Month: September 2023

Bags 2 Riches

“Bags 2 Riches”, brought to you by Simplii Financial, is a docuseries that features the origins of seven notable immigrants’ journeys while highlighting their new lives in Canada. The series revisits the lows and celebrates the highs as each individual recounts the challenges they faced.

I am honoured to be featured alongside NBA star Chris Boucher, Syrian-born “refugee” chocolatier Tareq Hadhad, broadcast pioneer Shushma Datt, first 3-sport-Canadian-Olympian Georgia Simmerling, and a few others. We are all immigrants who call Canada home, and we all aim to contribute to this incredible country.

The docuseries was a massive success, so last evening the “Bags 2 Riches” team brought us together in real life to celebrate with a few hundred guests.

Back row, from left to right: Eva Lau, Allen Lau, Chris Boucher, Georgia Simmerling, Tareq Hadhad; Front row, from left to right: Shushma Datt, Sangita Patel

Tareq shared how the war destroyed his family’s chocolate business, which was one of the largest in the region at the time. As a refugee in Canada, he rebuilt everything from the ground up. Peace by Chocolate is now one of the largest chocolate companies in Canada.

If you think his inspirational story is like a Hollywood movie, you are not wrong. You can now watch “Peace by Chocolate” (the movie) on your favourite streaming service.

Chris revisited his early struggles. He occasionally needed to ride the overnight bus just to stay warm for the cost of a fare before achieving success, including helping the Raptors win the championship in 2019.

Shushma, Georgia, and I also revisited our own experiences, moderated by the amazing Sangita Patel. The takeaway? Follow your passion, lean into your strengths, work hard, don’t give up, and dream big.

Other important takeaways: 1) Chris is incredibly tall! 2) Like me, Sangita is an electrical engineer, which I didn’t know. She is now one of the most engaging media personalities in Canada.

Thanks again to Simplii Financial for giving us the platform to share our stories!

P.S. All 7 episodes of “Bags 2 Riches” can be viewed on YouTube. I know you’ve probably seen enough of me. But, if you’re curious, catch Eva and on episode 4 🙂

Andy Lau at TIFF

After so many years, the two A Laus finally met 😂

Yesterday at TIFF, in the world’s premiere of The Movie Emperor, one of the A Laus watched the other A Lau cheekily cast as a movie star, also named Lau, seeking relevance via a film festival–baiting art-house role in director Ning Hao’s sharp satire of movie industry pretension.

Equally importantly, it was an honour for me to witness the one and only Andy Lau receiving the prestigious TIFF Tribute Award live. 🏆

From left to right: Karina Lee, Rick Mak, Eva Lau, Allen Lau
From left to right: Maggie Mok, HKETO (Toronto) Director Emily Mo, Eva Lau, Karina Lee

I wasn’t in that many pictures as I was too busy taking pictures and enjoying the show. 📸🎥

Lab2Market Deeptech Expo

On September 25, I will be the keynote speaker at Lab2Market Deeptech Expo.

While many associate Wattpad primarily with storytelling (and they’re not wrong – after all, I am on IMDb!), it is important to highlight that Wattpad has also been an AI-driven company for well over a decade, long before AI became cool! 😉 We built our own “Story DNA” AI technology to generate insights from the world’s largest and most diverse sets of stories and data. Without AI, managing our billions of story uploads would be impossible.

It is also worth noting that I am an electrical engineer, which means I know a thing or two about semiconductors, energy, telecommunication, etc. In fact, all three partners at Two Small Fish Ventures, i.e. Eva, Brandon and myself, are engineers with BOTH software and hardware experience. We’ve been backing commercialized AI, semiconductor and advanced material companies like Ideogram, Ada, BenchSci, Zinite, Sheertex and many more for years.

As an engineer-turn-CEO-turn-investor who has been involved in deep tech for a long time, I will share a broad perspective of where deep tech is heading. Look forward to it!

Story Protocol

Earlier today, TSFV announced our latest investment: Story Protocol. In short, Story Protocol is “Git for creative IP.” We backed the founders in late 2022, when the company was operating in stealth mode. Now, we’re committing additional funding in Story Protocol’s latest round, led by Andreessen Horowitz. So far, the company raised over US$54 million in funding. 

Being part of the founding team of Wattpad – the world’s largest storytelling platform – the Two Small Fish Ventures team is especially excited about Story Protocol and what it means for creators and the industry as a whole. The internet is a co-creation and remixing machine, and this trend will be supercharged by Generative AI. Story Procol is building the core infrastructure for this era.

On a more personal note, I am also super excited to work with its co-founder Seung-yoon Lee. We know S.Y. Lee well from our Wattpad days, as he was the co-founder and CEO of Radish, a direct Wattpad competitor. Although we were once competitors, we’re now partners ready to usher in a new era for IP together. 

Please read Brandon’s blog post for more details.

Union Square Ventures

It feels like it’s been ages since we were last here! In 2011, Union Square Ventures’ Albert Wenger led Wattpad’s Series A, our first institutional round. throughout the subsequent decade, Ivan and I made frequent visits to the USV office, be it for board meetings, the CEO Summit, or just casual get-togethers whenever we were in NYC.

Yet, my last visit was just before the pandemic hit. And after Wattpad‘s acquisition in 2021, circumstances didn’t permit me to return.

Until now.

USV has backed many iconic companies that have become household names — Twitter, Tumblr, Zynga, Cloudflare, Twilio, MongoDB, Etsy, Duolingo, to name a few.

