Ellen Ma

Ellen Ma is a Managing Director at UpHonest Capital, an early-stage venture fund she helped build from its earliest days. Originally from China, she moved to the United States for her education and graduated from UCLA, where she studied mathematics, economics, and global studies. While at university she was active in the Chinese-American tech and entrepreneurial community, hosting events and helping bridge information gaps between immigrant founders and the broader U.S. startup ecosystem. During this period she also founded "Gui Tu Sai Pao," a publication for Chinese-speaking tech entrepreneurs that reportedly grew to more than 100,000 weekly readers.

Ma co-founded UpHonest Capital in 2016 — when, as she has recounted, the firm was still deciding on its name and logo — alongside friends from that community, starting with roughly $2 million raised from new immigrants in the Los Angeles area. Over the following years she grew with the firm, moving from Media Lead (2016–2018) to Investor (2018–2022) to Partner (2022–2024), and stepping into the Managing Director role in October 2024. UpHonest today works with a portfolio of more than 300 companies.

She was named to Forbes' 30 Under 30 for Venture Capital (2022 list) and has also appeared on Business Insider's "Seed 30." Beyond deal-making, Ma has launched a series of community initiatives that reflect the firm's network-first strategy: the UpHonest Scout community for engineers and product managers at major tech firms, bio-4-all for biotech founders, SoMAx for college students, and Beta Academy for young investors.

• Invests at pre-seed and seed, writing checks of $150K–$1M (sweet spot ~$300K), and has increasingly moved toward writing bigger checks into fewer, more selective companies as the firm's network has matured.
• Core sectors span consumer products and marketplaces, software, healthcare/biotech and longevity, AI, robotics, deep-tech, fintech, and overlooked traditional industries ripe for innovation (e.g., logistics, manufacturing).
• Evaluates founders on three "core capabilities": personal attributes (learning aptitude, charisma, determination), founder-market fit (network and track record within a supportive community), and market dynamics.
• Mission-driven focus on immigrant and Chinese/Chinese-American founders: in her own words, "I believe many immigrant founders have limited access to capital in the early stages due to facets such as not being well-networked or simply having to contend with a language barrier," and her goal is to bridge that gap and back capable founders early.