# Ethos Fund

Ethos Fund is a Venture Capital based in Johannesburg, Gauteng, United States.

## Overview

- **Organization type:** Venture Capital
- **Headquarters:** Johannesburg, Gauteng, United States
- **Region:** North America
- **Address:** Los Angeles, CA, United States
- **Founded:** 2025
- **Assets under management:** Undisclosed
- **Website:** ethosfund.vc
- **LinkedIn:** https://www.linkedin.com/company/ethosfund

## About

Ethos Fund is a venture capital firm investing in pre-seed stage, globally ambitious startups in Vietnam and the US. It was founded by a pair of serial entrepreneurs who want to prove that founders and venture capitalists don't need to compromise to build transformative companies. The firm emphasizes authenticity and a shared ethos between startups and investors.

## Sectors

- Enterprise Software
- Digital Health
- FinTech
- EdTech
- AI/ML

## People

- David Yi — Managing Partner
- Simon Shin — Managing Partner
- Gloria Lee — Venture Partner

## Questions

### Who runs investment decisions at 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.

### How does Ethos Fund source proprietary deal flow?

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.

### What investment stages does Ethos Fund typically target?

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.

### How is Ethos Fund’s investment thesis different from a standard cross-border VC?

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.

## Related profiles

- [Ethos Capital](https://altss.com/profile/ethos-capital)
- [Ethos VC](https://altss.com/profile/ethos-vc)

---

Updated: 2026-08-11T15:06:42.396Z

Canonical page: https://altss.com/profile/ethos-fund

Maintained by Altss — https://altss.com — methodology: https://altss.com/methodology