How Elizabeth Yin Found Success in Launching a VC Fund for ‘Hilariously Early’ Startups

A behind the scenes look at raising capital for Hustle Fund

Elizabeth Yin is one of the more interesting VCs operating today. Before she co-founded Hustle Fund, she reviewed over 20,000 pitch decks as a partner at 500 Startups. (One of those was mine — although she didn’t invest.) I checked in with her recently while surveying new funds, and she had some fascinating things to say about how to effectively fund extremely young startups.

While at 500 Startups, Yin noticed a gap in the funding process: investors were mainly interested in investing in founders who already had a steady flow of revenue or product-market fit. Those who did receive funding at the very early, pre-seed stage all fit certain patterns: They had a particular kind of resume or were from certain geographical areas of the United States.

Elizabeth saw a missed opportunity.

“That was what I wanted to solve: how can we solve the really, really early-stage funding to make it fairer for everyone and also find signal where there generally isn’t any?” Elizabeth says. “How can we democratize pre-seed funding?”

Together with former 500 Startups partner Eric Bahn and NerdWallet veteran Shiyan Koh…