User:Chaud321/sandbox
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Venture Capitalist
- Investor
- Serial Entrepreneur
Chon Tang | |
|---|---|
| Alma mater | |
| Occupations |
|
| Employer | Berkeley SkyDeck Fund |
| Known for | Catchpod / Kaiqiaole Document Management, Ichnop |
| Title | Founding Partner |
| Board member of | BlazingDB, Converge Industries, Mira Inc. |
Chon (Ziqiang) Tang is an investor, entrepreneur, startup advisor and the founding partner of the Berkeley SkyDeck Fund, affiliated with the Berkeley SkyDeck startup accelerator.[1][2][3][4]
Career
Angel Investing
Tang made his first angel investments in 2005, focused in Northern California.[5][6] One of Tang's investments TubeMogul went public in 2014 and was acquired by Adobe in 2017.[1][7][8] Tang's investment Pulpix was acquired by Adyoulike in 2018.[9] In 2017, Kando recorded that Tang had made a total of 25 investments since 2005.[10] Tang has participated as a board member for the Sacramento Angels, a member of the selection committee for the MIT Angels, and as a member of Sand Hill Angels, Berkeley Angel Network. In 2020, Tang was named an SVIEF Investor of the Year.[11]
Junzi Capital Engineering Hedge Fund
Tang founded Junzi Capital Engineering hedge fund in 2009 after the 2008 financial crisis.[3][5] Junzi was a quantitative hedge fund which invested in commodities, especially energy, through automated algorithmic trading, which Tang programmed to trade for 23 hours a day, six days a week.[5][12][13] Tang focused on mispriced futures options informed by the Black–Scholes pricing model.[5][12] The fund used a volatility arbitrage strategy, with 200-300 trades per day, producing a 43.24% return in 2012.[5][14] Tang said in a Top Traders of 2012 interview with ACTIVE TRADER that he ordinally developed the tech to inform his own investing strategy before discovering how well it worked on the market.[5] By the first quarter of 2013, Junzi was operating via telework with staff in California and Chicago, Illinois as well as an operations team in Asia.[6]
Berkeley SkyDeck Fund
In 2017, Tang joined UC Berkeley SkyDeck as a fund manager, where in early 2018, Tang and colleague Caroline Winnett launched the Berkeley SkyDeck Fund at $24 million, backed by venture capital firms Sequoia Capital and Mayfield.[1][15] The fund promised $100,000 to each startup accepted into the SkyDeck accelerator in return for a 5 percent equity stake in the startup.[16][17] Chon stated in an interview with the Sacramento Business Journal that in order to be accepted into the program, one of the startup's founders or advisors must come from the University of California system.[18] He also said that SkyDeck appeals to investors by bringing in founders from foreign countries, with the goal of becoming an international hub for entrepreneurship.[18]
In late 2018, Tang and SkyDeck announced a semiconductor Chip Track to fund and launch semiconductor startups with partner companies Cadence Design Systems and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Limited.[19] The goal Tang said in a press release was to "help bring the silicon back to Silicon Valley" by providing emerging chip startups with the services needed to build prototypes, a process that normally costs $2 million.[19][20][21] In May 2021, The New York Times reported that the SkyDeck chip track had selected a total of seven semiconductor startups to for the program with plans to add more in the future.[22]