Millie Liu photo
Investor profile

Millie Liu

Founder and Managing Partner, First Star Ventures

About

Millie Liu grew up in Shenzhen during its rapid transformation from blank canvas to megacity, which shaped her comfort with backing founders building in uncharted territory without established playbooks. She applies a distinctive screening test to deep-tech startups by asking whether a small team of Google engineers could recreate the technology in under a year—if yes, she considers it insufficiently defensible for investment. Millie Liu grew up in Shenzhen during its rapid transformation from blank canvas to megacity, which shaped her comfort with backing founders building in uncharted territory without established playbooks. She applies a distinctive screening test to deep-tech startups by asking whether a small team of Google engineers could recreate the technology in under a year—if yes, she considers it insufficiently defensible for investment.

Works at

Investment focus

Stages
Pre-Seed
Seed
Sectors
AI
BioTech
Climate
Deeptech
Hardware
Data

Investment details

Avg check size$100K - $1M
Can lead rounds
No
Geographies
USA