1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Julien Pham, 3CC Third Culture Capital (Part 1)

Julien Pham, Founder GP at 3CC | Third Culture Capital, talks about the firm’s focus on HealthTech. Julien is a physician by training. Excellent discussion!

Sramana Mitra: It’s my pleasure to welcome back Julien Pham from 3CC, Third Culture Capital for a catch up conversation. Juliane, welcome back.

Julien Pham: Hi, Sramana, it’s a pleasure to be back.

Sramana Mitra: All right, let’s start catching up. It’s been a while. I was looking at when you came last time. It’s been a while. So what’s going on in the fund? What are you seeing trends wise? Let’s catch up.

Julien Pham: Yeah, I think it’s interesting. I can’t remember exactly the date that I was in, but I was definitely launching Fund One amidst the post-pandemic turband a tough funding environment.

I would say it’s still a relatively tough funding environment now that we are raising Fund Two, but we’ve learned a lot of lessons in the past three years. So the portfolio program for Fund One has grown to 15 companies and we are about to launch Fund Two, hopefully in early 2025.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s double click down on Fund one. Remind me the size of fund one.

Julien Pham: So Fund One was a $5 million pilot fund that allowed us to write pre-seed and seed checks in health tech companies, mostly.

Sramana Mitra: I remember health tech as your focus. So let’s talk about the kinds of companies you’ve invested in – some of the concepts, markets that you chose to invest in, what was your investment thesis, and how did that pan out as you invested in them and as those companies started executing in the industry.

Julien Pham: Great questions. Maybe it’s easier if I talk a little bit about the thesis. Now, we’re very proud of having built a really unique thesis and ethos at 3CC. A lot of this has been based on my own personal and professional experience, going from being a physician to a founder entrepreneur, to now being a Founder GP of a healthcare VC fund. The notion and the name of the fund, Third Culture Capital, is broadly derived from this notion of being a third culture kid or having a third culture mindset.

As you know, Sramana, the classical definition of a third culture kid is a child who grows in a culture that’s different from their parents or their “passport country”. They may grow up in an environment that doesn’t look like them, but then when they go back to their “passport country”, or home country, or other parents’ country, they may have reverse culture shock and don’t feel like they fit in completely either. So they kind of step between one culture and another, and they’re part of this universal third culture.

We’ve expanded this to more of a mindset because today people are traveling and living globally, so it’s not so much about what language you speak or what country you’re from, but what do you bring to the table that’s completely unique? It’s about diversity of thought, diversity of background, and diversity of experiences. We believe that individuals who’ve gone through this unique journey of having diversity of experiences not only tend to be more adaptable and more resilient but also have a very broad lens on how to build innovation for societies throughout the world.

Sramana Mitra: Well, in that context, are you then investing in companies that are outside of the United States, outside of any particular geography that you’ve chosen? Or is it broad? Is it specifically focused on certain corridors?

Julien Pham: We back people first and foremost. We back individuals who we believe have this third culture mindset. Obviously, there’s a practical preference of investing in companies in the US, because we understand the healthcare delivery system over here, and we have relationships mostly in the US, but we’re generally open to innovations from abroad.

In fact, we kind of pride ourselves in being outliers and backing outliers. That’s how our deal flow comes through, right?

We meet some unique individuals who have come across our networks at one point or another, kind of moved back to the country, went to school with someone at INSEAD or whatnot, or end up traveling with a former classmate somewhere in Southeast Asia. Through these opportunistic relationships, you end up meeting some really fantastic and very qualified people. From these introductions, sometimes we get to meet some phenomenal founders who have, again, this uniquely qualified backgrounds with a third culture mindset are building solutions for healthcare delivery.

Some of these solutions may fit initially in the US, but have the ability to scale globally at some point, and some of the solutions started elsewhere because the talent was elsewhere or the idea was elsewhere, but they’re looking for soft landing in the US. That’s the right time for us, where I’ll check if it’s stage appropriate for where they are, and then we can help them scale here in the US.

So the short answer is that we are global by design, but from a practical standpoint, the majority of our deals have been in the US.

This segment is part 1 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Julien Pham, 3CC Third Culture Capital
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