Sophie Liao

Sophie Liao is the Founding Partner at Oyster Ventures, a seed-stage venture capital firm based in San Francisco, California. Since launching the firm in 2016, she has managed three funds and deployed capital into more than 80 startups, typically writing initial checks between $25,000 and $200,000 with follow-on investments reaching up to $5 million. Before establishing Oyster Ventures, Liao served as a Managing Director at Rothenberg Ventures and a Vice President at Draper Dragon, while also maintaining ties to the Republic Venture Fund. Her transition into venture capital followed an entrepreneurial career that included co-founding a visual effects startup, which she successfully sold to a large media corporation in 2015. Liao currently focuses her investment strategy on funding seed-stage and early-stage companies across the fintech, SaaS, and marketplace sectors that introduce liquidity and efficiency to traditional industries.