Association Series #1: Ada Yin, Investment Manager @ Airtree
Uncovering how interesting minds entered Venture Capital and new aspects of their personality, experiences and processes to light.
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#1 Ada Yin, Investment Manager @ Airtree
1/6 Career overview before Airtree
I’ve never been much of a career planner, and so VC was more an opportunity that came up which aligned my passions and experiences rather than something I actively worked towards. My parents are both migrant entrepreneurs - they started a lighting wholesale business nearly 30 years ago. So growing up, I was determined to understand how to build a successful business. My baseline for career risk-taking was what they had to do to come here - leave everything they knew behind, to try to build a better life, in a country whose language they didn’t really speak. This shows up in how I’ve made career decisions. I’ve always been biased towards learning new skills and environments over familiarity.
I've been at four very different companies and roles - Microsoft, EY-Parthenon, Partners in Performance and now AirTree. Oscillating between strategy, execution, technical builds, and investing. I think the most valuable thing I've done to invest in myself is to just very proactively ask to do the things that I was interested in, even if I felt completely unqualified.
At Microsoft, I really wanted to look under the hood. And so I had no technical experience. But I ended up, building and presenting data and AI demos that gotten to conventions. I was helping build like a student analytics platform in higher ed. And, I think all of these happened because I found some way to be helpful to the team that I wanted to build and do things with. And I just said, Hey, like, this is why you should let me work with you. This is what I'd to do. This is what I'm really passionate. interested about. Can I do it?
I did the same thing in management consulting as well. I really wanted to work on software company acquisitions, I really wanted to also figure out how technology could help in the decarbonisation space for climate. And so in both these cases, I talked to the right partners or the right leaders who are building this, show them where I could be useful, and then found ways into those different deals and into those different projects.
The part of my career that I probably don't talk about enough, was just the number of casual jobs I've done. And this again, comes back to walking in many different shoes and understanding the experiences of different types of people. I've worked as an ice cream server, as a health clinic receptionist or restaurant server, maths tutor, and in sales. Over the years, my mother and I have worked on building out sales plans, pitch decks, business strategies, and websites. We’ve even taken ex-employees to court for fraud. I think all of these things have shaped how I show up for work, and where I am today.
2/6 What was the interview process to join Airtree?
My first introduction to Airtree was actually at a society event back at uni and Elicia McDonald, one of the partners, was talking about her job and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I had no idea how to be competent enough to apply.
Ultimately, about a year ago, one of my friends who works at Airtree reached out and said hey, you're pretty crazy about technology and this role may be a great fit for you, you should apply. And so I caught up with Elicia, of all people, for a virtual coffee. At that stage it was more of a learning opportunity for me to get to know her and AirTree, rather than a formal process.
A couple of months later the application process opened. Here were my steps:
Writing an investment memo based on my analysis of a startup that I was interested in.
TIP: I think the best piece of advice I'd give for this is don't go for the obvious ones. Don't go for Canva, don't go for the startups that the VC has already invested in. Find an area that you're particularly passionate about and then dive into it.
I picked one enabling decentralised energy trading and another niche startup I was excited about that was building out an autonomous internet.
TIP: And I think what's important here is less what you pick but more that you've thought about it, simplified it and really thought about the business case for it.
Then I had an initial call with an Investment Manager, to get a sense of who I am and talking through my experiences to date.
We went to a case study, where 30 minutes before the actual meeting, I was given a dummy deck of startup x and you basically have those 30 minutes to read through it come to some opinion.
TIP: Make sure that you have an opinion, not just sitting on the fence. What’s important is how you talk them through your investment case for why you think this is a good or not a good company, and what you’d need to believe to think otherwise.
After that, it was one on one meetings with Partners. So I had them with Craig and with John. John loves his walking meetings! This was more about getting to know me, my motivations, why VC is an area that I'd actually like to work in. This was also an opportunity for me to do DD on them — what their motivators are, the culture and business they have mind for AirTree, and the future business trajectory.
