macroeconomics, international relations. This book not only constitutes perhaps the most in-depth and insightful investigation of sovereign investors to date, but the book starts a broader debate over globalization and state economic intervention in the context of world digital revolution. Invaluable to European governments and businesses, in particular, as the EU strives to become the third tech pillar of the world next to the US and China.

Pierre-Yves Lucas, Head of Cooperation Mongolia, European Union and former Adviser to the CEO of the SWF of Kazakhstan

A book that, against the backdrop of the world-altering coronavirus epidemic, provides a thoughtful guide to the role sovereign investors play in the world-changing digital transformation and how one accelerates the other.

Margaret Franklin, CFA, President and CEO, CFA Institute

This is a story about Time Machines.

Ajay Royan, Co-founder with Peter Thiel of Mithril VC Funds

To Angela I love you dearly

Winston Ma

To Rebecca, whose support has been invaluable.

Paul Downs

This is a story about Time Machines.

No, dear reader, you did not stumble upon the science fiction aisle at the bookstore. You are, however, holding a chronicle of the hunt for their closest earthly cousins.

In this timely book, Winston Ma and Paul Downs bring to light the oft mysterious world of transformative technology startups and the burgeoning sovereign wealth funds who invest in them. Together, these constitute a group of builders and investors who have emerged as two of the biggest forces reshaping the world as we know it. Their origins are diverse, but their evolution has many parallels. And their future, and ours, is intertwined in more ways than anyone anticipated.

Over a nearly two-decade career in tech and investing, I have come to appreciate that every great technology startup is in fact a Time Machine, the fruit of a tribe of mad-genius progenitors intent on hurtling us into the future. Most fail, and almost all are unprecedented by popular opinion. When they succeed, however, they famously remake whole industries for a generation or two.