The Exchanges

Q Okay, so I'm intrigued by this one given the history and sports love, but what's the favorite point Book and why?

A Yeah, there are two. One from the West is Malcolm Gladwell's outliers, and his 10,000 hour rule makes a lot of sense to me as someone who is constantly finding ways to improve ourselves. And it also makes you realize that where you're born, where you are, what access you have makes a huge difference in the outcome you can make as a person in your career. And so that's always, that's what stuck with me. It's very relevant to how I analyze industry sectors and geographies and people. Second book is from the East, is the biographies of Tokugawa, one of the shogunate in Japanese history. How he had to move his fiefdom in near Nagoya, which is passed on to him after like, you know, four or five generations. Uproot everybody, including his family, his subordinates, and move to Ito, what is Tokyo today. Start from scratch when he was 49 years old. So uprooting oneself and your whole clan when you're 49 years old is not easy, but leverage that To build up a foundation ends up unifying Japan years later. So always thinking of ways to improve yourself and never give up hope when it seems like it's so dark and so challenging. How is that possible? That even killness, that detachment and intellectual honesty is extremely important for you to make the right decisions over and over and over again.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, there are two. One from the West is Malcolm Gladwell's outliers”

Q You mentioned before your excitement around e-commerce specifically within the consumer space. Uh, I'm intrigued. Has Amazon not already won? That's the common, uh, thesis posited to me.

A I love people when people say that because it just makes me smile. I, fortunately we have that perspective being in China where Alibaba with Taobao and Tmall owns 80% of market share in e-commerce and JD has another over 10% market share in e-commerce. Yet, E-commerce thriving in China. There are multiple players that are doing well. There's several unicorns in that space, despite the fact that 90% of market share is dominated by just two players. And look at Amazon in the US. Amazon has about 40% market share in the US. And e-commerce penetration into offline retail as a percentage of offline retail in the US is only eight or nine percent. In China, the same ratio is about 15%. So there's still plenty of growth That could be happening in e-commerce in the U.S. This is why we invest in Wish, in Poshmark, in House, in Ibotta, in Alphara.

AI assessment note: “Amazon has about 40% market share... still plenty of growth That could be happening”

Q to Affirm. I mentioned many, many hits, and I mean, you've got many more as well. I'm looking forward to doing your bio because it might be a little bit longer with the amount of hits. But my question to you is like, I always think really interesting one is, what's been like one or two of the biggest misses, and how did that miss change your investing process today?

A If I look at some of the misses we had, you know, I did not invest in Chime. I did not invest in DoorDash. And DoorDash is the company. Tony has done extremely well since they found that, uh, working with a fast food chain restaurants made a huge difference for them and then make the address market even bigger. It's not working with the niche high end specialty restaurant, but for the mass market and chime, I was impressed with the founders, their marketing ability, their marketing insight. Wasn't sure if the tech is as differentiated, but by them being nimble and going after the mass market, they have done well. And both of them fit my own thesis of investing mass markets. So when I miss that, it just makes me think even harder about being a multi-stage investor. If somehow miss them early, wasn't as sure if they can make it. Once they reach that inflection point, once they have developed a new nugget of truth, I should be more aggressive or encourage my partners and I to be more aggressive to go back and invest in them. Sometimes even as a student of history, I love studying patterns and I love studying how things shift, but sometimes even in the process of doing that, I still need to remember that there's still a history of business, and I miss something early, it's okay. Got to go back to it and re-engage.

AI assessment note: “I did not invest in Chime. I did not invest in DoorDash.”

Q I'd love, though, to start today with a little on you, and how you made your foray into what I call the wonderful world of venture capital. What was your entry point?

A After Stanford, I started my career in, typically, for people who are interested in business, investment banking. Obviously, that would be New York. So I started my career in M&A Investment Banking, which, uh, after two years took me to Asia, a place that I was born to, but didn't spend a lot of time working until after college. And then from there, I fully moved into a growth capital investing. Because in Asia, back in the late 19 nineties, growth capital is where the action was at. And then something called the internet came about. So I actually did two startups. You can spend up four years and realize that I am actually not very good as an entrepreneur. I enjoyed the experience, learned a ton, but thought that I would do something else instead. And what I decided to do was that, hey, look, all those people in the boardroom telling us what to do. That job looks fun. So I decided I want to be a VC. Hence, I came back to the U.S. and eventually ended up starting my career with Bessemer in early 2005 in the mental park office. And shortly thereafter, about six months to nine months later, I end up going to China with Bessemer in late 2005. And that's Where I started the VC phase of my professional career.

AI assessment note: “eventually ended up starting my career with Bessemer in early 2005”

Q I'd love, though, to start today with a little on you, and how you made your foray into what I call the wonderful world of venture capital. What was your entry point?

