Despite being born into a wealthy and influential family, Joseph Fung is forging his own path as a tech investor. Joseph is the grandson of legendary share trader Fung King Hey, one of the co-founders of Sun Hung Kai Properties, one of the world’s largest property developers by market capitalization.
Joseph worked in finance at Citigroup and Morgan Stanley before joining Hong Kong billionaire Richard Li’s PCCW, where he helped with the communications and media group’s content acquisitions.
After more than a decade of working for someone else, he launched his own venture capital firm, Saltagen Ventures, in 2017, which is focused on early-stage investments in science and technology.
Over the past five years, Saltagen has invested more than $18 million across 20 startups globally, including in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Hong Kong, and the U.S. Its portfolio companies in Hong Kong include Fano Labs, an AI startup spun off from the University of Hong Kong, and Cathay Photonics, a maker of sapphire-based screen protection films for displays.
The 41-year-old tech investor believes that his success is due to the way his father raised him. His father didn’t push him to take over the family business, allowing him free to explore and learn about his own abilities. He has been able to build his own reputation, ways of learning, sense of self-confidence, and deal with his own successes and failures without being judged by his family.
Despite Joseph’s family legacy, he admits that investing in life sciences requires a different level of humility. He knows that he cannot rely on his family’s capital to ensure that he dominates the sector. Instead, he believes that it is essential to integrate a high level of humility to succeed in a completely unrelated industry.