Becoming an investor in these companies at a mature stage, or post-IPO, is straightforward. But what sets USV apart is that this team has spotted these future giants before anybody else, time and again. Often, these companies were budding startups with just a few team members and pre-revenue. To illustrate, when USV placed their bet on Wattpad, we had fewer than 10 on the team. While we weren’t exactly pre-revenue, it would still be years before many of our current revenue streams took off.

Throughout this journey, our learnings haven’t just come from the USV team. We’ve peer-learned so much from the network of USV portfolio CEOs and founders. The speed, intensity, skills and tenacity needed to navigate these rocket ships are on another level. A single misstep can derail years of hard work. What is at stake is unbelievably high. Interacting with these founders was tremendously helpful to me. I can testify that being part of the USV network played a part in Wattpad’s eventual success.

Post-Wattpad, the Laus has re-entered the USV fold as an LP. We’re also thrilled to be collaborating with USV’s Andy Weissman on an exciting new investment. Stay tuned for more updates on this front!

Steampunk Covers

I’ve long wanted to craft a steampunk story on Wattpad. The allure of this science fiction subgenre, which fuses futuristic tech with 19th-century steam-driven aesthetics, has always captivated me.

But the initial draft didn’t meet my expectations. I lacked the time for refining, and equally challenging was crafting an appealing steampunk cover.

That’s changed now.

Take a look at these covers I designed using Ideogram.ai, the newest addition to Two Small Fish Ventures‘ portfolio.

Ideogram.ai empowers individuals with generative AI, enhancing their creative capabilities.

Here’s how simple it is: I just typed:

Text says: “My Steampunk Story”. A male and a female wearing steampunk style fashion in Europe, 4k, cyberpunk., 3d render, cinematic, photo, typography.

…and voila!

What sets Ideogram apart is its ability to address a longstanding issue among popular AI image generators: rendering text in a spectrum of colours, fonts, sizes, and styles within images. Whether it’s lettering on signs or crafting company logos, it’s all achievable with a few keystrokes or taps.

Previously, I’d spend hours attempting to create a passable cover using tools I was hardly proficient in. Now, I simply describe my vision, and a polished cover is instantly brought to life. The process couldn’t be more effortless.

Ideogram.ai

Last week, Two Small Fish Ventures announced our most recent investment in Ideogram AI, a Toronto-based generative AI company. The company was founded by former Google Brain researchers and launched with $16.5 million USD ($22.3 million CAD) in seed funding led by Andreessen Horowitz and Index Ventures. The round was actually closed at the beginning of 2023. We can finally talk about it now, as the company was in stealth.

The founders of Ideogram – Mohammad Norouzi, William Chan, Chitwan Saharia and Jonathan Ho – are renowned scientists who pioneered research in generative AI text-to-image systems. They’re also “the brains” behind Google Brain’s Imagen (pun fully intended).

Ideogram’s new product is transformative as it has successfully addressed an issue that has plagued many popular AI image generators to date: producing reliable text in varying colours, fonts, sizes, and styles within an image – be it lettering on signs or company logos – with just a few clicks, words, or taps.

For instance, when I typed:

“Cartoonish happy animals with a big sign that says ‘animal kingdom’, vibrant, graffiti, typography.”

The result was excellent. I can already imagine so many new use cases that weren’t possible before.

Check it out on Ideogram.ai.

Delrina, ATI, Wattpad and Sheertex

The stories behind this picture we took in Muskoka a few weeks ago captured four incredible world-dominating startups.

From left to right: Sally Daub, Zak Homuth, Katherine Homuth, Eva Lau, Allen Lau, Dennis Bennie


Eva and I started our careers at Delrina in the ’90s. Delrina was a fledgling startup with a modest team of just over 20 when she joined. When I joined nine months later, it reached nearly 100 people. Less than four years later, when Dennis Bennie, the CEO and co-founder, brokered a half-a-billion-dollar deal with Symantec, the company employed just under 800 people and became one of the world’s top 10 PC software companies. With over 90% of the market share, Delrina’s products were so dominant that we crushed all our competitors. Truly legendary. 

Post-acquisition, Eva went to work for ATI, where she crossed paths with Sally Daub, then served as its General Counsel. ATI and its chief rival Nvidia emerged as the two world’s leading graphics chip players. In 2006, ATI was acquired by AMD for $5.4 billion. The transaction is one of the largest Canadian tech acquisitions. Probably still in the top three to date.

I’ll be succinct about Wattpad—it’s a story many are familiar with. We pioneered mobile reading, user-generated fiction, AI-and-audience-backed movies and many areas that resulted in billions of story uploads in over 50 languages, numerous world’s most-watched movies and 100 million users in virtually every corner of this planet.

Katherine and Zak Homuth’s Sheertex needs no introduction. In seven short years since its founding in Muskoka, the company became a world-famous household name and synonymous with unbreakable pantyhose. Three years ago, it took over the largest hosiery factory in Canada. To keep up with the demand, it is now moving into a space in Montreal three times larger. There is still so much headroom for growth.

These four Canadian companies are all world-dominating category creators.

As a passenger on the rocket ship, being the captain of the rocket ship and funding the rocket ship are three different skills. And yet, they’re intertwined, each amplifying the other. If you have never been on a rocket ship, it would be hard to imagine what a rocket ship looks like and spot the next one.

Eva and I have been immensely fortunate to wear multiple hats as employees, founders, and investors in many rocket ships. The timeless adage rings true: Surround yourself with the best. If you aim to be the best, work for the best and work with the best will help you learn from the best.