A After Stanford, I started my career in, typically, for people who are interested in business, investment banking. Obviously, that would be New York. So I started my career in M&A Investment Banking, which, uh, after two years took me to Asia, a place that I was born to, but didn't spend a lot of time working until after college. And then from there, I fully moved into a growth capital investing. Because in Asia, back in the late 19 nineties, growth capital is where the action was at. And then something called the internet came about. So I actually did two startups. You can spend up four years and realize that I am actually not very good as an entrepreneur. I enjoyed the experience, learned a ton, but thought that I would do something else instead. And what I decided to do was that, hey, look, all those people in the boardroom telling us what to do. That job looks fun. So I decided I want to be a VC. Hence, I came back to the U.S. and eventually ended up starting my career with Bessemer in early 2005 in the mental park office. And shortly thereafter, about six months to nine months later, I end up going to China with Bessemer in late 2005. And that's Where I started the VC phase of my professional career.

AI assessment note: “eventually ended up starting my career with Bessemer in early 2005”

Q You mentioned Square and Peloton there. I'm super intrigued on actually Exit. Because, you know, both are obviously public lockups are done. And so my question to you is like, how do you think about the right time to exit and to return cash to LPs, but also not leave a ton of money on the table? Like, how do you think about that right time to exit the position?

A Yeah, we talked through that quite a bit. We are, for the most part, have a strong DNA of being a private investor. So even when we do make public investments, it's something that we have to develop a lot of comfort in that we know the sector and know the peer group extremely well before making those investments. And therefore, once our company go public, instead of trying to figure out which one's likely to be the next square and next Zendesk and continue to, or Airbnb and continue to rise, we have sort of adopted approach of being willing to exit evenly, quarter by quarter, a finite amount between five to 10%, and do that over a three, four year period, so that we're not trying to time the market and give company plenty of time to be able to prove themselves as a public traded company. And the amount can vary from quarter to quarter. We wouldn't work with the company on that. But I think that for any portfolio, you wouldn't be with a company four years after IPO is showing quite a bit of commitment already. And at the same time, and there are going to be companies that if we spend enough time with them, even after they go public, we may say, hey, you know, this is very special. The market is, is much bigger than popular market realize it. Then we should invest from a later fund, a newer fund, double down into that. Before, LPs have a lot of worry about cross fund investments.…

AI assessment note: “adopted approach of being willing to exit evenly, quarter by quarter”

Q If you kind of translate that to e-commerce and kind of millennial brand loyalty in the e-commerce space, it's something that always concerns me. How do you view millennial brand loyalty and, and the strengths or weaknesses of it today?

A Right. The young generation grew up not just automatically buy everything from a PNG or Uniliber or any of the established brands. They will figure out what brands that work for them through their peers, through people they, they like, they follow on the internet. As such, a brand has to figure out how to become popular on Facebook, on Instagram, even on Snapchat, on social media, like, uh, Pinterest. And so forth. So figuring out how to build something that there's a great water mouth effect that you can get influenced or want to follow and share their thoughts about your brand with their followers is extremely important. We're an investor in lively, a athlete leisure wear for women in New York. We're an investor in functional beauty in New York. We're an investor in glow concept in New York, a cosmetics brand for millennials. And we see that the e-brands we're investing in New York are All are with entrepreneurs will understand their consumer very well. They understand how to be more authentic and transparent to the consumer, and they share what they do on the social media with their consumer, and that kind of transparency wins trust and builds high frequency of interactions between the brands and the users, and we think that's a great way to sustain and build a brand that can last longer with young consumers who have a shorter time span these days.

AI assessment note: “transparency wins trust and builds high frequency of interactions between the brands and the users”

Q What were the big core theses that you took away from your time in China and that you developed that, that you think are maybe more broadly applicable to both the kind of globalization thesis?

A I think the first is that don't just provide a service to friends like you and to yourself. Well, that is very tempting thing to do. If you come from a more privileged background, many of the entrepreneurs we meet in the U S are from Ivy league, from Stanford, from Berkeley, from relatively privileged background. If you only build a service, a product for yourself or your friends, that's a relatively niche market. You should do something that interests you. Think of the past market. Think of the underserved markets. Think of market that's beyond just yourself, your circle, but to greater part of the world. And if you can figure out something that you're passionate about, that can solve 1,000,010 of millions, even hundreds of millions of people's pain point, you can be on a massive business. That's the first thing I learned in China. The second thing I learned is that the price point you're offering has to be reasonable, affordable, what we call affordable luxury. You want something that's Amazing, but price extremely reasonable. Don't worry about high margin. Worry about high volume. Don't worry about selling it one time, two times. Selling is something that the consumers will come back over and over again. You want to be in a category where there's high frequency of usage, not something that they will buy only once or twice in their career. The third thing I learned is that do…

AI assessment note: “I think the first is that don't just provide a service to friends”

Q So your favorite book and why? Next plane ride, what should I be reading?

