E252: Inside the Mind of a 29-Year-Old Billion-Dollar Fund Manager

Dec 1, 2025

Eva Shang, Co-founder of Legalist, shares her remarkable journey from Harvard dropout to leading a billion-dollar asset management firm. She discusses pivoting from legal analytics to litigation finance and the challenges of raising their first $10M fund without a track record. Eva explains why Legalist uses a fund model instead of a venture-backed approach and dives into the niche world of litigation finance. She highlights how technology and algorithms help identify investment opportunities and why talent and culture are vital for long-term success.

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ANECDOTE

From Legal Analytics To Litigation Finance

Eva Shang and Christian started Legalist as a legal-analytics scraper at Harvard and entered Y Combinator in 2016.
John Levy redirected them toward litigation finance after noting lawyers already knew case quality, sparking their pivot.

ADVICE

Prioritize IRR Over Origination Volume

Avoid the venture-backed originator model in capacity-constrained markets that reward underwriting over volume.
Focus on IRR and repeatable underwriting, not growth-for-growth's-sake origination metrics.

ANECDOTE

Slow Early Years, Big Inflection With Fund II

Deploying Fund I took two years and was demoralizing compared with YC peers who showed quick revenue growth.
The real inflection came after raising Fund II ($100M), which signaled institutional credibility.

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How do you scale from a $10M first fund to managing over $1.5B — all in one of the most capacity-constrained asset classes on earth? In this episode, I talk with Eva Shang, Co-founder and General Founder of Legalist, about dropping out of Harvard, getting into Y Combinator, pivoting from legal analytics to litigation finance, and raising their first $10M fund long before they had any track record. We discuss why Legalist chose the fund model over the venture-backed originator model, how they deployed their algorithm to find late-stage cases at scale, why litigation finance is capacity constrained, and how Legalist expanded into adjacent strategies like bankruptcy, mass torts, law-firm lending, and government receivables.

Highlights:

How Legalist began as a data-driven legal-analytics platform.
Why the team shifted from software to asset management.
How technology identifies litigation, bankruptcy, and receivables opportunities.
The role of public-records sourcing and automated case screening.
Why Legalist focuses on uncorrelated, niche credit strategies.
How Legalist evaluates risk in litigation finance.
How the team structures underwriting across legal and credit factors.
Why government receivables and bankruptcy claims require specialized processes.
How Legalist works with law firms, claimants, and contractors.
Eva’s philosophy on building teams, culture, and long-term systems.

Guest Bio:

Eva Shang is the Co-founder and General Partner of Legalist, an asset manager specializing in technology-enabled investments across litigation finance, bankruptcy, law-firm lending, mass torts, and government receivables. Eva co-founded the firm in 2016 after leaving Harvard and entering Y Combinator, and has led Legalist from its $10M debut fund to over $1.5B in AUM across multiple strategies.

Our Podcast now receives more than 300,000 downloads a month. Are you interested in sponsoring an episode? Please email David Weisburd at david@weisburdcapital.com.

#venturecapital #vc #startups #openlp #assetmanagement

Stay Connected with David Weisburd: X/Twitter: @dweisburd LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dweisburd/ Weisburd Capital: https://www.weisburdcapital.com/

Stay Connected with Eva Shang: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eshang/ Legalist: https://www.legalist.com/

Questions or topics you want us to discuss on How I Invest? Email us at david@weisburdcapital.com.

(0:00) Introduction (2:20) Y Combinator insights and venture capital decisions (4:51) Emphasizing IRR in building a sustainable business model (6:48) Lessons from early fundraising and growth strategies (9:36) Diversification and understanding capacity-constrained assets (13:33) Fundamentals of litigation finance and sources of alpha (18:08) Exploring the government receivables strategy (20:38) Cultivating long-term vision and independent mindedness in entrepreneurship (24:33) Reflecting on past decisions and the importance of team building (26:14) Closing remarks