Time Capitalist
Many people have asked me: Heyu, where have you been these past few years? How have you been? What’s next for you?
Yes, a lot has happened. Here is a bit about my journey from 2021 to now:
Turned my Minerva capstone thesis on urban innovation into the MAP Fund.
Returned to Asia at the end of 2020 to spend more time with family during Covid.
Airbnb, the company I was fortunate to work for early on, went public. I had the opportunity to learn from the investors who backed it about their funding stories and investment journeys, coming full circle! I invested in AirAngel to continue supporting it.
Spire and Outlier, two portfolio companies I invested and worked closely with exited through listing and M&A.
Joined the advisory board of Shuion Land, a publicly listed real estate company to connect value creation in cities across different timeframes.
Involved in setting up the endowment strategy for the university where I was part of the founding class (indeed evergreen)
Locked down in my apartment for two months in Shanghai (glad I had lovely roommates at that time!).
Started Harvard Medical School training.
Learned to surf and tried modeling (I know).
Started guest instructing at NUS.
Contributed to two books writing with my professor, Stephen Kosslyn around active learning and humanity in AI
Felt excited, anxious, and lost, but put myself together.
A lot has happened in my life, but one main difference is that I was not traveling to every corner of the earth. I wasn't planning my next trip; instead, I was spending time in my current life, both virtually and physically. So the natural question that came up was: how do I want to spend my time? And how do I feel about it?
At the same time, I have spent almost a decade in venture as a student, operator, and investor (also known as the cycle). It's a good time to reflect and envision: what time spent creates good memories and business momentum? What motivates those great times that turn into great outcomes?
I never thought I would be a venture capitalist. The first fund I met in San Francisco was Benchmark, which backed Minerva and kindly provided its office to the Founding Class. Benchmark turned out to be one of my favorite teams due to its deep commitment over time. Over these years, through both luck and intentional exploration, I have thought a lot about what business is, what investing is, what venture investing is, what kind of founders and businesses I want to work with, what kind of investor I want to be, and what kind of investment firm I want to build. This has involved a lot of first principle and value system checking.
Looking back at the history of the venture capital industry, capital was the scarce asset needed to fund high-risk innovation, so this asset class has always been optimized for dollar return. But what if capital starts to become a commodity? What other scarce assets in the modern world can generate high returns?
I would say time.
As human beings, we all have limited time with attention span constraints in life. This realization has become much stronger after spending more in-person time with family during Covid and starting medical school training. So I began to implement a new philosophy in life and investing: time capitalism.
Being a time capitalist means optimizing for good time spent. The first question in terms of definition is both objective and subjective: what is good? It means different things for different people as individuals. But as investors, there will be more absolute return profiles in terms of numbers and timeframes. For me, it means fulfilling: genuine curiosity, excitement, and connection with high-caliber ideas and people with high potential for long-term success.
This philosophy has started to change my time allocation setup to optimize quality and compound ruthlessly with the perspective of time opportunity cost. It has applied to my reading, learning, meetings, socializing, and decision-making, and has started to create a positive feedback loop.
So I decided to continue experimenting with this hypothesis of being a time capitalist for the next stage of my life and career development. Specifically, it means:
Information & Emotion: Contributing to the projects/community I strongly care about as a proactive builder.
Interaction: Acting as a present thought partner for founders and business partners at key inflection points, with a core focus on building long-term competitiveness through customer love.
Incentive: Starting a project with Chenyi from Strategy Capital to have long-term aligned capital for great founders and businesses.
Continuing to write and share.
Only working with good people.
I will share more details when there are updates. I am excited about this journey myself.
