10 things you didn't know about Elizabeth Yin

Elizabeth Yin is among the most interesting VCs operating today. She is the CEO and co-founder of LaunchBit. She speaks at various events and conferences frequently as a business owner and raging success. There is so much that you didn't know about Elizabeth Yin. This article covers 10 of these things.

1.Elizabeth's education

Elizabeth Yin started official schooling in 1993 until 2000, where she studied at Castilleja School. She is currently on the school board of trustees from 2016 to date. She is also the former VP of the school's networking executive alumni board. As for college Elizabeth went through a lot after applying for a Business course at MIT, then being rejected and working in Tokyo, where she was fired due to circumstances such as funding in the company. She once again reapplied for College, and she got in. She studied at MIT Sloan School of Management, where she did her MBA in Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Strategy, and High Tech. She was also the Co-founder of Media-Tech, a society at MIT. Elizabeth Yin also pursued a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University from 2000 until 2004. While at Stanford, she participated in Stanford Student Enterprises, Stanford at SEA, BASES E- Challenge, where she was a semi-finalist, and participated in Stanford Center for Technology and innovation in Kyoto.

2. Ice breaker

Elizabeth Yin started her startup journey way back when she was little. She claims to have had her eye-opening moment when she was in the 9th grade when her best friend Jennifer was also her co-founder in her first company, introduced Elizabeth to her cousin, who was starting his company in San Francisco. From there on, Elizabeth was sure she wanted to start her company, and she told her best friend about it. They made a pact which they later fulfilled when they founded their first company, Launch Bit. Two years later, Jennifer's cousin sold his company to Microsoft for a couple of hundred million dollars. This acted as a serious eye-opener for Elizabeth, making her more determined to start her own company.

3. Elizabeth’s work experience

Elizabeth started as a Marketing Manager on developer products at Google from September 2007 till November 2008. There she led marketing for social APIs, which included OpenSocial and the Social Graph API. Still, in November 2008, she was the CEO and co-founder of Side projects and lots of startup learning based in the San Francisco Bay Area, which lasted till June 2011. In July 2011, she became CEO and co-founder of Launchbit with her best friend, Jennifer. Launch Bit was based in Las Vegas, Boston, and in the San Francisco Bay Area. LaunchBit is a platform that concentrates and enables marketers to get their ads to professional audiences. The company earned when these workings were carried out in email newsletters and on niche blogs just by a cost-per-click. Her story with Launch bit is the classic from rags to riches type of stories. LaunchBit, died three years and three months later, in September 2014. Elizabeth was also a partner in 500 Startups, where she ran the 500 Startups accelerator program in Mountain View. Elizabeth Yin went on to invest in seed-stage startups further and managed a group of investors. Her longest experience is at Hustle fund, where she is a co-founder and general partner since August 2017.

4. She was the founder of a hustle fund

The hustle fund was quite a challenge for Elizabeth to start, this was mainly because there were no ready investors, and being an angel investor, she was not listed online. This forced Elizabeth and her team to reach their own networks by asking anyone ready to invest in their project. They even went to the extent of being introduced to some of their friends’ rich friends. When doing this, she and her team would organize dinners with the investors and discuss the investments.

5. Her social interaction with the media

Elizabeth is among the few people who would use their social media to earn or change other people's lives. She has used Twitter to her advantage by earning a good reputation among her 41,000 followers. She uses her Twitter to educate and advertise what she feels her followers would benefit from. Yin has ensured her followers have felt a direct and transparent relationship between them and her company. According to fntalk.com, Yin explains how Twitter helped her and her partner in getting over 50% pitch application from Twitter.

6. Her Skills

For years Elizabeth has gained skills that have helped her in the business world. Some were gained through school, while others developed through her interaction and encounters in different life fields. Some of the skills include; public speaking, fundraising, advertising, venture fundraising, sales and marketing, and customer development. This skill was sharpened and will continue in her life, and she has been able to increase her capacity every day as she grows.

7. Elizabeth's achievements

Despite the many life setbacks, Elizabeth has been able to keep moving and growing. She has achieved several things, like being the founder of a pre-seed fund (Hustle fund). According to angle.co, she was previously a partner at 500 startups and ran the mountain view accelerator program. However, she was also a co-founder and ran LaunchBit, an ad tech company.

8. Leadership and team-building skills

Elizabeth Yin has worked alongside many who keep on recommending her in the workspace.

9. Balancing family and startups

Elizabeth openly states that the female gender in startups faces judgment if one has a family when beginning a startup; she says it is considered taboo to have a child when starting up a startup. She was expectant when working on her company, LaunchBit. She claims that having a child while starting up or having a startup puts one at a disadvantage as it shows a lack of dedication.

10. Elizabeth’s stand on diversity in a workplace

Elizabeth claims that around 18% of their portfolio companies are led by under-represented founders, including Black and Latinx [ herself being Asian]. She says that her team is not biased in race or by background, making it diverse. This is because her fund is a rare fund that encourages cold pitch submissions, making sure they are held virtually, reducing unconscious biases. The team continues to work to reach a more diverse set of founders. This is according to medium.com.