Episode 4

David Lu - Learnings from starting a venture fund

00:00:00
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00:42:41

July 2nd, 2019

42 mins 41 secs

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About this Episode

David Lu (@davidjlu) is an up & coming venture capitalist based in Sydney and Singapore, who is constantly traveling the world on the hunt for great investments. He is a Partner @256 Ventures, a global cryptocurrency VC fund, investing in a portfolio of diversified digital assets.

Previously, David founded Australia’s first student VC called, Textbook ventures. He also regularly writes academic papers around the topics of entrepreneurial ecosystems, startup roadmaps and early-stage fundraising. Forbes wrote an article about David with the title “Why Being A Young Investment Partner Isn't Always A Good Thing”.

Please follow me on Instagram, Twitter, and my Website, where I post new episodes, share cool stuff & interesting articles I found, blog occasionally, and provide glimpses into my life!

Show notes:
02:50 -- How David got into Venture Capital
07:32 -- Resources for getting started with learning about Venture Capital & deciding what knowledge is relevant for your portfolio companies
11:45 -- David’s story of how he got started with Australia’s first student VC fund - Textbook Ventures. + How one of his successful investments led him to crypto.
16:20 -- David’s learnings from starting a Venture business (“Think in default scenarios”)
19:25 -- How do you react to things not going well when you grow your business + How creativity and thinking about the purpose of their fund helped Textbook Ventures to pivot
25:40 -- Riskiness of startup investing and how seed & pre-seed investing is the best way to build a relationship with promising founders
28:40 -- How VC is all about the people and how you make them feel
30:10 -- David’s investment criteria
33:14 -- David’s best investment to date
35:02 -- Unusual hobbies of David
36:43 -- Favorite books
38:05 -- Personal advisory board
40:18 -- Advice to younger self & anyone

Resources mentioned:

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