Huang Jinfeng (黄锦峰, David)

“From the company’s founding in June 2016 to January 2019, our financing was very difficult. In August 2017, I met 80 investors before one was willing to invest.”

When anyone in the company feels pressure, they can find their supervisor, ultimately they can find me. But I can't find anyone to talk to—I have no supervisor. That's really frustrating. When you're tormented, there's only one way—endure.

Huang Jinfeng (黄锦峰) spent three years proving a thesis that sophisticated investors couldn’t see. The rejections weren’t random—they were systematic. Venture capitalists saw cosmetics as a commodity category dominated by global giants with century-old brand equity. Why would consumers choose an unknown Chinese brand over L’Oréal or MAC? The pattern-matching said no.

Born in 1983 into China’s post-80s generation, Huang would become one of the youngest beauty founders to reach the NYSE at age 37. But the path there required enduring a level of systematic rejection that tests whether founder conviction is evidence-based or ego-driven—and reveals the loneliness that no one outside the founder’s chair truly understands.

The P&G Years #

Huang enrolled at Sun Yat-sen University in 2003, studying International Economics and Trade at Lingnan College. There he met Chen Yuwen and Lu Jianhua—classmates who would later become his co-founders. The university, named after the founder of modern China, instilled a spirit of ambitious nation-building that would later inspire the company name “Yatsen.”

After graduation in 2007, Huang joined Procter & Gamble’s CMK (Consumer and Market Knowledge) department. This assignment provided a master class in how multinational beauty companies operated—department store distribution, television advertising, magazine campaigns, celebrity endorsements. Within three years, Huang became P&G’s youngest marketing manager in China. He mastered what he called the three pillars of consumer insight: hindsight (understanding what happened), insight (understanding why it happened), and foresight (predicting what will happen).

But the role also revealed something investors would later struggle to see: the fundamental playbook that L’Oréal, Estée Lauder, and Shiseido used to dominate China’s $60 billion beauty market was becoming obsolete. The market wasn’t shifting from offline to online—it had already shifted.

After leaving P&G in 2010, Huang pursued an MBA at Harvard Business School. During a 2011 summer break, he noticed Weibo’s meteoric rise—China’s Twitter equivalent was fundamentally changing how consumers discovered and discussed products. Upon completing his MBA in 2013, Huang joined Yunifang (御泥坊) as Vice President and COO, helping guide the online-native mask brand toward its eventual public listing.

The 80 Rejections #

In August 2016, Huang founded Yatsen E-commerce with his two Sun Yat-sen University classmates. Their founding thesis emerged from a striking market observation: mature beauty markets like Japan and Korea showed a roughly 1:1 skincare-to-makeup ratio, but China’s was 9:1—a massive untapped opportunity in color cosmetics.

What followed was three years of systematic rejection that would test whether Huang’s conviction was based on evidence or ego.

“From the company’s founding in June 2016 to January 2019, our financing was very difficult. In August 2017, I met 80 investors before one was willing to invest.”

The pattern was consistent. Venture capitalists saw cosmetics as a commodity category where global giants held century-old brand equity. They couldn’t see past the pattern-matching: L’Oréal and Estée Lauder had dominated for decades, and Chinese brands had never broken through at scale. Why would consumers choose an unknown Chinese brand over MAC?

Each rejection forced Huang to refine his thesis. The digital transformation wasn’t coming—it had already happened. Consumers made purchasing decisions based on Xiaohongshu (小红书) reviews and Douyin (抖音) livestreams, not magazine advertisements. The multinationals’ legacy advantages in retail distribution and traditional media meant nothing in this new landscape.

But how do you prove an insight that contradicts everything investors think they know?

The 30-Minute Yes #

The breakthrough came on December 30, 2016, when Huang met Fang Aizhi of ZhenFund. The 30-minute meeting yielded a term sheet on the spot—validation that at least one sophisticated investor understood what 80 others had missed.

“The investors who rejected me weren’t wrong from their perspective,” Huang later reflected. “They were pattern-matching based on decades of industry data. What I saw was that the patterns had already changed—consumers had moved, but the data hadn’t caught up yet.”

In May 2018, Gaorong Capital led the Series A at a $100 million valuation. By September 2019, Yatsen achieved unicorn status with a $1 billion valuation. Three years from founding to billion-dollar valuation—the fastest trajectory in Chinese beauty history.

On November 19, 2020, Yatsen listed on the NYSE under the ticker YSG, raising $617 million. At 37, Huang became one of the youngest Chinese beauty founders to list on a U.S. exchange. The investors who had said no watched as the thesis they couldn’t see became undeniable.

The Loneliness of the Founder’s Chair #

But even success doesn’t eliminate the psychological toll of leadership.

“When anyone in the company feels pressure, they can talk to someone, find their supervisor, ultimately they can find me. But I can’t find anyone to talk to—I have no supervisor. That’s really frustrating.”

This quote, from an August 2022 interview, revealed something that transcends Perfect Diary’s specific journey. The loneliness of founder leadership—the weight of decisions that affect hundreds of employees, the isolation of carrying responsibility without anyone above you to share it—is a universal experience that no amount of success can fully resolve.

“When you’re tormented, there’s only one way—endure.”