A I like any book that Malcolm Gladwell writes. He's usually extremely thoughtful and look at an interesting phenomena from a very different perspective. I think I learned a lot from reading Outlier and Tipping Point, Blink, and so forth. I also like to read books that talk about history. I love history. So I studied Japanese history, Chinese history, European history, In particular, I love to see how an older nation kind of evolve and transform itself into a more modern state, and the societal changes it caused, because I see a lot of similar parallels to that period, to what we're going through today. I also love sports, so like, I read tons of books about how to build championship teams. How do you collect a group of talent and mold them into a high-performing team that can do very well and win championships year after year? So I draw my inspirations from From these sources, they helped me to think through and help my CEO to, to, to work through the problem they face in their industry sectors.

AI assessment note: “I like any book that Malcolm Gladwell writes. He's usually extremely thoughtful”

Q the first almost kind of talking points, because I want to start today with some of the big checks that you've written into the likes of Wish, Poshmark, Ibotta, some mega consumer companies of the day. But Jeremy and the likes of Eric Fang and Kleiner have posited the view that a more pessimistic view towards consumer. So why are you still investing in a consumer as a whole today?

A Sure. I was in China for eight years between 2005 and 2013. During that time period, I saw Alibaba grew from a two hundred million dollar valuation company in 2005 after Yahoo became five billion dollars from 5,000,001,005, which everyone thought was crazy at the time, to over four hundred billion in market cap yesterday. So in a span of literally 12, 13 years, you see a country where there was very little internet, broadband internet access. To now having seven hundred million internet users on broadband, seven hundred million smartphone users, and that kind of scale and growth is incredible. And in 2013, I thought companies in U.S. and China in internet space were about to go global and become even much bigger than just one China market or one U.S. market. And I said to myself, over the next 10 years, between 2013 and 20, uh, 23, globalization of mobile internet, especially for consumer companies, Will be the most important trend I will ever bet on in my career, and hence, because I have a more global view, I am still extremely bullish on consumer internet.

AI assessment note: “because I have a more global view, I am still extremely bullish on consumer internet.”

Q Peloton, yeah, it's for rich people, right? No one can afford a Peloton, and now they have payment plans, and it's actually hugely more affordable for a huge swathe of the population. My question to you is that when you look at that, Are there any takeaways for you or lessons when it comes to maybe not being flippant, but also thinking more strategically about market sizing and TAM analysis?

A Yeah, that's a great question. In fact, we end up investing both Peloton and Affirm because of that. When we are talking to Peloton, we know of Affirm, and we were interested to see who Peloton works with in order to have that payment plan, because we know that will make it more affordable. And knowing Max and Affirm, we felt that Peloton made the right choice of the partner that we're working with. And so we ended up investing in a firm as well. And I think the only other firm that did that was Matt at Wellington. So both of us only went and invested in both companies. And so if you're betting on the trend, you want to bet on multiple players that are somehow working together, forming ecosystem to grow together. And that, again, that's the fun part of this job.

AI assessment note: “if you're betting on the trend, you want to bet on multiple players”

Q that kind of seeing that and being there, seeing the Netscape IPO. You know, the thing for me, I always, we said before about me learning with the show. One thing I haven't learned is navigating through downturns and booms and busts. You've seen them firsthand. I want to ask two things, which is like, how did seeing those booms and busts impact your investing mindset first, do you think?

A Wow. That's a big jump from Stanford to having seen through different cycles. I started my career in banking, as I mentioned, and then went into growth capital, and I was doing that in Asia. Banking took me to Asia, and I was doing tech investing in Asia, and that's when I see the rise of semiconductor business, the fat business out of Taiwan, and all the Taiwanese VC that made money of the semiconductor value chain by investing in chip companies and chip design houses and so forth. And very soon after, there was the Asia financial crisis of Then a few years later in that bubble, the first bubble bursted in early 2000. And then you have the financial crisis of 2008. And then the last decade, a bit of ups and downs, but for most part, a bull market. So having gone through a few cycles earlier in three big ones with Asia financial crisis, internet bubble, the first one, and then the financial crisis from the U S it gives you perspective on when other people are afraid and Stop investing or stop innovating. The ones that are still able to have the mental fortitude to keep on doing that ends up becoming a lot stronger afterwards. Facebook started in four years after the market crashed. You see the rise of the tech companies outside of the U.S. Not even started around the time of the financial crisis. This is the same, even true for companies like Airbnb and Uber and so forth, all s…

AI assessment note: “it gives you perspective on when other people are afraid and Stop investing”

Q that kind of seeing that and being there, seeing the Netscape IPO. You know, the thing for me, I always, we said before about me learning with the show. One thing I haven't learned is navigating through downturns and booms and busts. You've seen them firsthand. I want to ask two things, which is like, how did seeing those booms and busts impact your investing mindset first, do you think?

