MiraclePlus () is a Chinese

venture capital Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to start-up company, startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in ...

firm headquartered in

Beijing Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...

founded in 2018. It was spun off as an independent firm after

Y Combinator Y Combinator, LLC (YC) is an American technology startup accelerator and venture capital firm launched in March 2005 which has been used to launch more than 5,000 companies. The accelerator program started in Boston and Mountain View, Californi ...

China was closed. It is one of the largest

startup accelerator Startup accelerators, also known as seed accelerators, are fixed-term, cohort-based programs, that include mentorship and educational components, and (sometimes) culminate in a public pitch event or demo day. While traditional business incubato ...

s in China.

Background

In 2018,

(YC) established a unit in China known as YC China. It was led by Lu Qi, a former executive who had worked at

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

and

Baidu Baidu, Inc. ( ; ) is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in Internet services and artificial intelligence. It holds a dominant position in China's search engine market (via Baidu Search), and provides a wide variety of o ...

. In November 2019 affected by the

China–United States trade war An economic conflict between China and the United States has been ongoing since January 2018, when U.S. president Donald Trump began Tariffs in the first Trump administration, imposing tariffs and other trade barriers on China with the aim of fo ...

, YC announced that it would be closing YC China. It stated it would revert to its original strategy of supporting companies from its

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that is a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical area of the Santa Clara Valley ...

headquarters. Lu and the members of YC China then established MiraclePlus as an independent firm. It had already start fundraising six months prior to YCs formal announcement when it was still part of YC and had opened its first startup incubation program in China. The format was similar to YC but had a more localized operation. In Spring 2020, MiraclePlus held its second incubation program which differed from its first one as it was run under the MiraclePlus brand rather than YC. The program also asked startups to stipulate "Why now?" in their pitches which was different from the approach at YC. According to Lu, it had 20% more applicants than the first one. MiraclePlus' first fund had received $55 million in funding at the end of October 2019 according to the

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government, created in the aftermath of the Wall Street crash of 1929. Its primary purpose is to enforce laws against market m ...

. After MiraclePlus became independent it continued to acquire funding with its investors including

Sequoia Capital Sequoia Capital Operations, LLC is an American venture capital firm headquartered in Menlo Park, California, specializing in seed stage, early stage, and growth stage investments in private companies across technology sectors. the firm had appro ...

University of Michigan The University of Michigan (U-M, U of M, or Michigan) is a public university, public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest institution of higher education in the state. The University of Mi ...

and

Liu Qiangdong Liu Qiangdong (Richard) (; born March 10, 1973) is a Chinese Internet entrepreneur. Liu founded JD Multimedia as a business-to-consumer single retail store for magneto-optical products in June 1998 and later moved the company into an e-commerce ...

. According to Lu, the aims of the incubation program is to accelerate product-market fit and to help

startup companies A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an Entrepreneurship, entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship includes all new businesses including self-employment and businesses tha ...

survive longer.

References

External links

* {{authority control Y Combinator Chinese companies established in 2018 Financial services companies established in 2018 Investment management companies of China Startup accelerators Venture capital firms of China