Allen's Thoughts…

After witnessing many scientists and engineers make the transition to CEOs or founders, including myself, I have noticed the following.

A few weeks ago, we hosted our Legends of Semiconductor dinner, bringing together some of the people who helped build Canada’s semiconductor industry and the next generation of founders and engineers.

Two weeks ago, I shared a short note about a fun side project I could only work on at the cottage.

It is that time of the year again: our annual Legends of Semiconductors dinner, hosted as always at our home.

Long before I became a founder or venture capitalist, I spent a significant part of my academic life in the University of Toronto Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, thinking about signal processing: how do you recover meaningful information…

Where founders sleep at night has little to do with how great their companies can become.

I am encouraged by Canada’s new AI for All strategy.

Software is not dead.

Canada arguably invented modern AI.

As a founder, I attended many founder summits over the years.

May is Asian Heritage Month in North America, which makes it a good time to talk about the bamboo ceiling.

Upper Bound has become one of my favourite annual trips.

In the past few years, I have been spending much of my time with researchers, professors, and deep tech founders sitting on remarkable breakthroughs and asking a difficult question: What does it take to turn this innovation into a world-class company?

Allen’s Thoughts is almost a decade old.

My last post — Stop Supplying.

Canada has a paradox that I have been talking about for a long time.

We are super excited to share our investment in Tiptree Systems!

Today, Apple turns 50.

Every VC says they back high-quality companies.

We are super excited to share that Two Small Fish led YScope’s US$3.9 million financing, with Snow Angels (the Snowflake alumni investment syndicate), Next Wave NYC, UTEST, and other successful founders participating.

Today is Pi Day, and it feels like a good excuse to reflect on an old friend.

OpenClaw, an AI agent that can operate a computer on your behalf, has taken the world by storm.

At Two Small Fish Ventures, we invest in the next frontier of computing and its applications.

AI has a massive efficiency problem.

Is software dead?

For most of semiconductor history, progress was a simple loop.

I spent Saturday morning in Hong Kong as a speaker at the Canadian Engineering Asia Pacific Conference, a gathering that felt historic.

Edge AI has been a key pillar of our Advanced Computing Hardware investments and a core part of our thesis for a long time.

The machinery on the assembly line is world-class.

I spent a full day at Ontario Tech University in Oshawa a few weeks ago.

I wrote my master’s thesis on Code Division Multiple Access, or CDMA, a wireless communication technology that originated from military needs in World War II.

In October, at our Two Small Fish Ventures AGM, I had the chance to sit down with Benjamin Bergen for a fireside chat.

At the beginning of this year, I wrote an op-ed for The Globe about what many were already calling the AI bubble.

I had the opportunity to join a panel at the Impact 2025 Summit in Calgary, moderated by Raissa Espiritu, with Janet Bannister and Paul Godman.

On Friday, October 17, 2025, Chancellor Kathleen Taylor at York University conferred on Eva Lau the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa.

The Laus have some exciting news to share.

When I was studying electrical engineering, out of my curiosity, I chose to take an elective course on quantum physics as part of advanced optics.

Last year we invested in Axiomatic AI.

In 1865, William Stanley Jevons, an English economist, observed a curious phenomenon: as steam engines in Britain became more efficient, coal use didn’t fall — it rose.

One of the most powerful frameworks I’ve come across is the Rule of 3 and 10, coined by Hiroshi Mikitani-san, founder and CEO of Rakuten.

For nearly 70 years, the home electrical panel has looked the same.

The cost of intelligence is dropping at an unprecedented rate.

A few years back, Eva met Dr.

At most dinners, introductions start with your name and maybe what you do.

A swimming world champion, a cycling champion, and a marathon champion each tried their hand at a triathlon.

In the history of human civilization, there have been several distinct ages: the Agricultural Age, the Industrial Age, and the Information Age, which we are living in now.

In the early 2000s, it was a common joke in the tech world that “next year is the year of the smartphones.”

Humans have conquered land, sea, and space.

When entrepreneurs exit their companies, it is supposed to be a victory lap.

This year marks a big milestone: Two Small Fish Ventures turns ten!