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The Best Steak Was Still Colorado
Talks about Family, Fathers Day and Immigration
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Michael Yang
Managing Partner at OMERS Ventures
MY
Michael Yang
Managing Partner at OMERS Ventures
San Francisco Bay Area
Overview
Michael Yang is a Senior Managing Partner at OMERS Ventures in the San Francisco Bay Area, with a strong background in venture capital, strategic partnerships, and start-ups. With experience at top companies like Yahoo and Comcast Ventures, he has successfully invested in notable companies such as Landed and Korbit, showcasing his expertise in Series A and Seed funding rounds.
Work Experience
Senior Managing Partner
2019 - Current
As Head of OMERS Ventures (OV), I have the honor and privilege to lead a venture capital firm with offices in Palo Alto, Toronto and NYC focused on $5-20M investments in Series A to C opportunities in early stage B2B software and early growth tech-enabled services. Currently, I am Board director for Crunchbase (account-based prospecting for private companies), Caraway Health (virtual student health provider), Clearcover (personal auto insurance), Foresight (workers comp insurance), and Felix & Paul Studios (cinematic VR). Previous investments include PeerWell (virtual musculoskeletal care provider, acq by Bardavon), Wattpad (social story telling, acq by Naver), and Landed (down payment assistance for homebuying, acq by SAS LLC). I have been a Mentor for Creative Destruction Lab (CDL-Risk) and its insurtech stream in conjunction with the University of Wisconsin; an Advisory Committee Member for Silicon Valley Employers Forum (SVEF) and its coalition of employers assembled to influence global benefits; and an EIR Collaborator with Turner Construction, a leading global general contractor. I launched OV's US office in 2019 (Palo Alto) before becoming North American head in 2022 (including our Toronto team) and ultimately becoming the Head of Ventures in 2023 (opening an NYC office). OMERS Ventures manages $2B AUM over 5 funds since its inception in 2011.
Managing Director
2009 - 2018
Emerging tech (Health tech, IoT, VR/AR) and commerce investor for the early stage, financially driven $1B+ AUM corporate venture arm of Comcast/NBCUniversal. Health tech investments included Accolade (healthcare navigation, NASDAQ: ACCD), Healthline (healthcare information services, acq by Summit Partners), BodyMedia (wearable activity tracker, acq by Jawbone), Talix (risk adjustment for payers/providers, acq by Edifecs) and Brightside (financial wellness). IoT investments included August (smart home locks, acq by Assa Abloy), Automatic (connected car solutions, acq by SiriusXM), Precision Hawk (enterprise drone services acq by Field), and Pony.ai (autonomous mobility, sold down in secondary). VR/AR investments included Baobab Studios (VR animation), Felix & Paul Studios (cinematic VR), SPACES (location-based VR, acq by Apple), and NextVR (live VR broadcasting, acq by Apple). Commerce investments included KiwiCo (subscription STEAM projects), CreativeLive (online classes for creative pursuits, acq by Fiverr), and Ninth Decimal (location-centric marketing platform, acq by InMarket). Launched inaugural west coast presence for Comcast Interactive Capital in 2009 which became Comcast Ventures in 2012. Led LP investment in Xiang He Capital (Beijing-based growth stage VC led by Hesong Tang).
Comcast Ventures partners with extraordinary entrepreneurs building transformative consumer and enterprise companies.
Vice President/General Manager
2005 - 2008
Led $125M business unit in the Yahoo! Media Group as well as the Local Markets & Commerce Division, comprising of Yahoo! Autos, Yahoo! Real Estate and Yahoo! Health; cut my teeth with Yahoo! Shopping.
Yahoo is a technology and media company that serves users through its portfolio of digital platforms, products, and services.
Raised $6,800,000.00 from Visa, SoftBank Capital, Sequoia Capital and Reuters Venture Capital.
Principal
2002 - 2005
Enterprise IT investor for a $2B AUM early stage, trans-Atlantic venture fund. Portfolio companies included Active Endpoints (BPEL engine, acq by Informatica), LiveVault (online backup and recovery service, acq by Iron Mountain), Marathon Technologies (Windows virtualization, acq by Stratus), and Open Ratings (predictive analytics of suppliers, acq by Dun & Bradstreet).
Atlas Venture creates and invests in biotech startup companies with seed and early stage venture investments.
Senior Director
1999 - 2002
Product Marketing and Business Development for Kleiner Perkins-backed collaboration software start-up (fka FireDrop) that was acquired by MetricStream.
Zaplet is a cloud-based open platform to build, deploy and manage a variety of GRC applications for financial firms globally.
Manager, Business Affairs
1998 - 1999
Business development and corporate development for AOL and Netscape.
AOL Lifestream is a web-based application that enables users to keep track of all their comments on social networking sites.
Raised $1,000,000,000.00 from Comcast Ventures and Google.
Associate
1993 - 1996
Strategy and operational consulting for Fortune 500 corporations in retail, consumer products, industrial products and healthcare.
Education
Investments
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