When Wang Wenjing left university in 1983, he hit the jackpot - a job in the office of the State Council that manages the departments of the central government. It was a plum for the bright student from Jiangxi.
Five years later, Mr Wang stunned his colleagues and drew the wrath of his parents when he left the government to set up a company to make financial software with one of his colleagues and with 50,000 yuan (about HK$46,500) of borrowed money, in a nine square metre room, with one computer.
A decade later, he sits in a large, well-appointed office on the second floor of a new 50 million yuan building next to many of the country's biggest computer firms in the middle of the mainland's Silicon Valley - Zhongguancun - a northwest suburb of the capital.
He owns 80 per cent of the Beijing Ufsoft Group, with sales last year of 200 million yuan and 40 per cent of the national market for financial software, including a virtual monopoly on the ministries of the central government and the National People's Congress.
Mr Wang represents the new kind of company chief that the central government is eager to cultivate.
His is one of 4,500 hi-tech companies in Zhongguancun that together employ more than 100,000 people, 60 per cent with tertiary education, making it the most technology-intensive area in the mainland.