unexpectedly became a 1-man VC. Now what do I do?

Hire me as an intern?

Only slightly joking! To not be completely useless, I can try provide some thoughts as someone who’s been involved in my local early-stage company ecosystem / working on advising growth stage companies in getting funding:

• Having boots on the ground in the geography you want to invest in is probably crucial; while all start-ups / VC funds are pushing remote work, I think you won’t get the same “pulse” of the ecosystem unless you’re interacting in person

• Would say it couldn’t hurt to replicate a similar strategy to your angel backer; they’ve clearly achieved success and if there was any structured approach used, try mimic that as a starting point?

• First actionable thing I would personally do is establish a good CRM-type system; build up lists of (1) prospective start-ups and (2) other VC funds, as you build your network as someone with money to deploy, hitting it off with other funds could be one way to increase your deal flow. Also the benefit is that you can incrementally build up your rolodex and have it very clearly mapped out for you (there are some pretty good CRMs focused on sourcing-heavy shops, i’ll follow up w/ names if I can remember)

• Aware you noted you’re in HK but I’ll comment from my geography anyway (Australia); VC funds here are very much for transparency. Blackbird, for example, is disclosing all of its fund data. A great way to get a feel for what’s hot in the market is just looking at VC portcos and finding ancillary industries that are underserved. On the same point of transparency, check out AirTree’s Open Source VC page - they have a lot of resources wrt start-up documents, investor lists and so on. While it may not be directly relevant, there could be things in there that help you flesh out the operations side of your fund (e.g., term sheet templates, diligence checklists, investor lists)

• Regardless of how you plan to invest, would really focus on getting involved in all the accelerators / events / angel networks etc. in the sector/geography you’re trying to be involved in; it helps you build credibility and a track record without deploying capital as you start out

Apologies if a lot of this is already common sense - just stuff I’ve taken from being involved in the space