Venturing Along With GGV Capital

As many of you know, I have been a venture partner to GGV Capital. Today, GGV Capital announced me, along with another Venture Partner (Denise Peng, formerly of Qunar) and a new EIR (and and my old friend), Jason Costa. More precisely, I have been a Venture Partner with the firm for about a year now, after years of being a consultant to the firm (as well as other firms in the past). For someone like me who is just starting out in their investing career, a dream opportunity.

Yes, I know — it is an unusual, unconventional split-role and association for someone to have, but when I look back on my work history and timeline, my career has simply never fit neatly into a LinkedIn profile. After years of struggling to find a way to cut into the investing industry, I had the fortune of choice last summer. While still raising and deploying Haystack, the early-stage VC fund I started and currently invest out of, the six managing directors of GGV — all whom I’ve known for years — were creative in finding a way for me to join them on certain key projects while supporting me in my own efforts to build up the Haystack franchise.

GGV has been, from its first day almost 20 years ago, a differentiated venture fund. The firm was founded on the thesis that the interconnectedness of the world’s two largest economies — the U.S. and China — would increase over time. Throughout its history, the GGV Capital team has been fortunate to be associated with some of the most iconic global companies and operated seamlessly, at scale, across the Pacific Ocean.

It’s worth noting GGV and Haystack operate at slightly different scales 😉

Haystack is roughly $10M in the current fund, Fund III (and is only 40% invested). GGV just raised its sixth fund at $1.2B. As part of this special opportunity, I spend my Mondays at GGV and participate in a variety of the firm’s internal meetings. As someone who hopes to create a franchise fund, I am fortunate to have a front-row seat to learn how a large, global venture capital firm operates at scale, makes decisions, builds relationships with limited partners, and works directly with founders and entrepreneurial executives at startups.

This is all the professional stuff.

On an individual level, like many other VCs in the ecosystem who have helped me and individually been an early backer of Haystack, all of the six MDs of GGV have all been personal investors in each Haystack fund. They have even gone so far as introducing me to some of their LPs so I can build relationships with them over the long term — a very generous gesture. When GGV debates a large investment, the MDs will sometimes seek my counsel, and it feels great that they would care to ask my opinion. On the flip side, when I am stewing over a small investment in a very early-stage startup as a single-GP fund, I can always call or email one of them and have them spar with me about why I should or shouldn’t do the deal. Like with their founders, they will always make the time for me.

Almost a decade ago, I was on a path to finish graduate school and move to Asia. As part of that process, I spent many years traveling to and working in India and China on a variety of projects for the university. Ultimately, I chose to come back to the Bay Area, but those experiences in India and China still live with me vividly, and I learn so much via osmosis at GGV about how technology and consumers in Asia are building the next new things.

As we saunter into the final months of 2016, and as I set out to raise Haystack IV in 2017, I am thankful for all of the opportunity that’s laid out before me. As someone new to investing, there is no playbook and guidepost on how to do all of this stuff they call venture capital. Now, I get the benefit of working with two platforms and that is both exciting and liberating.