Jason Tan, the former head of Tiger Global Asia and now the Chief Investment Officer of Jeneration Capital, 2018 celebrated both ten years investing in Asia, and his 40th birthday this year.

Mr. Tan believes his generation of investors and entrepreneurs is a special one. They were born after the 1978 Reform and come after the generation that lived through the cultural revolution and “has experienced hardship first hand and therefore often prizes stability over chaos”, he says. By contrast, Mr. Tan’s is an optimistic generation. It carries no baggage from the past and actually believes in the China Dream because his contemporaries have lived it. For the most part, they all started from humble origins—Mr. Tan’s family lacked mattresses when he was a child growing up in Beijing. But today they have reached the commanding heights (however defined) by their own efforts, through capability rather than connections as is the case both with those who preceded them and followed them.

While at Tiger Global, Mr. Tan invested in some of the most successful technology companies in China and has seen them flourish. The list includes Alibaba, Didi Kuaidi, 58 Ganji, Meitu, Uxin, Meituan, and Miss Fresh. And while he left Tiger last year, the firm will continue to reap the benefits of Mr. Tan’s instincts. Bilibili, a leading mobile video community will soon go public in the USA with a valuation upward of $4bn. The initial $140m that Mr. Tan put into Didi Kuaidi on behalf of Tiger Global turned into more than $1.2bn in three years, investors say.