Elizabeth Yin
Co-Founder & General Partner at Hustle Fund
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.
Career
- 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
Key moments
Jump straight to the part of How to Build a Global Pre-Seed Fund from Scratch you want.
- 1:54 Elizabeth's first investment: three shares of Coca-Cola at age 10
- 6:50 What Hustle Fund is investing in now and why vertical SaaS still matters in the AI era
- 9:31 How Hustle Fund sources deals globally through co-investors and content
- 15:09 Elizabeth's two-part framework: founder quality vs. idea quality
- 18:10 Why competitive markets are a double whammy for small-check investors
- 22:57 The surfing analogy: spotting small waves that grow big in five years
- 25:06 Biggest investing lessons from Fund 1 to Fund 4: valuation and follow-on discipline
- 27:58 Camp Hustle, content marketing, and running VC like a lead generation business
- 30:09 Does valuation really matter at pre-seed? When it does and when it doesn't
- 37:39 Growing AUM: why Fund 2 was the hardest and the "event ticket sales" fundraising pattern
Connections
Spot something wrong? Suggest a correction Updated 25 September 2026
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