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Dave Lu is a veteran of the technology industry, having worked for over two decades at…
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Dave Lu shared thisGrowing up, I had to remind my immigrant mom that we were American too. When I was younger, my mom would use 美國人 (American) interchangeably with white person. I always had to correct her and tell her that she was an American too. Even though she was a naturalized citizen, she was just as American as anyone else. That was the beauty of this country. Regardless of how much nativists want to ignore the Constitution and villainize immigrants, they are still Americans, whether they like it or not. Immigrants are what make America great and we see that every day. Today is the first day of AAPI Heritage Month. And I'm proud to be both American AND Asian. I have always considered myself lucky to have the superpowers from two cultures. According to the newest STAATUS report released today by The Asian American Foundation, 77% of Asians believe that being born in the U.S. is not important to being truly American, the highest number of any group. The majority of Asian Americans are first or second generation immigrants, so they are truly grateful for the opportunities that this country has given them and their families. Most left behind their family and loved ones to come to America with little to nothing to start a better life. They know that being truly American means more than waving a flag or singing an anthem. I wouldn't be where I am today if I wasn't an American. Asian Americans have contributed so much to this country from starting small businesses to building the most valuable company in the world. We are responsible for breakthroughs in science and medicine. We have changed the American palate with their culinary influence. Our influence in fashion and design are evident all around us. The STAATUS Index survey, conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago, reveals stark gaps in how U.S. adults think about the impact of federal policies on Asian Americans and the growing cultural influence of AAPIs. As we approach the 250th birthday of America, we are still divided on what it means to be "truly American". But my hope is that we will someday be moving towards uniting again after this nightmare is over. I am so grateful to the important work that Norman Chen and the team at The Asian American Foundation are doing to shine the light on this data and give us voice. Thank you Joy Moh, Prisca Bae, Anita Nagpal Schwartz, CFRE, Ruby Yip, Sam Hyun, MBA, MPP and the rest of the crew for all you do!
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Dave Lu shared thisThis is why representation matters. A random Asian man in an acapella video shows up and this is what’s in the comments: “Jackie Chan’s doppelgänger took me all the way out.” “That was definitely Ke Huy Quan.” “Personally thought it was Data from the Goonies…” “Nah man that was Long Duk Dong from Sweet Sixteen movie.” I was just waiting for a Shang Chi comment. He looks nothing like any of them, but we all look the same right? We’ve been dealing with this our whole lives. I thought it would have gotten better since I was a kid being called Bruce Lee. The only Asian woman in the room was always Lucy Liu or Connie Chung. It’s exhausting. Ask any Asian guy who plays pick up basketball how many times he gets called Jeremy Lin. Back in the day it was Yao Ming. People who think this is funny or think we’re being too sensitive are the same ones who are fine minimizing others and making them feel invisible. When you see racist microaggressions like this, call it out for yourself and for others. Until we have more representation, we won’t be reduced to a handful of people any more. Make yourself known and show them exactly who you are.
