Ep 17 - Huoy Ming Yeh - CSC Upshot Ventures

Venture Studio

This week, we are thrilled to welcome Huoy Ming Yeh to the show. Ming is co-founder and managing partner of CSC Upshot Ventures, the largest fund dedicated to financing seed-stage startups, ever. If you’re the type of person who listens to the Venture Studio podcast regularly, you probably heard about CSC Upshot launching in October. If not, it was a big deal. Here is some background- CSC Upshot is a $400MM venture fund created to invest primarily in US seed-stage technology startups via AngelList. It’s biggest LP is CSC Group, one of China’s 3 largest private equity firms, with $12B under management. Remember, if you’re a fan Venture Studio, please subscribe on iTunes so you never have to miss an episode. If you’re feeling up to it, do us a favor and leave a 5-star rating and review in the iTunes store- it helps other people find the show. As always, you can connect with us on twitter @ventureStudio and you can listen to prior episodes at venturestudio.org, and on iTunes, Soundcloud, Stitcher and TuneIn. Now that the words “$400MM” and “AngelList” have sunk in, lets dissect this a bit. Earlier this month, you learned about the Angel List’s Syndicates product in our interview with Dustin Dolginow of Maiden Lane. Today, we dig further into the massive opportunity. Some stats: as of October 2015 (when CSC Upshot was announced), AngelList Syndicates had helped over 650 companies raise $205MM from 4,400 individuals and Maiden Lane’s $25MM vehicle. Now, CSC Upshot joins the Syndicates ecosystem with a fund nearly double the size of all Syndicate activity to date. Today Ming and Dave talk all about CSC Upshot, the need for more liquidity at the seed stage, the difference between Chinese and US entrepreneurs, and whether we’re seeing the great unbundling of VC or just a natural evolution of the venture financing market.