“The next generation of consumers are living their best lives in online worlds like Roblox, Fortnite and Discord.” That’s what he says Jason YesCo-founder and General Partner of an early-stage enterprise capital company Patron. “Our goal is to invest in early-stage consumer companies that will shape the way the gaming-first generation learns, shops, socializes, plays, invests and, let’s be honest, procrastinates when it comes to going online.” he explained. Entrepreneur.
Patron was created in the fall of 2021. After starting their careers in enterprise capital, each Yeh and co-founder Patron Brian Cho he then held leadership positions at Riot Games, where Yeh helped launch and scale League of Legends for the next nine years. Their third Partner, Atherton Amberbuilt a social platform backed by YC and Forerunner that was acquired by Discord, where it helped the company scale to audiences outside of gaming.
We connected with Yeh to get a glimpse into what his company expects from founders and what he learned at Riot Games about the difference in a product that is “good” versus a product that is disruptive.
What inspired you to create Patron?
Watching my daughters experience the Internet for the first time made me realize that I had a few preconceptions about how it really works and how people behave and connect online. They are growing up in the age of ChatGPT and expect the Internet to contain answers to questions, not links or sponsored content that I have change into accustomed to via Google. They expect Spotify and YouTube to know what they wish to take heed to or watch without having to offer too much information. They also love songs and videos that magically appear on their playlists.
It dawned on me that I needed to stop judging how something should work based on my past experiences and as an alternative consider methods to best experience something based on first principles. I started to feel like there was a gap in the products and services that were intended to serve my daughters’ generation of consumers.
Please share “holy @#$!” business moment.
We began working on Patron during the pandemic, a time of chaos for many. For me, it meant juggling every thing – moving my family from Berlin back to Los Angeles, running from school drop-offs to fundraisers, and squeezing in Zoom calls from my parents’ house while we looked for a recent home.
Then, as a part of our initial push for Fund I, we were presented with an unexpected opportunity to potentially join a larger company. This was a great opportunity – an easier path to fundraising, much higher short-term compensation, and a probability to stabilize my work-life balance. It gave the impression of a sensible alternative, a predictable path that few would have the probability to think about. However, with so much change and uncertainty in the world, I desired to have more control over what I work on, how I work, and with whom I work. So we decided to rely on ourselves. It was a leap of religion and I hoped it would not damage our fledgling fundraising effort.
What happened next was simply wonderful. We achieved an oversubscribed debut fund in just six months. Sometimes the hardest decisions result in the most extraordinary results. Trusting our vision was a risk that modified every thing.
I might advise entrepreneurs to make sure they thoroughly understand their core audience. We love seeing founders with a unique advantage in identifying and serving audiences they will organically reach at an interesting scale. Building this community needs to be an early priority and a part of the company’s DNA.
Can you share details of your fundraising success?
I’m proud that we successfully and efficiently increased our goal fund size in two different markets. First, in 2021, we raised our $90M Fund I in lower than six months, although Patron is a completely recent entity and not an existing VC firm. Then, despite tougher capital market challenges in 2024, we raised our $100 million Fund II in roughly nine months, raising commitments from recent institutional investors, including a large university endowment, a sovereign fund and several recent institutional single-family homes . offices.
What does the word “entrepreneur” mean to you?
To me, “entrepreneur” means someone who desires to create something where nothing existed before. It is to make use of an idea and an opportunity, and then through thought and motion create something from nothing. Entrepreneurs by nature should be daring in taking risks because it is going to all the time be easiest to not create something recent. As founders of Patron, we consider ourselves entrepreneurs, which allows us to significantly empathize with the founders we serve.
What is something that many aspiring business owners think they need but don’t really want?
People often confuse external validation from celebrities as a sign of product quality or product-market fit. They attempt to get that one megastar to make use of their product through non-organic or paid means and point to that as the reason why their product is great. This is very true in the gaming space.
However, paying for people to make use of your product is a trap that is rarely sustainable. Instead, focus on truly understanding your goal user’s motivations. Build something they’ll wish to use and play again and again. The trick is to build bridges for this core audience so that they will share your product with others.
Is there a specific quote or saying that you simply use as personal motivation?
For me, it’s the words of Rick Rubin: “Look for what you notice but no one else sees.” As investors, our role is not only to see the obvious, but also to look for hidden currents that are invisible to others and that signal transformational potential. Our company specializes in financing innovation and creating a vision for how people will use the Internet of tomorrow.
If you are a founder or entrepreneur reading this, I have a query for you: What future do you see that others could also be missing?