Bill Tai

Funder Name: Bill Tai
Funder Type: Individual
Funder Location: USA
Funder Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kitevc
Funder URL:
Funder Overview:

Bill Tai has been funding startups as a Venture Capitalist since 1991 and has had 23 of his startups become listed companies.

Originally trained as a chip designer, he joined LSI Logic, a seminal Silicon Valley startup formed by the CEO of Fairchild Semiconductor after earning a BSEE with Honors from University of Illinois. After an MBA at Harvard he was issued Badge #A001 during the formation of TSMC (NYSE:TSM), now among the world’s 10 most valuable companies (~$580 Billion market value as of 2020).

He co-founded Treasure Data (acquired by ARM/Softbank) as Chairman and is among the first investors in Canva, Color Genomics, Dapper Labs (originator of Cryptokitties and NBA Topshot), Safety Culture, Tweetdeck/Twitter, Wish.com and Zoom Video, where he was the first backer to commit at the company's formation. He is Board Chairman of Hut8 Mining (NASDAQ: HUT), North America's largest publicly listed Bitcoin mining operation.

He was Founding Chairman & CEO of iAsiaWorks (IPO via Goldman Sachs & Morgan Stanley) and Founding Chairman of IPinfusion (Tokyo:4813). He has served as Board Director of 8 publicly listed companies (AWRD EGHT HUT8 IAWK NPIX TMTA TUNE and IMGO) that grew from startups he funded at their formative stages.

He is founding Chairman of ACTAI Global 501(c)3, a community of Athletes Conservationists Technologists Artists & Innovators supporting 1) environmental conservation and 2) economic empowerment via entrepreneurship.

He is creator or cofounder of the worldwide startup competition www.ExtremeTechChallenge.org, the annual www.NeckerBlockchainSummit.com and the annual www.WestTechFest.com, a thousand person technology festival held annually in Perth Western Australia where he is an Adjunct Professor at Curtin University focused on “innovation and economic development”.