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Dave Lu shared thisAmazing to see our Hyphen Capital portfolio company Nex be named one of Time Magazine's 10 Most Influential Entertainment Companies of 2026 alongside Spotify, YouTube, Warner Music Group and Netflix. It's a testament to the leadership of David Lee and the hard work of the Nex team. Tony Sung P. K. Chan Alex Wu
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Dave Lu shared thisFor all of the Indian and Chinese Americans who voted for this President and somehow still support this administration, please read this. I know the President posts all sorts of offensive and ludicrous content to his Truth Social that you ignore and write off as him just being “crazy” but not serious. But today he posted a Newsmax transcript of Michael Savage, a lunatic white supremacist, and his rant about birthright citizenship. He called ACLU lawyer Cecilia Wang a snake and goes on to insinuate that Chinese and Indian immigrants are destroying our country. I know you don’t want to pay higher taxes, but is that worth having an administration that feels this way about you? How do you rationalize this for tax savings? Meanwhile your kids are in danger of being victims of hate crimes because he stokes resentment and hatred for immigrants, women and people of color. Our children see how he treats women reporters and how he is erasing our histories in museums. Is that worth a few thousand dollars a year? "A baby here becomes an instant citizen, and then they bring in their entire family from China, or India, or some other hell-hole on the planet," he wrote in the letter. They've done more damage to this nation than all the mafia families put together. In my unhumble opinion. Gangsters with laptops. They've robbed us blind, treated us like second-class citizens, let the trud world triumph, stepped on our flag, et cetera.” “Earlier when I saw this going on and listened to the snake from the ACLU Ms. Wang, attorney Wang, she speaks so eloquently. Supreme Court arguments are just legal tricksters. I wrote about fighting each other. Our nation is being overrun with Chinese coming here just to drop a baby on our shores to then bring in the entire family. How about some common sense in a bankrupt nation. ACLU Attorney Wang is pushing to destroy our national identity, turn us into a colony of China, but it’s not limited to China, it’s also India. They’re also abusing it. I used to be a great supporter of Indians in India until I opened my eyes up to what’s going on here. White men need not apply to jobs in the state of California. Nevermind in high tech. I don’t care what your qualifications are. You’re not getting a job at High Tech in California. Your chances are nil. You have to be from India or China because almost all the internal mechanisms are set up to run by Indians and Chinese. I know it for a fact, and you don’t have to argue with it. If you don’t know what you’re talking about, don’t argue with me.”
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Dave Lu shared thisIt's incredible to see how creative founders like Eddie Jiao, Zain Shah and Drew Carr are rethinking the way we interact with computers and AI. So many people fit their ideas into existing paradigms and boxes because it's what they know. A website, a mobile app, a chat prompt. But what if you wiped away all the interfaces that you've been anchored to in the past? With AI and the increasing amount of compute, you can break out of the status quo and try something bold and mind-blowing like they did with Flipbook. I love seeing the next generation of Asian Americans being unafraid to take bets on themselves by building their own houses instead of bumping their heads up against bamboo ceilings. Founders like Grant Lee from Gamma. Coco Mao from OpenArt AI. Aravind Srinivas and Johnny Ho from Perplexity. Jesse Zhang and Ashwin Sreenivas from Decagon. If you're building your own house and need someone to take a bet on you, Hyphen Capital would love to talk. DM me!Dave Lu shared thisWhat if your computer were entirely streamed to you as pixels from a model? Zain Shah, Drew Carr, and I set out to build a new way of interacting with computers and AI - one that’s dramatically more visual and adaptive than our current Internet and GUIs. We’re calling it Flipbook and you can play with an early prototype of it today. https://flipbook.page In the early days of computing, many people believed that the command line was the final interface - the most natural way to use a computer. The early concepts for Graphical User Interfaces in the 60s were impractical and used too much processing power that some believed could’ve been better spent doing real work. But eventually the cost of processing power went down, and those Graphics were what allowed computers to reach the hands of the many. Today’s Flipbook is still slow and limited. But we believe it’s an early glimpse of a more flexible and powerful way of using AI. Hope you enjoy playing with it :)
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Dave Lu shared thisAnother example of the “glass cliff”: Asha Sharma was named the new CEO of XBox as the division is facing declining console sales (-32% in Q2), falling revenue (-9% in December), layoffs and studio closures, and losing ground to upstart competitors like Nex Playground. As I mentioned in my previous post about Debby Soo, the glass cliff phenomenon is when women and minorities are only appointed to leadership positions during times of crisis, downturn, or turmoil, setting them up for a higher likelihood of failure. They can also be conveniently scapegoated if things inevitably get worse. And if they are successful, as OpenTable was because Debby turned it around, they can take credit for the win. Phil Spencer's tenure as Microsoft Gaming CEO was marked by a shift toward cloud/subscription services over hardware. “I do think as we look at the next decade of gaming, as we think about reaching the over 2 billion people on the planet who play games, many of those people won’t be buying consoles and gaming PCs,” Spencer said. He increased the XBox Live subscription by 50% in October 2025 and raised prices on consoles. Meanwhile the Nex Playground, a brand new console targeted at families, outsold the XBox over the holidays. Now Sharma, who has no prior gaming industry experience and was President of the CoreAI product at Microsoft, is now charged with turning the gaming division around. Despite anyone looking at her and claiming she’s a DEI hire, she is more qualified than most men for any job. Before joining Microsoft, she was Chief Operating Officer at Instacart and VP of Product at Meta, overseeing Messenger and Instagram Direct. She also serves on the boards of The Home Depot and Coupang. If anyone can turn this sinking ship around, it’s this woman.
