They Turned Down an Early Pay Day to Maintain Control of Their Business. And Then Went on to Raise $190 Million. Jason Yeh, co-founder and General Partner of Patron, explains the early-stage venture firm's creation and future outlook.
By Dan Bova
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"The next generation of consumers are living their best lives in online worlds like Roblox, Fortnite, and Discord." So says Jason Yeh, Co-Founder and General Partner of early-stage venture firm Patron. "We're all about investing in early-stage consumer companies that will shape how this gaming-native generation learns, shops, socializes, plays, invests, and, let's be honest, procrastinates online," he explained to Entrepreneur.
Patron launched in the fall of 2021. After starting their careers in venture capital, both Yeh and Patron co-founder Brian Cho went on to hold leadership positions at Riot Games, where Yeh helped launch and scale League of Legends over the next nine years. Their third Partner, Amber Atherton, built a YC and Forerunner-backed community platform that was acquired by Discord, where she helped the company scale to audiences outside of games.
We connected with Yeh to get a glimpse into what his company looks for in founders and what he learned at Riot Games about the difference maker in a product that is "good" versus one that is transformative.
What inspired you to create Patron?
Watching how my daughters experience the Internet for the first time made me realize I had several biases about how it works and how people behave and connect online. They are growing up in the age of ChatGPT and expect the internet to respond to questions with answers, not the links or sponsored content I've grown accustomed to through Google. They expect Spotify and YouTube to know what they want to listen to or watch without providing much input. And they love the songs and videos that magically appear in their playlists.
It dawned on me that I needed to stop judging how something should work based on my past experiences and instead consider the best way to experience something from first principles. I started to feel like there was a gap in products and services to serve my daughters' generation of consumers.
Please share a "holy @#$!" business moment.
We started working on Patron during the pandemic, a time of chaos for many. For me, it meant juggling everything—moving my family from Berlin back to Los Angeles, rushing from school drop-offs to fundraising pitches, and squeezing in Zoom calls from my parent's home while we searched for a new house.
Then, amid our initial push for Fund I, we received an unexpected opportunity to potentially join a larger firm. It was a golden opportunity — an easier fundraising path, significantly better short-term compensation, and a chance to stabilize my work-life balance. It felt like the smart choice, the predictable path that few would have a chance to consider. But with so much change and uncertainty in the world, I wanted more control over what I was working on, how I worked, and who I worked with. So we chose to bet on ourselves. It was a leap of faith, and I hoped it wouldn't derail our fledgling fundraising.
What happened next was nothing short of miraculous. In just six months, we achieved an oversubscribed debut fund. Sometimes, the hardest choices lead to the most extraordinary outcomes. Trusting our vision was the risk that changed everything.
Related: I Turned Down A Major Retailer Who Wanted to Carry My Product. Here's Why.
What advice would you give entrepreneurs looking for funding?
Many entrepreneurs will lead with their product and strategize how to push it out to consumers. However, when building up League of Legends at Riot Games, we didn't start with, "What great game can we make?" We started with, "How can we make something our core audience will love and can spend 1000+ hours playing"
I would advise entrepreneurs to make sure they have a deep understanding of their core audience. We love to see founders with a unique edge in identifying and serving an audience they can organically reach at an interesting scale. Building that community should be an early focus and part of the company's DNA.
Can you share details of your success with fundraising?
I'm proud that we successfully and efficiently raised our target fund sizes in two different markets. First, in 2021, we raised our $90 million Fund I in less than six months, despite Patron being a completely new entity rather than an existing VC firm. Then, despite a more challenging capital market in 2024, we raised our $100 million Fund II in about nine months, bringing in commitments from new institutional investors, including a large university endowment, a sovereign fund, and a couple of new institutional single-family offices.
What does the word "entrepreneur" mean to you?
To me, an "entrepreneur" represents someone who wants to create something where nothing existed before. It is to take an idea and opportunity and, through thought and action, produce something from nothing. Entrepreneurs, by nature, have to be bold risk-takers since it will always be easiest not to make the new thing. As founders of Patron, we consider ourselves entrepreneurs, allowing us to empathize significantly with the founders we serve.
What is something many aspiring business owners think they need that they really don't?
People often mistake external validation from well-known personalities as a sign of product quality or product-market fit. They strive to get that one famous person to use their product through some inorganic or paid means and to point to that as a reason why their product is great. This is especially prominent in the gaming space.
However, paying to have people use your product is a trap that is rarely sustainable. Instead, focus on truly understanding the motivations of your target user. Build something they love to use and play again and again. Then, the trick is to build bridges for that core audience to share your product with others.
Is there a particular quote or saying that you use as personal motivation?
For me, it's Rick Rubin's words: "Look for what you notice, but no one else sees." As investors, our role isn't just to spot what's obvious but to seek out those undercurrents that are invisible to others yet signal transformative potential. Our firm is dedicated to funding innovation and envisioning how people will interact with the internet of tomorrow.
If you're a founder or entrepreneur reading this, here's my question for you: What future do you see that others might be overlooking?
