When Edith Yeung left the security of her enterprise software development job to launch her own conference business, she no idea whether she had what it takes to succeed as an entrepreneur. It wasn’t even until two years had passed successfully organizing business and technology conferences in the San Francisco Bay area that she finally felt ready to tell her parents she had quit her job at Autodesk.
But that’s just where Edith’s entrepreneurial journey begins. After a chance encounter with the CEO of Dolphin Browser, Edith joined the company as the Vice President of International Business Development, a role she excelled at despite having no previous business development experience.
Today, Edith is Partner at the 500 Startups Mobile Collective where she oversees investment in early stage startups with a strong focus on mobile technology.
Join Jay for this week’s episode to hear how Edith accidently fell into her first business and successfully navigated multiple career changes.
Listen in to learn:
- Why you should never stop learning
- How to scale your software business from nothing to top of the app store
- Why your positioning is more important than your product when vying for the attention of VCs
Listen to this episode on iTunes.
Share your biggest insight from this week’s episode with Jay: @jaykimmer.
Links from Today’s Episode
- Read the full transcript from Edith’s interview
- Follow Edith on Twitter and LinkedIn
- Check out Edith’s profile at 500.co or pitch Edith directly
- Sign up for Edith’s weekly newsletter
Detailed Show Notes
- (2:00) Edith’s Hong Kong origins and her early career as an enterprise software developer
- (3:15) Edith accidently starts her first company, a business and technology conference company
- (5:00) On landing a business development role at Dolphin Browser with no previous experience
- (7:34) How Edith’s past technical and business development experience helped her become a better angel investor
- (9:35) The challenge of early stage investing in Silicon Valley and the technologies that are getting the most attention from VCs
- (12:07) On dealing with parents that weren’t supportive of Edith’s entrepreneurial ambitions
- (15:14) How Edith helped scale Dolphin Browser from a total unknown to over 150 million active users
- (19:33) How Edith sees the Apple IOS vs. Android development wars playing out over the next 5 years
- (23:51) Overseeing the 500 Startups portfolio in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan and bringing US-based startups to Asia
- (28:23) How to position your startup to grab Edith’s attention
- (30:36) Why it doesn’t pay to be shy when asking for money
Leave a Reply