So You Wanna … Be a Seed-Stage Investor? With Steve Jang

**Dave Chang** (0:00)
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**SPEAKER_2** (1:03)
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**Dave Chang** (1:31)
Welcome to The Dave Chang Show, part of the Ringle Podcast Network presented by Major Domo Media. Thank you, Latino, as always.
We have an interview today with my good friend, Steve Jang. Probably not have heard about Steve, but he has been instrumental in a lot of the products and businesses you probably use or support. Besides being a very successful venture capitalist, and I don't think he's the traditional one. He is unique in many ways, not just as a successful investor business person, but he just has a good general sense of where culture is going. That's sort of his job. And he's not your traditional setup and how that'll happen in his career. This podcast, we're not gonna go deeper into that. We're gonna have him again. I think we can do a longer one. In the podcast, we referenced the Tim Ferriss podcast. Steve does a really good job of distilling many of the popular topics about Korean and Korean American culture. He's just full of wisdom.
Very excited to have him on. And I wanted to get his take on some of the business he's investing in and some of his thoughts on where food and AI are going to go. So yeah, we're gonna have more interviews moving forward. So yeah, enjoy. Steve Jang, I don't know how to describe you to people.
Because you're not just a venture dude, you know?

**Steve Jang** (2:51)
You know, I do some film stuff.

**Dave Chang** (2:53)
Yeah.

**Steve Jang** (2:54)
Do some restaurant stuff.

**Dave Chang** (2:55)
I don't even think it's that. Because I would say, not that I know all the people in the world of venture capital, far from it, but you seem to be one of the few people that are non-traditional venture capital kind of people.

**Steve Jang** (3:10)
Yeah, definitely. I mean, there's a new generation, even though, as you said, I'm old.

**Dave Chang** (3:15)
You're not old. You're not old.

**Steve Jang** (3:17)
We got to stop that, the Korean stuff, where we're like, you know, being like two years apart, and then you call them like big brother and old. I know.
That's like, you know.

**Dave Chang** (3:26)
Why?

**Steve Jang** (3:26)
We're American.

**Dave Chang** (3:28)
Korean American.

**Steve Jang** (3:30)
Yeah, it's a new country. It's a new nation. We'll talk about that.

**Dave Chang** (3:33)
We'll talk about that. But I always have a hard time pinpointing what you do, who you are, other than you have one of the great gifts which is to break down complex pieces of information or concepts into sort of simple two to three sentences, right? Number one. Number two, you seem to know everyone.
You know, we walk into the Spotify office and you go, oh, Daniel. I was like, who the hell are you talking about? I was like, oh.

**Steve Jang** (4:00)
Daniel and I go way back. Early music streaming days. Like 2008
2008 That's like 16, 15 years ago.

**Dave Chang** (4:10)
And you knew back then that Spotify was going to be a thing.