Getting into competitive venture deals is difficult enough when you aren’t a huge name-brand VC, and doing it from another country is even more challenging. Our guest today, Yatong Li is Managing Director at Sixty Degree Capital, a cross-sector firm that invests in software, digital infrastructure, healthcare, and biotech companies across multiple stages as early as Series A and as late as pre-IPO. Yatong talks to us about how he gets into competitive deals and what his view of the market looks like in 2023.We also have Anthony Mouchantaf joining us for another news rundown covering the biggest news in tech this week.About Yatong Li:Yatong Li is the Managing Director of Sixty Degree Capital. He joined in 2017 as an Analyst in the Toronto office and advanced to Managing Director in 2022.Born in China, Yatong moved to Canada and completed the Master of Finance program at the Schulich School of Business, York University. He graduated from Nanjing Agricultural University with a B.Sc. Before joining Sixty Degree Capital, Yatong worked at China Securities (SH: 601066) and as an investment banking analyst at China Galaxy Securities (HK: 06881), a state-owned securities firm in Beijing with a market value of $6.3 billion.In this episode we discuss:

News roundup with Anthony Mouchantaf

How Yatong got his start in becoming an investor

Early investments

Sixty Degree Capital’s origin story

How Yatong nurtures relationships in Silicon Valley

The diligence process at Sixty Degree

Building relationships with corporate partners

Why he focuses on infrastructure investments

Their investment decision process

How Yatong’s investing thesis has evolved

Sixty Degree’s process of investing

How Sixty Degree co-invests

How early-stage investments are assessed

What the market looks like right now

Thoughts on Stripe and others slashing valuation

Sixty Degree’s recent investment in DataGrail

Fallout from the SVB collapse