Team

Dr. Lan Xuezhao

Dr. Lan Xuezhao

Founding and Managing Partner

Lan is among the earliest investors in companies such as Scale AI, Quince, Path Robotics, Workstream, Ergeon, etc. She built and led the Corporate Development Strategy team at Dropbox during its most acquisitive time. She previously managed teams at McKinsey and developed brain training games as a founder. She studied the human brain for her Ph.D and received M.A. in Statistics, both from the University of Michigan.

Pascal

Pascal

AI Partner

Pascal is BSV's internal quantitative data science engine built to supercharge our investment team!

Rachel Wong

Rachel Wong

Head of Data Science

Rachel previously built internal tech tools and supported portfolio companies at Playground Global, a venture firm managing $800M. Before Playground, she was on the data analytics team at Mimosa Networks (acquired by Airspan) and was a researcher in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon. She received a B.S. in Statistics and minor in Physical Computing from Carnegie Mellon.

Chang Xu

Chang Xu

Partner

Chang previously was a Principal at Upfront Ventures, where she focused on investing in AI and the future of work. Prior to joining venture, she was a founder and operator. She was the first Product Manager at the Minerva Project and co-founded Onion Math, an ed-tech startup in China that has raised $90M. She started her career at BCG, advising clients across tech, retail, healthcare and private equity. She holds an MBA and AB in Applied Math and Computer Science from Harvard.

John Mannes

John Mannes

Partner

John led TechCrunch’s AI coverage, providing analysis on hundreds of companies applying machine learning to solve enterprise problems. He has also contributed to outlets like NPR, SXSW and The Washington Post. John spent time with the Mid-Atlantic and Michigan Venture Associations, supporting founders and venture firms outside of Silicon Valley. He previously drove technology modernization in the nation’s 17th-largest school district.

Wilson Kyi

Wilson Kyi

Investor

Wilson built Square’s growth and retention team, outreach automation, and product. He also launched and managed new businesses globally at DiDi and CloudKitchens. He began venture investing at Fifth Wall Ventures and as an angel investor. He co-founded Fish Sauce, a community of Asian American founders, operators, and investors. He holds an MBA from Harvard and BS in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the University of Southern California.

Catherine Stewart

Catherine Stewart

Board Partner

Catherine is the former COO at Shippo, where she led Marketing, Sales, Biz Dev, Customer Success, Support, People Ops, Product Management, and Strategic Planning. During her time, Shippo's valuation grew from $220M to over $1B in under 18 months. Prior, Catherine was the CBO at Automattic, the company behind WordPress. While at the company, she led the acquisition and integration of WooCommerce. She holds a Masters from the University of Cambridge and a BA from Yale University.

Sheila Vashee

Sheila Vashee

CMO

Sheila was most recently the VP of Growth at Opendoor, where she was responsible for growth across the buyer and seller marketplace. She took Opendoor from 4 to 21 markets and billions in GMV in a few years. Prior to that, she was the second marketing hire at Dropbox, where she helped 12x the Dropbox user base to 600m users and >1Bn in revenue. She started her career as an investment banker at Morgan Stanley and holds an MBA from UC Berkeley and a BA from Stanford in Economics.

Dr. Yibo Ling

Dr. Yibo Ling

Board Partner

Yibo is the CFO of Bird (NYSE), where he manages the company's accounting, tax, treasury, financial planning, and analysis functions. Yibo oversaw the company’s public market debut. He was previously the Director of Corporate Development at Uber where he managed corporate strategy and M&A, while driving strategic deals with Didi, Yandex, Grab, JUMP and Lime. He holds a PhD in Medical and Electrical engineering along with an MS in EECS from MIT and a BSE from the University of Michigan.

Muhammad Ammad

Muhammad Ammad

Senior Engineer

Muhammad is a senior software engineer and a cloud enthusiast with experience in various tech stacks. Previously, he worked as a Data Engineer at Wanderu, a ground and air travel metasearch engine. He led the API team at EMPG Labs, building some of the biggest property portals around the globe. Prior to that, he was a software engineer at Afiniti, a unicorn company focused on developing AI for use in call centers. Muhammad received his B.S. in Computer Science from FAST-NU Lahore.

Fahad Noor

Fahad Noor

Senior Engineer

Fahad is a senior software engineer and backend developer. Previously he worked as an iOS developer at GenIteam, building various apps of different categories. He then worked as a web developer at Platalytics, a big data platform. He led an SEO team at Arbisoft, for an insurance quotes comparison site. Before joining BSV, he was a senior backend developer at Ohi, an instant e-commerce fulfilment solution. He holds a B.S. degree in Computer Science from FAST-NU Lahore.

Muhammad Zulqarnain

Muhammad Zulqarnain

Senior Engineer

Zulqarnain is a senior software engineer with experience in various web application tech stacks. Previously, he worked as a senior software engineer for edX, an online course provider created by Harvard and MIT. He was a senior member of the team that was responsible for upgrading the massive micro-services based architecture of edX without affecting millions of monthly active users. He holds a B.S. degree in Software Engineering from PUCIT Lahore.

Lisa Chen

Lisa Chen

Operations Manager

Lisa has worked in Operations within numerous industries from business management, credit management, public relations, to health-tech. She has led organizational restructuring initiatives along with fostering people and culture at each company she's been a part of. She received a B.S. in Biology and a Minor in Music at the University of California, San Diego.

Ingrid Chen

Ingrid Chen

Controller

Ingrid has been in the venture industry for over 15 years. She’s previously held positions at Trident Capital, Accel, and worked with private equity, venture and hedge fund clients at Ernst & Young. She was the VP of Finance at Trident growing the funds from $300M to $1.9B. Prior to that, she worked in Corporate Accounting at Cisco. She received a B.S. in Accounting from the University of Southern California.

Eduardo Fonseca

Eduardo Fonseca

Technical Advisor

Eduardo is an entrepreneur and startup advisor. He was the CTO of GoodRx where he grew the engineering team from 8 to 100+ engineers, led the diligence and integration for three acquisitions, and oversaw a complete architectural revamp. He has built computer vision models for quick real time image segmentation on mobile devices as well as NLP models for conversational interfaces. He has 25+ years of experience in software engineering and 15+ years of leadership experience.

Kurt Varner

Kurt Varner

Design Advisor

Kurt is the VP of Design at Frame.io, a leading cloud based video collaboration platform. Prior to Frame, Kurt was a Design Director at Dropbox where he managed several design teams focusing on the collaboration space. Previously, he was the first designer at Shyp, building and scaling the design team as the company grew from 10 to 200+ employees. Kurt has also worked at a design agency, Zurb, where he consulted with companies like Facebook, Netflix, Mozilla, and eBay.