Asia’s top female startup investors on why they love their jobs (Part II)

At Tech in Asia we talk with venture capitalists all the time, but we seldom get the opportunity to learn more about their personal backgrounds and their day-to-day responsibilities as investors. Partly because we love chatting up VCs, and partly because it’s March (Women’s History Month in English-speaking countries, and International Women’s Day is on March 8), we spoke with some of Asia’s leading female investors to understand why they love what they do.

Rui Ma, venture partner at 500 Startups

 I grew up in Silicon Valley. My parents were both engineers and I studied electrical engineering in college. I did tech finance pretty much right after college, and I’ve always been doing technology-related stuff throughout my career, with the exception of a brief stint in real estate. The first transaction that I closed was Skype’s sale to eBay, and I helped represent eBay.

I originally moved to Asia for personal reasons, but then I stayed because it was very interesting and dynamic. I’ve always wanted to do early stage investment, but I wasn’t quite sure what the right platform was.

I started off doing late stage M&A, and it was interesting but I knew I didn’t want to do it forever and ever. And then I did PE, late-stage growth equity investing. The deal frequency was really low, with only one or two deals a year. You don’t really have much impact on the company, and you spend a lot of time negotiating these really detailed financial terms. I wanted to be working in a stage where there was more possibility for companies to evolve.

I met Dave [McClure, founder of 500 Startups] two-and-a-half years ago and we talked for a while about what his plans for China were. I ended up joining his team – which sort of surprised me, because even though I knew I wanted to do early-stage investment, I didn’t think I would be working with quite so early stage companies.

My favorite thing about the job is that every day is different. Dave gives me a ton of autonomy. i get a lot of freedom and get to set my own goals. i do have to talk to the team and go over with them what I’ve planned, but then i have to go off and execute it. I think that’s also one of the challenges. You set your own goals, so if you can’t achieve them, well, who’s problem is that?

Another tough thing is that I didn’t realize how tough it would be when the companies you have have troubles.

I’ve had conversations when I know that the company isn’t going to go forward much longer. I sort of know when those discussions are coming when I receive a weirdly-worded email from a founder in my inbox. For example, one of the investments from a region I was covering died, and one of the co-founders, who was very young, came to me. I already knew that the company was liquidating but he didn’t know that I knew. and he found it extremely difficult to talk to me, because, you know, he was a first-time founder. He put almost two years into this company so it was hard for him to say to me, “Hey, I’m sorry, I can’t really do much except give you some money back.” And he was like close to tears. and we talked for about four hours. I feel like those things are tough for both the founder and the investor. but I’m getting better at it because i’m getting to see that the way the founder reacts in that situation can tell me whether or not I should invest in them again. If they did things honestly, fairly, and learned quickly, then that’s a good sign.

Right now I’m also working on developing an AngelList syndicate for female founders. It’s through 500 Startups, me, and a few other investors. We’re trying to raise $10 million to invest in about ten startups over the next year or so. The criteria is that they need to have at least one female founder, and the ownership needs to be at least 10 percent. Syndicates have been around for a while, but this will be the first female-focused one.

One of our goals for the syndicate is to help investors invest more easily. This helps the founders as well because then they can get a larger check from us. Number two is we also want to encourage people to support women founders. That’s why we focus on women-founder themed companies. Some of our top exits in the past have been headed up by female founders. Viki had a female founder and Wildfire had a female founder. We feel like our portfolio has about 20 to 25 percent female founders or co-founders. So we think it makes sense from both a social and business perspective.

(As told to Josh Horwitz)

Hannah Nguyen, associate at DMP

I’ve deeply appreciated Digital Media Partners (DMP) for giving me a chance to learn and grow tremendously in the last three and a half years. Since I don’t have years and years of experience in working in venture capital, when I first joined DMP I found myself feeling like a tiny fish from a river that just swam into the big ocean. It was extremely exciting as well as intimidating.

Joining DMP reminded me of my first day working as a research assistant for a mutual fund in San Francisco called Parnassus Investments. It was there that I first fell in love with the investment world. Everyone on the investment team came from elite universities and had years of experience in investment banking or portfolio management. I’ll never forget watching my colleagues juggle countless conference calls, manage extremely complicated excel models, and trade stocks from multi-screen Bloomberg terminals. I learned how to conduct research, identify investment targets, and make investment recommendations to firms. Witnessing the research and decision-making process was an eye-opening experience for me, and it led me to dream of a career in the investment field.

Chiah Li Ong, partner at JFDI

See more interviews in our Female Entrepreneurship series: