“The intuition part comes from activities of creativity that change your perspective.” — Yiwen Li
Yiwen Li is a seasoned investor with a successful track record of investing in AI, blockchain, and healthcare tech while developing global business partnerships to fast-scale the business.
Yiwen is currently Head of Venture Investments at Bayview Development Group, a global family office with diverse exposure public market, private equity, venture, and real estate. Prior, she was a Principal at Alumni Ventures, responsible for end-to-end multi-stage investments focused on blockchain and fintech. She was Director for Corporate Strategy at Masimo (Nasdaq: MASI). She built an innovation pipeline in healthcare connectivity and data analytics. She was Director for Corporate Development at NantHealth (Nasdaq: NH), where she established the international business division. Yiwen started her career at Capital Group in equity research.
Yiwen is an Advisory Board member of C-Sweet. She served on the board of Give2Asia as the chairman of the finance committee and a member of the investment committee. She was an advisory board member for the Asia Society where she co-founded the “Asian Women Empowered” initiative. She was recognized as the” Top 50 Women Leaders in San Jose 2024 and 2025”, “Top 50 Women in 2019” and the “Most Inspirational Women in Web 3”. Yiwen is also the author of one of the best sellers “Make the World Your Playground”, inspiring women to find their unique path. She is a frequent speaker on innovation and emerging technology trends.
Yiwen holds a Master from the London School of Economics and a Master from the University of Vienna. She also graduated from the Venture Capital program at UC Berkeley and the Private Equity Program at Wharton. She was selected to be one of the ” Young American Leaders” at Harvard Business School. Yiwen is a recipient of the European Union’s Erasmus Mundus scholarship. She is fluent in Mandarin and German, worked and lived in Europe, Asia, and US.
You can find Yiwen on her socials here:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yiwenli999/
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also watch the episode on YouTube here.
OUTLINE:
[00:00] Intro
[02:07] Yiwen’s childhood
[05:00] Jazz singing
[06:14] The value of learning languages
[09:01] How to build intuition around emerging managers
[14:51] Getting to the bottom of a GP’s motivation
[16:33] What percent of GPs are not in VC for the right reasons?
[19:47] Does success fuel or inhibit ambition?
[24:17] The cost of knowledge is cheaper
[24:56] Competitive edges in the current world
[27:06] Why creative activities matter
[31:21] Advice to emerging LPs
[32:42] Post-credit scene
SELECT LINKS FROM THIS EPISODE:
- Bayview Development Group
- Alumni Ventures
- Capital Group
- OpenAI
- ChatGPT
- Anthropic
- Anthropic’s Dario Amodei on 20% unemployment rate in the US
SELECT QUOTES FROM THIS EPISODE:
“The entrepreneur’s [life] is a life where you’re eating glass every day.” — Yiwen Li
“For the first time, the cost of knowledge is becoming cheaper.” — Yiwen Li
“It’s the easiest time to create a company. It’s also the most difficult time to maintain the competitive edge of that company.” — Yiwen Li
“The intuition part comes from activities of creativity that change your perspective.” — Yiwen Li