Andre Koo Jr. is the Founder and General Partner of K8 Capital, a hybrid private credit and venture capital investment firm. His career has been defined by a rare multiplicity of vantage points — operator, founder, and institutional investor — and it is the synthesis of those perspectives that shapes K8's strategy today.

He began his career at Colony Capital, where he executed debt investments across commercial real estate, developing an early fluency in structured credit and downside-first thinking. From there, he co-founded two early-stage businesses, one of which entered an M&A process with a Fortune 500 acquirer — an experience that sharpened his instinct for evaluating businesses from the inside out, with the operational clarity that most investors never have the opportunity to acquire.

During the COVID period, Andre built out the Koo Family Office from the ground up while simultaneously leading its venture strategy. Beyond direct cap-table investments, he deployed capital into a curated portfolio of emerging managers whose investment theses were philosophically aligned with the Family Office’s mandate. That conviction compounded into something structural: a GP ecosystem in which K8 became the primary beneficiary — maintaining first-look access into their deal flow and the ability to selectively co-invest in their highest-conviction portfolio companies. The flywheel remains active today.

The K8 thesis, however, was equally forged by what Andre witnessed from the other side of the table. Running a fund-of-funds strategy as an LP, he experienced firsthand the structural deficiencies of the traditional venture model — undifferentiated fund strategies, a market saturated by generalist managers, and a near-total absence of liquidity or distributions throughout the holding period. These were not abstract observations. They were lived realities that demanded a more rigorous institutional response.

Those accumulated experiences — as an operator, a founder, and an investor who has sat on both sides of the transaction — are the intellectual foundation of K8's value proposition. Building has always been intrinsic to who Andre is. And as will become evident, it has always been intrinsic to his family as well.