Valerie Van Vu, former Vietnam head of investments for Venturra, has launched her own early-stage VC firm, Ansible Ventures, in partnership with Alto Partners.
The new firm has hit US$8 million for the first close of its maiden fund, which will be used to invest in 15 pre-seed and seed-stage startups with a focus on Vietnam. Vu said she aims to close the fund at US$15 million.
Ansible Ventures’ founder Valerie Van Vu / Photo credit: Ansible Ventures
Vu, the company’s founding partner, has been one of the most active seed investors in Vietnam’s tech ecosystem. While at Venturra, she led seed investments into many Vietnamese startups, most notably Nano Technologies, Med247, Marathon, Mio, and Infina.
Vu shared that she had come up with the idea to build her own fund around a year ago.
“I think not many local funds want to go this much early, when the startup sometimes is still just an idea. On the other hand, I saw that the quality of the new startup founders has reached the inflection point,” she told Tech in Asia.
She began reaching out to her mentor and some industry experts to learn more about how to build her own fund and started to get interest from potential investors, such as Alto Partners and Saison Capital.
Some of her limited partners for this fund include Saison Capital, KK39 Ventures, Black Kite Capital, Axie Infinity co-founder Trung Nguyen, as well as senior executives from VinFast, Uber, and Gojek.
Vu said she often approaches aspiring founders even when they haven’t built the product yet. “I build a relationship with them by helping in brainstorming the idea and sharing insights about fundraising,” she said.
To date, Ansible Ventures – which aims to invest in all sectors, especially consumer internet, software for SMEs, and Web3 apps – has led investments in three startups: direct-to-consumer beauty brand Zitore, digital payments provider CashGrow, and professional network Curieous.
See also: The challenge and hidden potential of Vietnam’s agritech sector
Ansible Ventures is trying to tap into Vietnam’s digital economy, which is expected to reach US$200 billion in gross merchandise value (GMV) by 2030. In the process, it will overtake Thailand in GMV and is only below Indonesia, which is the biggest country in the region.
Editing by Thu Huong Le and Jaclyn Tiu
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