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Dave Lu shared thisThe "glass cliff" phenomenon occurs when women or people of color are elevated to leadership positions more often in times of crisis than during more prosperous times, setting them up for failure. Now that the pandemic is over and diversity is under attack, we're starting to see that pendulum swing back the status quo again. But when you're as good as Debby Soo, you become virtually untouchable. We both still joke about how my LinkedIn post about her being announced as the new CEO of OpenTable got 10x the impressions as hers. What wasn't as funny was that she was given the job when the restaurant industry was facing a once-in-a-lifetime existential crisis with the pandemic. My own startup was working in the restaurant industry, and no one knew what to expect or do. Debby has always been fearless for as long as I've known her, so she was unfazed and rolled up her sleeves. If these were the circumstances that got her the job, so be it. She fully embraced the challenge, not only of an industry in turmoil, but of turning around a company that was seen as a dinosaur. When Debby took over OpenTable, it was widely perceived to be a monopoly that stopped innovating. Upstarts like Resy and Tock were winning over all the hot new restaurants that people wanted to go to. OpenTable became a Groupon for struggling restaurants. Users were leaving for competitors. As a result, it was losing business from their real customers, the restaurants who pay them as much as $6,000 a year. Restaurants hated OpenTable. During the start of the pandemic, they were forcing some customers to sign three-year contracts, not even knowing if they'd survive that long. During her first two years, Debby flew around the country to meet restaurant owners and was berated in meeting after meeting. She knew that OpenTable had ignored their real customers: the restaurants that pay them, not the diners. Their mission statement was "We make it easier for people to experience the world through dining." And as she says, "Restaurants pay us. If they're suffering, we suffer." She changed the mission statement: "We serve restaurants so they can serve the world." Since she took over, OpenTable has won the business of some of the top restaurant groups in the country and world. Many of the hottest reservations are now only available on OpenTable. She has built a partnership with Visa to attract their customers with the Visa Dining Collection for exclusive reservations. She launched OpenTable Icons. We just got back from Mexico City, and all of the hottest restaurants were on OpenTable from Maximo to Masala y Maiz. She has won over restaurateurs all over the world and turned around a sinking ship with her steadfast leadership and vision. It was never easy, but she was relentless and dare I say, inevitable. For more on Debby's story, check out our conversation on the Hyphen Nation podcast. Link in comments.
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Dave Lu shared thisAs a member of the Apex for Youth Leadership Council, I couldn’t be more thrilled that our annual gala raised $3.65 million for low-income and immigrant Asian American students to unlock their full potential and open doors they would otherwise not be available to them. During a time when federal funding is being cut to diverse populations in need, people showed up and showed out to break fundraising records. It was amazing to see one role model, gold medalist Eileen Gu present another role model, Michael Chung, the award as this year’s well-deserved Gala honoree. Michael serves on the Leadership Council with me as someone who has raised millions of dollars for the Asian American community as the co-chair of Taste of Asia. Michael embodies the exponential life. Not only is he the Global Co-head of Public Equities at Millenium, one of the biggest hedge funds in the world with $80B in AUM. On top of being a finance leader and philanthropist, he also co-founded one of my favorite restaurants in New York, Nami Nori. The restaurant group now has five locations serving the best temakis (hand rolls) in New York and New Jersey. It’s one of Pharrell Williams favorite restaurants in the world and last time I was there, he brought Rosé from Blackpink with him to eat! Needless to say, Michael is doing so much to serve the community and we are grateful for him. Congrats to Jiyoon Mary Chung and the amazing team Wendy Hu-Au Kim Thai Yaya Yuan Pavan Makhija for all the important work they do. And to Preeti Sriratana for his many years board leadership!Dave Lu shared this“I didn't know I would leave this very room four years ago with a mentor of my own.” 4 years ago, Eileen Gu stood on this very stage as an honoree. 4 years later, she came back to the same stage. This time, to honor him, Michael Chung as the Apex for Youth 2026 Gala Honoree.
