On April 29, the "2021 China Quantitative Investment White Paper" jointly organized by Huatai Securities, Kuanbang Technology, Amazon Cloud Technology, Chaoyang Sustainability, Finelite and other market authorities was officially released, and a press conference was held in Shenzhen. Wang Hengpeng, a partner of Jukuan Investment, attended the meeting and gave a speech entitled "Practical Exploration of Quantitative Team Collaboration". We recorded the text for readers.

The "2021 China Quantitative Investment White Paper" (hereinafter referred to as the "White Paper") said: China's quantitative investment is 35 years behind the United States. But in fact, in the past four or five years, China's quantitative scale has grown by more than 10 times, and quantitative involution has formed a large degree of industry consensus. Therefore, today, from the perspective of team management, company culture and personal career development, I would like to share with you the exploration and experience of Jukuan over the past few years.

Quantification should not be labelled and conceptualized

Quantification has been developed in China for many years, but today we still find that some friends, whether they are institutions or investors, still tend to label or conceptualize quantification.

For example, the team's collaboration model, some people often ask in due diligence: "Are you a PM system, a flow factory, or a centralized system?". In fact, quantification, like other industries, should be a group of people who work together efficiently in a pragmatic way of discussing and discussing things on a case-by-case basis. The so-called "teamwork mechanism" doesn't have such a simple canonical answer, and it's not so mechanical, don't conceptualize it.

For another example, people often ask: "How many factors do you have in total?" The White Paper mentions that some people have 500, some have 1,000, and some have 10,000. Three years ago, I saw my peers say that there are 1 million factors. There are 10 million factors, and 100,000 factors are equivalent to hundreds of factors that a person has to generate every day. Does this number make sense? An inversion factor may have 100 sub-factors, should we name it 1 or 100? In fact, what we should focus on is the essence, to understand the richness of the underlying revenue sources of the strategy, rather than the labelling of 500 factors and 10,000 factors. 

Another example is that we often encounter a problem, "I heard that Jukuan is a 'platform team', and the researchers are unstable? (laughs)". First of all, I will report a data to you. Until today, no full-time researcher of Jukuan has left Jukuan to go to other quantitative private placements. Many people confuse the two concepts of "JoinQuant platform" and "platform-based private equity" in Jukuan... This kind of labelling and conceptualization often reflects unprofessionalism.

So today I hope that I will not talk about those lofty concepts and nouns, abandon metaphysical things, and talk to you about some of the most simple and simple underlying logic.

A partner's story

Let me share with you the story of "Jukuan Partner".

Jukuan started building the platform in 2015, and today's investment and research partner Man Qi has become the first batch of early users. As he used the platform more and more deeply, we started one-on-one in-depth communication in 2017. In 2018, our netizens rushed to the spot and found that he "knows Jukuan better than Jukuan" and is a very passionate person. Iron powder. And this is precisely one of the characteristics of Jukuan researchers: full of love for quantification, and a particularly high sense of identity with Jukuan itself.

So I started digging him in 2018. I said, "If you want to come to Jukuan to do sales, no one else can do it for you." He said, "Sorry brother, I just want to do strategy research and development, this one is enough for me to do for a lifetime. ."

This is a point I want to express, that is, what is the core of doing anything? I think to do something to the extreme, you must at least have love and interest.

In 2018, Man Qi started a business, doing system services for quantitative data cleaning and storage, and then joined Jukuan in the spring of 2019 when his business failed. At that time, his entry was warmly welcomed by almost all his colleagues. Why? Because he is not a shallow user, but has a very deep precipitation of the platform, not only proficiency, but also the accumulation of mutual trust and appreciation between people (Manqi and Jukuan team).

After joining the job in 2019, Man Qi went home later and later, and has been immersed in strategy research. By 2020, there will be an outbreak, and there will be more and more strategic outputs. Excellent people have a characteristic, that is, they constantly improve their requirements and constantly break through their own ceilings. This is our favorite talent (because of the extreme self-driving brought by love). After the outbreak in 2020, Manqi has continued to break through. In 2021, he received the company's quarterly review A+ for three consecutive quarters.

