Andy Liu

Andy Liu is a co-founding partner of Unlock Venture Partners, an early-stage technology fund he launched around 2017 with partners Raazi Imam and Sanjay Reddy, splitting its footprint between Seattle and Los Angeles. In January 2022, the firm announced a $60 million fund to back seed-stage startups across the two markets. Liu is based in Seattle and leads much of the firm's Pacific Northwest activity.

Before becoming a full-time investor, Liu was a serial entrepreneur. Most recently he was co-founder and CEO of BuddyTV, an online video portal that was acquired by Vizio. Earlier, he co-founded and served as CEO of NetConversions, a web-analytics company acquired by aQuantive (NASDAQ: AQNT); following the acquisition he stayed on as VP & GM of Atlas NetConversions.

Liu has been an unusually active angel investor for well over a decade, with more than 90 personal early-stage investments — heavily concentrated in the Seattle/Pacific Northwest technology ecosystem — before and alongside his work at Unlock. He also serves on the boards of portfolio companies including Possible Finance and Plunk.

He earned a BS in Electrical Engineering from Seattle Pacific University and an MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

• Invests at pre-seed and seed, writing initial checks of roughly $750K–$1.5M and targeting 10–25% ownership (flexible).
• Looks for companies with "a strong, sustainable competitive advantage around data."
• Invests broadly across tech — fintech, marketplaces, consumer, and SaaS — but explicitly avoids biotech/medtech.
• Describes himself as "VERY bullish" on the Seattle / Pacific Northwest startup ecosystem.
• Positions Unlock as a hands-on partner beyond capital: board support, late-night mentoring, customer introductions, hiring help, and financing strategy — "we want to be as helpful as the founder would like us to be."
• Values founders who will roll up their sleeves; on his podcast appearance he noted that Unlock tries to "quantify what we like about the founder."
• Personal motivation, in his words: "I get fired up helping entrepreneurs achieve their goals and dreams."