Hosting Hans Tung: How $10B+ Companies Get Built
What the Midas List Doesn’t Teach You - Hans Tung Does
I had the privilege to host Hans Tung - Managing Partner at Notable Capital and one of the most respected venture investors in the world - for a dinner with our Icons community.
Hans has been on the Forbes Midas List 13 times and has backed generational companies including Airbnb, ByteDance, Affirm, Coinbase, Slack, Quince, and Anthropic. Two decades of investing across the US and Asia gives him a global lens that’s rare — and it showed throughout the conversation.
Here are the ideas that stayed with me:
The biggest outcomes tend to follow a few repeatable patterns
Hans described three “shapes” that show up again and again in category-defining companies:
1) They democratize access.
The biggest companies don’t just build something new — they expand the pie. They help people earn more, save more, or buy more for less by making something previously expensive, complex, or exclusive suddenly accessible at scale.
2) They’re built with cross-border advantage from day one.
The best founders don’t treat “global” as a later-stage expansion plan. They architect for it early: talent, distribution, supply chain, go-to-market — and they compound faster because they’re playing on a bigger surface area from the start.
3) In AI, developers come first.
Models improve because millions of developers are constantly poking them with real-world requests. The feedback loop isn’t theoretical — it’s production traffic. Developers are the growth engine of model intelligence.
The future of VC: barbell or bust
Hans was straightforward: venture is splitting into two camps.
Mega-funds that can write billion-dollar checks and need truly massive outcomes to move the needle.
A long tail of small, sharp funds built by operators from this AI wave — people with real product and distribution instincts.
Everyone in the middle will feel the squeeze.
One line that landed: if your fund is many billions, to deliver top-tier returns you basically need at least one “Anthropic-level” win in every fund.
Why some Chinese founders build more enduring companies
Hans pointed to two forces that create relentless intensity:
Culture and work ethic (the 9-9-6 reality) creates speed, iteration, and stamina.
Early secondary liquidity is rare, so founders stay hungry longer.
In the US, early liquidity can be a double-edged sword: it can reduce urgency to build something truly enduring.
His advice: treat liquidity as a milestone — not the finish line.
Vertical AI can now create $10B–$20B outcomes
Hans believes vertical AI products can now reach outcomes that were almost impossible before.
But the biggest winners will blend vertical depth (workflows, distribution, and real customer outcomes) with horizontal potential that lets them generalize into adjacent industries over time.
Hardware: it’s not subsidies, it’s culture
Asia’s advantage in hardware isn’t mainly subsidies — it’s culture, iteration speed, and problem-solving directly on the production line.
In the US, he’s most excited about hardware where Asia isn’t an option — especially defense.
AI apps vs models: where compounding value sits
Models get better every day because developers keep pushing them with real usage. Apps on top can be valuable — but the compounding value tends to sit in the model layer.
So if you’re building applications, the moat has to be real: go deep enough in workflow complexity, proprietary data, distribution, or measurable outcomes that a base model can’t easily replicate what you do.
Hosting Hans was a reminder of how powerful it is to learn from people who’ve built conviction through cycles — and across continents.
Thank you to everyone in the Icons community who joined, and a special thank you to Hans for sharing so openly.
