Dave Lu

Managing Partner of Hyphen Capital | Host of Hyphen Nation | Co-founder of Asian Leadership Center and Stand With Asian Americans | Emmy-winning Producer of 38 at the Garden | Advisory Board of Smithsonian APAC

📍 United States🔄 Updated September 2026💼 10 investments📅 5 years investing🗓 Last invested Jan 2024
VC🌍 United States
10
Total investments
1
Early stage
4
Mid stage
2
Late stage
5y
Years active

Portfolio

10 investments · sorted by recency
All investments
Early stage
Mid stage
Late stage
Investor
2024
Sandbox VR is the future of entertainment. With over 80 global combined retail and franchise locations, the most advanced VR technology, premium AAA experiences developed in-house, and an exclusive Netflix collaboration, we’re the most successful and fastest growing location-based virtual reality company on the planet. And, with over $60M raised by investors including a16z, Alibaba, Justin Timberlake, Katy Perry, and Kevin Durant, we are continuing our path to rapid growth. Interested in own the future of entertainment? Learn more about franchise opportunities: https://franchise.sandboxvr.com/?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=organic-social&utm_campaign=link_in_bio&utm_content=corp
Seed Investor
2023
SafeBase empowers organizations to develop a customer-facing, scalable Trust Center that automates the security review process between buyers and sellers. Fast-growing companies like LinkedIn, Asana, Palantir, and Jamf use SafeBase to reduce security questionnaires, create a better buying experience, accelerate sales velocity, and position security as a revenue driver. To learn more, visit drata.com.
Investor
2023
Gamma is your AI design partner for creating presentations, websites, social media, and more. All at the speed of thought.
Investor
2022
MìLà is an authentic Chinese food company. While MìLà is a Chinese food brand, it’s really a celebration of the power of food to bring us together, share our stories, and discover new flavors and cultures. Our team works tirelessly to enhance delicious products that we all enjoy at home! History You may remember us as Xiao Chi Jie, or XCJ. We opened in 2018 as Xiao Chi Jie, a restaurant in Bellevue, WA, where we shared the amazing ingredients, recipes, and flavors of our Chinese heritage. Since then, we’ve grown, and so has our passion for what we do. In 2023, XCJ became MìLà. As we evolved, we wanted a new name that felt authentically Chinese but could keep growing with us. MìLà means honey (mi 蜜) and spice (la 辣) in Chinese. We’re the same small team, making the same insanely delicious products, just with a new look. Mission MìLàs mission is to build something that feels authentically and uniquely true to our roots as a Chinese American-founded brand. Something we can own, but that’s also meant to be shared. One of the things we love about Chinese food is that it’s traditionally served family-style—shared with everyone gathered at the table. MìLà is a Chinese food brand, but it’s really a celebration of the power of food to bring us together, share our stories, and discover new flavors and cultures. Check out our openings here: https://eatmila.com/pages/careers
Seed Investor
Mar 2021
Pry is a financial planning platform that is the first real alternative to spreadsheets for small businesses. Use Pry to connect your financial stack for a real-time budget vs actuals, manage your hiring plan, and model scenarios in a powerful visual environment. Designed with founders, CPAs, finance teams, CFOs, and investors in mind, our user-friendly platform is the best tool for startups to manage their cash runway.
Investor
2021
Formation Bio is an AI-native pharma company differentiated by radically more efficient drug development. The company has built proprietary technology platforms to optimize critical aspects of clinical drug development, enabling more efficient trial design, faster trial completion, and higher quality trial data. Formation Bio acquires clinical-stage drugs from pharmaceutical and biotech companies with the goal to develop assets faster, unlocking greater value per program and ultimately accelerate access to new treatments for patients. 2025 CNBC Disruptor 50 2025 Fierce 15 Award 2024 Endpoints 11 Award
Investor
2021
Sanzo bridges cultures by connecting people with authentic flavors. Our flagship line is a modern sparkling beverage infused with traditional Asian flavors.
Investor
2021
Persona helps businesses manage KYC/AML/KYB programs, fight fraud, and build trust by automating any identity-related use case with our flexible identity infrastructure. For example, we help Coursera verify learners’ identities before delivering course credentials and Brex comply with strict international KYC/AML regulations. Beyond securely collecting and verifying user information such as PII, government IDs, and selfies, our platform also provides flexible case review and orchestration tools to help businesses streamline and automate all their identity operations — from setting custom rules to ingesting third-party data and triggering external actions. In short, Persona handles the complexities of securely collecting, verifying, and managing sensitive personal information, so you can stay focused on building your product.
Seed Investor
2021
