General Partner at ether.fi Ventures
Check size: $500K–$1M, from a current public ether.fi Ventures fundraising statement. The live site positions Fund I at pre-seed through Series A and publishes ventures@ether.fi. Confirm allocation, instrument, ownership target and whether the fund will lead; the current site says $20M committed capital while the April 2025 launch post described $40M, so fund-size headlines should not be used to infer check capacity.
David backs technical, early-stage teams at the intersection of finance, AI and crypto that pair crypto-native properties with real adoption. His clearest current thesis is a two-layer build: first achieve web2-grade safety, recourse, fraud prevention and consumer experience; then use composability, programmable money, non-custodial ownership, transparency and global 24/7 access to deliver step-change utility. He favors strategic partnerships where ether.fi's users, liquidity, validator capacity and distribution materially improve a company's odds—not passive capital alone.
Email ventures@ether.fi or use the exact @DaveHsu profile; the fund also states that DMs are open. Lead with stage, instrument, amount, shipped product and usage. Explain why the product needs crypto, what it does beyond web2 parity, and how it protects users before asking them to trust it with money. Quantify the distribution or network-effect loop and specify which ether.fi asset is strategically useful—users, card volume, staked ETH/validator capacity, vault liquidity, integrations or GTM. For RWA/finance products, cover underwriting, ratings, liquidity, application embedding, compliance and redemption. For Ethereum infrastructure, show validator adoption, latency/economics, MEV consequences and security. Ask for a partnership design, not only capital.
Founders who already inhabit a non-consensus future but can explain the concrete product path; technical teams with exceptional shipping speed, ecosystem understanding and community alignment; real utility and usage rather than a narrative-only token; products that preserve non-custodial ownership; safety infrastructure that unlocks mainstream trust; financial primitives with compounding network effects; and companies for which ether.fi can contribute users, liquidity, validator capacity, product integrations, distribution or go-to-market leverage.
Extractive or predatory crypto products, celebrity and political memecoin schemes, consumer experiences that normalize unrecoverable loss, empty narratives without utility, and teams that rely on a check while ignoring product, distribution and ecosystem alignment. His public work also implies caution toward RWA products missing ratings, liquidity, application integration or distribution, and protocols whose economics do not survive security, risk and adoption analysis.
Require insurance, recourse, fraud prevention and consumer-grade experience before expecting users to value crypto's composability, programmability, self-custody, transparency and global access.
Look for founders building either essential trust plumbing or a 100–1000x crypto-native utility layer, ideally with a credible connection between the two.
Underwrite what the ether.fi platform can contribute beyond money—users, card distribution, vault liquidity, staked assets, validators, integrations and operating help—and whether that contribution changes the outcome.
An onchain real-world asset needs more than issuance: evaluate ratings, secondary liquidity, embedding in applications, distribution, compliance and redemption mechanics.
Favor founders whose product vision initially sounds ahead of the market but becomes more coherent under repeated technical discussion and produces a credible sequence of network effects.
Evaluate the factors that make a deal win inside investment committee—market timing, team, technical edge, adoption evidence, economics, alignment and the fund's differentiated ability to help.
Separate financial innovation with real users and durable value from hype, predatory token distribution and fee extraction that shifts losses to vulnerable participants.
“We need web2 parity before web3 transcendence.”
— https://www.linkedin.com/posts/david-hsu-cfa-13858542_a-tale-of-two-cryptos-activity-7449671916971413504-_mQk
“A real partnership, not a passive check.”
— https://x.com/DaveHsu
Crypto must first match web2 on insurance, recourse, fraud prevention and consumer-grade UX, then compound those foundations with composability, programmable money, self-custody, transparency and borderless access.
ETHGas became strategically compelling because a market for Ethereum blockspace could restore validator agency and unlock new products, while ether.fi could make the thesis real with validator capacity rather than a passive check.