Idea Bulb Ventures is the U.S. based investment company working with Sinovation Ventures, the early stage venture capital firm established by Dr. Kai-Fu Lee.
Strategy
We invest in start-ups in the U.S., at seed and Series A stages, in specific technology focus areas. We evaluate projects primarily based on their team and product, their merit for the U.S. market, as well as their potential for successfully entering the China market in due time. Idea Bulb aims to be the founders' China partner, with the help and support of our team in the Bay Area, and the team of Sinovation Ventures (fka 创新工场 China's Innovation Works) in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen.
Idea Bulb's investment focus areas include:
- Connected Devices (IoT), wearables, next generation fitness, lifestyle, home, car, medical, etc., as well as devices disrupting industrial sectors, that are software-driven and likely to result in data rich companies, new platforms or marketplaces.
- Developer Tools, SDKs, APIs, next generation analytics, mobile A/B testing, etc., as well as start-up tools for sales, productivity and real-time communications.
- Online education (EdTech), with a primary focus on exceptional content for the post-secondary and lifelong learning audience. The content needs to be market-driven, around a measurable skill-set, and delivered with a learning-by-doing methodology. Secondary focus on simple tools that solve school administrator, or teacher, or parent pain points, that can grow fast enough to become new platforms or marketplaces.
Idea Bulb occasionally invests in projects beyond these focus areas. Such projects are led by exceptional teams and typically have an immediate and clear synergy with the portfolio of Sinovation Ventures (fka 创新工场 China's Innovation Works).
Team
Hua Wang
Hua is a co-founder and Managing Partner of Sinovation Ventures, based in Beijing. Earlier in his career, Hua served as Google China’s Head of Business Development, where he built Google China’s premium ad network into an annual $80 million business. Hua also managed Google China’s portfolio of investments, including well-established Chinese internet companies such as Dianping, Ganji, Tianya, Xunlei, Maxthon, and others. Prior to Google China, Hua co-founded and managed Shanghai Yinda Technology, an engineering consulting company offering mobile telecom network planning and optimization services. Hua has an MBA from Stanford University.
Chris Evdemon
Chris is a Partner at Sinovation Ventures and the CEO of Idea Bulb Ventures, currently based in the Bay Area after spending 10 years in Singapore and in Beijing. Chris has been “hands on” his entire career around his entrepreneurial and angel investment projects. Earlier in his career, he was a Managing Partner at Eastern Bell Venture Capital and also served as the CEO of ICDL Asia Pacific, an organization in the computer skills certification sector with operations in 25 Asian countries which he helped turnaround and relocate to Singapore. Prior to Asia, Chris co-founded and managed ECDL Hellas in his native Athens, Greece. Chris holds a M.Eng. in Mechanical Engineering from Imperial College in London, and an MBA from INSEAD.
Ricky Wong
Ricky is a Senior Investments Manager at Idea Bulb Ventures with experience in software engineering, product management, startups, and angel investing. Earlier in his career, he founded and ran Mobnotate, an ad network for eBooks. Prior to that, he started Google's data warehousing and business intelligence teams in the US - in addition to rotational stints in London, Hyderabad, and Beijing. Ricky received his MS/BS in Computer Science from UCSB, with emphasis on Artificial Intelligence and Distributed Systems, and MBA from INSEAD.
Angela Bao
Angela is an Investments Manager at Idea Bulb Ventures with experience in U.S.-China cross-border investments, economic analysis, and journalism. Previously, she was a research analyst with the Rhodium Group in New York, where she co-authored a major study on China's economic data and performance. Prior to that, she was a researcher for The New York Times in Shanghai, covering China's economy and the technology sector. She is the creator of an audio program and still writes a column for Bloomberg Businessweek on U.S.-China dynamics and the education sector. A native of Beijing, Angela holds dual Master's degrees in International Finance / Journalism from Columbia University, and dual Bachelor's degrees in Journalism / Economics from Peking University.