A Wow. That's a big jump from Stanford to having seen through different cycles. I started my career in banking, as I mentioned, and then went into growth capital, and I was doing that in Asia. Banking took me to Asia, and I was doing tech investing in Asia, and that's when I see the rise of semiconductor business, the fat business out of Taiwan, and all the Taiwanese VC that made money of the semiconductor value chain by investing in chip companies and chip design houses and so forth. And very soon after, there was the Asia financial crisis of Then a few years later in that bubble, the first bubble bursted in early 2000. And then you have the financial crisis of 2008. And then the last decade, a bit of ups and downs, but for most part, a bull market. So having gone through a few cycles earlier in three big ones with Asia financial crisis, internet bubble, the first one, and then the financial crisis from the U S it gives you perspective on when other people are afraid and Stop investing or stop innovating. The ones that are still able to have the mental fortitude to keep on doing that ends up becoming a lot stronger afterwards. Facebook started in four years after the market crashed. You see the rise of the tech companies outside of the U.S. Not even started around the time of the financial crisis. This is the same, even true for companies like Airbnb and Uber and so forth, all s…

AI assessment note: “it gives you perspective on when other people are afraid and Stop investing”

Q Why the move back to the US? You're a rock star investor in China. Why the move back to the US when, when the globalization thesis can be done from anywhere?

A Well, I saw my friends and colleagues, Eric Fund and Byron Dieters and Jeremy were having all the fun, and I figured I would join them. So what I saw in I saw Tencent. I saw Xiaomi. I was figuring out how to be more global and expand beyond China. I see that Airbnb, Uber were rapidly expanding in Europe and elsewhere and eyeing China. So when I see the best companies in the U.S. and China are sort of at what I call entering in the sort of age of exploration, expanding beyond their home markets, I felt that it is a irreversible trend because the experience and knowledge and scale companies from these two countries Countries have built from their home market, have allowed them to do even more beyond the rest of the world. I know that I need to be back here in Silicon Valley, sort of, I, I view this the most diverse, among the most diverse place in the world, in tech, to use that as a home base, to do more investments that can facilitate and accelerate and take advantage of this trip.

AI assessment note: “I know that I need to be back here in Silicon Valley”

Q I'd love to discuss one. You spoke about kind of markets there. How do you view markets, market creation, and the thesis that kind of the most exciting are ones which start small and then have massive expansion opportunity?

A I think if you start with Something that you know is a pinpoint for a particular focus segment of the users. Focus on solving that problem. Let's take house as an example. There's a lot of pain to go through to find the right architect, the right designer, the right contractor, to look at which style of house you like, both inside and outside. For each of the rooms, whether it's a family room, living room, dining room, or backyard, or the outside of the house, find the right ways to see which style will look better if there's something that you desire. And what house has done that we think is extremely amazing is build a community where architects, designers, everybody's feel comfortable to share their content, their creative work, so that you can search for them based on what room you're, you want to look at, what style you're interested. So you've been remodeling my bathroom. I can look at modern. I can look at transitional. I can look rustic. I can have a variety of style right then, right there to see if this is something that I would like For years, they have late commerce on top of it. So if it's something that you like, you can click and buy. That experience where you have a community, content, and commerce is what we think is extremely differentiated from Amazon. At the same time, it is something that keeps getting users to come back over and over again. I find myself o…

AI assessment note: “start with Something that you know is a pinpoint for a particular focus segment”

Q I, I do, I do want to finish so today, because you've said to me before, in the age of President Trump and Brexit, technology and VC is a global game. I'm intrigued, especially with one element, and it's where you said about the convergence of millennial values across the globe. How are you seeing this, and how does that affect how you invest?

