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In celebration of the Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, we chat with Jason Wang, founding partner of Beluga Capital, a venture capital fund investing in early-stage technology companies. 

Jason has been a food and tech entrepreneur since 2011. He was the founding CEO of Caviar, a popular food delivery app that Square acquired in 2014. Before Caviar, he cofounded Munch On Me in 2011, a daily deals platform that was part of the Summer 2011 batch at Y Combinator. He’s also held various roles at Google, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, and Microsoft. 

Jason was born in China, but his family came to the US when he was just one year old. He grew up in Texas but moved to the Bay Area when he was eight, and this is where he spent most of his life. Although Jason studied accounting and ended up in finance and banking, he had always wanted to study business.

In this episode, Jason shares how he got into entrepreneurship, specifically in the food and tech industry, launching Caviar and selling it after two years, and becoming a franchise owner of The Halal Guys Inc.

Jason also talks about how he got into the investment space and launched Beluga Capital, a venture capital fund investing in early-stage technology companies. 

Finally, Jason let us in on his travel adventures, having been to 107 UN-recognized countries and his goal of climbing the Seven Summits.

Episode Quotes:

Selling Caviar to Square 

“The whole experience was like a whirlwind because we were the first on-demand food delivery app. We launched a week apart us and Postmates. We're the first couple of years before DoorDash and Uber Eats even existed. So, I remember there's just so much happening all the time. There's not much competition. We were getting all these restaurants and users and different markets. And it was just hard to keep up. We're drowning in our own growth week after week. We kept hitting our targets. But we were coming to a point where we're about to break because our growth just cannot keep up with human physical ability to route orders on a screen. And it started happening for all of our early markets that would become really successful. The acquisition came at a really good time.”

Why they started Beluga Capital

“Even when we were at Caviar, my co-founders and I, we just started getting a lot more inbound interest from entrepreneurs. And we thought one of the best ways we can help them is not only advice but also give them some capital. That way, we'd be more vested into their companies. So, with some of that exit liquidity we had, we decided, hey, we're not going to raise any outside capital, it's all going to be personal. And we're just going to invest in startups. It's our way of giving back. Because going through a startup is, essentially, no buy-ins in the beginning, right out of college. We had so much help. And without that help, we could never have succeeded in the way we did. And so, we wanted to do something like that for the next generation of entrepreneurs.” 

On pursuing different interests and passions

“I see it as different stages of my life. Starting out, I would not go into venture investing, I want to be more an operation role. Because that was more fun to me, like I had the best time of my life. Just looking back, while I was in it, I was like, "Wow, it's a constant stress and hard work." But looking back on it, I would only do that in my 20s. I don't want to be in my 40s or 50s and have that same—if I didn't have to go through the same thing again, so that I'm more geared towards investing. And I love it. I guess, for me, it's like different phases of my life there's different roles or areas that I enjoyed more.”

Show Links:

• LinkedIn
• Beluga Capital