Charles Huang
Charles is a Venture Partner at Idea Bulb Ventures. He is the co-founder of RedOctane and the co-creator of the Guitar Hero video game franchise. Guitar Hero launched in 2005 and went on to become the fastest video game to reach $1B in sales. Charles left Guitar Hero in 2010 and is currently the co-founder of Indigo 7, a startup focused on brands in fashion apparel and entertainment. He is an active, serial angel investor. Charles immigrated to California as a young child and currently resides in Silicon Valley with his wife and two daughters. He holds a BA in Economics and Asian Studies from the University of California at Berkeley.
Kai Huang
Kai is a Venture Partner at Idea Bulb Ventures. He is the co-founder and ex-CEO of RedOctane and the co-creator of the Guitar Hero video game franchise, acquired by Activision in June 2006. Kai was also co-founder and CEO of Adux Software, a software company developing solutions for the server appliance market. Prior to Adux Software, he was a consultant with Accenture, where he worked with Fortune 500 clients in the area of supply chain management. He is an active, serial angel investor. Kai holds a BA in Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley.
Portfolio
Connected Devices / Developer Tools / EdTech / Others
Swivl turns your mobile device into your personal cameraman.
Smart waste management solutions.
Exquisite, fashionable accoustics and connected jewelry.
Your smart, helpful, new baking assistant.
Smart, robotic sprinkler devices.
Soil sensor, smart water valve, and gardening recommendation app.
Sensors and software infrastructure for energy data collection and consumption insights.
Connected devices to optimize sleep.
The future of 3D depth capture in computer vision.
Advanced earth observation systems.
Distributed hardware production.
Robotic toys for kids.
Unleashing the power of computer vision for machines of all types.
Connected Devices / Developer Tools / EdTech / Others
The leading gameplay video SDK and mobile community.
Easiest way to create a mobile-optimized site.
Remote teams' communication and collaboration tools.
Cross-patform power collaboration tool.
Data science-as-a-service, initially focusing on retention.
[Acquired by Square]
Machine learning-as-a-service.
Open source, modern and hackable PaaS, based on container technologies.
SaaS control panel for hosting service management.
Connected Devices / Developer Tools / EdTech / Others
Swivl turns your classroom into online education.
Essential start-up skills in just one month.
High-school / college students Q&A community. [Acquired by Admittedly]
Brings daycare and kindergarten classrooms to life.
Basic programming logic for kids, in a fun game.
Screen time filtering for schools and parents.
Virtual wallet platform for education.
Platform for substitute teachers.
Robotic toys for kids.
Connected Devices / Developer Tools / EdTech / Others
Surfing the internet, reinvented.
Online interview tools.
[Acquired by Yahoo!]
Arcade style fun mobile games.
VR publishing tools and platforms.
News
Sinovation Ventures Raises $675 Million in Fresh Capital
Sinovation Ventures, co-founded by former Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. executive Kai-Fu Lee, on Monday said it closed two venture capital funds aimed at deals. A new U.S. dollar-denominated fund of $300 million was raised from global investors; Apple Inc. supplier Foxconn Technology Group was the anchor investor. Sinovation Ventures also raised a new yuan-denominated fund of 2.5 billion yuan, larger than its previous 500 million yuan fund. Read more ...
Meet Fictiv, the Airbnb of 3-D Printing
We are thrilled to welcome Fictiv to our portfolio of companies. Fictiv makes it easy for hardware entrepreneurs to order and receive prototype parts by connecting them to a network of 3-D printers and manufacturing machinery. Fictiv aims to enable more entrepreneurs to launch hardware startups by lowering the costs of product development. The founders say the company has demonstrated enough traction to secure $10 million in investments. Its chief investor is Accel Partners, which led the company's seed financing and its Series A round late last year. Read more ...
Robot Maker Wonder Workshop Raises a $20M Series B
Wonder Workshop is dashing towards new markets, especially China.The maker of Dash and Dot has raised a $20 million Series B round led by WI Harper Group and Idea Bulb Ventures with participation from Learn Capital, Charles River Ventures, Madrona Venture Group and TCL. The company’s flagship products are two round blue robots aimed at introducing students age 6 to 12 to computational thinking. Read more ...
