Don Hoang – Investing Philosophy
Don Hoang is a venture capital investor and former operator focused on backing structural shifts in technology — particularly across AI, fintech, and capital markets infrastructure.
This page outlines Don Hoang’s investing philosophy: how he evaluates founders, thinks about market cycles, and positions capital for long-term value creation.
Investing in Structural Shifts
As an investor, I focus on industrial-scale change.
Not incremental startups.
Not momentum trades.
Not narrative-driven hype.
The largest venture capital outcomes come from platform shifts — mobile, cloud, fintech infrastructure, and now AI.
Today, AI represents a foundational transformation in how value is created. It is automating knowledge work, compressing cost structures, and redefining competitive advantage across industries.
But not every AI company is investable.
My role as a venture capital investor is to identify the minority of companies that:
Become infrastructure, not features
Build embedded workflows, not surface-level tools
Compound data advantages over time
Generate durable gross margins
There will likely be dozens of generational winners in AI. Most companies won’t be among them.
The discipline is knowing the difference early.
Founder Quality Over Storytelling
As a venture capital investor, I prioritize founder quality over narrative quality.
Great storytelling raises capital.
Great execution builds enduring companies.
I look for founders who:
Possess unique, non-consensus insight
Ship product quickly without sacrificing clarity
Attract exceptional talent
Demonstrate capital discipline in both up and down markets
Improve their decision-making over time
In frothy markets, valuation follows narrative.
In corrections, performance determines survival.
My underwriting centers on long-term execution.
Distribution Is the Moat
Technology advantages compress.
Distribution compounds.
One of the core principles in my investing philosophy is that defensibility is rarely found in code alone.
Winning companies:
Control distribution channels
Own trusted relationships
Sit inside recurring workflows
Integrate deeply into customer operations
Particularly in AI, I evaluate:
Switching costs
Revenue durability
Customer dependency
Unit economics after infrastructure costs
A demo is not a moat. Embedded usage is.
Capital Cycles Create Opportunity
Every venture capital cycle follows a pattern:
Deployment → frenzy → overexpansion → correction → consolidation → leadership.
A correction does not invalidate a technological shift. It resets pricing and reallocates capital.
Some of the best investments in venture capital history were made:
After sentiment collapsed
After valuations compressed
When conviction replaced consensus
As an investor, I position for the phase after hype.
This is particularly relevant in AI, where capital intensity and valuation expansion are currently elevated. The long-term winners will emerge — but price discipline will matter.
Long-Term Alignment
I believe in long-term partnerships between investor and founder.
The best outcomes I’ve seen — at Uber, Revolut, and across venture-backed companies — were built through:
Alignment
Trust
Resilience
Multi-year commitment
My goal as an investor is not short-term markups. It’s to own meaningful positions in companies that compound for a decade or more.
Focus Areas
As a venture capital investor, my current areas of focus include:
AI infrastructure and vertical AI applications
Fintech and financial rails
Capital-light, margin-leveraged businesses
Workflow automation across regulated industries
These sectors sit at the intersection of technology, capital markets, and operational leverage — areas where my background as both an operator and investor provides differentiated perspective.
About Don Hoang
Don Hoang is a venture capital investor with experience scaling Uber globally and serving on the investment committee at Atomico’s $1.2bn fund. He has invested in over 40 companies across fintech, AI, and digital infrastructure.
He writes about AI, venture capital, capital cycles, and investing philosophy at don-hoang.com.
