William Bao Bean

William Bao Bean is Managing General Partner of Orbit Startups the first and longest-running startup program in Asia with over US$180m in assets under management. Orbit provides hands-on support for growth, partnerships, fundraising and user acquisition combined with an initial investment package. Our focus is on digitalization across emerging and frontier markets to drive efficiency in e-commerce, fintech, media, health, education, and logistics. Orbit's consumer ecosystem has helped our startups scale to 218m monthly active smartphone users. William joined Orbit from SingTel Innov8 Ventures where he was a founding Managing Director supporting China investments. Prior to that William was a Partner at Softbank China & India Holdings, a VC backed by Softbank and Cisco, leading investments in China and South East Asia. William started his career in equity research most recently with Deutsche Bank where he was a top ranked analyst for Asia Internet and China Tech, Media and Telecom and worked on the IPOs for Alibaba, Kingsoft, eLong (Expedia China), OnMobile, Rediff and Infoedge Naukri.

In 2005, he was ranked #3 stock picker in China/Hong Kong and #1 for Technology, Media and Telecom by Thomson Reuters Starmine. In 2006 he was ranked #3 equity research analyst in Asia for Software and IT Services by Institutional Investor Magazine for his work on China Internet. William has done over 300 early stage investments including Bitmex in blockchain, UShopal in ecommerce, VideoVerse in media, italki in edtech, Carota in mobility, Flickstree in media, ELSA Speak in edtech, Tappytoon in media, Coutloot in ecommerce, and Dastgyr in fintech. He currently sits on the board of directors of Supplynote, Scantrust, Boost Capital, Pandabus, Fleksy, Goama, italki, and SRT as well as non-profit Blair Academy. He holds a BA from Bowdoin College.

William Bao Bean is the Managing General Partner at Orbit Startups, based in Asia. William Bao Bean studied BA History, International Relations @ Bowdoin College. Explore their detailed professional journey, key connections, and contributions to the industry on our platform.