Altos Ventures

About

Altos Ventures is a venture capital firm founded in 1996 by Ho Nam and Han Kim, who met as MBA classmates at Stanford Graduate School of Business (class of 1994) ¹². Anthony Lee, also a Stanford MBA graduate, joined as the third co-founder approximately four years later ³. The firm is headquartered at 2882 Sand Hill Road, Suite 100, Menlo Park, California ⁴.

Altos began with $30 million in committed capital from a sole limited partner, a South Korean financial conglomerate ¹⁵. The firm’s first fund was $86.5 million ⁶. For the first 15 years, Altos struggled to generate meaningful returns, raising four funds without significant exits ⁷. The dot-com crash forced a fundamental strategic pivot: the partners abandoned what Ho Nam calls the “VC lotto game” — finding early-stage companies and preparing them to raise from brand-name VCs at higher valuations — and instead began helping founders build cash-flow-positive businesses that required minimal venture capital ⁷.

In late 2001, the partners raised a fund from traditional institutional LPs to focus on bootstrapped technology companies ⁵. In 2008, Altos refined its strategy again, targeting capital-efficient companies with more explosive growth potential ⁵. The firm did not raise a new fund after the dot-com crash until 2005 ⁸.

Altos became a Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) with the SEC, a distinction that gives it uniquely flexible capabilities including the ability to execute secondary share purchases and create special purpose vehicles (SPVs) ⁶⁹. This structure enabled the firm to build massive positions in its best-performing companies — most notably Roblox — across multiple funds and SPVs ⁶.

As of 2024, Altos manages more than $10 billion in regulatory assets under management across more than 15 funds in three vehicles: Altos Ventures and Altos Hybrid funds (investing in U.S. and global companies) and Altos Korea Opportunity Fund (targeting South Korean startups) ⁹¹⁰. In November 2024, the firm raised $500 million for its latest fund, its largest to date, while continuing to cap individual fund sizes below $1 billion ¹⁰. To date, Altos has backed nearly 250 companies, been the first and lead investor in more than 50, and seen over a dozen portfolio companies go public or be acquired by publicly traded companies ⁹.

There is a Harvard Business School case study (2022) examining a critical December 2012 strategic decision point when the firm was running out of capital and did not have the realized track record to raise another traditional institutional fund ⁵.

Stated Thesis

Altos Ventures publicly describes itself as partnering “with early to growth stage technology companies operating in consumer and enterprise sectors, with the goal of building durable and compounding businesses over decades” ⁹. The firm emphasizes its “uniquely flexible, long-term, and concentrated approach to venture capital, supporting the full lifecycle of companies from inception to global growth and profitability” ⁹.

Ho Nam has articulated a philosophy rooted in Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger’s value investing principles, adapted for early-stage venture capital ⁶. The firm publicly states a preference for “hedgehog” founders — those with singular life missions and obsessive focus on one business — over “fox” founders who are clever serial entrepreneurs chasing multiple opportunities ⁶¹¹. Ho Nam crystallized this thesis after asking Buffett and Munger a question at the 2003 Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting ¹¹.

The firm’s stated investment criteria center on three questions: (1) does the business make money or have a clear path to profitability, (2) does it have a protective moat (network effects, patents, proprietary know-how, counter-positioning), and (3) does the team have a deep relationship with Altos that provides a proprietary information advantage ⁶.

Altos also emphasizes capital efficiency as a core value, publicly stating a preference for founders who build businesses that do not depend on excessive venture funding ⁷¹².

Inferred Thesis

Based on 18 verified investments in the portfolio table below, the following patterns emerge. Note: Altos claims nearly 250 total investments, so this sample represents approximately 7% of the full portfolio.

Geographic distribution: 10 of 18 verified investments (56%) are in South Korean companies, with 7 in the United States (39%) and 1 in Canada (6%). This heavy Korea weighting reflects the firm’s dedicated Altos Korea Opportunity Fund and the Korean heritage of co-founders Ho Nam and Han Kim, both of whom are Korean-American ¹².