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Dave Lu shared thisI graduated from the University of Pennsylvania almost 30 years ago with a finance degree from Wharton. It was the best undergraduate business degree in the world at the time and arguably still is. While I am grateful for the experience, if I had to do it all over again, I probably would have chosen differently. While going to Wharton taught me the fundamentals of business at a young age, and gave me a leg up on my peers when I started my analyst program as a management consultant, they all would eventually catch up. Going to Penn may have made me more polished and business savvy early on in my career, but it also made me a lot more risk averse. The brand name and expensive tuition put pressure on me to make the most of my degree. My parents sacrificed so much to get me there, that I felt like I owed it to them. That meant playing it safe and staying on a track, that could eventually lead to being a public company CEO. On the other hand, the most S&P 500 CEOs have no bachelor's degree at all. They dropped out of college and founded their companies like Mark Zuckerberg (Meta), Jim Bidzos (Verisign) and Michael Dell (Dell Computers). Or they started from the bottom like Ron Vochris, who was a forklift driver at Price Club and is now the CEO of Costco. And then there are outliers like David Ellison, who was a nepo baby. For the most part though, being promoted to a public company CEO is an extremely different art and skill set than building your own company and taking it public. The latter also has a lot more skin in the game and more equity ownership than the former. So I would take a list like this with a grain of salt and look deeper than the surface. In a world that will be dominated by AI, where many skills like accounting and financial modeling will be commoditized, it will be much more crucial to focus on EQ and creativity to succeed in business. I would encourage kids to study liberal arts and learn about things that will make you more interesting and well-rounded as a person. Raw analytical power can only get you so far before you hit a ceiling. People skills are what get people to the top. If you are one-dimensional and boring, your career may stall. The Ivy League degree gets you into the room with a lot of the right people who will increase your odds of success, but you don't necessarily need a fancy degree for that either. If you notice, Stanford, MIT, Duke and other top undergraduate programs are not listed. That doesn't mean that they are not wildly successful (building private companies, venture capital, etc.). Building something from nothing is arguably much harder than being hired for an existing job. Success is defined differently for different people, as it should be. These lists are fine for starting conversations, but be careful to give it too much weight when deciding on where to send your child to college. You should decide based on who they are and where they will grow the most as a person.
Dave Lu commented on a post
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Looking forward to this conversation and meeting you all!
Dave Lu commented on a post
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For the full 2026 STAATUS Report visit: https://share.taaf.org/STAATUS2026
Dave Lu replied to a comment
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🔮 El Wong 🔮 exactly! Take up your space and don’t make yourself small when they try to make you feel small!
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Dave Lu liked thisDave Lu liked thisIf I could only teach my kids 2 skills at 16, here's what I'd choose: 1. Systems thinking A few weeks ago, my 21-year-old Ryker told me "Dad, I love coding. But I'm realizing I'm not going to code for much longer…" He's right. But the job has never just been writing code. Your job is to solve problems. Identifying what problem to solve, where the problem actually lives in - code, firmware, hardware, sensors - and which one to touch to fix it. Ryker is an electrical engineer. He writes the code, builds the hardware it runs on, breaks it, and rebuilds it. That loop is where real intuition lives. Not in the prompt alone. That is systems thinking: seeing across all the layers instead of going deep in just one. You can know every instrument in an orchestra and still have no idea what the symphony will sound like. Systems thinkers create that symphony. 2. Learning to learn Most people spend the first 20 years of their life learning, and then switch to executing. The best founders I've backed can toggle back and forth. Take Andrew Feldman. He'd already built and sold SeaMicro to AMD. He could have coasted. Instead he dropped into the catacombs of wafer-scale compute - a field almost no one believed was possible - and spent years learning physics, materials science, and thermal dynamics from first principles. Different domains but the same loop. Build, break, learn, rebuild. The best founders drop into new domains from scratch, unafraid to look foolish on the way in. Learning can no longer be a phase, especially today.