I think this entire process was a couple of months end to end.
3/6 Looking back on the past 12 months of being an investment manager, what two skills have you had to accelerate the most?
Hyper simplifying complexity and then really distilling a business down to its core components of success. A core part of the job is meeting with founders - they'll go through in detail their business, why they're doing what they do, who they are, why they succeed. I then take that and basically turn it into a one minute investment pitch that is presented to the rest of the team about why this is interesting, or why maybe this isn't interesting right now.
So that was probably the biggest challenge just because I’d find myself across e.g. quantum sensing and decentralised derivative trading platforms, in the same week. A common misconception is that VCs know a lot about a lot of things but many of us would rather start by having things explained to us like we’re twelve.
The second thing I think that's been a journey is finding an authentic way to build personal brand. A big part of this role is how founders know about you, find you and then also choose to work with you. And I think, as is with anything, the brand that seems to resonate most is the truest version of you. But putting the truest version of you out there is incredibly vulnerable. So I’ve started to find my way of doing this. I recently launched a series of founder dinners called ‘Good Borking Company’ with small groups of 12, using a format I made up to encourage deeper conversations and help all voices around a table be heard. It brings together my love of feeding people (learnt from my grandmother) and introverted character traits.
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4/6 Three specific things you do directly after meeting a founder for the first time?
I’m an excitable and very optimistic person, so I’ll usually come out of a meeting buzzing. To ground this, I run some initial market analysis to understand what else is out there. This also helps me ask less stupid questions.
I identify the couple of things that I love, the key risks the business and then the areas that I want to dive deeper into
I then build out an investment thesis on why we would or wouldn't invest at this point in time. I find it helpful to also think about what we need to believe to do otherwise.
This is all independent. We then go to the investment committee where we present the thesis for businesses and discuss.
If it's a complex area that I know a partner has experience in, outside of the Investment Committee meeting, I’ll catch up with them and get their thoughts.
The vast majority of the startups I see are early stage and so when you're early, you’re looking at team, dream and product market fit. The product market fit is in brackets at the early stages. As startups mature, we look more at traction metrics - growth, retention, unit economics, user engagement etc.
5/6 What is your top tip for getting into VC?
I'll break down the key elements of being a VC in my view. I think from that you can kind of pick your own path to where you show excellence in, to really set yourself up for for being a good candidate for VC.
Origination
Due diligence (DD)
Founder partnership
Origination is essentially how you network, what you do, what spaces you play in that give you an unfair advantage in finding great founders before others do. Some people are fantastic at building relationships in the ecosystem. They have a genuine passion and origination comes really naturally to them.
Due diligence is the ability to really unpack a business and assess its potential based on the market opportunity, team, and business. There’s some spreadsheet work, but not nearly as much as people think. In fact, there are a lot of people who come into VC without finance backgrounds.
Finally, founder partnership comes down to how you add value. Individually and as a firm. Venture is about backing founders who want to build very big businesses. Partnership is how you help them achieve that, in the way they want to be helped.
6/6 What separates the best investors from the rest?
Founders will have the best answer to this but from what I’ve seen, they care most about networks and so the best investors have strong networks to help them get to where they want to go.
So being able to connect people to others in a way that's mutually valuable is just such a core part of being a good investor and being an investor that founders want to work with.
What I've also seen in all the partners at Airtree is this intuitive sense of knowing when to lean in, when to get the hell out of the way.
This ties into being able to not just create a personal brand, but maintaining and deepening it. And that requires not just authentic marketing and brand building, but also really consistent strong execution. Doing right by parties and making sure that, in all situations, you're doing the right thing by everyone. It doesn’t make saying no any easier - and we’re saying no 99% of the time. But to me, it's about coming out of every situation, with no regrets - providing kind and constructive feedback where I can, making that intro to angels or others whenever it makes sense.