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Timothy Chen
9,863 posts
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Timothy Chen
@tnachen
Founder of @EssenceVenture, Co-host of @ossstartup, @theinfrapod. Ex-CEO of @hyperpilotio. SVP of Engineering @cosmos.
Seattle, WA
essencevc.fund
Joined August 2008
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  • Pinned
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    Timothy Chen
    @tnachen
    Sep 23, 2025
    Really excited to launch our fund 4!
    Tim Chen has quietly become of one the most sought-after solo investors  | TechCrunch
    From techcrunch.com
    46K
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    Timothy Chen
    @tnachen
    Jan 31, 2025
    Infra / system people will become one of the most important builders in this AI era.
    24K
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    Timothy Chen
    @tnachen
    Jul 4, 2021
    Recently I've passed the 60 mark of amount of startups I've invested in (both via fund and personal), lots of small checks and all of them are quite early, but wanted to jot down few things I learned so far: 1) As many people have mentioned, you don’t truly know what is going to
  • user avatar
    Timothy Chen
    @tnachen
    Jun 21, 2023
    Exciting to announce the new fund from @EssenceVenture! It's been a amazing journey to start fund 1 since 2019 and now raised fund 3. Wrote a little bit of the motivation behind starting Essence VC as well -> essencevc.fund/blog/essence-v…
    user avatar
    Stephanie Palazzolo ✈️ ICML
    @steph_palazzolo
    Jun 21, 2023
    Exclusive: Chatted with the indomitable @tnachen about his firm @EssenceVenture's $27MM third fund, investing in the hot infra, dev tools, and AI space, and succeeding as a solo GP. Check out more here on @BusinessInsider: businessinsider.com/tim-chen-essen…
    64K
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    Timothy Chen
    @tnachen
    May 16, 2023
    I'm thrilled to announce that @EssenceVenture is putting up our first virtual conference! LLM In Developer Tools 6/1 9:30 - 12:30 pm PST LLM / Foundation models are changing every tech product right now, and Developer Tools are being redesigned to incorporate AI.
    30K
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    Timothy Chen
    @tnachen
    May 18, 2025
    The most common thing I'm seeing early stage VCs telling folks is that you no longer need a technical cofounder and just find a product person and use AI to build your product. Wdyt?
    93K
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    Timothy Chen
    @tnachen
    Feb 20, 2022
    Just got off a few calls with VCs this week looking at companies raising their next round, and want to highlight a common challenge that came up especially raising after a seed. Especially in the infra and data world, raising the first money has become much more simpler given
  • user avatar
    Timothy Chen
    @tnachen
    Apr 9, 2023
    The vector database land grab has seems to begin now
    21K
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    Timothy Chen
    @tnachen
    Dec 27, 2023
    The bar of an MVP is going higher and higher as we see software becoming easier to demo with AI. At the same time the amount of work to have a production software is ironically going higher given the expectation and complexity. The challenge for 2024 is “how” you can demonstrate
    15K
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    Timothy Chen
    @tnachen
    Mar 10, 2023
    If covid forced us to learn how to work remotely, SVB is forcing folks to run a company with 250k
    6.8K
  • user avatar
    Timothy Chen
    @tnachen
    Mar 25, 2021
    An intro email summarizing me in 10 words “Tim has his own fund and is a good dude”
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    Timothy Chen
    @tnachen
    Mar 12, 2022
    A daily conversation I have with technical founders, is how much they drastically underestimate the amount of work and focus required to get GTM right. Writing code and putting something on product hunt isn’t all that is to it.
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    Timothy Chen
    @tnachen
    May 11, 2021
    When a VC says “Please come back when you have a few paying customers”, no matter what the tone is, it doesn’t mean you are just few paying customers away for them to lead your round. Treat it as a straight up no.
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    Timothy Chen
    @tnachen
    Feb 22, 2023
    It’s obvious that @flydotio @neondatabase is following the footsteps of @supabase and @vercel growing to become the places where devs like to run. And often the winning formula is developer experience, paired with architectural advantage as @nikitabase mentioned.
    18K