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Dave Lu liked thisThank you Dave Lu as we kick of AAPI Heritage Month and sharing your reflections. The data you share is illuminating. I encourage you to check out this post. #AANHPICommunity
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Dave Lu liked thisHappy Day 1 of AAPI Heritage Month all! I, along with many Asian Americans, have had the same experience Dave Lu lays out below.
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Dave Lu reacted on thisDave Lu reacted on thisAAAIM is thrilled to announce the appointment of Elizabeth “Liz” Yan as Chief Operating Officer! Liz joins AAAIM after 20 years of experience in the New York City investment industry. Most recently, she served as Senior Director at First Eagle Investments, where she covered institutional relationships across the Eastern and Midwest regions of the United States. Liz also dedicates significant professional and personal time to serving the Asian American community. She serves on the Board of Directors and as a high school mentor for Apex for Youth, a local nonprofit organization whose mission is to empower underserved Asian American and immigrant youth from low-income families in New York City. “It is a great honor to be joining such an esteemed team at AAAIM, alongside its highly respected Board Members and National Advisory Council members,” said Liz. “I am grateful for the trust and support in continuing to build upon a legacy forged through two decades of persistence, community strength, and joyful celebration. I look forward to launching the start of this new chapter in my career as we celebrate the beginning of the AANHPI Heritage Month.” Alyssa Lee Carrie Shen CMP CMM CED Amy Chen Alex Chi Brenda Chia David Chiang Gordon Chun Ching Liao Jay Eum Chris Kojima David Lam York Lo, CAIA, CIMA Linda Luu Prashant Mehrotra Sona Menon Bill Park Jim Park Deepa Patil Heidi Poon, CFA, CAIA Sanjiv Shah David Sheng Susan Soh Sammy Suzuki Sophia Tsai Valerie Wong Fountain, CFA Suzanne Wong Johnny Wu
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Dave Lu reacted on thisDave Lu reacted on thisAKA — All Kinds of Asians — is Ontra's employee resource group for Pan-Asian, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander employees and allies. They run monthly lunches, quarterly virtual events, and in-person local gatherings — building community in the in-between moments, not just the milestone ones. This May, in celebration of ANHPI Heritage Month, AKA is hosting a fireside chat with Dave Lu: tech leader, investor, Emmy Award-winning producer, co-founder of Stand with Asian Americans, and founder of the Asian American Founders Circle. The conversation covers identity, leadership, and what it means to live with intention. It's what AKA is here to do: help members connect, grow, and contribute to a more equitable Ontra. Happy ANHPI Heritage Month from AKA and everyone at Ontra.
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Dave Lu reacted on thisDave Lu reacted on thisThe people who build bridges between East and West don't just close distance. They open futures. And they invite all of us to walk through. That's what I kept thinking yesterday at Stanford APARC's Taiwan Program conference. Crossing between two worlds takes more than intelligence. It takes empathy. Curiosity. And the kind of courage that shows up every day — in two languages, two cultures, two sets of unspoken rules — until people on both sides start to see each other clearly, and then start to build together. The room was full of people who have done exactly that. Pathfinders. Role models. Bridge-builders who have spent decades widening the road for everyone behind them. A few moments I want to hold onto: Steve Chen — my advisor and role model. I've watched him give insightful interviews many times, but it was the first time I saw him moderate. Authentic, thoughtful, and remarkably good at weaving investment, technology, and talent policy into one coherent thread. His journey is an inspiring bridge between east and west itself! So grateful that he is actively showing us how and leading the way! Shih-Ching Tsou, the director, writer, and producer of Left-Handed Girl, the nominee of Academy Award for the best international picture. I told her how much I loved her film — ten years in the making, shot on an iPhone. She smiled and said: actually, the project is twenty years old. It took her 20 years to fundraise and bring it to life! That kind of resilience is what bridge-building looks like up close — long horizons, deep conviction, and the determination to keep going until the work crosses oceans and moves people on the other side. The gathering and the conversations made me believe: When bridges exist, more people cross. When role models exist, more people dare. When pathfinders go first, the road behind them widens. East and West aren't a zero-sum game — they're a chance for the best of both to compound. The people building that future are doing some of the most important work of our time. They deserve our recognition. More than that, they deserve our courage — the willingness to follow them, build alongside them, and one day become bridges ourselves. Grateful to have spent yesterday with old friends Dave Lu, Chris Loh, Kate Yang, PhD, and new friends Mason Yu, Tony Wang, Jonathan Liao, Jason Lin, Peter Lai, Andrew Chau, ILARIA CHAN at the intersection of democracy, technology, and culture — and grateful for everyone in that room widening what's possible for the rest of us!
