Lei Jun is seemingly incapable of escaping his nemesis. The founder and chief executive of Xiaomi this week had his latest comeuppance when investors valued the smartphone company he wants to take public at roughly 50-60 per cent of what he reckons it is worth.
He has been here before. Xiaomi, the company he launched in 2010, was once the world’s most valuable private start-up— at $45bn it was worth more than Uber at the end of 2014 — and rode high on a formula of selling smartphones as sleek as iPhones at far cheaper prices.
But that unravelled with the arrival of new competitors and hefty cash burn, unleashing a soul-searching mea culpa from a humbled Mr Lei in early 2017. “We must slow down and earnestly learn from our mistakes. Prevention is better than having to fix things later,” he said.