In the middle of the night on January 6, 2022, CEO Gosmon sent an email to officially promote Man Qi as a partner and become one of the six partners. In this email, Mr. Gao talked about the evaluation criteria of two Jukuan partners: one is contribution and the other is culture. Contribution is performance (not today), and culture is the core theme I share today. The email mentioned that in Man Qi, you can see "strong self-driving force, outstanding combat effectiveness, efficient response all the time, driving force, collaboration ability, sense of responsibility, positive energy, love for quantification, considerate things, hard work and no complaints. , lead by example, put the interests of the team first, and strictly demand colleagues", these are the points we value for talents.

At 1:22 in the morning, Man Qi replied to the email, and the content was the memory of various scenes in history. In the last sentence, he said: "Jukuan is worth entrusting, we are worth paying, I hope that every colleague will work hard and make more legends of Jukuan together. When we are old, we can recall these bloody bits and pieces with our children and grandchildren in front of our knees. !" 

After the story is finished, my summary of the story has these eight points to share with you:

►If the person is right, the thing is right

►Love is the core of success

►Freedom and growth are together

►Division of labor and collaboration without setting boundaries

►Values , this thing is true

►Good team, full of energy from top to bottom

►Team＞Individual

►Leaders need a pattern/mind

01 People are right, things are right

This is our talent view. In 2021, Jukuan screened more than 10,000 resumes, and finally recruited less than 10 investment researchers. This set of data reflects two points:

[Intensifying competition in the industry] On the one hand, the industry has indeed reached a stage of fierce competition. In the cruel competition, it is difficult for ordinary and outstanding people to gain a foothold in the industry . Therefore, we must further improve the requirements for talents and look for more outstanding people;

[Continuous source of talent] On the other hand, JoinQuant's platform business can continuously guarantee the source of talents for Jukuan investment research, which is the second point.

[Looking for adults] Many business leaders have said that they need 80% of their time to recruit people and 20% of their time to manage people. I also think it's very hard as a manager not to think about changing someone. Jobs once said: "We want to pick the most outstanding people to work with, because they don't have to consider their dignity." - This kind of people, I think it is the same as Netflix's "adults".

[Continued breakthroughs] In addition, Niu X's people did not bring them out, they came up by themselves - this point just fits what the "White Paper" said: The channel for everyone to acquire professional knowledge is self-study and practical exploration. Our CEO Gosmon once said: Jukuan ’s only criterion for interviewing investment and research personnel is whether it can continue to make breakthroughs in cruel competition . This “breakthrough” does not mean that others lead you to make breakthroughs, but that you can make breakthroughs yourself.

02 Love is the core of success

Here I would like to quote two sentences, one is Gu Ailing, who once said her three magic weapons for success: "Sleep 10 hours, love, focus."

Basketball superstar Kobe Bryant also once said: "To be truly outstanding in a field, a person must be extremely obsessed with this thing."

Two years ago, Mr. Jukuan Gao wrote an article "How to Become a Quantitative Researcher of Jukuan", talking about the qualities we value, the first is love, and the second is faith. And Manch is a very typical case.

03 Freedom and growth are together

We believe that the real cow X comes from the great exertion of subjective initiative. Therefore, in Jukuan's investment and research division, we have virtual groups, but at the same time, we will also give colleagues full freedom of choice. The team gives full trust and authorization, as well as the corresponding support.

Mr. Gao once said in an internal email that within the investment research team, when mentors guide colleagues, they should be careful not to affect the originality of the whole process of colleagues.

We believe that the role of the team should be support, not jurisdiction and restriction. The "White Paper" mentions that there are different organizational models. In fact, frankly, we don't know what model we have. Like the "Lean Partnership" in the book. What is Lean Partnership? That is, we have division of labor, but not rigid division of labor. People can go back and forth between sub-strategies and between groups, and they are flexible special forces.

Ji Xuanyi, another researcher of ours, just joined Jukuan last year. He wrote an article called "Growth and Freedom" on our WeChat public account. He said that the core feeling of doing research in Jukuan is very freedom. Of course, this freedom does not mean that there is no support, but in the case of freedom, the company's investment and research environment, computing power allocation, teamwork, etc. will be fully given. support.

