Rick Hao

I started my career as a software engineer. I spent years building and coding before I made the move into venture capital — first at IQ Capital, focused on deep tech in the UK, and then at Speedinvest, where I built and led the deep tech investment practice and completed more than 30 investments over nearly a decade.

That background shapes how I think. I am more comfortable reading a technical paper or walking a factory floor than sitting in a pitch meeting. I like founders who understand their science precisely and can translate it into something real. I have been investing in deep tech since before it was called that. I lived through the cycles — the periods when the category was unfashionable, when the timelines felt too long and the capital requirements too heavy for most investors to stomach. Those years were clarifying. They taught me that deep tech cannot be invested in passively, or broadly. You have to understand the science, the manufacturing realities, the global supply chains — and you have to be willing to stay close long after the cheque is written.

Over more than a decade, I have watched deep tech companies succeed and fail. The ones that fail rarely fail in the lab. They fail in the gap between a working prototype and a product that can be manufactured, sold, and scaled. That observation sits at the centre of everything I built Ruya to do.

Ruya Ventures is the fund I always wanted to exist — one designed from the ground up around the specific demands of deep tech: focused conviction, hands-on support, and a genuine commitment to helping founders cross the hardest thresholds.