Tim Chen, quietly became one of the most sought after Solo investors

Tim Chen, Solo VC in his company Essence VC, said that he had just closed his fourth fund, fresh $ 41 million, without even trying. Investors with limited partners were so willing to take a position that they prevented it, said TechCrunch. He didn’t even have time to generate a deck.

A increase in $ 41 million may not seem too much in the age of Venture from many billion dollars and solo VC, similar to Jack Altman (who has just collected its second giant fund, for $ 275 million). But this is mainly because Chen didn’t want to simply accept more. This is an increase from the third CHENA fund in 2022 in the amount of $ 27 million (which increased from its $ 5 million second and $ 1 million of the first fund).

Chen didn’t start recent activities related to raising funds, because it was only last month that he was still invested from the third fund, which was now packing. But the investors of the limited partners began to whisper about them after one of his portfolio firms from his second round, Tabular, was acquired by Databicks for around $ 2.2 billion in 2024.

“It basically returned our entire fund,” said Chen Techcrunch and placed it on the map, as he described. Suddenly LPS heard his name in all places: on tables, mentioned by other VC, the founders quoting his advice. They wanted.

This is partly because Chen specializes in startups of programmers and infrastructure in the earliest stages, the segment gaining popularity in the AI ​​era.

Chen has cut his teeth as a software engineer, winning a street loan since his time as one of the earliest Mesosphere employees, a one -off infrastructure startup in the Open Source cloud supported by Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Microsoft; Then co-founder of the start-up “Aiops” called Hyperpilot and sold it in Clouder in 2018.

In 2019, Chen began investing Angel and discovered that he had talent for him, supporting other deep technical startups, similar to Jasper, Flatfile and Motherduck. “I really liked it. The founders still loved me, they repeated all their friends.”

Looking for a recent profession, he thought that the undertaking was, so he interviewed several Big Sand Hill Road firms, but they were all rejected.

“Nobody wanted to hire me,” he said. “I am an engineer and founder of a small screen. I don’t think this is a typical profile.”

Jake Zeller, his friend who worked in Angellist (and is now on his own fund), told Chen that he wouldn’t surrender and consult with him about launching his own fund on this platform.

“He told me:” Tim, I think you may raise a fund of $ 1 million and try it. ” I said: “Wow. So he gave me a deck template on the pitch,” Chen reminded, and through admission, Chen landed LP like Bain Capital.

The famous infrastructure and investor AI Martin Casado from Andreessen Horowitz got here as LP in later funds. And then the investor of funds for funds Michael Kim from the Cendana Capital invested. After selling the tables, Kim told him that Cendan had already reserved $ 15 million for the fourth fund. Chen was shocked.

He also received phones from others, some who were previous investors, similar to Sapphire, General Catalyst and recent people. “I didn’t collect funds. I didn’t know how much to raise. I was like implementation and vibration,” he said.

When Stepstone forced him to send LP documents so that they might connect the money – and desired to bring others – he decided to attach and make a fund immediately. Angellist mainly made documents for collecting funds for him. He decided on a reasonable hit from the last fund, moving rigorously, because he still considers himself a beginner in enterprise.

Supporters of Fund IV ended, including names similar to Tomasz Tunguz (former Redpoint partner, currently the theory of Ventures) and Ethan Kurzweil (formerly Bessemer Partner, currently VC chemistry).

He assigns his growing repute in his origin as an infrastructure engineer. “There is so few VC that look like me”, referring to its deep technical origin with software infrastructure.

Although it was not attractive for large firms, it was a profit for his solo investing. Instead of typical VC focusing on the funnel of adhesion and sales, Chen helps early founders to learn find out how to build their products.

For example, he has invested in a company called Comfyui which was then working on a visual and consumer product based on the stable diffusion model Open Source. After investing, Chen advised the founders to grow to be a platform of models programmers they refined.

Comfy-Org I just collected a series of $ 17 million To compete with large manufacturers of the closed source model. And their post on the blog publicly thank Chen for helping to develop a strategy.