VC Visionaries

In this conversation with Homan Yuen, Managing Partner at Keymaker, he reflects on the long movement from science to startups to investing, and on what he learned along the way about building companies, evaluating technology, and navigating a career that did not unfold in a straight line. What emerges is a career shaped not by a single leap but by a series of thoughtful recalibrations.

What shapes a venture capitalist long before they ever write a check? In this ATC interview, we sat down with Sophia Zhao, Partner at Alumni Ventures, to trace the throughline from her childhood in Chengdu and Vancouver to her work backing founders across AI, Web3, and women-led ventures.

Jenny Xiao is a Partner at Leonis Capital, a research-driven VC fund focused on seed and pre-seed AI companies. Before Leonis, she was an early employee at OpenAI and a Ph.D. researcher at Columbia. She left OpenAI just a week after ChatGPT took off to join forces with her partner, Jay Zhao, to build a research-driven fund backing AI-native companies. Jenny’s research has been featured in Nature, the NYT, the WSJ, and Bloomberg.

Han Shen is the Founding Partner of iFly VC, a U.S. venture capital firm focused on investments that bring American consumers joy. Born and raised in Nanjing, China, Han came to the United States in 1998 to pursue a PhD in Chemistry at the University of Chicago. He had expected to follow his parents into academia, but years as a scientist, followed by an MBA at Wharton, drew him toward the challenge of turning ideas into real-world innovations, using venture capital as the ca

We sit down with Eric Bahn, Founding Partner at Hustle Fund, for a candid and wide-ranging conversation about his unconventional journey into venture capital. Born and raised in Detroit to Korean immigrant parents, Eric shares how his upbringing, early career pivots, and deep personal relationships shaped his path from aspiring writer to tech entrepreneur to VC.

In this interview, Haomiao reflects on the path that shaped him—from growing up in Austin as the child of Chinese scholars, to building his own startup, to stepping into the world of venture capital, first at Kleiner Perkins and later as a co-founder of Matter Venture Partners. Along the way, we talk about Haomiao’s former life as a founder, the joys and challenges of early-stage investing, and the quiet comforts of hot pot dinners, boba runs, and life in Millbrae. It’s a por