That’s why when he’s sizing up a startup, more than anything else he’s focused on the founder in front of him. “Mostly I look at interactions with the entrepreneurs— their charisma and ability to communicate with others, their familiarity with the industry and also their own company’s data, and finally the integrity of what they say and do.”

Tang likes to call himself both a “career cynic” and a “life enthusiast”. It’s a seemingly contradictory combination that he says he picked up over 15 years of meeting founders and peering inside startups. It’s also the essential tension at the heart of all venture capital investing: balancing financial pragmatism with the optimism offered by a founder’s vision. Being an effective venture capitalist, he says, means never leaning too much into either impulse. “When I’m looking at a company, I’m a person who wants to believe. I guess the flip side of that is I’ve seen enough to know when not to believe.”

Striking the right balance, on the other hand, has kept him on a constant quest for Asia’s next unicorn.He’s also found that, with the right attitude, being a professional cynic can have perks for one’s mental health. “These days I’m lucky enough to have found a career where it’s almost literally my job to be cynical and question everything,” he says. “That allows me to focus my optimism and enthusiasm into other aspects of my life.”

Alvin Kwock, founder of insurance tech player OneDegree, has certainly met both Chibo Tangs. Although Tang was a Series A investor and has been his friend for the past six years, they didn’t have the most auspicious start. “He rejected us three times!” Kwock recalls with a wry laugh. In 2020, OneDegree launched its ambitious digital platform, which is probably best known today for its canny decision to cover Hong Kong’s legions of exotic pet birds, cats and tortoises.

But when Kwock first pitched his company to Gobi Partners in 2017, OneDegree was still years away from being licensed to enter the insurance market. Tang was “definitely a sceptic”, he says, “but to be honest, who wouldn’t be? When you’ve just got a piece of paper and there’s no business? No customers? Naturally, he had questions.”

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Yet 12 months later, Tang would close the deal for Gobi Partners to join OneDegree’s HK$200 million Series A funding round via the Alibaba Entrepreneurs Fund. “It wasn’t until that fourth pitch,” Kwock says with a smile, recalling the moment when Tang went from his acquaintance to his investor and future confidante. Even without revenue on OneDegree’s balance sheet yet, Tang was onboard. “It was only when he could see the track record... that we were making progress toward actually building this thing.”

Once a company has joined Tang’s stable, that’s when business can get personal. He is well known for encouraging Gobi’s portfolio company founders to meet and cross-pollinate, as well as to take an active part in leadership communities like the Young Presidents Organization.

Earlier this year, Tang introduced Austen Chu, founder and CEO of one of Gobi’s most recent seed companies, the luxury watch platform Wristcheck, to Jack Zhang, founder of Airwallex, the Melbourne fintech unicorn. In the days following that meeting, Wristcheck would begin to adopt Airwallex for use on its platform.

But these connections actually go much deeper. Zhang is one of Tang’s closest friends and will be serving as the best man at his forthcoming wedding. Then, there are the countless stories of him going above and beyond for his founders, supporting decisions that put their vision first. “It’s a very different relationship when you’re investing in their seed round, believing in them when no one else will,” he says. “I think that’s what draws me most to what I do, and it’s the biggest reward of this job. It’s the relationships. It’s the friendships.”

Friends can also have a little fun, according to some of Tang’s founders. “I remember back when he worked at Gobi’s Shanghai office, he would ride this little scooter everywhere, all over the office,” chuckles Norma Chu, founder and CEO of DayDayCook, a Gobi Partners portfolio company since 2012. “He had this very Silicon Valley style back then ... with the shorts and the T-shirt. Priceless.”

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And somewhere in the midst of a US$15 million bridge funding round for deeptech healthcare startup Greater Bay Bio, Tang treated CEO Kingsley Leung to a humbling experience at the pool table. “He loves pool,” recalls Leung. “When I learnt that, I took him out for a drink and played him a couple of times. Obviously, he destroyed me. It wasn’t even close.”

Tang was born in Shanghai in 1985, and his family emigrated to the United States when he was three years old. Coming from a family of professors and doctors, he says academics were strongly emphasised during his upbringing. He was still a small boy when his mother began tutoring him in maths—a path that would eventually lead him to a bachelor’s in applied mathematics and economics from Harvard. His childhood summers were often spent with his grandparents in Shanghai, who made sure the young Chibo kept up with his Mandarin.“I never lost my Chinese, which is something I’m pretty proud of,” he says.

At Harvard, he first studied engineering, but switched tracks because he “couldn’t sit in a lab all day,” he says. “I realised I really enjoy interacting with people.” Quite early in his career, he made the jump from management consulting to the world of venture capital, citing a desire to get more “hands-on” with young companies. “To be honest, I probably didn’t fully realise what I was getting myself into when I joined. At that point in my career, I was just about two years into management consulting and felt that I had learnt what I could already.

I wanted to be closer to business, closer to China, and that’s when I met my partner today, Thomas Tsao. He’s the reason I joined Gobi and the main reason I continue to stay.” Looking to the future, Tang has no doubt that Hong Kong will continue to build on its role as what he calls the “keystone city” of the Greater Bay Area.

“Not only will [Hong Kong] further solidify itself as a key financial hub in the global capital markets, but as it slowly pivots away from incumbent sectors like traditional finance and real estate, it will also establish itself as a leader in many sectors that are new, such as innovation and technology, healthcare, blockchain and more. I couldn’t be more excited for the future of Hong Kong.”

As for Gobi Partners, he says the firm is bullish on the Greater Bay Area and will remain vigilant for the next big opportunity to emerge from the startup ecosystem. “We are the ones who believe when no one else does,” he says. “We are the ones who put money and reputation on the line when no one else will. We are there to help before the rest of the world even knows who these companies are. It’s our job to stay ahead of the curve and to take on risks that no one else would know or want to take. That’s our role in the ecosystem—to kickstart the flywheel.”

Read the June issue here

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