Experience & Education
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Hyphen Capital
View Dave’s full experience
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Licenses & Certifications
Volunteer Experience
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Volunteer
Frontline Foods
- Present 6 years 3 months
Disaster and Humanitarian Relief
Launched FeedtheFrontlines.org which merged our efforts with Frontline Foods to feed frontline workers during the COVID-19 pandemic around the country while supporting local restaurants who have been devastated. Partnered with Jose Andrés and World Central Kitchen. Frontline Foods has raised over $1M.
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Founder
Asian American Founders Circle
- Present 15 years
Civil Rights and Social Action
Created a community for Asian American founders to network and connect with other founders who have a shared experience and background. Our founders have started companies and organizations ranging from tech companies to consumer products to non-profits to restaurants and more. Members include the founders of YouTube, Kabam, Boba Guys, Twitch and many more.
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Industry Advisor
Taiwan Startup Stadium 台灣新創競技場
- Present 10 years 6 months
Science and Technology
Advising and coaching technology founders in Taiwan.
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Mentor
StartX.
- Present 11 years
Mentor teams of entrepreneurs in the Stanford StartX accelerator program.
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Founder
Drink for a Cause
- Present 18 years
Social Services
Co-founded Drink for a Cause in 2008, a monthly happy hour that raises money for non-profit organizations and charities by partnering with local venues. 200-300 regular attendance and over $150,000 donated to important causes such as the Susan G. Komen Fund, Partners In Health (Haiti), San Francisco Firefighters Toy Drive, SAGE, Japan Tsunami and Earthquake Victims and many more.
Honors & Awards
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Stanford GSB Centennial Alumni Catalyst Award
Stanford Graduate School of Business
The Stanford Graduate School of Business' first peer-to-peer recognition program, sponsored by the GSB Alumni Association. This initiative shines a spotlight on alumni whose peers—friends, classmates, and fellow graduates—nominated them for their extraordinary contributions. Each honoree exemplifies the commitment of the GSB community to change lives, change organizations, and change the world. This recognition was given to 100 of the 34,000 Stanford business school alumni.
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Alumni Award
Stanford Asian American Awards
The Stanford Asian American Awards were created in 2000 by the Asian American Activities Center (A°C) Advisory Board, which serves as an advocacy board to the Asian, Asian American, and larger Stantora communities. The awards ceremony brings the Stanford community together to recognize Asian American faculty, alumni, staff, and students for their tremendous achievements, services and dedication.
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Community Impact Award
Ascend Northern California
The Ascend NorCal Impact Award celebrates individuals who exemplify Professional Achievement & Community Advancement.
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2023 Emmy Award
The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences
Sports Emmy Award winner for Outstanding Short Sports Documentary for 38 at the Garden
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CACF Catalyst for Change Award 2022
Coalition for Asian American Children + Families
The Catalyst for Change Awards honor Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) leaders who are a force for positive change in their communities and their fields of work.
Languages
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Chinese
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Spanish
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Organizations
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Taiwan X
Co-Founder
- PresentLaunched initiative with YouTube founder, Steve Chen, to bolster and mentor entrepreneurs and startups in Taiwan by building relationships across the Pacific with a community of veteran entrepreneurs and experienced investors with a personal or professional interest in Taiwan.
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Asian-American Founders Circle
Founder
- PresentStarted hosting gatherings to bring together the community of Asian-American founders in the Bay Area. The group includes people who have started businesses and organizations across technology, fashion, food, consumer products and non-profit. Currently we have 100+ founders involved.
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