Bill Liao

Bill is General Partner at SOSV, supporting, mentoring and investing in companies and startups at all stages of growth. Bill founded SOSV’s life sciences practice in Europe running the first complete life sciences accelerator on Earth in Cork in Ireland SynBioaxlr8r (later IndieBioEU Cork and then RebelBio at Imperial College London) focusing on entrepreneurs building technologies in or around the field of synthetic biology and then life sciences in general. Bill’s investments at SOSV include Perfect Day, Synthace, CyGenica, Hyasynth, AlgiKnit, Carverr, MavenHut, Silicon Republic, Restored Hearing and Storyful (acquired by NEWS Corporation). Bill is also the lead investment partner on SOSV II (Ireland fund) and is responsible for sourcing and managing investments for that fund with the Irish government.

Bill comes to SOSV with a wealth of experiences, both in the public and private sectors. A co-founder of CoderDojo, a free global network formed to assist young people with learning computer programming, Bill also co-founded XING, a pioneering enterprise social networking platform. Prior to these endeavours, Bill served as COO of Davnet, a telecommunications carrier.

Bill serves as a special diplomatic envoy for St Kitt’s and Nevis, with an emphasis on sustainable development and the environment, and founded WeForest, an NGO that has planted over 5 million trees globally. The author of three books, Bill is a speaker at events such as The World Economic Forum, The Globe Forum in Sweden, TED and TEDx and also at major institutions such as The London School of Economics and The House of Commons.