Sector distribution: Based on 18 verified investments: 4 in e-commerce/marketplaces (22%), 4 in fintech (22%), 3 in enterprise SaaS (17%), 2 in gaming/entertainment (11%), and 5 in other sectors including edtech, consumer/social, mobility, food delivery, and proptech (28%). The firm’s actual portfolio likely skews more heavily toward enterprise SaaS given Tracxn data showing Enterprise Applications as the top category across 237 investments ¹³.

Stage distribution: Altos invests across stages from seed through growth, but the distinguishing behavior is aggressive follow-on investing. Across 237 tracked investments, Tracxn data shows Series A (92 investments) and Series B (45 investments) as the most common entry points, with seed rounds comprising 24 investments ¹³. However, the firm’s most distinctive pattern is using its RIA structure to invest hundreds of millions in secondaries and SPVs for its best-performing companies — deploying over $400 million into Roblox alone from an initial $86.5 million fund ⁶⁷.

Hold period: Extraordinarily long by VC standards. Altos has held Roblox since 2008 (17+ years) ¹⁴, Coupang since 2011 (14+ years) ¹⁴, and Demandbase since at least 2011 (14+ years) ¹⁵. The firm’s RIA structure and SPV capability enable indefinite hold periods.

Co-investor patterns: In Korean deals, Altos frequently co-invests with SoftBank Ventures Asia, Kakao Ventures, and DST Global. In U.S. deals, co-investors include Kleiner Perkins, Andreessen Horowitz, Felicis, and Initialized Capital.

Notable gap: Despite publicly emphasizing capital efficiency and bootstrapped companies, the firm has backed several companies that raised massive amounts of venture capital (Coupang raised $4.6 billion, Roblox raised hundreds of millions). The capital efficiency emphasis appears to apply primarily to the early stages, with the firm comfortable supporting aggressive capital deployment once product-market fit is established.

Portfolio

Note: This table represents approximately 7% of Altos Ventures’ claimed ~250 investments. Years marked with ~ are approximations based on founding year or available context. Altos has invested in many additional companies across the U.S. and South Korea that are not captured here due to limited public data on individual round participation.

In Their Own Words

Ho Nam on the firm’s approach to venture capital, from his Acquired podcast interview (2021): “we never run out of money and we never run out of time. Thanks to our LPs, we could just keep investing across multiple funds.” ⁶

Ho Nam on capital efficiency: “We like these really bootstrapped, kind of scrappy, capital-efficient kind of entrepreneurs. We don’t like burning a lot of money.” ¹²

Ho Nam on investing becoming easier with experience, from a Liberty RPF interview: “I might be delusional but I think it has become easier.” He added: “All I can do is focus on what I can control - the decisions, not the outcomes.” ²⁵

Ho Nam on management quality, from the Liberty RPF interview: “Such charming people tend to turn me off.” ²⁵

Ho Nam on permanent capital: “There is no such thing as permanent capital.” And on fund structures: “I like the pre-nup agreement inherent in the current fund structures.” ²⁵

Ho Nam on differentiation, from a Harvey Mudd College interview (2024): “you could strive to be different. The differentiation — something that’s uniquely authentic to who you are” — can succeed in crowded markets ⁸.

Ho Nam characterizes the venture portfolio’s purpose: “I no longer even think about the venture deals as investments. I think about the venture portfolio as just the world’s greatest discovery mechanism.” ⁶

Ho Nam on his initial reaction to Roblox: He initially thought the idea was “the dumbest idea” until seeing “7% compounded growth on a weekly basis for 52 weeks” combined with YouTube evidence of passionate community engagement ⁶.

What Founders Say

Seunggun Lee, founder of Toss (Viva Republica), on Han Kim’s early belief in him as a founder: “I don’t know how, but he had that belief… I guess he was invested in my integrity and spirit.” ²⁶

Kim Bong-jin, founder of Woowa Brothers (Baemin), initially had his investment pitch rejected by Altos twice, but persistently returned. The Altos team ultimately invested after observing the company’s surprisingly growing monthly revenue data, recognizing what they described as “entrepreneurs with drive, substantial growth, and perseverance” ²⁷.

No additional independently sourced founder testimonials were found through dedicated searching. The firm’s long-tenured relationships with founders like David Baszucki (Roblox, 17+ year relationship) and Bom Suk Kim (Coupang) are well-documented in investor interviews but verbatim founder-side quotes about the experience of working with Altos are scarce in public sources.

Sources