First Cheque with Cheryl Mack & Maxine Minter 
About Elizabeth Yin
Elizabeth Yin is co-founder and general partner of Hustle Fund, a pre-seed venture fund investing in early-stage software entrepreneurs globally, with a focus on B2B, digital health and fintech. Before Hustle Fund, she was a partner at 500 Startups, where she invested in seed-stage companies and ran the Mountain View accelerator, and earlier co-founded and ran adtech company LaunchBit, which was acquired in 2014. Yin remains an active voice in early-stage investing, headlining events such as Venture Underground in San Francisco in February 2026. On First Cheque, she discussed how to build a global pre-seed fund from scratch.
- Talks about
- Fundraising, Going Global, Venture Capital
- Website
- elizabethyin.com
In conversation.
1 episode
First Cheque with Cheryl Mack & Maxine Minter Go straight to the good bits.
Key moments from How to Build a Global Pre-Seed Fund from Scratch.
- 1:54Elizabeth's first investment: three shares of Coca-Cola at age 10
- 6:50What Hustle Fund is investing in now and why vertical SaaS still matters in the AI era
- 9:31How Hustle Fund sources deals globally through co-investors and content
- 15:09Elizabeth's two-part framework: founder quality vs. idea quality
- 18:10Why competitive markets are a double whammy for small-check investors
- 22:57The surfing analogy: spotting small waves that grow big in five years
- 25:06Biggest investing lessons from Fund 1 to Fund 4: valuation and follow-on discipline
- 27:58Camp Hustle, content marketing, and running VC like a lead generation business
- 30:09Does valuation really matter at pre-seed? When it does and when it doesn't
- 37:39Growing AUM: why Fund 2 was the hardest and the "event ticket sales" fundraising pattern
The path so far.
- Now
Co-Founder & General Partner · Hustle Fund
- Earlier
Partner (ran the Mountain View accelerator) · 500 Startups
- Until 2014 · Startup
Co-founder · LaunchBit
Sources: elizabethyin.com
Hustle Fund on Day One
Hustle Fund is a San Francisco venture capital firm that invests in pre-seed software startups and aims to decide after one or two meetings.
1 person · 1 episode
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