When Koko Xs considered pursuing a career as a VC after graduating from college last year, he observed several trends that suggested he should do something else. He found that closing deals was difficult and taking a long time to generate returns, given that most VC funds typically take 10 years to mature.
Still, he ended up becoming a VC. And now, at the young age of 21, Xs is backed by backers including Marc Andreessen, Chris Dixon, Kevin Hertz, Josh Wolf, Lux Capital, and the Fund of Funds Nomad. , has already secured $17.5 million in committed capital for its first solo fund.
He's already on the cap table for seed rounds at some very popular startups, most notably defense technology firm Mach Industries (where he worked for several months before jumping into venture capital) and Examples include AI chip maker Etch Co., Ltd. It met Mach Industries founder and Thiel Fellow Ethan Thornton, also a young founder, and Etched's Gavin Uberti, who dropped out of Harvard to found an AI chip startup. That's for later. Xs said she was able to save and invest $140,000 from her tuition and income from a job she worked while attending college.
Mr. X, an American citizen, was born in Shenzhen, China, and moved to a small town in Massachusetts when he was 12 years old. I then majored in mathematics at New York University. He wanted to invent a technology that could be commercialized and wanted to get a Ph.D. So he cold emailed 3,000 PhDs, including founders, executives, and venture capitalists. Through that, he got in touch with Ian Peikon, a venture partner at Lux Capital, who was redirected to Lux GP Brandon Reeves.
It was “a coincidence,” Xs told TechCrunch. Lux was located just off the New York University campus, and the company was known for investing in deep technology. “He was really the first professional startup guy I ever met,” Xs said of Reeves. The exchange paid off, and early last year Mr. Ecks joined Lux as an investment analyst under Mr. Reeves.
He spent just a few months at Lux before joining Mach's Thornton as head of growth in 2023, when the company raised $79 million just four months after a $5.7 million seed round led by Sequoia Capital. He was also with the company when it secured its Series A. First investment in defense technology.
But after a few months there, he decided surgery wasn't for him. He said: “It was less thinking and more doing, whereas venture is the opposite. It's more thinking instead of doing a lot.” He started raising money in April. , plans to invest about a third of the funds by the end of the year.
He aims to use that money to fund deep tech companies and what he calls “deep infrastructure” companies. These companies may not be traditional hard tech on paper, but they are still indicative of certain market trends. One example, Xs said, was investing in Microsoft in the 1970s or 1980s, which would have given investors exposure to nearly every PC OEM at the time.
“I think a lot of the deep tech stuff that a lot of my colleagues and friends end up investing in is going to end up being very gimmicky and component-based.” The benefits are not extreme enough.
He acknowledges that multi-stage funds have significant advantages over mid-sized or single funds, and the data backs this up. Emerging solo funds have been hit the hardest since VC money tightened in 2022, according to PitchBook and the National Venture Capital Association's Q3 2024 report. This is the lowest number of funds in the past 10 years.
But Xs believes that smaller funds like his can still get deals using boutique strategies. He believes this opportunity will only grow as venture companies take on the technology. He believes the technology sector could even account for half of global GDP in 20 years, displacing services, agriculture and industry.
There are also star solo fund VCs who have had huge successes, such as Elad Gil, who raised more than $1 billion for his third fund last year. Or Lachy Groom, who has raised multiple funds.
For now, Xs is taking an aggressive approach to the fund, aiming to write checks to 15 companies representing 80% of the fund's capital. Through these roles, he aims to secure 1% of a $10 billion company. He's looking for founders who are “unrecognized,” as he defines them, who have endured extreme hardship, who are highly neurotic, and who are “active” in response to existential issues. These include people who take a “conventional approach.”
In the long term, Xs has much more ambitious plans than just a venture investment. He wants to expand a number of business lines, including venture index funds, venture credit offerings, and company roll-ups through a buy-and-build model.