A Sure. In the U S it's not rocket science. The most interesting consumer that has come up over the last decade would be Gen Z, uh, that has grown up with a Snapchat in the last five years. And then also the millennials, people who grew up with smartphones and now are getting to the workplace. And you look at those two pockets of users, they are different than their parents. They spend a lot more time on the internet. They spend a lot of time talking to each other. They spend a lot of time looking, listening to influencers. sharing their thoughts and opinions on particular matter. And we see from the research we have done and the deals we're in for the company performance, we see that from the data we have, there's a lot of similarity between a Gen Z consumer and a millennial consumer in the U.S. with China. And we're seeing similar users coming up in India, Indonesia, Brazil, Eastern Europe, Western Europe as well. And more and more of them come through the digital generation, connect with each other much better on that. They're less skeptical and more interested in To get more information from their peers, and I see my kids spend time on iPad looking at YouTube or play on Musical.ly often, and they have no problem interacting with strangers on the internet. As a parent, I worry, but as an internet user or as an investor, I see that there's a convergence amongst younger users wo…

AI assessment note: “there's a lot of similarity between a Gen Z consumer and a millennial consumer”

Q self-assess, it's lived up to your views? We've seen the likes of kind of Uber, Go, and Retreat, and we've seen many others try and make it out in China, and then we, I'm not sure if we've seen China come to Europe so much. I mean, we're seeing it more now with OFO and the likes, but do you think it's lived up What's the expectation that you had?

A Well, in my last four years with GGV, I invested either lead or co-lead with my colleagues. Airbnb, Slack, three of the top five shopping app in the, uh, in the U.S. That's Wish number two, sometimes number one. Opera number three, sometimes number four. Uh, Poshmark number five, sometimes number six. And Ibotta, my most recent investment, somewhere between 12 to 15. They all have done very well, and several of them have become more, either becoming, or already becoming, Quite global. And we made investment in Peloton, Giphy, and Bustle in New York, and several e-brands in New York as well. So when we look at our consumer internet portfolio that we have done in the last four years, it is quite interesting. So we look at the portfolio we have, and we've seen disruption happening by internet in home, in auto, and also in travel. So all this travel, we have investment hotel tonight, in-house investment in-house. All that is very exciting to us, and more and more of them are looking to go global. Now, with respect to China, sure, you know, Uber met some resistance and ends up doing a deal with that DD, which is our portfolio of ours, but I don't think the outcome is bad for Uber in China. They put in about a billion to two in, and they have a stake that's worth seven billion. Only spent two years work. Not bad. And I think that stake in DD will end up being extremely valuable. We t…

AI assessment note: “So it's not an issue of market. It's an issue of entry model in China.”

Q No, it absolutely does. In terms of kind of carrying that through and ensuring that you have the ownership required, I'm intrigued. How do you think about reserves then and kind of providing that continuous capital? Is it something that you're very much kind of thesis driven around? What's your take on kind of reserve allocation Uh,?

A We tend to have a reserve ratio somewhere around one to one or one to two. So for every dollar we put in, Sometimes we have a dollar in reserve. Sometimes we have 50 cents on the reserve. It all depends on where we are with the cycle of the fund, and also whether there's recycling going on. So we have some flexibility. If there are a situation where we think that there are a lot of great opportunities out there, and we want to get in early, and we may not invest as more thereafter, then the situation ends up being one to 25 cents on the dollar. So it all depends on And we, we change that ratio accordingly from time to time.

AI assessment note: “We tend to have a reserve ratio somewhere around one to one or one to two.”

Q I really do appreciate that, but I want to start on you and with some context, because, you know, we see this incredible track. We see the Midas list with you at the top of it, and I'd love to go back a little bit and go, how did you make your way into the world of venture, and how did you come to be a GP with GGV today?

A I was born in Taiwan, and I came to the U.S., specifically in Los Angeles, when I was 13 years old. So I did my middle school and high school in L.A., and when it comes to going to college, in hindsight, very fortunate to choose to go to Stanford, and I was on Stanford campus between 89, 93. 93 is a special year, as everyone knows, the launch of the Netscape browser. Seeing some of my classmates end up going to Yahoo, end up going to Netscape, end up going to some other internet startups, It's kind of like what you see with crypto today, and you just see, wow, anything's possible, and two years after I left Stanford, Netscape went public, and never forget, sitting, it was in New York, and was working for an investment bank, kind of job that people tried to get after college, and see this Netscape company worth billions of dollars, and only an eighteen-year track record, and had a loss-making P&L. It was like, what the hell's going on in this world? And that kind of proximity to tech really changed and shaped how I ended up where I am today, and I was Just getting that appreciation of what tech can do in a way that's so abnormal and different and such an outlier.

AI assessment note: “proximity to tech really changed and shaped how I ended up where I am today”

Q at a billion and you're going, okay, this has a reasonable shot of being a three to five billion dollar company, just choosing any company. A billion you come in, reasonable shot of being a three to five billion. Is three to five X attractive enough on growth checks? Like what is an attractive enough, like potential exit multiple for you to be like, yeah, we should take this back.

