Essence VC

Profile

Essence VC is a venture capital firm based in Seattle, Washington, founded by Timothy Chen. With a deep technical background and hands-on operating experience, the firm focuses on investing in infrastructure companies before they exist. The team, led by Managing Partner Tim Chen, who has a decade of experience in enterprise infrastructure and open source communities, works closely with technical founders to help them transition into effective leaders and build strong engineering teams.

Essence VC invests primarily in the infrastructure sector, with a focus on AI, data, devtools, and cybersecurity. The firm typically invests at the pre-seed, seed, and Series A stages, with check sizes ranging from $10,000 to $10 million. Their investments are primarily in the United States, and they have a strong network in the developer and open source communities. Essence VC III, their latest fund, was launched in 2023.

Notable investments by Essence VC include Modal - a developer platform, Ollama - a software development company, Warp - a terminal for developers, Apollo - a business productivity software, and Tabular - acquired by Databricks. These companies highlight Essence VC's focus on supporting early-stage technical founders in the infrastructure space.