Bill Tai, latest VC to surf — literally — on China wave
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Charles River Ventures becomes the latest venture capital firm with Silicon Valley offices to invest in China. And like all self-respecting venture firms, CRV has opted for — surprise! — a digital media start-up.
Bill Tai, who invests out of the firm’s Menlo Park office, has led a less-than-$5 million investment (subscription required) in WangYou, which lets Chinese users share online diaries, music, photographs and short films for a fee of about $3 per month. Apparently, it is already profitable, which is a good thing.
We note that Bill Tai is the latest Silicon Valley venture capitalist we’ve discovered has a blog (and yes, we’ve been slow to update our blogroll to reflect all these newcomers, but we will do so soon). His is called Kiteblog, and it is really all about his kitesurfing hobby. He’s pretty serious about this. When we met Bill a couple of years ago for lunch in San Francisco, he drove up with a surfboard and other gear on top of his car — it was a Friday, and he was cruising to the beach after lunch. Ahh, the life of a big-firm VC. But as you’ll see from the blog, his posts boast a good dose of technology and gadgetry — so to it does seem to meld together harmoniously with his job.
You’ll also see Bill obviously spends some time in Hawaii. In fact, I’m (Matt) out here in Hawaii for a few days vacation myself, so posting here at SiliconBeat might be lighter than usual.
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About the Author, Matt Marshall
Matt launched VentureBeat in September of 2006, with the realization that no one else was covering the entrepreneurial and tech innovation scene with the velocity or depth that he was. Prior to founding VentureBeat, he covered venture capital for the San Jose Mercury News from 2001 to 2006. In 2002, Matt was awarded "Journalist of the Year" by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists. Prior to working at the Merc, he was a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Bonn, Germany from 1995 to 1998, and a writer for the Washington Post in 1994. Matt holds a PhD in Government and an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University. In addition to VentureBeat, Matt is also the Executive Producer of DEMO, the leading launchpad event for emerging technologies.
