Eva Lau is one of our 30 Inspirational Women in Canadian FinTech and Finance!
Eva (@MrsEvaLau) is managing director at Two Small Fish Ventures, a firm she founded with her husband Allen. As an angel investor, she backs companies like reward app Drop and Paycase, which uses blockchain technology to send money overseas. Before Two Fish, Eva worked in product development for Wattpad, a virtual community for user generated stories. Here, she shares her best financial advice, speaks about her impressive career, and honours the women who inspired her along the way.
What are you most proud of accomplishing in your career?
EL: In my product development career, the proudest moment definitely was scaling the Wattpad user base from tens of thousands to tens of millions. Wattpad is an entertainment company and there are over 65 million monthly storytellers on the platform. I was so privileged to have the opportunity to join Wattpad during its infancy and help them create one of the most engaging social platforms on the internet. Since leaving Wattpad and becoming an angel investor, I am equally proud to be giving back to the tech community by sharing my experience with other founders. So far, I have made just under 20 investments, and all of them are network-effect based companies. This is just the beginning of a new chapter for me and I certainly hope that my effort in angel investing will help nurture more tech giants in Canada.
Who were the women that served as role models to inspire you in your life?
EL: There are certainly many women in my life that have served as role models, especially in the early days of my career, when I was one of the very few women in the engineering team in a the Toronto software startup called Delrina. The late Teddy Rosenberg was the GM of one of the divisions at Delrina. She was one of the few women leaders in the company. I was never in her team, but her role as GM in a tech startup certainly inspired me and showed me that women could lead in the tech world, too. The other woman I would like to mention is a good friend and mentor: Marg Vaillancourt at Jewlr. Marg and I met at Delrina. Her passion for developing great products inspired me to become a great product and process person in the tech world.
What was the best financial advice that you’ve ever received?
EL: Don’t set your eyes on the money in the short term, set your eyes on doing the right thing for the long term. Money will follow 🙂
Thanks for sharing your story, Eva! To learn about more finfluencers, check out our 30 Inspirational Women in Canadian FinTech and Finance.