A Yeah. You tell some of the investors that invest later States, even later States than we do some of the most famous examples, you know, for example, the people who invest in Facebook after it become a multi-billion dollar evaluation. And if you ask them what they thought based on their analysis at the time investment, they thought they would do three to five X as well. Ends up being a over trillion dollars in outcome. If they keep on holding it for the last 10 years. So even in the analysis that you do, it's hard to predict anything beyond three to five X in the growth stage. So you have to pick ones that has a special possibility for a lot more. For example, go back to taking the example of Peloton. One of the things we learned through due diligence was that the plan that you're on to enjoy Peloton and Peloton digital, Peloton digital, which came afterwards, is that it's about 97 dollars a month to enjoy the payment program they have with Afterpay plus the subscription. To the classes. And you have two people sharing it, you know, and your better half is sharing this. It's about, you know, well, 48, 49, 50 dollars a month. And at that rate, times 12, it's about the cost of a gym membership. So you have to decide, you think that enough people out there will say, instead of gym membership, I'm not going to use that often. I'm going to use this with the best instructors in the wo…

AI assessment note: “hard to predict anything beyond three to five X in the growth stage”

Q I mean, you know, post three hundred million in valuation. I mean, how you've got to be a lot more sensitive to price because this really matters in terms of multiple expectation. But actually, yes, I mean, if you're paying a billion and it could be fifty billion, there's still a 40 X with dilution. So I guess when does the rubber hit the road with valuation in your mind?

A That's why it favors folks who can be multi-season investor. I remember investing in Peloton at about a billion dollar valuation. Today, it's over thirty billion. So even a billion dollar valuation, it was a hard round. A lot of smart people passed. Because of variation, and because it was still mostly a hardware business, at least perceived to be so, hardware business back then, it was hard to get that round done. But, you know, obviously a lot happened since that made people realize that it's a subscription business that's COVID and growth accelerated. So, whether you're investing early, mid, or late, you still have to pick correctly. It's still about picking the rising tide and picking the best player in that. It sounds simple, but it's really hard to do when you're deep into analyzing a company and trying to figure out what are the early signals That could indicate that this is a rising tide, and the inflection point for growth is just right around the corner. And the judgment call involves, and the guts to make that call, is what makes this job extremely interesting and rewarding.

AI assessment note: “whether you're investing early, mid, or late, you still have to pick correctly.”

Q speed of penetration for me, and it's like, you know, AR or VR, and it's like, we all kind of know it's going to go up and to the right, hopefully, or we think it will, or a lot of people think it will, but it's like, at what rate, and I don't want to take market timing risk. How do you think about market timing risk today when investing?

A Right. That's a great question. Again, the level of questions have gotten a lot more sophisticated over the last five years. So kudos to you. We constantly, almost every week, talk about, is this sector at the point in time of its trajectory that's at inflection point, or will rise the fastest over the next few years? Therefore, now is the right time. Again, this is why investing in multi-stage is much better than investing in single stage, because you get to see and choose, okay, I love this sector, I love this founder, but it's just a bit too early, or they're at a tough We should come back to it later when we see that it can grow fast again. So spending time talking about that, we don't want to time the market. The reality is that AUM is always going to be limited. So you have to make those asset allocation decisions based on how fast you perceive this sector is going to grow in the next few years and decide what to come into that company today. And, you know, Palatom, those investors early, you know, Lee Fixer invested early for Tiger. It has been a tremendous run for them. But the first two, three years, It was extremely tough, and it wasn't clear that this one would break out. Having come in a bit later gave me more visibility to do it, and I'm thankful for the work John and the team have done to make all the investors that are in, in them successful. At the same time, fo…

AI assessment note: “make those asset allocation decisions based on how fast you perceive this sector is going to grow”

Q I'd love to discuss one. You spoke about kind of markets there. How do you view markets, market creation, and the thesis that kind of the most exciting are ones which start small and then have massive expansion opportunity?

A I think if you start with Something that you know is a pinpoint for a particular focus segment of the users. Focus on solving that problem. Let's take house as an example. There's a lot of pain to go through to find the right architect, the right designer, the right contractor, to look at which style of house you like, both inside and outside. For each of the rooms, whether it's a family room, living room, dining room, or backyard, or the outside of the house, find the right ways to see which style will look better if there's something that you desire. And what house has done that we think is extremely amazing is build a community where architects, designers, everybody's feel comfortable to share their content, their creative work, so that you can search for them based on what room you're, you want to look at, what style you're interested. So you've been remodeling my bathroom. I can look at modern. I can look at transitional. I can look rustic. I can have a variety of style right then, right there to see if this is something that I would like For years, they have late commerce on top of it. So if it's something that you like, you can click and buy. That experience where you have a community, content, and commerce is what we think is extremely differentiated from Amazon. At the same time, it is something that keeps getting users to come back over and over again. I find myself o…

AI assessment note: “if you start with Something that you know is a pinpoint for a particular focus segment”

Q self-assess, it's lived up to your views? We've seen the likes of kind of Uber, Go, and Retreat, and we've seen many others try and make it out in China, and then we, I'm not sure if we've seen China come to Europe so much. I mean, we're seeing it more now with OFO and the likes, but do you think it's lived up What's the expectation that you had?

