DAVID SU

Su did not take the usual finance path. He grew up and studied in Singapore, earning a computer engineering degree from Nanyang Technological University.

Then he spent seven years at Lotus and IBM, running the software and services business across Greater China. That gave him a front-row seat to China's tech boom before it exploded.

He moved into venture as a founding partner at TDF Capital and later KPCB China. Then he co-founded Matrix Partners China, where he built a track record backing companies at the very start.

Matrix Partners China is Su's main stage. He co-founded it and helped grow it into one of the country's top early-stage firms, focused on tech, consumer, and healthcare.

His hits read like a map of modern China. He backed Baidu, the search giant, early.

He backed Didi, the ride-hailing company that beat Uber in China. And he backed XPeng, an electric-car maker that later listed in the US worth billions.

He was also early on Focus Media and medical-device maker Kanghui.

Su invests at the seed and early stages, when a company is often just a founder and an idea. His edge is pattern recognition built over decades in Chinese tech.

He came up in enterprise software, so he understands how businesses actually buy and use products. He tends to focus on a few sectors he knows cold, mainly technology, consumer, and healthcare.

In plain terms, he bets early, bets narrow, and bets on people he can read.

XPeng is the standout. Su and Matrix backed the electric-car startup early, when Chinese EV makers were unproven and cash-hungry.

XPeng later went public in the United States and reached a market value above $18 billion by 2025. Backing a car company from scratch is brutally expensive and most fail.

This one did not. It is the kind of early bet that lands an investor on the Midas List.

Su does not have a famous public flameout on the record, which is common for early-stage investors who spread their bets. The real risk in his style is the one every seed investor carries.

For every Baidu or XPeng, there are quiet write-offs nobody names. The honest lesson is that his wins are loud and his misses are silent, which is exactly how venture math is supposed to work.

You only need to be right big a few times.

Su believes the money is made at the start, before a company is obvious. Get in early, back a founder you trust, and hold on while they build.

He leans on his operating years to judge whether a business can actually work, not just whether it sounds exciting. His long run on the Forbes Midas List suggests the approach holds up.

Find great people early and be patient.

Su keeps his family life out of the press. What is public is his tie to Singapore, where he studied and still serves on the board of trustees at Nanyang Technological University.

That connection to his old school says something about him. He stays loyal to the place that trained him, even while building a career across the water in China.

Su earned a bachelor's in computer engineering from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. It is an engineering degree, not a finance one, and that matters.

He learned how technology works before he learned how to fund it. Decades later he returned to NTU as a member of its board of trustees.

As an Amazon Associate, Netfigo earns from qualifying purchases. Book links above may be affiliate links.