Her parents made her calculate hourly revenue at a KFC outlet. She’s now a VC

Photo credit: Koh Shiyan

Her parents are both fund managers. Now, after some time away, she’s back in Singapore to continue a family tradition.

Koh Shiyan has become the managing partner of “pre-seed” investment firm Hustle Fund, which has closed its first fund of US$11.5 million from the likes of Chinese gaming pioneer Shanda, Japan’s Line, and Naver, South Korea’s largest search engine.

She has a varied background. After graduating from Stanford University, she became an associate at various funds, completed an MBA at Harvard, and helped scale up Silicon Valley startup NerdWallet into a US$150 million revenue business.

Tech in Asia caught up with her to find out more.

Thanks for doing this interview with us. To start off, what prompted you to come back home?

This probably seems cliched, but there’s no place like home. I have a two-year-old daughter, and I want her to have the opportunity to grow up in Singapore – a safe place filled with delicious food and loving family – and the opportunity to grow up in a region with so much secular growth ahead of it.

How big an influence did your parents have on your career trajectory and choices?

First time I’ve been asked that question… just kidding. My parents very much impact how I think about businesses and investing. We were the kids that grew up being asked to calculate the hourly revenue of a KFC outlet when standing in line. I grew up talking about what makes businesses tick, and what makes a good investment (Has the upside been priced in? What edge do you have here? Can this CEO scale?).

But when I was in university, I actually thought I was headed for the civil service. I am a huge policy and economics nerd, and love the system-level thinking required for designing public policy. A summer internship at JPMorgan rekindled my interest in business, and the rest is history.

The proposition of a pre-seed fund is intriguing. How would you define “pre-seed”?

My partner Elizabeth Yin has a great blog post on this, “Pre-seed is the new seed.” In a nutshell, as funds have grown bigger and moved upmarket, there’s been a gap in what was traditionally seed investing. We think of pre-seed as pre-product launch or early product, raising US$1 to US$500,000, where typical sources of capital are friends and family, and some angels.

What kind of startups will you invest in at Hustle Fund, and how much will you be investing in each company?

We will invest in any startup that is software-enabled, including business-to-business, business-to-consumer, fintech, crypto, and hardware. Hustle Fund 1 is presently focused on founders in North America and Southeast Asia.