BusinessBecause
Quest Ventures’ Managing Partner James Tan was interviewed as an alumni of the Tsinghua-MIT Global MBA Program.
“James Tan founded Quest Ventures, a multimillion dollar venture capital firm focused on tech startups in Asia. He says his MBA helped him break into the Chinese market.
James credits enrolling on the Tsinghua-MIT Global MBA Program, a collaboration between Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management (Tsinghua SEM) in Beijing and MIT Sloan, for helping him to grow a successful business and expanding into the lucrative Chinese market.
James recognized how many Chinese startup originally mimicked business ideas from the US. More recently, companies like Weibo (China’s Twitter) and DiDi (China’s Uber) use US models as a starting point, but are bespoke to China.
Similarly, James looked to US venture capital firm Sequoia—which has invested in Apple, Stripe, and Airbnb—as an example of the long-term success that he wanted Quest to emulate. But crucially, it needed to have an Asia focus.
“I wanted to build a very strong VC firm by this region, for this region,” says James.”
