Ophelia Cai / Tiny VC

Ophelia Cai is a Partner at Tiny VC, a European venture fund that writes $150-200K checks across an expansive portfolio of ambitious technology startups.

Ophelia’s journey to Tiny started with a WhatsApp message in May 2021. Andy Chung asked: “Would you join tiny full time?” The role was ambiguous. But she believed in the people (Philip and Andy, first AngelList EU hires), the strategy, and herself to step up.

Our conversation gets into what makes Tiny different. While most funds aim for 10-20 companies, Tiny is targeting 300 companies in their third fund. They’ve built Nemo, an ai platform that automates workflows typically handled by VC interns. It ingests decks, generates summaries, pulls LinkedIn profiles, identifies competitors, suggests co-investors based on historical data. The system lets a small team manage scale.

Tiny also runs a Collective Partner Program, allowing specialists outside the team to deploy capital from the fund. 20% of Fund III’s LPs are previous Tiny founders. They processed over 710 decks via Nemo in Q1 2024 alone.

Ophelia’s take on the changing nature of venture is that “The breakaway velocity that you need in this industry to start something new and to jump ship is phenomenal. All of the incentive structures are designed to keep you against doing that.”

Full episode below, or on Spotify / Apple Podcasts