Kevin Fong

I joined MVP to get back to my investing roots — and because I’m impressed with how they’re doing things. MVP’s focus is on that same deep-technology innovation that I had been working on with GSR Ventures in China, but at a much earlier stage — which is how my investor career began. When doing due diligence on MVP after they became the lead investor for a company that I had seeded (oneNav), I became intrigued by what MVP is doing and impressed with the team they’re doing it with. Starting a new venture fund and creating an initial portfolio of successful investments is hard, but Andre and Wes have found a unique way to do it. A big challenge for a new fund is finding deals, and I was blown away by the systematic, data-driven software MVP uses for prospecting. I’m excited about helping MVP move to the next level and have a larger, more agile base of funds to invest.

My perspective on how VC has changed over the years and where I think it’s going: everything runs in cycles. When I started in venture capital in 1988, it was very much a tech-oriented, early-stage focus. We funded companies with technologies, products, and markets that were just a hypothesis. In order to be successful at it you need a deep understanding of the technologies, the people that can create it, and the market potential. Over the last 15 years, that changed; the types of companies that created outsized returns have been either media, consumer, or cloud-based (SaaS) enterprise companies. These types of companies allowed an investor to evaluate the actual product/service, customer traction, and product market fit. 

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This has led to a generation of VCs that drifted away from deep technology-based companies. With public multiples back to what I consider to be normal levels, investing in companies with important, defensible and differentiable technologies will be with us for the next decade or more. Combined with world de-globalization trends, I think you have the perfect storm to create a new type of venture fund re-establishing the old model going back to the nuts and bolts of traditional venture investing. The VC world is cycling back to the basics, where venture capital started.

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Great VCs and great founders have a strong conviction and a vision of a world shaped by their ideas or future creation. It is not a wish; it’s a carefully studied analysis of the world (or market) that exists today, and how it might be impacted by what can be created. Along with this vision, is a recognition of what it takes to get there with a reasonable number of resources, whether it be capital, or the right people, and the right amount of time to meet the market. 

The short answer to “Why Las Vegas?” is to keep my wife happy. We both love Las Vegas because of the entertainment, restaurants, and sports that we enjoy, but the second reason is that when I started GSR Ventures, a lot of my time was spent traveling to China and the flight was marginally longer from San Francisco. Don’t get me wrong, as a second-generation tech entrepreneur and Silicon Valley native, I love it for what it is, but my final reason is: being away from the crowds of Northern and Southern California is honestly a joy.  Now, with WFH post-COVID, it’s easy to conduct business from anywhere — and the core MVP team is only an hour away by plane, in the same time zone, and we are deeply connected, even throughout the day!

To start, I'd say the secrets to my success are my passion for the business of venture capital, my passion for technology, and good pattern recognition. I pride myself on being able to envision what the world might become and helping entrepreneurs see around corners — which has now translated to helping venture firms do the same thing. I’ve been doing it for 35 years. As an investor, I’ve been able to both recognize the importance of emerging technology and world-changing ideas, along with the right conditions for a booming economy that can support a startup ecosystem — like for instance, how bringing early-stage tech investing to China in 2003 was a recognition of the right ecosystem, the right government industrial policy, talent pool, and entrepreneurial spirit. I see that same opportunity again now in the next wave developing in venture and MVP’s approach.