Billy So and Warren Hui founded Soul Ventures right before the world turned upside down. The firm was founded on the idea that it could bring U.S. startups to Hong Kong, the leading startup hub in East Asia.
The company recently opened an office in Japan but has had to navigate choppy waters as tensions between the U.S. and mainland China grow.
Prior to Soul, So was involved in Hong Kong-based AVP Electronics Ltd., a semiconductor distribution company for the likes of Samsung Electronics. Hui was a vice president of investment banking at Morgan Stanley, working on mergers and acquisitions across Asia for six years. When Hui got the itch to join the venture capital world, he began applying to some of his favorite VC firms without much luck.
“By that time, I had a good bunch of clients from the bank that were willing to support me. So, they wrote me my first check and I raised a fund,” Hui said. “The idea was that we would go and find the best founders and startups – primarily in the U.S., but also across parts of Asia – where the founders are creating technology that would change the daily lives of people.”
Soul Ventures invested in companies like Hawthorne-based SpaceX, Santa Monica-based last mile delivery robot Coco, as well as some of the first movers in generative artificial intelligence like Anthropic and OpenAI.
“When we thought about what our value-add is to startups, we always thought that because Asia is so big and so vast, and we were from this region, it would be very helpful if we could help bridge the gaps and bring the touch points in Asia to U.S. startups,” Hui said.
At the time, the U.S. was able to tap into a growing market in China, a populous country that was experiencing fast mobile internet adoption and had high growth potential. Meanwhile, China’s homegrown companies were able to grow with domestic and international funds.
Malibu-based Soul Ventures, headed up by the pair, raised $25 million and opened in 2020,…
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