YUVC - why you venture capital YZ Fu | VC | LP | HNWI

YZ Yuanzhe Fu + YY Yuyan Wang, founders of YUVC are thrilled to be joined by Dan Siroker, founder and CEO of Limitless/Rewind AI.
Dan made VCs crazy by releasing a public pitch that attracted over 1k preliminary investment offers, 170+ term sheets, 30+ offers valued over 1b+. More recently, he charged $100 for an investor meeting (luckily, we got the meeting for free).
Rewind AI is a tool that many of the VC partners we talked to had regretted missing out.
Previously, Dan served as the Director of Analytics for Obama's first campaign. He also co-founded Optimizely, the #1 workplace according to San Francisco Business Times.
Dan has raised hundreds of millions in his career.

Highlights:

YZ: How do you select and filter investors, and what are the key traits you admire in them?
Dan: The most important thing I look for when evaluating investors is alignment around our long-term goals. Usually, you get into hot water when your goals are not aligned with the investor's goals. You really want to make sure that both the person you're working with at the venture fund and the fund itself are aligned with your values. For me, it's long term.
YY: Are there any fundraising advice you could give to other startup funders in 2024?
Dan: The core of that success has come from building a great product and building something people want. Usually, that's the most important thing.
YY: What's the biggest challenges for you in hardware?
Dan: How much you need to plan ahead. I'm a big believer in valuing responding to change over following a plan. So if something new comes in, new information, I want to be very nimble and quick as a team at incorporating, at learning, iterating. And hardware, you have physical atoms. And those physical atoms need to be put together, shipped to a customer. And once they're shipped, it's quite hard to change those atoms. And so that's been the biggest challenge for me.

Chapters:

00:01 Introduction
02:07 What's Dan's next fundraising move?
12:14 Is 10x easier than 2x?
23:47 The Limitless Pendant
31:11 Meaning of Life

Links:

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YZ Yuanzhe Fu + YY Yuyan Wang, founders of YUVC are super excited to have a round-2 with Lewis Hong, Partner of FP Solutions VC, face-to-face at Westin Shenzhen.
Previously, we had an online chat with Lewis uncovering his SpaceX life, investment rationale, and interesting stories.
Since Lewis had a deep dive into the Shenzhen supply chains, we learned from him about these topics:

00:50 Chinese Founders Going Global
09:49 Where to Source Hardware Tech
16:26 AI in 3 years
17:30 AI workflow as a hardware tech VC
20:47 Meaning of Life

Highlights:

YY: Are there any interesting companies that have made some fatal mistakes in localization?
Lewis: From the bottom of your heart, how to overcome the resistance to you being a foreign enterprise. You do it by being more local than the local enterprises.
YZ: What are some obvious traits of entrepreneurs?
Lewis: Teamwork is crucial. We are not very keen on investing in entrepreneurs who work alone. We hope to find many Musks, but relatively speaking, they are rare.
YZ: What kind of capabilities will AI have in 3 years?
Lewis: For ourselves, we focus on AI-inspired hardware.

Links:
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We (YUVC) are thrilled to have a face-to-face chat with Song Chang, Partner of QF Capital, at their Shenzhen headquarters.
QF Capital is a leading early-stage RMB fund in China since 2013, now managing nearly 10 billion RMB. QF endured the first 5 years with a DPI close to 0 and witnessed a soaring number of portfolios going public ever since.
Song joined QF Capital as a fresh graduate and experienced the typical path of a VC investor from a newbie analyst to a senior partner, much like QF Capital itself.

00:00 Introduction
03:34 10 years at a Venture Capital firm
05:16 Investment Methodology (Take eVTOL for Example)
33:47 AI in the eyes of a Chinese VC Investor
42:04 Future of Venture Capital in China
50:43 Founders
53:40 Meaning of Life


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YZ Yuanzhe Fu + YY Yuyan Wang, founders of YUVC are joined by Sue Xu, Managing Partner at Amino Capital on the YUVC Podcast.