Huang’s years of rejection had taught him something that would prove essential: the difference between persistence and stubbornness is whether your thesis survives scrutiny from people who don’t share your assumptions. Eighty investors couldn’t see what he saw—not because they were stupid, but because the evidence hadn’t yet become visible to those relying on historical patterns.

The Lesson #

Systematic rejection tests founder conviction in ways that success never can. When everyone says no, you must ask: Is my thesis based on evidence others can eventually verify? Or am I simply unwilling to accept that I might be wrong?

Huang’s answer came in the form of sales figures that proved the digital transformation had already happened. Perfect Diary became the first C-Beauty brand to rank #1 on Tmall’s Singles Day, defeating MAC, Estée Lauder, and L’Oréal. Sales reached ¥100 million in just 13 minutes.

The 80 rejections weren’t failures—they were a filter. They forced refinement of the thesis until the evidence became undeniable. And they revealed a truth about founder psychology: the loneliness of conviction precedes the validation of being right.

The investors who said no weren’t wrong from their perspective—they were pattern-matching based on decades of industry data. What Huang saw was that the patterns had already changed. Consumers had moved to new platforms and new behaviors, but the data hadn’t caught up yet. His conviction was based on evidence others couldn’t yet verify—until the sales figures made it undeniable.

The $16 Billion Peak #

By February 2021, Perfect Diary’s parent company Yatsen had reached a market capitalization of $16 billion. The stock peaked at $122.75 per share. Huang’s paper wealth exceeded $3 billion. The thesis that 80 investors had rejected was now worth more than many of the venture capital firms that had passed.

The validation seemed complete. But the market was about to deliver a lesson that would prove more valuable than any success: building fast is not the same as building strong.

The 98% Crash #

In April 2022, Yatsen received a NYSE delisting warning. The stock had fallen to $0.39—a 98.5% decline from its peak. Co-founder Lu Jianhua publicly criticized leadership decisions. COVID-19 lockdowns had closed two-thirds of the company’s retail stores. The traffic arbitrage strategy that had built the brand so quickly was now working against it: competitors had copied the KOL playbook while holding the century-old brand equity that Perfect Diary lacked.

The crisis forced a reckoning that success had delayed. Perfect Diary had mastered reach, not trust. The 15,000 KOL partnerships could generate awareness, but they couldn’t create the loyalty that sustains brands through difficult periods. International giants like L’Oréal had spent decades building brand equity; Perfect Diary had tried to shortcut that process through growth hacking.

“That was my most painful time,” Huang said in a 2022 interview. He traveled to Japan seeking counsel from experienced entrepreneurs. The advice he received was simple: “Endure. No giant changes or huge dividends will make the company grow—just bit by bit optimize, bit by bit cut costs, bit by bit improve products.”

The Second Entrepreneurship #

Huang declared what he called a “second entrepreneurship”—a fundamental pivot from the strategy that had built Perfect Diary. The company shifted focus from color cosmetics to skincare, acquiring premium brands like French Galénic, British Eve Lom, and Taiwanese DR.WU. These weren’t growth hacking plays; they were bets on brand equity that would take years to develop.

By Q4 2024, the pivot showed results. Yatsen posted its first non-GAAP quarterly profit since the crisis: ¥107 million. Skincare had grown to 43.5% of revenue (up from zero in 2019). Gross margins reached a record 79.1%. The company wasn’t recovering through the same strategies that built it—it was building something fundamentally different.

Huang frames his remaining career as a decades-long endeavor: “I’ve only worked in one industry for the past 15 years, and I’ll probably only do beauty for the rest of my life. When Yatsen reaches its fourth five-year period, I’ll only be in my 50s. With enough experience and organizational capability, maybe I can arm-wrestle with international beauty giants.”

The ambition remains, tempered by hard-won wisdom. The trajectory from 80 investor rejections through $16 billion peak valuation to near-delisting and partial recovery reveals a founder tested beyond what most entrepreneurs experience. His crisis-forged insight—that sustainable brands require more than traffic arbitrage—may prove more valuable than his original disruption thesis.

The Question That Remains #

The question Huang now faces: can the skills that built Perfect Diary evolve into the ones needed to sustain it? Growth hacking and brand building require fundamentally different capabilities. The former optimizes attention; the latter cultivates trust. Traffic arbitrage—the strategy that propelled Perfect Diary to prominence—builds reach but not loyalty. Sustainable brands require patient cultivation of trust through consistent quality, genuine relationships, and products that genuinely improve customers’ lives.

The $15.6 billion in lost market capitalization represents perhaps the most expensive lesson in modern beauty industry history: digital disruption can accelerate growth, but it cannot shortcut the hard work of brand building. International giants took decades to build brand equity; Huang must now attempt the same journey in compressed timeframes while managing a public company, supporting hundreds of employees, and satisfying institutional investors who demand quarterly results.

Whether Huang can execute this more difficult transformation will determine whether his story ends as a cautionary tale or a complete redemption arc. The crisis insights he carries—about endurance, incremental improvement, and the limits of growth hacking—may ultimately prove more valuable than the original disruption thesis that made him famous.

At 41, with decades of career ahead, Huang has time to prove that the founder who built fast can also build strong. The 80 rejections taught him persistence; the $16 billion peak taught him what’s possible; the 98% crash taught him what’s sustainable. Few founders accumulate all three lessons before turning 50.

Last updated: January 15, 2026