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”.
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
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