A Well, in my last four years with GGV, I invested either lead or co-lead with my colleagues. Airbnb, Slack, three of the top five shopping app in the, uh, in the U.S. That's Wish number two, sometimes number one. Opera number three, sometimes number four. Uh, Poshmark number five, sometimes number six. And Ibotta, my most recent investment, somewhere between 12 to 15. They all have done very well, and several of them have become more, either becoming, or already becoming, Quite global. And we made investment in Peloton, Giphy, and Bustle in New York, and several e-brands in New York as well. So when we look at our consumer internet portfolio that we have done in the last four years, it is quite interesting. So we look at the portfolio we have, and we've seen disruption happening by internet in home, in auto, and also in travel. So all this travel, we have investment hotel tonight, in-house investment in-house. All that is very exciting to us, and more and more of them are looking to go global. Now, with respect to China, sure, you know, Uber met some resistance and ends up doing a deal with that DD, which is our portfolio of ours, but I don't think the outcome is bad for Uber in China. They put in about a billion to two in, and they have a stake that's worth seven billion. Only spent two years work. Not bad. And I think that stake in DD will end up being extremely valuable. We t…

AI assessment note: “a way to go to China is not necessarily to do it yourself, but find a strategic partner”

Q I really do appreciate that, but I want to start on you and with some context, because, you know, we see this incredible track. We see the Midas list with you at the top of it, and I'd love to go back a little bit and go, how did you make your way into the world of venture, and how did you come to be a GP with GGV today?

A I was born in Taiwan, and I came to the U.S., specifically in Los Angeles, when I was 13 years old. So I did my middle school and high school in L.A., and when it comes to going to college, in hindsight, very fortunate to choose to go to Stanford, and I was on Stanford campus between 89, 93. 93 is a special year, as everyone knows, the launch of the Netscape browser. Seeing some of my classmates end up going to Yahoo, end up going to Netscape, end up going to some other internet startups, It's kind of like what you see with crypto today, and you just see, wow, anything's possible, and two years after I left Stanford, Netscape went public, and never forget, sitting, it was in New York, and was working for an investment bank, kind of job that people tried to get after college, and see this Netscape company worth billions of dollars, and only an eighteen-year track record, and had a loss-making P&L. It was like, what the hell's going on in this world? And that kind of proximity to tech really changed and shaped how I ended up where I am today, and I was Just getting that appreciation of what tech can do in a way that's so abnormal and different and such an outlier.

AI assessment note: “proximity to tech really changed and shaped how I ended up where I am today”

Q Do you think, you know, Val's spoken before about the unbundling of venture, you know, into, you know, investing itself, board membership, portfolio services. Do you think kind of Tiger is the embodiment of that unbundling, as you said there with the, you know, the consultancy services that they provide, Not taking board seats, just investing. Do you think we are going to see the unbundling truly in this manner?

A I think that Tiger hasn't decided to build up a portfolio service team yet. You see KOTU in the early stage of that. So it's interesting to see who decided to adopt more of a variation of the Andreessen model to have a large operating team. And you talk to fine folks at Andreessen, they're not trying to go global. They do mostly in primarily US and they will dabble here and there, but primarily focus on the US market because it's operational heavy to scale their model. So I always wonder, Is there somewhere in between where we have provided most essential services on platform on a more global basis? Allow us to invest a large enough AUM that's growing to invest globally as the preferred partner to share what we've seen on a global basis. And is that the happy medium that we think could work? And this is why you see us expanding into LATAM, expanding into India, going back to our roots in Southeast Asia, investing in more geographies than before with a larger AUM, and many of the companies in these geographies Are falling into a similar thesis. So if we're helping somebody in one country, the knowledge from ride sharing or food delivery or ad tech can be shared with multiple companies because they're all kind of riding on the same tide and a lot of them enjoy swapping notes with each other and we help to facilitate that. So that's one way of making up for the fact that we're not…

AI assessment note: “I think that Tiger hasn't decided to build up a portfolio service team yet.”

Q Speaking of kind of self-improvement there and self-analysis almost, final element is the element of kind of board membership, and you've been on some of the most impactful boards of the last decade. How would you summarize your style of board membership today, and how has it changed over the last 1520 years?

