Investor Connect - 677 - Sophie Liao of Oyster Ventures

On this episode of Investor Connect, Hall welcomes Sophie Liao, Founding Partner at Oyster Ventures.Oyster Ventures is a seed-stage-focused venture fund based in San Francisco, New York, and Hong Kong. They target companies that bring liquidity and efficiency to antiquated industries and with massive potential to scale. Since 2016, they have launched three funds and deployed capital into 80+ startups. Their checks start at $25k to $200k, from Pre-Seed to Series Seed. They typically continue to invest in their portfolio companies from Series A to C and beyond, and they can write checks up to $5M+. Oyster Ventures generally doesn't lead rounds, but when they do, they will invest $500k to $2M. When they lead, they join the board as a director or observer. They happily invest in companies anywhere in the world but have a preference for standard jurisdictions and structures (e.g., Delaware C Corps, Hong Kong or Singapore Limited companies, SAFEs, etc.) They don't invest in markets they don't understand well or markets that require deep specialization to evaluate. While they do invest in cryptocurrency and blockchain companies, they very rarely invest in crypto-tokens without an equity component. They don't invest via SPVs, by mandate, they don't invest in mainland China, and they don't invest in uncapped notes and SAFEs. Sophie is a three-time fund manager with a top-performing record by IRR. She was MD at Rothenberg and VP at Draper Dragon before setting off on her own to found Oyster Ventures as a solo GP in 2017. Prior, she co-founded and sold a VFX startup to a large media company in 2015. Before that, she ran M&A strategy and started her career by launching joint ventures for U.S-Asia cross-border businesses in the TMT sector. Sophie discusses her investment thesis, advises entrepreneurs and investors and describes some of the challenges they face. You can visit Oyster Ventures at www.oyster.vc, via LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/company/oyster-vc, and via Twitter at www.twitter.com/oysterventures. Sophie can be contacted via email at [email protected], and via LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/sophie007. _________________________________________________________________________ For more episodes from Investor Connect, please visit the site at: http://investorconnect.org Check out our other podcasts here: https://investorconnect.org/ For Investors check out: https://tencapital.group/investor-landing/ For Startups check out: https://tencapital.group/company-landing/ For eGuides check out: https://tencapital.group/education/ For upcoming Events, check out https://tencapital.group/events/ For Feedback please contact [email protected] Please follow, share, and leave a review. Music courtesy of Bensound.