Camellia Venture Capital

This project involved conducting comprehensive investment due diligence for a venture capital firm evaluating the commercial viability of launching an internationally recognized Broadway musical in the Chinese musical theater market. Working within a cross-functional research team, I led four primary analytical workstreams: a comparables matrix benchmarking the target production against thirteen competing international musicals, a venue and city prioritization scoring model across four Tier 1 Chinese markets, a structural barriers analysis examining why post-2015 Broadway IP faces systematically higher market entry costs than French and classic West End productions in China, and a sensitivity analysis quantifying the relationship between IP licensing fee percentages and break-even occupancy thresholds.

The financial modeling work required building a three-scenario revenue and cost model from the ground up, incorporating market sizing data drawn from national musical theater industry reports, ticket pricing benchmarks across comparable imported productions, and production cost proxies sourced from Broadway union agreements and Chinese HR platforms. I sourced and converted cost inputs across four currencies, built a dynamic sensitivity chart linking IP licensing fee percentage to occupancy break-even across a ten-by-eleven scenario grid, and identified a critical error in the sponsorship revenue calculation that materially revised the model's Base Case from a marginal profit to a near-zero margin position. The analysis surfaced that the 50% venue revenue share and the unknown IP licensing rate were the two variables with the greatest leverage on project profitability, and that the downside scenario was structurally unviable at any commercially realistic licensing rate regardless of occupancy performance.

The deliverable was a five-workstream investment memorandum covering IP and creative fit, China market conditions, financial economics, execution feasibility, and platform scalability, concluded with a staged market entry recommendation contingent on resolving specific upstream unknowns before capital deployment. The project required synthesizing primary and secondary research from Chinese-language industry reports, government venue data, Broadway League performance records, international touring production databases, and salary benchmarking platforms across three countries, translating that research into a structured venture capital due diligence package under conditions of material data uncertainty.