ODDITY is a consumer-tech platform built to transform the global beauty and wellness market. We deploy advanced technology, including data science, machine learning models, and computer vision, to develop exceptional products and deliver consumers a superior experience. Our first two brands, IL MAKIAGE and SpoiledChild, have brought millions of consumers online to shop for beauty products for the first time. Our New Ventures brand incubator leverages ODDITYs data and technology platform to develop new brands, solve consumer pain points, and disrupt additional categories in the global beauty and wellness market. ODDITY operates a business headquarters in New York, and an R&D center in Tel Aviv
Investor
2021
Nex is helping families reconnect with the joy of movement through fun, social, and interactive content that’s accessible to all ages. Its award-winning Nex Playground console, launched in December 2023, uses cutting-edge AI, mobile and vision technologies to merge digital and physical worlds, immersing players in the experience using their natural body movement. Nex Playground games range from original sports and fitness titles, to educational games and titles in collaboration with Hasbro and Sesame Workshop. Since its founding, Nex has been recognised as one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies, TIME’s Best Inventions, Parents’ Best Entertainment System for Families, and has been awarded the prestigious Apple Design Award. Nex Playground is also kidSAFE+ COPPA certified, highlighting the company’s firm stance on privacy and safety for kids and families. To learn more, visit https://www.nex.inc or follow us on Instagram and Facebook.
Experience · 16 entries
All (16)
Investments (10)
Founder (5)
2024
Co-Founder of Asian Leadership Center
Nov 2024
Corporate Edge is a premier leadership consulting firm offering executive advisory services to support critical business challenges of prominent corporations and their most promising senior leaders. Our methodology is a robust, systematic approach. By working as a team within the entire organization, we leverage shared knowledge of themes, culture, and landscape ensuring outcomes are aligned with business goals. Corporate Edge engages with companies that are large, complex, and focused on long-term strategic initiatives. We work with our clients senior-level leaders during their most critical crossroads. As a solid foundation is formed, we help guide the way for future success through on-going strategy, board of directors cultivation, executive assimilation, talent management and succession planning. Since 1998, we’ve earned the trust of top leaders across a broad spectrum of industries including technology, financial services, healthcare, biotech and multimedia. Our world-class clients, including Microsoft, Genentech, Adobe, Kaiser Permanente, AAA, and Salesforce, just to name a few, span from entrepreneurial ventures to long-standing Fortune 500 organizations.
Investor
2024
Sandbox VR is the future of entertainment. With over 80 global combined retail and franchise locations, the most advanced VR technology, premium AAA experiences developed in-house, and an exclusive Netflix collaboration, we’re the most successful and fastest growing location-based virtual reality company on the planet. And, with over $60M raised by investors including a16z, Alibaba, Justin Timberlake, Katy Perry, and Kevin Durant, we are continuing our path to rapid growth. Interested in own the future of entertainment? Learn more about franchise opportunities: https://franchise.sandboxvr.com/?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=organic-social&utm_campaign=link_in_bio&utm_content=corp
2023
Seed Investor
2023
SafeBase empowers organizations to develop a customer-facing, scalable Trust Center that automates the security review process between buyers and sellers. Fast-growing companies like LinkedIn, Asana, Palantir, and Jamf use SafeBase to reduce security questionnaires, create a better buying experience, accelerate sales velocity, and position security as a revenue driver. To learn more, visit drata.com.
Investor
2023
Gamma is your AI design partner for creating presentations, websites, social media, and more. All at the speed of thought.
2022
Investor
2022
MìLà is an authentic Chinese food company. While MìLà is a Chinese food brand, it’s really a celebration of the power of food to bring us together, share our stories, and discover new flavors and cultures. Our team works tirelessly to enhance delicious products that we all enjoy at home! History You may remember us as Xiao Chi Jie, or XCJ. We opened in 2018 as Xiao Chi Jie, a restaurant in Bellevue, WA, where we shared the amazing ingredients, recipes, and flavors of our Chinese heritage. Since then, we’ve grown, and so has our passion for what we do. In 2023, XCJ became MìLà. As we evolved, we wanted a new name that felt authentically Chinese but could keep growing with us. MìLà means honey (mi 蜜) and spice (la 辣) in Chinese. We’re the same small team, making the same insanely delicious products, just with a new look. Mission MìLàs mission is to build something that feels authentically and uniquely true to our roots as a Chinese American-founded brand. Something we can own, but that’s also meant to be shared. One of the things we love about Chinese food is that it’s traditionally served family-style—shared with everyone gathered at the table. MìLà is a Chinese food brand, but it’s really a celebration of the power of food to bring us together, share our stories, and discover new flavors and cultures. Check out our openings here: https://eatmila.com/pages/careers
Show all 16 entries ↓
Investment activity
2021–2024 · 10 investments
20216202212023220241
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