Michael Cheng

Managing & Founding Partner, Drum Tower Ventures
Michael Cheng (MBA 2001) has 20 years experience in venture capital, leading early stage investments and working with private companies in China. Currently Managing and Founding Partner of Drum Tower Ventures, a private fund that invests in global startups and is designed to assist startups optimally expand and succeed. As part of that strategy, Drum Tower at times “embeds” into the management at it portfolio companies. Currently Michael is head of the China operations for one of its global startups, managing sales, strategic alliances and government relations. Prior to Drum Tower, Michael was a private investor and served as Director on the Board of a number of companies, mostly in China. Most notable of these was Red Octane, the inventor of the Guitar Hero game, where he was a first round investor. Red Octane was sold to Activision Blizzard for over 30 times return. Before, Michael was a partner at Fidelity Ventures, a proprietary fund of the Fidelity Investments Group. Michael worked at Fidelity from 1996 to 2005 primarily responsible for looking at early stage companies in China in the communications, Internet, IT software, media and healthcare sectors. Michael earned a BA and MBA from the University of California, Berkeley in 1993 and 2001, respectively.