A I am not the most talkative in board meetings. I always believe that in each board meeting, the only, for each person, making the one or two or at most three impactful comments is important. Because management is presenting a lot of facts and a lot of data and a lot of analysis. How to go through all that and figure out what are the most important things to work on. Because you give someone 10 things they need to work on, they're not going to do most of them. You tell someone there's one or two things you've got to really think about, they remember it. So just figuring out how to be impactful without being nosy and being noisy is extremely important. Because we have so many signals in our lives everywhere. And how to sift through that noise and focus on two things Or three things at most that really matter is extremely important. If you can just do one thing right at every board meeting and get that done and executed over time, you're going to be able to do a lot already. So how to be impactful and how to focus and prioritize is key.

AI assessment note: “I am not the most talkative in board meetings.”

Q Peloton, yeah, it's for rich people, right? No one can afford a Peloton, and now they have payment plans, and it's actually hugely more affordable for a huge swathe of the population. My question to you is that when you look at that, Are there any takeaways for you or lessons when it comes to maybe not being flippant, but also thinking more strategically about market sizing and TAM analysis?

A Yeah, that's a great question. In fact, we end up investing both Peloton and Affirm because of that. When we are talking to Peloton, we know of Affirm, and we were interested to see who Peloton works with in order to have that payment plan, because we know that will make it more affordable. And knowing Max and Affirm, we felt that Peloton made the right choice of the partner that we're working with. And so we ended up investing in a firm as well. And I think the only other firm that did that was Matt at Wellington. So both of us only went and invested in both companies. And so if you're betting on the trend, you want to bet on multiple players that are somehow working together, forming ecosystem to grow together. And that, again, that's the fun part of this job.

AI assessment note: “if you're betting on the trend, you want to bet on multiple players”

Q Do you think, you know, Val's spoken before about the unbundling of venture, you know, into, you know, investing itself, board membership, portfolio services. Do you think kind of Tiger is the embodiment of that unbundling? As you said there with the, you know, the consultancy services that they provide. Not taking board seats, just investing. Do you think we are going to see the unbundling truly in this manner?

A I think that Tiger hasn't decided to build up a portfolio service team yet. You see KOTU in the early stage of that. So it's interesting to see who decided to adopt more of a variation of the Andreessen model to have a large operating team. And you talk to fine folks at Andreessen, they're not trying to go global. They do mostly in primarily US and they will dabble here and there, but primarily focus on the US market because it's operational heavy to scale their model. So I always wonder... Is there somewhere in between where we have provided most essential services on platform on a more global basis? Allow us to invest a large enough AUM that's growing to invest globally as the preferred partner share what we've seen on a global basis. And is that the happy medium that we think could work? And this is why you see us expanding into LATAM, expanding into India, going back to our roots in Southeast Asia, investing in more geographies than before with a larger AUM, and many of the companies in these geographies Are falling to a similar thesis. So if we're helping somebody in one country, the knowledge from ride sharing or food delivery or ad tech can be shared with multiple companies because they're all kind of riding on the same tide, and a lot of them enjoy swapping notes with each other, and we help to facilitate that. So that's one way of making up for the fact that we're not …

AI assessment note: “I think that Tiger hasn't decided to build up a portfolio service team yet.”

Q Do you think, you know, Val's spoken before about the unbundling of venture, you know, into, you know, investing itself, board membership, portfolio services. Do you think kind of Tiger is the embodiment of that unbundling? As you said there with the, you know, the consultancy services that they provide. Not taking board seats, just investing. Do you think we are going to see the unbundling truly in this manner?

A I think that Tiger hasn't decided to build up a portfolio service team yet. You see KOTU in the early stage of that. So it's interesting to see who decided to adopt more of a variation of the Andreessen model to have a large operating team. And you talk to fine folks at Andreessen, they're not trying to go global. They do mostly in primarily US and they will dabble here and there, but primarily focus on the US market because it's operational heavy to scale their model. So I always wonder... Is there somewhere in between where we have provided most essential services on platform on a more global basis? Allow us to invest a large enough AUM that's growing to invest globally as the preferred partner share what we've seen on a global basis. And is that the happy medium that we think could work? And this is why you see us expanding into LATAM, expanding into India, going back to our roots in Southeast Asia, investing in more geographies than before with a larger AUM, and many of the companies in these geographies Are falling to a similar thesis. So if we're helping somebody in one country, the knowledge from ride sharing or food delivery or ad tech can be shared with multiple companies because they're all kind of riding on the same tide, and a lot of them enjoy swapping notes with each other, and we help to facilitate that. So that's one way of making up for the fact that we're not …

AI assessment note: “Is there somewhere in between where we have provided most essential services on platform”