 04 Divide labor and cooperate without setting boundaries

We believe that a team must divide labor and cooperate, but a good innovation team must not be an assembly line, but a very dynamic team, without setting boundaries between organizations.

[Support in place] The "White Paper" says that the challenges faced by quantitative researchers in research work: computing power, environment, data cleaning, transaction slippage, real market, etc. These things are exactly what the team needs to help researchers to solve. If the support is in place enough, and researchers can really invest 100% of their time in research, it may take only one year to produce an effective alpha in five years. So it's not just how good the researchers are, it's how the team has achieved each other in general.

[No Boundaries] While dividing labor, the team should not set up boundaries or get stuck, but should collaborate more effectively, so as to have more efficient iterative capabilities at the overall strategy level and continue to maintain industry competitiveness.

[No ceiling] In the division of labor, many people ask: "Does the team have someone who specializes in digging factors and someone who specializes in combining?" In fact, it is not so simple. When one person does a good job in factoring, after developing many factors , he naturally needs to be responsible for a sub-strategy, and needs to do the internal combination optimization of the sub-strategy, as well as related targeted risk control, etc. Therefore, the organization needs to open the ceiling of personal development. The real genius cannot be constrained by this ceiling, and he may leave.

05 Values, this thing is true 

In many organizations, people think that values are PUA. What is the premise of PUA? It's the boss who doesn't do it, and the employees who do it. So when we insist on long-termism, insist on not exposing style, insist on legal compliance, insist on altruism and team cooperation, etc., when we want everyone to persevere, the founder and management team must persevere first and make very good example. Therefore, the values are not false. The real values are to do it yourself first, and then continue to guide and immerse yourself in it.

Hu Shi has a saying: "Between people, the lowest level of relationship is interest, the top level is emotional connection, and the highest level is the identification of values." I personally agree with it very much. Whether it is Jobs' Apple or Cao Dewang's Fuyao Glass, I have seen many corporate histories, and my understanding is that the success of a great company is ultimately the success of its values.

Therefore, when someone is promoting "how much computing power we have, how many researchers, how strong AI...", Jukuan is more about sharing its team philosophy, values, methodology, and emphasizing on the bottom line of the business. Logical expertise. We believe that people are the most important means of production, so we define values and team culture as the core competitiveness of Jukuan.

 06 A good team is full of energy from top to bottom 

[Collaborative Culture] A key point of building a good team is to build a collaborative culture that is collaborative rather than involution. A friend from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange at the same table at the pre-meeting seminar just now asked, "Has your marketing team divided regions and channels?" I said, "We don't have that clear division." "Then you are very chaotic and introverted. ?" That's not the case, but Jukuan's team is more collaborative and supportive. In the 'About Us' column of Jukuan's official website, there is a sentence: our colleagues are excellent, modest, cautious, rigorous, practical, diligent, responsible, and do their best to support each other. " Do your best to support each other " is our core advocacy.

[Right] Another key to building a good team is to build a mechanism that can be discussed and let the right people make decisions. Chairman Mao once said: The revolutionary victory of our organization depends on two "knots", one is unity and the other is summary. A good summary requires a good discussion and decision-making mechanism, and everyone needs to have the courage to express and be willing to express, and constantly create this kind of soil, otherwise the team will have no soul, and the team members are all executors and tools. We don’t want that, so we need to “remind ourselves at all times to avoid getting caught up in self-communication, to create an environment for discussing issues, and to actively embrace discussions that are close to the essence, not based on location or emotion.”

 07 Team＞Individual

Mr. Gao said: "Too many individuals can easily make people arrogant and lose part of the team's spirit of cooperation. The latter is what we value. What we want to build is a special force with a high degree of mutual trust and cooperation."

Frankly speaking, we also received a lot of very high-quality resumes, but some of them were finally passed, and some were due to such "arrogant" reasons. Because we all know that the industry is intensifying, the first half can be the personal star fund manager, the personal star Quant's PK; but the second half is ultimately the team fighting power of PK. Most of the researchers in the top quantitative institutions in the United States have more than one or two hundred people. It is unrealistic to go it alone in such brutal competition. Collaborating with others is actually an important quality of a real top investment researcher.