Planetary Resources Raises $21.1 M Series A
Planetary Resources, the asteroid mining company, announced today that it has secured US$21.1 million in Series A funding. The capital will be used to deploy and operate Ceres, an advanced Earth observation business that features the first commercial infrared and hyperspectral sensor platform to better understand and manage humanity’s natural resources. The funding was led by Bryan Johnson and the OS FUND; and joined by Idea Bulb Ventures; Tencent; Vast Ventures; Grishin Robotics; Conversion Capital; The Seraph Group; Space Angels Network, a syndication of investors from Angel.co; and Larry Page. Read more ...
Edyn debuts smart water valve
Oakland-based Edyn started selling a new, smart gardening device this week: an Internet-connected water valve that lets users irrigate their gardens or lawns automatically. The Edyn Water Valve uses data from the company’s Edyn Garden Sensor, a soil sensor, along with local weather systems, to adjust the moisture levels in the soil. If a user wants, they can adjust their irrigation systems via the Edyn smartphone app. Read more ...
DreamWorks Animation veterans create Spaces VR
Entertainment veterans from DreamWorks Animation have started their own virtual reality startup with $3 million in funding. The Santa Monica, California-based Spaces is headed by chief executive Shiraz Akmal and chief technology officer Brad Herman, two veterans who worked on DreamWorks Animation’s early VR experiences through 2015. Comcast Ventures led the funding for the company, which will VR and “mixed reality” experiences. Spaces is already working with such companies as Microsoft, NBCUniversal, Big Blue Bubble and The Hettema Group, among others, to develop and produce a wide range of projects across all VR and mixed reality platforms. Read more ...
Kamcord's Series C led by Time Warner
Today is a big day for Y Combinator graduate Kamcord, after the San Francisco-based startup announced a $10 million Series C round led by Time Warner, and a move that expands its streaming focus from mobile games to any app. Alongside Time Warner, existing backers Tencent, TransLink Capital, XG Ventures, Plug & Play Ventures and Wargaming participated in the round, which values the four-year-old company at more than $100 million. Read more ...
ClassWallet Closes $1.5M Seed Round
ClassWallet, fast-becoming the leading platform for school funds disbursement and tracking, has closed a $1.5 million round of seed financing. Total funding raised to date is $4.03 million. The priced round was led by Idea Bulb Ventures. Other investors include Techstars Ventures and William Guttman, as well as several education and financial technology angel investors. Read more ...
Square acquires Framed Data
Square is acquiring the team behind Framed Data, a predictive analytics service, and will be deploying the team of data scientists to its Square Capital team. Square tracks merchants’ transaction history through its services in order to better determine their eligibility for loans through Square Capital. There are certainly a lot of requirements around the analytics part of the service; Square has to do a detailed risk analysis for each customer and determine at what rate they are going to be paying back their loans. Read more ...
Caeden Introduces a Smart Bracelet
Just about every major tech company, like Apple and Microsoft, has some sort of wearable computer. Caeden, a wearable tech start-up, thinks that with most of these smartwatches and fitness accessories, an important first step was skipped: They don’t look like something you would want to wear. On Tuesday, the one-year-old company is opening orders for Sona, its smart bracelet. The bracelet includes the usual sensors you would find on a fitness gadget for counting steps, but also a heart rate sensor that can measure overall health and stress levels. Read more ...
Vurb has launched!
Google Search was not built for mobile. It’s all about lists of web pages, but the small screen is ruled by apps. That’s why if Google launched today, it might look a lot like Vurb … which did launch today. Vurb is a mobile search engine that pulls info from partnered apps like Yelp and Rotten Tomatoes, and deep-links you out to apps like Uber and Google Maps. Rather than send you clicking through links, it cobbles together critical content and contextual suggestions into saveable, shareable, actionable cards. Read more ...
Kaymbu at FastCompany's Top 10
Kaymbu was selected by FastCompany as one of the top 10 most innovative companies in education for 2015, for bridging the gap between school and home. Thanks to messaging tools like Remind and ClassDojo, teachers and parents communicate far more frequently and easily than they did in the days of printed letters lost in the murky depths of student backpacks. Kaymbu, a young startup focused on preschools, stands out from the pack for three reasons. Read more ...
GungHo Backs Kamcord's Series B
Fast-growing startup Kamcord Inc. – mobile gaming’s answer to Twitch – has secured a strategic round led by Japanese gaming giant GungHo Online Entertainment Inc. (3765.TO) at a valuation around $100 million. Kamcord makes a software developer kit, or SDK, for developers to drop into their mobile games. The code allows players to record slices of their game play and share key moments. Read more ...
