Rewriting the Code

Early in his career as an engineer in the Chicago area, Dave Liguang Chenn, ’00, faced a crossroads. He had achieved his goals of moving to the United States from China and completing graduate studies in engineering, but he couldn’t stop thinking about something a coworker had said. One day, in casual conversation, the man told Chenn he had been doing the same work, in the same place, for 20 years. The comment stopped Chenn cold. “I felt I needed to do something different,” Chenn says now. “Otherwise, I could easily see myself there for my whole life, just like my colleague, sitting in my cubicle for decades, and that was not the life I wanted.”

That encounter gave Chenn the push he needed to change paths. He applied to Chicago Booth—a decision that ultimately led him to success as a technology entrepreneur, a founder of business conglomerates, and an influential investor in China.

Although Chenn always considered himself driven, he didn’t initially see himself as a businessman or a risk-taker. He grew up in a remote part of Fujian province in southeastern China, where the Cultural Revolution had denied his parents and grandparents the opportunity to attend college. At Beijing Institute of Technology, a professor advised Chenn to major in mechanical engineering, saying, “The most important thing is to survive. With engineering, you can have a job during wartime or peacetime.”

To 17-year-old Chenn, whose family had experienced disruption and deprivation, the logic was sound. And, for a while, his chosen path was enough. He was the first student in his class to go to the US for graduate studies, emigrating in 1992 with only $100 in savings. His $50,000 engineer’s salary two years later was 100 times what he could have earned in China. His parents were proud of him. “I was daring enough going to the US by myself with only a few dollars in my pocket,” he says. “At that time, I was quite satisfied being an engineer.”

But he was so shaken by envisioning his entire life unfolding in a single cubicle that he decided to do something completely unfamiliar for his next steps. In fact, he chose business because he knew so little about it. “As an engineer by training, I found all of it—the coursework, the case studies—so new to me,” Chenn says.

His first class, in financial accounting, taught by Roman L. Weil, the V. Duane Rath Professor Emeritus of Accounting until his death in 2023, was “a huge blowup for me,” says Chenn, who recalls scoring a C on his first exam. Not much about accounting principles stayed with him. But Weil gave the class some advice that did stick: “Read the Wall Street Journal every day, and day by day, you will develop your own business mind,” Chenn remembers him saying. Weil even brought copies of the newspaper to distribute to the class, Chenn recalls.

“As a result, I have kept up the habit of reading WSJ and other financial news and business magazines for more than 15 years,” he says. “That had a huge impact on me.”

Although he wasn’t yet thinking about entrepreneurship, Chenn took a course with Steve Kaplan, the Neubauer Family Distinguished Service Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance. Chenn recalls that he didn’t have enough bid points to enroll directly, so he audited, sitting in the back of the room or sometimes in the aisle. He also took the Developing a New Venture course, where he first studied comprehensive methods for researching and evaluating business ideas.

“I learned a lot of business skills and business knowledge and, most importantly, a business mindset from my Booth education,” he says. “It’s not just the financial knowledge and business strategies, but the idea of innovation and staying rigorous.”

While Chenn was learning enduring lessons from Booth faculty, he also was developing lasting relationships with his classmates. A number of his fellow MBA students have gone on to work with him in China, even serving as managing partners and managing directors of his various businesses, which have ranged from communication technology to venture investing.

Chenn had so many businesses percolating, in fact, that he created China Century Group, an umbrella holding company headquartered in Beijing. By 2018, it held more than 10 companies in technology, real estate and hospitality, energy, and financial investment. CCG currently has more than 5,000 employees in China, the US, and worldwide. About 20 are Booth alumni, and eight are in senior management roles.

“We may be the largest institution in China with this many Chicago Booth alumni in senior roles,” he says. “That’s an example of how the Chicago Booth network has been so valuable to me and my companies.”

Jianmei Jia, ’00, who now works with Chenn as managing director of his investment firm, Oceanpine Capital, didn’t cross paths with Chenn at Booth but recalls getting to know him at gatherings Chenn organized for recent Booth graduates in Silicon Valley in the early 2000s. “He is very social and was kind of the network center of our class,” she says. “He excels in making friends and maintaining relationships. In 2019, when I told people that I wanted to move back to China, he was the one person who took it seriously and really helped me reach my goal.”

Funding the Next Generation of Entrepreneurs

Chenn could have been satisfied with running China Century Group, but he was still looking around for the next big idea. “Those companies are no longer so cutting-edge,” he says. “And the prime time for me to start another company has passed. I thought, ‘Hey, I can’t do it by myself, but I could help and make an impact.’”

This time, it would be as an investor. In 2018, Chenn launched Oceanpine Capital to focus on technology investments, particularly in chipsets, AI, green tech, advanced manufacturing, medical technologies, and biotech. “I believe technology is the future, not only in the US, but more importantly, in China,” he says. He has turned over the day-to-day operations of China Century Group to his colleagues to free up time for the newer investment business.

So far, Oceanpine has invested more than $2 billion in 100-plus portfolio companies in technology and related industries. “We have had a number of success stories already, some with more than 15 times the return in only about five years,” Chenn says. “But some have totally failed. Of course, we never like to lose money, but that’s the nature of the business.”

He sees opportunities in small-cap businesses, which he believes will have a harder time going public in the next few years and will be more likely to agree to mergers and acquisitions. Like many investors, he is excited about the possibilities in commercializing artificial intelligence. “I have a conviction that AI will dominate every industry in the near future,” he says.

He hopes that one of his upcoming investments will be the first to meet his three criteria for being transformational: “First, it must have at least a 10-times return or a $1 billion absolute return,” Chenn explains. “Second, I, as an investor, must be highly influential in the company—or even have a controlling position. Third, this company has got to be highly impactful in its industry and in the world. Putting together all three of those dimensions? We’re not there yet.”

Wei Zhu, ’92, the former chairman of Accenture’s China business and an advisor to Oceanpine Capital, says Chenn emphasizes the “local character” of his fund, mentoring younger employees who are new to the private-equity business. Zhu remembers Chenn saying, “‘I’m not just doing this to make money. I want to build the next generation of investment experts.’”

In addition to helping up-and-coming entrepreneurs and investors, Chenn has given back to Booth. He is a current member of the Council on Chicago Booth as well as Booth’s Global Leaders Group. In 2018, he donated $10 million to support the Hong Kong Jockey Club University of Chicago Academic Complex | The University of Chicago Francis and Rose Yuen Campus in Hong Kong, which houses Booth’s Executive MBA Program Asia, and to fund scholarships for Full-Time MBA students at Booth and UChicago undergraduates.

Chenn’s highest priority was this scholarship support. “The most important for me was trying to help recruit the best talents for Chicago Booth,” he says. “The best product will come from fostering and cultivating the most successful business leaders in the world.”

Despite his success, he doesn’t think Oceanpine will be his last act. “I’m still in the middle of my career, so I’m still striving hard every day,” he says. “I’m not sure where my journey will be ending in the next 15 or 20 years. But I hope I will be recognized as someone who is impactful not only to his community but also to society.”

His advice to students and alumni is to keep an open mind—the same perspective that has led him down so many different and prosperous paths. He remembers wondering whether he should follow his classmates and stay in consulting, and whether the same view from the same cubicle would define his entire career in engineering. Today, he knows what makes him unique. Referencing the poem by Robert Frost, he says, “I took the road less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”