Ethos Fund

Investment decisions are led by Managing Partners David Yi and Simon Shin. Yi previously developed more than $800 million in business opportunities between Asia and the US as an executive at Riiid Labs, ACT.org, and K12.com, and exited two of his own startups. Shin founded early-stage fund Cypher Partners and held product-leadership roles at Chegg and Riiid before co-founding Ethos. Venture Partner Gloria Lee provides additional deal-flow and due-diligence support through her extensive board and legal-advisory network across technology and banking.

Ethos sources deal flow through the deep bilateral networks of its founding partners across Vietnam and the United States, augmented by Gloria Lee's board-level relationships at institutions such as Hanmi Bank and the Council of Korean Americans. The firm’s narrow geographic mandate and explicit cultural thesis act as a filter rather than a funnel: founders who self-identify with the Third Culture mindset frequently seek out the fund directly. Ethos does not publicly disclose a scout network or systematic outbound engine.

Ethos structures its activity around direct equity investments in pre-seed companies where it can serve as the first institutional check. The firm has not disclosed any allocation to external funds, fund-of-funds relationships, or secondary positions. Its follow-on practice suggests a direct, concentrated portfolio strategy rather than a hybrid model that mixes fund commitments with direct exposure.

Ethos targets the pre-seed stage, deliberately positioning itself as the first institutional investor in a startup’s cap table. The firm states it supports founders from the earliest stages and remains committed across subsequent rounds, treating the startup lifecycle as a long-term collaboration rather than a transactional entry. It does not publicly indicate participation in later-stage or growth-equity rounds.

Ethos mandates that portfolio companies have meaningful operational presence in both Vietnam and the United States, and screens founders explicitly for what it terms a 'Third Culture' mindset — the ability to operate authentically across multiple national, linguistic, or industry boundaries. This is not a thesis about labor arbitrage or market-access arbitrage. The fund describes it as a conviction that the most consequential innovations emerge from founders who live at the intersection of two or more worlds.