Huobi Co-founder Du Jun: The Essence of Entrepreneurship is to Start
Du Jun, co-founder of Huobi, quoted the words of Academic Director Fu Qiang after the opening ceremony of the 35th EMBA class at the National University of Singapore: the fundamental meaning of entrepreneurship is to start. He wrote about curiosity, passion, and the courage to restart as the boundary between humanity and artificial intelligence.
Du Jun is an alumnus of the 30th class of this program. He co-founded Huobi in 2013 with Li Lin and others, later extending to Jinse Finance, Node Capital, ChainUp, ABCDE Capital, Vernal Group, and New Fire Technology. His public resume states that he bought Bitcoin through Mt.Gox in 2012, previously worked as a product manager at Tencent, and has been involved in domain names and internet café businesses since 2004. In 2024, he applied for a PhD at the Hong Kong University Business School, claiming to have been an entrepreneur for twenty years and aiming to establish a practical operational framework. In March 2026, he also mentioned plans to launch an institutional trading platform in the second quarter.
Fu Qiang is a professor in the Strategy and Policy Department at the National University Business School, Academic Director of the Chinese EMBA program, and a chair professor. He graduated with a bachelor's degree from Peking University's Guanghua School in 1998 and holds a PhD in economics from Indiana University. He has been teaching at NUS since 2005, researching competition, tournaments, and organizational economics. In interviews and at the opening ceremony, he positioned the program as a "restart" platform for Chinese entrepreneurs and a window to the world, not providing standard answers. The Chinese EMBA has recently entered the QS global top twenty and won the Times Higher Education International Strategy Award. The traditional opening ceremony includes a torch-passing, and previous classes have admitted about 120 students from over ten countries.
The intersection of the two is the restart after a cycle. After the sale of Huobi, Du Jun shifted his identity from exchange operator to family office and compliance technology, with Vernal focusing on cash-generating AI applications while avoiding building large models. Fu Qiang sells macro courses and game theory to founders looking to expand overseas. The "to begin" at the 35th class ceremony was used by Du Jun to answer the question of "why still start a business," rather than to announce new financing terms.
Who is buying, who is selling: what is being bought is the alumni network and the identity update at the opening ceremony, while what is being sold is the self-doubt of "should I do it again?" The event was driven by the speeches at the ceremony, with funds not immediately flowing in and out of token markets, but rather directed towards EMBA tuition, subsequent institutional platforms, and family office projects. The beneficiaries are continuous entrepreneurs who need narrative continuity, while those under pressure are those who view entrepreneurship as a one-time cash-out. The comparison with AI is framed as a difference in courage, rather than a difference in computing power.
Public English documents can verify positions, project positioning, and re-entrepreneurship timelines, but the full verbatim transcript of the ceremony is not available; the "to begin" is based on the account of the parties involved.
Source: Public Information
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Du Jun's trajectory applies the same "restart" concept in different contexts: internet cafés and domain names, Tencent products, Huobi trading, media and primary funds, Singapore family office, and back to the classroom. Huobi reached a global top position within six months, marking the first leap in the cycle; selling the exchange without exiting represents converting liquidity into the next table. His EMBA alumni status qualifies him to transform the professor's words into a personal defense at the ceremony.
The capital path shifts from facilitating transaction fees to selecting and accompanying projects. ABCDE operates on a 5+2 cycle for crypto primary, while Vernal uses a more flexible family office ticket to invest in AI applications and compliance. If the institutional trading platform launches in the second quarter, it will be a step closer to the order book, rather than model training. The motivation is that as primary opportunities decrease, there still needs to be an entry point to "begin"—the classroom provides language, while licenses and platforms provide action.
The benchmark is not young founders writing code from scratch, but rather asset relocation akin to Li Ka-shing or Masayoshi Son continuing to bet on the next generation of infrastructure after a bubble. Fu Qiang's research in competition economics aptly explains such individuals: rankings are relative, resources are limited, and one must continually sign up for the next round. The industry phase shifts from exchange expansion to compliance and institutionalization, where entrepreneurship no longer equals opening a new exchange, but rather re-establishing a position within the regulatory grid.
Structural judgments belong to the reconstruction of the industrial chain. The mechanism is: as exchange profits are diluted by licenses and market makers, founders must shift the "begin" from the product level to the capital and education levels; AI can recite business plans but cannot bear the reputational risk of the next opening. Curiosity is framed as a difference, but the essence is who is willing to shut down the old entity and register the new one in another jurisdiction.
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