Dr. Sue Xu joined the firm in 2012, with investment theme of data moat, network effect and domain agnostic. She has successful investments from inception to unicorn in Generative AI, Consumer, SaaS and Frontier tech.

Highlights:

YY: Your most hesitant investment so far?
Sue: Most early-stage deals are controversial. No one is a winner for sure.
YY: Advice for Younger Self?
Sue: Find your position in the society. Then you can ignite endless inspiration.

Chapters:

04:34 Gift Moments
15:29 Rationality in VC
20:21 Silicon Valley Angle
24:36 Founder Portrait
28:13 Women in Tech
31:46 Partners at Amino Capital

Links:

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YZ Yuanzhe Fu + YY Yuyan Wang, founders of YUVC are thrilled to have Andreas Munk Holm of eu.vc, since we've shared so many common traits and stories.

Andreas, together with David Cruz e Silva, shaped eu.vc to be Europe's headline VC community, where 2 VCs are invited on the show every week. After chatting with 1,000+ VCs, they are also angel LPs of 10+ VC funds.

Highlights:

Do you agree with ‘there are two types of people who want to enter the VC industry, either very smart and capable, or super naive’?
Yes and no. Let me tell you about how I think about venture (from the perspective of people raising funds, because that’s what I care about as an LP)Story about my own journey in venture + realizing how much of a networked industry it is and there being “the in-crowd” and those outside of it. And how this impacts the industry as a whole.Conclusion: There’s clearly an A and B team in venture. So I guess that statement goes even for people IN venture. Just look at the performance dispersion in venture. Even at the fund level, there’s a power law.What are some commonalities of promising European emerging VC funds?
More solo-GPs, some very strongMore specialized firms, obv in deep tech, climate, and some in diversityStarting to see more later stage firms, which is great for Europe.Eastern Europe is incredibly interesting, great tech talent, starting to have breakout companies that feed great angels and founders back into the ecosystem, Romania being the posterboy for this with UI Path.Where do you see eu.vc in five years?
We do everything with an eye to becoming the most well-respected VC centric platform for European venture. Be that in the form of podcasts, educational courses, dinners, survival trips or fund investments.
Chapters:

00:45 On 2 types of VCs: either extremely smart & capable, or naive?07:15 On the game of VC08:15 Andreas' path to VC15:08 Why VC and LP only?21:48 Flywheel effect of running EUVC27:57 EUVC in 5 years35:55 The right GP and the European trends
Links:

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YZ Yuanzhe Fu + YY Yuyan Wang, founders of YUVC are joined by Dr. Han Shen, Founding Partner at iFly.vc on the YUVC Podcast.

YUVC had a brunch chat in Shanghai with Dr. Han Shen, founding partner of iFly.vc, a US-based early-stage consumer VC fund.

Dr. Shen is an early investor of Oculus, Weee!, and beyond.

A PhD in Chemistry from @UChicago and an MBA from @wharton , Dr. Shen broke into venture the hard way - visiting 100+ VCs at the Sand Hill Road, working for the series-C lead investor of @tesla (Vantage Point), joining Formation 8 and investing in Oculus (acquired by Facebook for $2b), and building his own fund iFly.vc and investing in @Weee_official the largest Asian fresh food e-commerce company in the U.S.

Highlights:

YZ: What’s the hardest part of building a venture capital fund?
Han: Consistently investing in the next big things.

YY: Your team setup and organizational culture?
Han: I’m a solo GP. I have operations team and associates. I remind them slow is fast, especially in one’s early years of VC.

YZ: Why was Weee!, your portfolio company and now the #1 Asian delivery app in the US, rejected by everyone?
Han: Some simply said TAM wasn’t big. But it wasn’t true. Minorities, including Asian, Hispanic, spend $360b on groceries. This market is under-served.

Chapters:

02:05 Entering VC in 2009
13:53 Investment Thesis of iFly.vc
34:57 the Next Big Thing

Links:
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