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When Tim Chen tried to break into venture capital six years ago, multiple firms in Seattle turned him down. “Nobody wanted to hire me,” he recalled in an interview with GeekWire. “I was too technical, they said. Too nerdy.”
Chen, a University of Washington graduate and infrastructure engineer who had just sold a startup, decided to launch his own firm.
Six years later, Chen’s investors — known as limited partners, or LPs — line up to give him money before he even opens a pitch deck.
Chen recently raised $41 million for a fourth fund at Essence VC, his venture firm that backs infrastructure startups. His LPs include institutional investors such as Andreessen Horowitz’s Martin Casado and Cendana Capital’s Michael Kim.
TechCrunch described Chen as “one of the most sought-after solo investors,” highlighting how investors preempted the latest fund.
“I had no deck, no memo — I hadn’t even started raising,” Chen told GeekWire. “The LPs just all came in.”
Chen used AngelList to raise $1 million for his first fund in 2019, focusing on developer tools and infrastructure — categories he knew inside out. The experiment quickly snowballed: he raised $5 million for Fund II and $27 million for Fund III.
A dozen companies from the Essence portfolio have been acquired, including Tabular, a data management startup that sold to Databricks last year for a reported $2.2 billion.
What started as rejection has become a calling for Chen — and an unconventional venture capital success story.
After studying computer science at the UW, Chen worked at Microsoft and VMware, helped launch open-source cloud startup Mesosphere, and later founded Hyperpilot, an “AIOps” company acquired by Cloudera.
Chen’s experience as a software engineer and operator has become his edge in VC — especially amid the AI boom. He’s able to make faster decisions and gain respect from founders.
“Tim asked the hardest, most interesting questions about how we were going to build what we said we were going to build,” said Jordan Tigani, CEO of Seattle startup MotherDuck. “From a founder perspective, this let me trust that he actually believed in what we were doing and was coming to his decisions on his own.”
Seattle entrepreneur Patrick Thompson raised capital from Chen twice — with his previous startup Iteratively, which was acquired, and his current company Clarify. “He’s one of the most technically-minded people, but also super humble and easy to work with,” Thompson said.
The combination of engineering depth and empathy has helped Chen win competitive early-stage deals. He’s built a niche around helping technical founders translate research and code into products and go-to-market strategies.
“I’m looking for people that have a deep enough background, with high intensity, and huge flexibility on learning,” he said.
Essence’s portfolio spans across the U.S. and beyond. LPs ask Chen why he hasn’t moved to the Bay Area yet.
Chen is staying in Seattle, where he’s lived since high school. He believes Seattle’s tech scene is under-networked but brimming with talent.
“There’s so much great engineering talent with great iconic companies here,” he said.
Essence plans to make around 40 investments out of its fourth fund. Seattle is certainly on Chen’s radar.
“Of course,” he said. “I’m meeting people here, like UW PhDs. I like technical people. The nerdier, the geekier, the better.”
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