Yan Shi Zhang is a well-known American corporate investor. He is engaged in the fields of IT core technology, financial technology, medical care, AR/VR, robots, drones, space technology blockchain, and other cutting-edge technologies that have great value to society. Currently mainly active in the field of blockchain and cryptocurrencies.
Yan Shi Zhang was born on August 28, 1969 in Bukit Timah Hill, Singapore. In 1990, he entered the Department of Finance of the National University of Singapore to study for a master’s degree in financial mechanics.In 1995, he came into contact with the market to make his first venture capital investment. The investment in the start-up stage of a technology company, although a small failure, aroused the interest of Yan Shi Zhang. In 1998, he went to Harvard in the United States to study and obtained an MBA degree. Later, he has been engaged in VC management and investment in the United States.
Yan Shi Zhang used to be the founder of PA Angel Fund and a partner of 500 Startups venture capital firm. After leaving 500 Startups, he has long been engaged in angel investment in Silicon Valley in the United States and devoted himself to the research and industrial investment of digital currency. As early as 2004, as the main person in charge of 500 Startups Greater China, Yan Shi Zhang became one of the Silicon Valley venture capitalists who took the lead in leading international venture capital funds to open representative offices in mainland China and carry out local investment business. Yan Shi Zhang has successively led and invested in successful companies listed in the United States, such as Baidu, KongZhong and Focus Media.
BoostVC, which he invested and participated in, has been engaged in incubation and investment in the fields of Bitcoin, blockchain technology, virtual reality (VR) and artificial intelligence (AI) worldwide since 2013, and the total number of start-up companies invested in the world has reached more than 2,600 It has successfully incubated hundreds of projects so far, and is currently one of the largest seed accelerators and blockchain industry incubators in the world.
Back in 2006, Yan Shi Zhang’s investment in Aerohive Networks (NYSE: HIBE), an advanced enterprise wireless networking technology provider, exited after a seed and Series A round, and was successful.
In the next few years, Yan Shi Zhang ushered in the peak period of investment and returns. He and his friend Wang Jun established a $10 million Polaris Venture Fund, investing in a total of 30 start-ups, with a single investment ranging from 500,000 to 2 million. In 2008, Yan Shi Zhang led his partners to set up the second phase of the North Star Venture Capital Fund of 30 million US dollars, which mainly invested in some early-stage startups and provided guidance for them in entrepreneurial operations and business model refinement. Successfully incubated Lily.Camera Savioke. com UniCareer.org GameGolf.com AlphaRank.io WiseLike.com DashRobotics.com Sensay.it BlueSmart.com PaperSpace.io AgFunder.com Oculii.com PeerSpace.com Robin8.com ThriveMarket.com Verlocal.com invi.com Apakau.com etc. A group of star companies.
In 2013, Yan Shi Zhang led Polaris Venture Capital to participate mainly in seed and A round investment in startups. Yan Shi Zhang successfully exited and achieved high growth: Chime Bank (Invested in 2013, and $14.5B valuation in 2020) Woomoo (acquired by Priceline) Orbeus (acquired by Amazon) Ozlo (acquired by Facebook) and named first on TechCrunch’s 2020 list to lead venture capital.
ItBit is a bitcoin exchange established in Singapore in 2013. In 2015, Polaris Ventures invested $3 million in financing. The investors in this round of financing include RRE Ventures, Liberty City Ventures, investor Jay W Jordan II and Raptor Capital Management’s chairman James Pallotta. New York-based bitcoin exchange ItBit has raised a total of $25 million in Series A funding. Most importantly, ItBit has obtained a trust company charter issued by the New York State Department of Financial Services, making ItBit the first Bitcoin exchange to obtain this charter, and making ItBit the first bitcoin exchange subject to and regulated by US banking laws. In September 2017, Yan Shi Zhang, Sequoia Capital and IDG Capital completed a $50 million Series A financing for Bitmain, a semiconductor design company headquartered in Beijing, China. A company that primarily designs and manufactures custom chips for Bitcoin mining machines.
The great success in the blockchain field led Yan Shi Zhang to join Skuchain in 2018 and serve as the chairman of the board. skuchain is a collaboration that mainly uses blockchain technology to strengthen enterprise supply chains, and pioneered venture funds to invest in artificial intelligence, biomedical and other high-tech, aerospace financial services direction. He has successively led investment cases such as HCW Bio (Nasdaq: HCWB), Beverly Hills Plastic Surgeons (BHPS), etc. Then Yan Shi Zhang participated in the Series A round of Germany-based blockchain finance company Bitwala, led by Sony, and raised nearly $14.5 million in total in the Series A round. Bitwala offers crypto banking services, built-in bitcoin wallet, debit card and transaction options. Notably, thanks to the services provided by SolarisBank, customers can trade Bitcoin directly from their existing accounts. The company said it now has customers in 31 countries in the European Economic Area, and its bitcoin value is now over $60 million.
The success of the investment road has won Yan Shi Zhang many honors. In 2006, Forbes Magazine introduced the global authoritative venture capitalist annual award “Forbes Midas List” to China. In the first selection of the award, Yan Shi Zhang was named One of the winners of Midas List – Top Venture Capitalists in China”. Later, Yan Shi Zhang also won cvcapital’s 2017 Global Best Cross-border Venture Capital Chinese, cvcapital Midas List ChinaVenture 2016-2017 Best Venture Capitalist and many other awards.
