Ep 147 | Yao Huang: Entrepreneur and Venture Capitalist Founder of The Hatchery

Sep 6, 2021

Ask episode

Chapters

Transcript

Episode notes

A note from Talking Taiwan host Felicia Lin:

Happy Labor Day! We’ve decided to take a break ourselves, so we are sharing one of our past episodes that I think really stands the test of time. In 2013 I interviewed entrepreneur Yao Huang. That year, she was involved with the Entrepreneur Challenge and Competition, which was organized by the Taiwanese American Professionals, New York Chapter and the Taiwan Merchants Association. Yao talked about how she went from a career in pharmacy to venture capital, and how she founded The Hatchery to grow Silicon Alley, New York City’s tech community. I think you’ll find that the perspective and advice that she offers in this interview sound and still relevant today.

Yao is the founder of The Hatchery and she’s been named by Forbes one of 11 women at the center of New York’s digital scene. Her entrepreneurship has been written about in Fortune magazine, and various publications.

Here’s a little preview of what we talked about in this podcast episode:

Yao’s connection to Taiwan
Yao’s involvement with the TAP-NY’s (Taiwanese American Professionals, New York chapter) and Taiwan Merchants Association’s Entrepreneur Challenge and Competition (ECC)
Yao’s career prior to becoming an entrepreneur
How she advised one of the companies competing in the ECC
The first company she started
How she made the transition from pharmacy in to entrepreneurship and venture capital
What is venture capitalism
What The Hatchery does
How The Hatchery has been integral in growing New York’s tech community
The Hatchery’s incubator program
Why Yao founded The Hatchery
Silicon Valley vs. Silicon Alley
What it was like leaving her job in pharmacy to start a company
What advice she has for people who want to start a business
What she loves the most about what she does
Her passion project, Win4Causes
What she finds so rewarding about what she does