E252: Inside the Mind of a 29-Year-Old Billion-Dollar Fund Manager
How do you scale from a $10M first fund to managing over $1.5B — all in one of the most capacity-constrained asset classes on earth? In this episode, I talk with Eva Shang, Co-founder and General Founder of Legalist, about dropping out of Harvard, getting into Y Combinator, pivoting from legal analytics to litigation finance, and raising their first $10M fund long before they had any track record. We discuss why Legalist chose the fund model over the venture-backed originator model, how they deployed their algorithm to find late-stage cases at scale, why litigation finance is capacity constrained, and how Legalist expanded into adjacent strategies like bankruptcy, mass torts, law-firm lending, and government receivables.
Highlights:
- How Legalist began as a data-driven legal-analytics platform.
- Why the team shifted from software to asset management.
- How technology identifies litigation, bankruptcy, and receivables opportunities.
- The role of public-records sourcing and automated case screening.
- Why Legalist focuses on uncorrelated, niche credit strategies.
- How Legalist evaluates risk in litigation finance.
- How the team structures underwriting across legal and credit factors.
- Why government receivables and bankruptcy claims require specialized processes.
- How Legalist works with law firms, claimants, and contractors.
- Eva’s philosophy on building teams, culture, and long-term systems.
Guest Bio:
Eva Shang is the Co-founder and General Partner of Legalist, an asset manager specializing in technology-enabled investments across litigation finance, bankruptcy, law-firm lending, mass torts, and government receivables. Eva co-founded the firm in 2016 after leaving Harvard and entering Y Combinator, and has led Legalist from its $10M debut fund to over $1.5B in AUM across multiple strategies.
Our Podcast now receives more than 300,000 downloads a month. Are you interested in sponsoring an episode? Please email David Weisburd at [email protected].
#venturecapital #vc #startups #openlp #assetmanagement
Stay Connected with David Weisburd: X/Twitter: @dweisburd LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dweisburd/ Weisburd Capital: https://www.weisburdcapital.com/
Stay Connected with Eva Shang: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eshang/ Legalist: https://www.legalist.com/
Questions or topics you want us to discuss on How I Invest? Email us at [email protected].
Chapters
| 0:00 | |
| 2:20 | |
| 4:51 | |
| 6:48 | |
| 9:36 | |
| 13:33 | |
| 18:08 | |
| 20:38 | |
| 24:33 | |
| 26:14 |
Transcript
Loading transcript...