Hi! I'm Simon.
I'm an early-stage software investor at Vertex Ventures US. I like working with technical teams who are building new ways for developers and companies to get more leverage from AI. Most of my work lives in the weeds with founders: early product thinking, customer conversations, go to market strategy, financial modeling, and navigating the moments in a startup that feel messy, complicated, or existential (sometimes all three at once).
Before investing, I was an investment banker at Qatalyst Partners. I was fortunate to advise enterprise software companies on nearly $100 billion in M&A deals. I genuinely enjoyed that work and still love to nerd out about finance. I also spent time in management consulting and in product at Google Cloud.
My love for software started young, inspired by my dad, who taught me coding basics early on. Growing up, I competed in math and programming competitions. I still have a fondness for web development and javascript, and I still read ML papers in a mostly unsuccessful attempt to keep up with my way smarter (and way hotter) data scientist wife.
Outside work, I'm busy trying to be the world's best dad and husband. In the rare moments I'm not with my kids, you'll find me rock climbing, snowboarding, woodworking, or lost in a good fiction book (nonfiction is boring).
Feel free to connect with me on X (@simontiu), LinkedIn (simontiu), Medium (@simon_tiu).