Spectrum 28 closes first US$170M to work closer with founders – no matter where they are
Find out the different sectors that the Silicon Valley-based firm plans to invest in
Left to right: Kent Ho (Co-Founder/Partner), Lyon Wong (Co-Founder/Partner), Alok Vasudev (Partner), Betty Jin (Associate)
When we first heard that Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm Spectrum 28 has closed a US$170 million-worth of inaugural firm, we were curious if there will be a strong Asian focus that local startups can tap into.
In a phone interview with e27, Spectrum 28 Co-Founder and General Partner Kent Ho explains the firm’s strategy.
“We typically take an industry-vertical approach,” he says.
“When we launched the fund last year, we started with three areas that we’re looking at. The first thing is fintech, the second would be genomics and digital health, and the third area would be retail and hospitality tech. And since we’ve kind of moved on to explore new areas; I’d say that the most recent area that we’re spending time in is construction tech,” he further explains.
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The VC firm basically does not focus at any particular geographical region, though Ho claims that it has looked into several deals in the Southeast Asian region, particularly in the e-commerce and hospitality sectors.
“It’s hard to say where the next company will pop up within these verticals given how we see this, and we’ve seen examples of teams that have popped up in different regions,” he says.
Spectrum 28 was founded by Ho and Lyon Wong; both of them had long history in public market and venture capital investment. Ho was the Managing Partner at Harbor Pacific Capital, which invested in South Korea’s Coupang back in the glory days of deals sites such as Groupon and Living Social. As for Wong, he was a Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners.
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“We were actually launched about a year ago, even though we have just recently announced to the world that we’re in business,” Ho said.
The firm is based in Silicon Valley with team members that include Betty Jin, who was part of the team that runs Uber’s expansion to China.
Spectrum 28 believes that the world of VC firms has changed lately; gone are the days when advice is all that one should expect from a VC partner.
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“What’s really important these days is working with founders, to really be able to focus on delivering value. As a firm, that’s one of the key things about our culture,” Ho said.
He also stresses that one of the firm’s unique strength is its investor base.
“We’ve really architected the limited partners from the ground up, where a good portion of the fund is the more traditional investors, such as financial institutions. The others in our vast business network are business owners, a number of multi-billion dollar family offices, which could be retail network, logistics, hotel chains, hospital chains, just to give you an example,” he says.
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“We selected those individuals that we thought understand more how tech is going to be important in their business, and are now taking the steps to think about that,” he adds.
In terms investment stage, Spectrum 28 invests in different stages from seed funding to Series A and beyond. It normally invests between US$2 million to US$8 million, and starts at US$500,000 for seed funding.
When it comes to the qualities that the VC firm is looking for in a portfolio company, Ho’s answer was firm.
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“The most important thing, and where we start with, is always the team. Do they genuinely understand, and how they genuinely spend the time to understand the industries that they are working on,” Ho answers.
“A lot of times people don’t do their homework, and that’s where we really like to push them. Again, we were fortunate to have folks from various industries with a lot of knowledge, and I think the partnerships allow us to really see through a lot of companies that we’ve come across, which ones are better positioned to tackle the market that they’re selling into,” he closes.
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Image Credit: Spectrum 28
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