LARRY LI

Apr 14

Written By Maki Hsieh

Amino Capital, Founder and Managing Partner

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YEAR INDUCTED
2024

CATEGORY
Business

Larry founded Amino Capital in Palo Alto, California in 2012. He oversees investments in startups across diverse sectors, including software-as-a-service, deep tech, artificial intelligence, and Web3. His investment portfolio boasts dozens of successful exits, over 15 unicorns, and over 30 companies valued at nine figures, among them Chime, Webflow, Rippling, Grail, Weee!, Replit, and Turing. In 2011, Larry also co-founded a fund that provided angel funding for Zoom.

Larry's achievements have garnered him recognition on the global venture capital stage, including being featured on the prestigious annual Forbes Midas Seed List two years in a row. In 2024, he was included in the top 5 artificial intelligence trendsetters and the top 20 investors, and in 2023, he was named a top 10 investor.

Larry uses multiple platforms to share his insights with aspiring entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. On social media, he discusses the latest technology trends with his over 600,000 followers. He has authored two books, “The Logic of Investment" and "VCDemystified,” and has mentored participants in the United Nations Development Programme. He also gives lectures at universities and advises entrepreneurs participating in the StartX incubator at Stanford University.

Larry holds a B.E. from Tsinghua University and an M.E. from the University of Florida.

HALL OF FAME ESSAY

There's a lot more to do as an Asian American. We are so quiet. Sometimes we do a lot of work, but we're so quiet, so we need to speak up. We need to do more, contribute more. There's so much work we can do together.

At Amino Capital, we invest in a lot of companies, many of them foreign immigrants and minorities. You've probably heard of Weee! Asian grocery. We wrote the first check. We invest in Chinese-American, Korean-American, Japanese-American, African-American, Jewish, Arabs, we invest in everybody and especially in African-Americans.

The Asian grocery store who became so successful, became a $4 billion company because they serve Chinese, Japanese, Mexican, all the minorities. So we have to go big. We invest in everybody. We invest in the Jewish company who's become a billion dollar company. We also invest in Arabs, or immigrants, and a refugee from Palestine: his company also became a billion dollar company.

What we find out is 80% of the founders, 80% of the unicorns, the billion dollar company founders, have at least one founder as either a woman, a minority, or an immigrant. That's very true. It's very true in the United States. In the United States, immigrants, minority are the mainstream of innovation, so we should be very, very proud. You should be very proud here and your children, let them to be very proud. They are the people who really have the drive, the innovative thought to go forward so let them to be proud.

Stand tall, although we are sometimes not that tall. Stand tall, and if you need help, let us know. This is Larry Li from Amino Capital. Let us know – your kids want to start a company? Talk to me. Thank you.