Caeden debuts its headphones
While there are many established headphones on the market today, most lack sophistication and style. That’s where Caeden comes in. Hosted by Soo Joo Park, Caeden celebrated its launch in New Yorkl by throwing a party with friends and family. Caeden debuted the Linea Collection; featuring No1 on-ear headphones in three color ways (Faceted Carbon + Gold, Convex Carbon + Gunmetal, and Faceted Ceramic + Rose Gold) as well as No2 in-ear headphones. Read more ...
Scaled Inference Lands $8M!
Scaled Inference, a startup founded by two ex-Googlers that is building a cloud-based platform for third parties that want to use artificial intelligence and machine learning tools to run their apps and services, has raised another round of funding to continue its development and hiring, a Series A round of $8 million from Khosla Ventures. Read more ...
The “Idea Bulb China Tech Tour”
In September 2014, we took the founders of three of our Idea Bulb Ventures startups to Beijing, as part of the inaugural “Idea Bulb China Tech Tour”. It was a week full of interesting meetings, cultural immersion and a lot of fun. This is a snapshot of the overall experience and a recollection of the key takeaways from the trip. Read more ...
Smart baking scale rakes in $2M!
Drop, the smart baking scale that opened up for pre-orders back in June, announced today that it has raised $2M in seed funding to save as many baking students as possible from embarrassment. The scale connects to a mobile app and helps you measure exact amounts of the ingredients you need for your recipes. As for the app, it contains recipes and leads you through them with pictures and directions.
Vurb closes $8M Series A round!
Vurb wants to solve mobile search by aggregating utility from top third-party apps so you can make decisions rather than click links. Today the 2014 Disrupt NY Battlefield winner announced it has raised a meaty $8 million Series A led by Redpoint Ventures to play David to Google’s Goliath in search. Read more ...
Vurb wins TC Disrupt NY 2014!
It’s been a long, tough road, but it’s finally time to crown the winner of the Disrupt Battlefield. This year’s batch was truly awesome. Twenty-seven startups took the stage to present. The six finalists were Boomerang Commerce, ISI Technology, Mimi, Mink, ShowKit, and Vurb. It was an amazing batch with multiple hardware startups, innovative business models and good engineering. Read more ...
Kamcord raises $7.1M Series A!
With a new app and Asian markets in its eye, one of the few companies working to add gameplay video recording on iOS and Android just got a bunch of cash to pursue its goals. Kamcord, the maker of a software-development kit that enables gamemakers to add video recording to their mobile apps, reported this morning that it closed a $7.1 million Series A funding round.
Framed Data launches its beta
A study found that the average American user has 25 apps on their smartphone. But figuring out how to convince users to keep returning to your app instead of letting it languish on their mobile is much harder. YC-backed Framed Data, which just launched out of closed beta, wants to make it easy for developers to parse user behavior, even if they don’t have a data scientist on their team. Read more ...
OneMonth's new HTML course
OneMonth launched its HTML course, a series of video lessons and tutorials that show anyone (even a total beginner) how to build their first website. The student will pick up HTML, CSS, FTP, SEO best practices, Facebook API, Bootstrap, blog theming, and much more. Read more ... In the meantime, Mattan and Chris (OneMonth founders) continue their weekly Hacker News Nation episodes, which are both informative and fun to watch.
Swivl launches its cloud service
Swivl announced its "S Cloud", a connected service for its robotic mobile accessory for creating and hosting learning video content. The service is a companion to the company’s second-generation robot designed for tablets, smartphones, and handheld cameras. S Cloud is available for public beta since January 2014, with free and premium levels offered. Watch the video ...
Yahoo! acquires Distill
Yahoo! just acquired a San Francisco-based startup called Distill, which was working on a way to make technical recruiting easier by pairing video interviews and programming challenges. They had raised $1.3 million in funding from investors including Felicis Ventures, China’s Innovation Works and DN Capital. Read more ...
Contact
Idea Bulb Ventures
50 California St. #2580
San Francisco, CA 94111
