How we invest
Thesis
At Oyster, we invest in companies that fit our philosophy.
Our standard check size is $250k, with some wiggle room, from Pre-Seed to Series Seed. We typically continue to invest in our portfolio companies from Series A to C and beyond. We can write checks up to $5M+.
We generally don’t lead rounds, but when we do we’ll invest $500k to $2M. When we lead, we join the board as a Director or Observer.
Our values
We help our companies in situations where they can leverage our areas of expertise. Common scenarios include:
Cross-border expansion: we often help western businesses expand to Asia, or vice-versa, leveraging Sophie’s background in cross-border M&A and strong network in greater China.
Fundraising strategy: we help founders position themselves for later-stage rounds. We help strategize; and when ready we can introduce Series A investors. We can bring in both co-investors and capital.
Internal affairs: Kenneth’s operating experience running engineering and business teams has given him the ability to jump in to help with a myriad of internal issues from designing stock incentive plans, to mediating founder disputes and optimizing management structures. Our advice focuses on team health & morale, which is paramount to long-term success.
We check in regularly, and jump in when there’s a need that calls for our help. The rest of the time, we’re pretty hands off and trust our founders that they know best how to run their business.
Policies
We happily invest in companies anywhere in the world, but have a preference for standard jurisdictions and structures (e.g. Delaware C Corps, Hong Kong or Singapore Limited companies, SAFEs, etc.)
We don’t invest in markets we don’t understand well, or markets that require deep specialization to evaluate. For example, we generally don’t invest in healthcare and biotech startups.
While we do invest in crypto-currency and blockchain companies, we very rarely invest in crypto-tokens without an equity component.
We don’t invest via SPVs.
By mandate, we don’t invest in mainland China.
We don’t invest in uncapped notes and safes.