Allen Lau 🇨🇦

Recovering CEO (Wattpad), 3x entrepreneur (one homerun, one single, one strikeout), deep tech VC (TSF), engineer, helping founders build world-class companies.

[Allen Lau 🇨🇦 @allenlau]

Super excited to announce TSF’s Fund III today! With $41 million (US$30 million) to invest in the next frontier of computing and its applications, covering everything from deep-tech AI to protocols to semiconductors.

With a bigger fund, we will lead, co-lead, and participate in rounds, i.e., anything with the word ‘seed’ in it. In other words, from company inception to the round before Series A.

Our investment team members are all engineers, entrepreneurs, and operators, including a successful CEO-turned-investor—that’s me! :-) Our track record includes extensive experience in semiconductors, creating groundbreaking AI products, and founding and scaling massively successful global tech companies. Needless to say, we are uniquely qualified.

We will help your startup achieve extraordinary success, just like we did in the past. Please reach out to us if you are a seed-stage startup focusing on the next frontier of computing. We want to hear from you as long as you live on planet Earth!

https://t.co/UoLv3XHldn

[Allen Lau 🇨🇦 @allenlau]

2/2 Game 2 is now underway in quantum, robotics, physical AI, space, advanced manufacturing, and smart energy. For Canadian family offices, this is a generational opportunity to back and own part of the next wave of world-class Canadian companies. My piece: https://t.co/IFi9nTMSSL

[Allen Lau 🇨🇦 @allenlau]

1/2 Canada arguably invented modern AI. We trained the talent, helped build the science, and produced many of the key researchers, yet most of the important AI companies ended up being built and owned elsewhere. That was Game 1, and we lost it.

[Ideogram @ideogram_ai]

Introducing Ideogram 4.0: the best open image model in the world.

Think it. Make it. Own it.

Download the weights, fine-tune on your own data, and run it on your hardware. Live on every Ideogram plan and the API today.

[Allen Lau 🇨🇦 @allenlau]

2/ At @twosmallfishvc, we have been investing in this thesis for years through companies like Zinite, @BlumindInc, and Hepzibah. These founders are building foundational technologies to address the speed, latency, and energy challenges in AI.

Exciting time!

https://t.co/wsSWCVAJ9T

[Allen Lau 🇨🇦 @allenlau]

1/ Great to see @MrsEvaLau quoted in the @financialpost on Canada’s next wave of semiconductor opportunity.

As AI adoption accelerates, the demand for more efficient chips is creating room for a new generation of Canadian deep tech companies.

[Allen Lau 🇨🇦 @allenlau]

3/ Our whole investment team has been engineers, operators, and company builders.

We are not outsiders looking in. We have lived the company-building journey ourselves.

Proud to deliver something uniquely Two Small Fish Ventures: relevant, trusted, and founder supportive.

[Allen Lau 🇨🇦 @allenlau]

1/ As a founder, I attended many founder summits. Now, as an investor, I am hosting our own.

If I had to pick one thing that helps founders get the most out of a summit, it is peer-to-peer learning from other founders who are on a similar journey.

[Allen Lau 🇨🇦 @allenlau]

2/ That is how we designed our @twosmallfishvc Founder Summit: interactive, focused, and high-trust.

Deep tech founders learning from each other through lived experience: what worked, what did not, what surprised them, and what they are still figuring out.

[Allen Lau 🇨🇦 @allenlau]

3/ I was born and raised in the East and spent my entire adulthood in the West.

The moment I became comfortable with discomfort, my cultural bilingualism became an unfair advantage.

More here:

https://t.co/habwv37DXJ

[Allen Lau 🇨🇦 @allenlau]

1/ You cannot turn left and turn right at the same time.

Eastern and Western value systems are optimized for different paths to outcomes

One rewards harmony. The other rewards constructive tension.

Neither is wrong. But they can be incompatible.

[Allen Lau 🇨🇦 @allenlau]

2/ May is Asian Heritage Month in North America, so let’s talk about the bamboo ceiling.

The bamboo ceiling can be the visible symptom of that incompatibility.

But I don’t think it is always the root cause.

The deeper issue is often discomfort avoidance.

[Allen Lau 🇨🇦 @allenlau]

Downside. Edge. Upside. That's what I talked about at Upper Bound. https://t.co/uZ6jNFlFnp

[GenseeAI @Gensee_AI]

Introducing Guided Mode in GenseeAI.

It’s a simpler, more personalized way to get started with AI workflows, especially if you don’t already know the original OpenClaw flow.

What’s new👇

[Allen Lau 🇨🇦 @allenlau]

4/ Whether you are a subscriber of Allen’s Thoughts or not, please take 30 seconds to subscribe to my new Substack as well.

“A Recovering CEO’s Thoughts by Allen Lau”

Thank you for being part of my journey.

[Allen Lau 🇨🇦 @allenlau]

1/ My blog Allen’s Thoughts is almost a decade old.

I have been writing there on WordPress because I wanted more control.

WordPress is open source. I can host it myself. I can DIY. I am not at the mercy of any one platform.

[Allen Lau 🇨🇦 @allenlau]

3/ More importantly, I want to spend my time sharing my thoughts, not maintaining the plumbing.

So, over time, I am moving to Substack:

https://t.co/qgZqVn5mhs

I will continue to post on Allen’s Thoughts for the time being.

[Allen Lau 🇨🇦 @allenlau]

.@Perimeter Institute has become a world-class magnet for people who are curious about theoretical physics. You will understand why after watching this video.

https://t.co/6XJW348jOQ

[Allen Lau 🇨🇦 @allenlau]

So here it is — its own post. Five banana lessons on jobs, ownership, and long-term value creation. It all starts with a monkey. 🍌

https://t.co/so4s0mJnGw

[Allen Lau 🇨🇦 @allenlau]

"Stop Supplying. Start Owning." was one of my most engaging posts in recent weeks. One part I did not go deep enough on: the banana analogy.