Cross-border transactions typically occur in fintech, where companies send money to another country. But David Yee and Simon Singh are applying that concept to the world of venture capital.
Yi and Xin founded Ethos Fund two years ago to bridge opportunities and startup communities between Vietnam and the United States. Yee said the five-person firm is one of the few, if not the only, fund focused solely on strengthening opportunities between the two countries.
They are backed by a $12 million capital commitment from Elite Education Group, i-Scream Edu, Orions Bridge Capital, Strong Ventures, and a group of limited partners including founders of Altos Ventures, Hashed, Tapas Media, JLin LLC, and Meridienlink. We have completed the establishment of our first fund. .
Yi and Shin work with companies in two ways. One is to invest in what they call “third culture founders” in the United States. They define this founder as “a talented individual who does not simply belong to one culture, but is shaped by multiple cultures.” ” Solve problems they care about.
The other is to invest in Vietnam at a very early stage level, pre-commercialization and pre-monetization. They also invested smaller checks with third-culture founders who fall into categories such as returning Vietnamese diaspora, Vietnamese Americans, and expatriates living in Vietnam, who then had larger checks certified. We are doubling down on startup companies.
David Yi and Simon Shin, co-founders of Ethos Fund. Image credit: Ethos Fund
“We call it Ethos because we focus on the spirit of our founders,” Yee said. “It is very important to us that our founders do more than just intercultural work. Their third culture is the uniqueness that they have developed throughout their lives that goes beyond skin color and geography. It means there is a third culture.”
Mr. Yi and Mr. Shin, both Korean, met in 2020 when Mr. Yi was CEO of educational AI company Riiid Labs. Their background is quite unique. Mr. Shin previously worked in product management for various technology companies, including Chegg, primarily in Los Angeles. He moved to South Korea in his 2014 and ran a startup called Hellocafe before joining VC firm Bluepoint Ventures.
Meanwhile, Yi began her career as a Peace Corps teacher in China. That led him to start his own education technology company. In the end, he ended up with eight companies, two of which he retired, many of which were in the Irvine, California area, including his EduGroup. He then moved to Southeast Asia, where he worked at Lyceum Partners before working at ACT and K12, among others.
One thing Yi noticed about his startup was that it didn't grow beyond a certain stage.
“I thought maybe it's because I don't know how to manage people well,” Yee told TechCrunch. “I too wondered why the profits didn't exceed a certain level. It's because I didn't know how to crack the code for acquiring big companies.”
But there's always something new to learn, and in this particular instance, Yi learned two things. One is that we didn't really know how to manage people professionally, and technology can't scale until we reach B2B. Now they want to help startup founders understand these lessons early on.
“Startup CEOs are learning on the go,” says Yee. “I have a lot of different personalities and I didn't know what I didn't know. I was able to learn by going to a larger company and understanding their infrastructure. That way I could learn things that I could apply to a startup. You can filter what is and what is not.”
With their edtech background, Yi and Shin believe that venture capital is education and host live programs and events. These include the New Venture Challenge, also known as “Founders on a Plane,” and Saigon Fest, which shuttles entrepreneurs and investors between Vietnam and the United States to learn from each other. .
According to Singh, the two have made nine investments so far. A recent and well-timed announcement was Oyl, which is building a digital wallet for the Bitcoin economy. Last week, Bitcoin hit an all-time high. Ethos has also invested in companies such as skills development platform Skola, AI-enabled marketing company Needle, and Mirrorscape, which develops virtual tabletop tools for gaming.
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