Clifford Tong

Clifford Tong is an active angel investor associated with Berkeley Angel Network, Sand Hill Angels, and Insync Angels. His own firm bio describes him as Founder and Principal Consultant of Diverse Strategies, Inc. (DSI), and says he has acted as a founder, co-founder, or angel investor in numerous startup companies.

Tong founded Diverse Strategies in 1990 after seven years at IBM, where he held marketing and technical positions and worked on the design and marketing of large mainframe systems for major West Coast customers. Diverse Strategies focuses on management consulting for new ventures and fast-growing companies, including strategy, business process re-engineering, marketing, management, and information technology.

He is also connected to the UC Berkeley startup ecosystem. Diverse Strategies lists him as a UC Berkeley graduate with B.S. degrees in Computer Science and Economics; LinkedIn and several profile aggregators place him as an advisor to Berkeley SkyDeck and a member of Berkeley Angel Network. Berkeley Angel Network itself is an affinity group of the Berkeley Haas Alumni Network whose mission is to build an angel-investor community among UC Berkeley alumni, faculty, and former faculty.

Tong has also been involved in small-business policy and advocacy. His Diverse Strategies bio says he served on the State of California Small Business Council, Caltrans Business Council, California Department of General Services Advisory Panel, Small Business California, and California Small Business Association, and that he was elected as a delegate and committee chair for the 1995 White House Conference on Small Business.

• Invests as an individual angel, with Signal listing a $5K-$50K investment range and a $10K sweet spot.
• Focuses on early-stage ventures; Signal ranks him across pre-seed, seed, and Series A categories, especially in enterprise, AI, fintech, digital health, energy/cleantech, real estate/proptech, consumer internet, and DTC.
• Signal summarizes his interest as: “Interested in new ventures, especially those in Enterprise SaaS, software, AI, healthcare, consumer products, energy/cleantech, fintech, real estate.”
• Berkeley Angel Network says it looks for “strengths in the team, potential market, technology and business model” and proof of market through sales, customer adoption, or a strong case for customer need.
• Berkeley Angel Network favors capital-efficient companies that can grow without requiring unusually large follow-on funding.
• UC Berkeley affiliation helps: BAN is particularly interested in companies founded by UC Berkeley students or alumni, or based on UC Berkeley technology, though it says companies are not limited to that connection.