His portfolio has included several successes, notably Skype, and now he has interests in a handful of internet start-ups in China.
Meanwhile, after a series of big ups and downs, China's stock market, as measured by the Shanghai Composite Index, is trading right where it was about a decade ago.
Trade is not the only way that China's ups and downs can spill over to the rest of the world.
In a Ho Chi Minh City office near the Saigon River, I interviewed another Vietnamese entrepreneur with a story that has echoes of China start-ups in it.
Third-party services have sprung up to help start-ups navigate the manufacturing process in countries like China.
It's being geared to become Vietnam's Tencent or Shanda, two runaway success stories from China's early start-ups.
And China's internet start-ups, such as Tencent (a social-networking service) and Alibaba (an e-commerce company), have had a genius for copying Western business models and adapting them to the Chinese market.
Douglas Leone of Sequoia Capital, a big venture-capital firm, reckons that in emerging markets like China around 50% of start-ups backed by foreign venture capitalists in the internet and mobile sectors are copycats, and in markets like Brazil it is closer to 70%.
ECONOMIST: Making money by bringing old ideas to new markets
Until 2007 regulation was rather lax, allowing start-ups to dominate the industry, notes Bill Bishop, a longtime China-watcher.
Such a situation is one of the risks that comes with choosing to manufacture in China, faced by both huge conglomerates and start-ups alike.
FedEx, UPS, DHL and other foreign express shippers are allowed to ship boxes within China and to handle outgoing shipments of boxes as well as letters.
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