Zhang Wen is an entrepreneur who likes a challenge. He is now running the animation company all angels in Shanghai, neighbouring the West Bund, an art and creative industry centre. We interviewed him in Shanghai earlier this year.
Wen graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in International Business Management from Nottingham University Business School China (NUBS China) in 2009, and gained his Master’s Degree in Marketing from Royal Holloway, University of London in 2010. In the same year, he moved to Shanghai and joined Standard Chartered Bank as an Account Manager. Four years later, he set up and managed a private equity fund. In 2017, he entered the K12 (kindergarten through twelfth grade) education industry and founded the K12 education company all angels. Later he led the company in designing and producing the first season of Rick and Coco – China’s first animated series that focuses on improving the financial quotient of children. Season one has been on iQiyi, Youku, Wasu TV and other leading video platforms in China, while the second and third season will be launched this year. In this interview, alumnus Zhang Wen will share his story about his studies and career with us.
UNNC changed me a lot
In 2004, the University of Nottingham Ningbo China (UNNC) admitted its first preliminary year students. The next year, Zhang Wen, who wanted to study abroad, was attracted by UNNC’s tagline “study abroad at home” and joined UNNC as one of its first cohort of undergraduates. Wen comes from Wenzhou, where the private sector is strong. Many of his schoolmates from there chose to stay in Wenzhou after graduating from university, helping their parents with business, whereas Wen chose to work in Shanghai. Wen explained, “The changes UNNC brought in me were huge. For example, I developed a completely different outlook. If I had studied at another university in China instead of UNNC, I would probably not have gone to Shanghai and not have done things that I do now.”
Wen said he really enjoyed the guidance he received from all the professors in the University, especially Professor Angus Hooke (now retired) who gave many suggestions about his studies and career. He has been particularly influenced by one of those suggestions, “I once talked with him about my career, and told him that I might go into business after graduation. He mentioned that if I wanted to engage in this field in the future, I must take a key issue into account — differentiation. So afterwards, I asked myself this question every day — what is my differentiation? Of all the English words, the one I remember the most is ‘differentiation’.”
Shifting from finance to education
After graduating from UNNC in 2009, Wen went to the UK to study for his master’s degree. In 2010, he served as an account manager for Standard Chartered Bank in Shanghai. In 2014, he obtained a license for a private equity fund. During the next three years, he invested in a number of projects related to the Internet, agriculture, and technical development etc. When asked about the lessons learnt from his investment experience, Wen stressed the importance of “choosing the right industry” and “choosing the right people”.
As the financial industry has been declining since 2017, Wen shifted to the education industry and founded all angels, a K12 education company. In 2018 and 2019, Wen led his team to design, produce and launch season one of the animated series Rick and Coco, with the second and third season out this year. Rick and Coco focuses on the education of children aged from 3 to 6, teaching through lively content in a relaxed and pleasant atmosphere. The animation is aimed at improving children’s financial quotient and emotional intelligence, as well as developing good habits and manners. As China’s first animated series on improving the financial quotient of children, Rick and Coco has filled a gap in the market and received recognition from many leading video platforms, demonstrating Wen’s idea of “differentiation”. However, making the animated series is not Wen’s ultimate goal. His long-term plan is to cooperate with more education institutions to develop high-quality courses, using the popularity of the animated series as a tool.
Speaking on the current strategy for producing an animated series, Wen said, “The goal in the first season is “from zero to one”, that is, to launch the first animated series related to enhancing the financial quotient in children as soon as possible, which has been achieved. In the beginning, we didn’t know very much about how to make an animated series, so even if we had outsourced the production work to others, they wouldn’t have known exactly what we wanted. Therefore we did everything ourselves, like designing, producing, reviewing and so on, thus investing a lot of time and money. The goal in the second and third season is ‘from one to better’. Two important tasks at that stage are operations and marketing. We will outsource our production work to companies who are specialised in producing animations to improve efficiency and quality as well as reduce costs. Our team’s job is to design better characters, scenes, and scripts etc., based on what other companies help us to produce, and then we will do the reviewing and other things. That is, what we need to do is just operations. The other important task at that stage is marketing, such as approaching other companies to do marketing together, during which we could also approach and select other companies’ high-quality educational products and services. There will be also opportunities for further collaboration in the future to develop courses together.
Wen is in close collaboration with UNNC alumni. He said that one of the advantages of UNNC is that UNNCers have similar backgrounds, so there are many opportunities for cooperation. He is involved in alumni associations in the field of finance and education and has recently become a shareholder of an alumna’s company. He also collaborates with one of his high-school classmates who engages in hypermedia teaching equipment helping to spread his cartoon into schools. Wen’s seven-year-old son is also a strong supporter of his father. He has not only seen Rick and Coco, but also voiced some of the characters in the series. Wen has also held auditions to select children for voice actors.
“I am a Wenzhounese at heart, who is not afraid of making changes.” Wenzhou pioneered private businesses in China. Many people from Wenzhou started from scratch. With their courage, perseverance and wisdom, they created the Wenzhou Model and performed lots of business miracles. Wen’s parents’ generation has experienced the boom of the Wenzhou Model but also the serious challenge of economic transformation, all of which deeply affected Wen. He did not choose the manufacturing industry that his parents are engaged in but chose newer industries. He sizes up the trend of events, dares to make changes and opens new horizons. Best wishes to Zhang Wen!