We believe that "excellence infects each other, and each other becomes noble" is the cultural soil of excellence . Mr. Gao said, "The team must pursue excellence. What is excellence? Excellence is like herd immunity . It needs a group of people to lead the company."

 08 Leaders need a pattern/mind

Someone once said that a good leader needs three characteristics: first, to light up a dream and vision that everyone yearns for; second, to have an admirable pursuit and perseverance; third, to give people a sense of security and reliability . My personal summary of this is: one has a dream, two has a killer, and three is a good person. And my assessment of Gosmond is similar.

Mr. Gao once said, "In fact, compared to strategy research, the more critical core skill for a person in charge of a quantitative fund is his ability to unite people." Almost all of the partners that Mr. Gao unites are 8 For those who have been following Mr. Gao for more than 9 years, what they are looking for should be the points of the pattern, not the things like "good mathematics and good computers". Because compared with the broad pattern and mind, there are too many people with good math and computer skills.

We believe that a leader's pattern/mind should be reflected in all aspects:

• For example, when doing business, the other party does not respect your colleagues. Do you choose business or the dignity of your colleagues?

• For example, in terms of short-term style exposure and long-term performance reputation, should you choose the former or the latter?

• For example, do you rely on competition agreements to keep people, or do you rely on trust and like-minded people to keep people?

Jukuan does not have clear competition restrictions, and we don't think we need to rely on this thing to retain people. This can be understood as our confidence in our own culture and team stickiness. 

There are many stories like Man Qi in Jukuan. For example, we have a master's degree in astrophysics from the Institute of Astronautics, and a graduate student with a master's degree in mathematics from Berkeley, California. They have all published "What's it like to work in Jukuan", "Freedom and Growth" and other experiences on the official website of Jukuan. You can see Jukuan's culture and values, as well as our way of doing things. In addition to Man Qi, new A+s are also emerging in Jukuan's quarterly reviews. I said to Gosmond, "As long as the investment research team continues to have more A+s, we won't worry about Jukuan's alpha."

There are not many people in Jukuan. We only have about 70 people. Many people think that we have a team of several hundred people to make these four business lines:

A quantitative platform that serves hundreds of thousands of users and is almost a household name in the industry; a quantitative private placement with continuous performance of tens of billions; an algorithmic trading provider that serves many leading brokerages; a data provider that serves thousands of quantitative institutions.

For all the current achievements, we feel that in the end, it is the efficient internal coordination of Jukuan, which is completed by this powerful special force. General Manager Gao said to me in 2017, and I also share it with you: "Social resources are limited, and everyone competes with their lives. The principle is to think deeply, make prudent decisions, and resolutely implement ." Jukuan has done a very good job in resolute implementation. thorough.

Last summer, at the sixth anniversary of Jukuan, Mr. Gao shared a passage in the PPT to share with everyone: "Six years have only just begun, and there will be many scenery and stories along the way. I hope that I will eventually be able to create a legend with you. ."

concluding remarks

Finally, I would like to share a few books with you.

"Netflix Culture Handbook", "Everlasting Business" and "From Good to Great": The truly outstanding and evergreen companies have one thing in common- the pursuit of profit.

Duan Yongping Investment Q&A: Duan Yongping has a very deep understanding of corporate culture. I learned a lot of resonance in his writing.

"Heart: Kazuo Inamori's Lifetime Entrustment": The book says that the process of life is the cultivation of character; the basic principle of cooperation is altruism. I agree with both of these words.

"ByteDance": Zhang Yiming once said that when I choose young cadres, the core is those who do not set their own boundaries . He also said: The core reason for supporting my entrepreneurship for so many years is not that I want to succeed, but the sense of accomplishment I pursue in this process . Many Quants in the quantitative industry have a high degree of IQ, and they also have their own sense of achievement and pursuit. If the organization only uses money to restrain him, I don’t think it will be a long-term thing.

 Finally, I wish every colleague can join or build a sustainable team, thank you!

If you want to get the "White Paper", you can scan the QR code below, add the [Finelite] customer service WeChat account, and get the electronic version!