We partner with outstanding entrepreneurs to build life-improving businesses globally.
Early stage focus
We do what it takes to move you from the earliest stage to Series A and beyond. At the earliest stage, we help you refine your idea, your product, and all aspects of the company’s operations, investor relations, and market positioning. We often invest in you through a seed round and sometimes at a later stage round. With this strong foundation, you are ready to scale and grow and ready to be introduced to large investors. Using our extensive relationships, we can present select companies to potential acquirers in many different verticals.
We offer a Mentorship Matching program for promising startups looking for guidance. Learn more here.
Meet Our Founder
Tess Hau
Venture Capitalist | Founder | CEO | Serial Entrepreneur | Advisor | Mentor Capitalist
Tess Hau is an investor and advisor to high performing startups, deep tech companies and extraordinary founders across the world.
A respected leader and subject matter expert, Tess is a sought-after speaker, lecturer, and advisor on venture capital, startups, entrepreneurship, strategy, Southeast Asia expansion and growth. She has been both speaker and moderator on numerous prominent VC and entrepreneurship panels. She was featured on Thrive Global’s list of “Top Women to Watch 2019”.
Among her many roles: Founder of venture fund Tess Ventures; Venture Partner at Spike Ventures, a venture capital fund for alumni of Stanford University; Co-founder of a stealth startup; and as a previous advisor to the Stanford Office of Technology Licensing, Tess was COO of GCBC Stanford Graduate School of Business. She was also appointed as Chief Ambassador by the Dean of Engineering at the University of Waterloo. Tess is a Member of the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP).
Tess is an internationally-recognized champion of health issues, women’s leadership, and diversity initiatives relating to gender and race. She is passionate about education, mentoring and developing women leaders, and connecting entrepreneurs across cultures.
Tess had multiple successful investments and exits through various entities before founding Tess Ventures. Examples include fintech, virtual reality, personalized medicine, construction tech, marketing automation, blockchain technology and others. Current investments include artificial intelligence, fintech, IoT, privacy and security, blockchain and healthcare.
Outside of work, Tess enjoys track racing with the Porsche Club. She believes in making this sport more inclusive and diverse. She also enjoys wine tasting, snowboarding, karaoke singing, and playing volleyball.
Five Pillars
These five areas of investment form the foundation of Tess Ventures:
Women founders and leaders
The next big opportunity in Southeast Asia
Data privacy and authentication
Healthcare industry disruptors
Deep Tech
Women Founders and Leaders
Female founded companies receive only 1/30 the venture capital funding of male founded companies. Tess Ventures is committed to investing and advising and using our extensive network to help the team raise capital. We at Tess Ventures have backed many startups where the founder is female or the leadership team has a female leader.
The Next Big Opportunity in Southeast Asia
We see that the next big opportunity is in Southeast Asia (SEA), especially in Indonesia. One third of the SEA population is under the age of 30. 90% of SEA internet users are mobile first. They are young, connected, and madly in love with social media. The average user in China and the US spends 6.5 hours online per day. The average Indonesian and Filipino spends 9 hours online per day. Some say if you missed the China train ten years ago, you cannot miss this one. Using Tess Ventures’ experience with Silicon Valley, we are committed to serve as the conduit between SEA and Silicon Valley and beyond. We have already successfully helped our startups expand to SEA.
Data Privacy and Authentication
Corporate data breaches, consumer privacy concerns, and a wave of new GDPR-like regulations create demand for technology tools that help enterprises meet compliance challenges and improve the customer experience with privacy, data protection, and identity verification. Tess Ventures has experience working with companies developing biometric and contactless solutions meant to strengthen data security.
Healthcare Industry Disruptors
We are keen on technology related to health, biotech, wellness, and relationships. Tess Ventures incubates and advises exciting health and wellness startups. Examples include transformative wellness and relationship empowerment platforms that improve the health of couples and individuals.
Deep Tech
Concerns about the over-centralization, inequities, and inefficiency of financial services has led to the emergence of financial technology companies who are developing simpler, faster, and cheaper solutions. Payment infrastructure and processing, stock trading platforms, personal finance, alternative lending and credit and insurance are all areas where Tess Ventures sees potential for tremendous change in how money is moved and used.
