Team

Management

Richard Chan is a serial entrepreneur and seasoned veteran in the technology industry with a global footprint. Richard has a diverse background where he got his CPA license with PwC, co-founded three startups in Silicon Valley, and led product management and business intelligence at Altavista and Microsoft. Since joining Microsoft in 2005, Richard led the market research and worldwide brand launch for Bing, pioneered the development of social search and applied AI in multimedia search. Before joining Ironfire Ventures, Richard was a mentor at Microsoft Ventures in Beijing and led the China Innovation Group. Since founding Ironfire Ventures in 2013, Richard has invested in over 70 early stage companies. As a food and wine enthusiast, Richard founded a wine distribution business bringing premium California wine to Hong Kong and maintained a food blog with over 1000 entries. Richard received his bachelor and MBA degree from UC Berkeley.

Managing Partner

陈先生毕业于加拿大西安大略大学与多伦多大学，拥有管理与专业会计硕士学位，以及注册会计师与特许金融分析师资格。回香港工作之前，陈先生在加拿大的安永会计公司工作。 2000年，他回香港加入一间私人信托基金公司。其间，陈先生参与该信托基金相关的投资项目的尽职审核、诉讼支持、资本运作统筹、以及交易与投资组合的管理等工作。除了身为信智合伙人之外，从2009年9月至2013年12月陈先生亦兼任Semeiotics公司的首席营运官，后者是一间创意产业公司。陈先生同时也是一个私人慈善基金的副主席，负责该基金的投资管理。

Managing Partner

Jessie is responsible for the investment in Mainland China, as well as the company research and analysis. Before joining Ironfire, she worked at Microsoft ATC Beijing as the product planner in SPG and responsible for overseeing business driven elements of product development, including market research and user experience. Jessie worked at iResearch Consulting from 2007 to 2010 as a senior consulting manager where she has served big internet companies in China and built personal connections in a wide range of IT industry. And then she joined Sohu as a strategic research manager and pioneered the development of new paid model. Jessie received her Master degree of operational research from University of Science and Technology Beijing.

Vice President

Sherry负责投资机会评估，以及行业研究和分析。同时她还是一家香港上市公司的主席助理。在加入Ironfire之前，她曾在星展亚洲资本(DBS Asia Capital)工作，参与了多个香港和新加坡的IPO、并购和reits相关交易。 Sherry获得了新南威尔士大学的商学学士学位，主修会计和信息系统。她同时也是澳大利亚的注册会计师。

Vice President

过去4年间，邱先生活跃于硅谷创业圈，与当地的创业公司，投资机构和孵化器建立了密切的联系。在加入信智资本之前，邱先生曾先后在HP新基金，Plug and Play，加州大学伯克利分校基金实验室和Batchery工作过。另外，他自己也曾创立过一家金融技术公司。邱先生于2016年4月加入信智资本，帮助信智在加州大学体系内拓展业务并发展当地合作伙伴关系。邱先生毕业于加州大学伯克利分校，获得政治经济学和公共卫生学的双学位，并辅修了公共政策学。

Associate

Entrepreneur in Residence

Shom is an MBA student at Berkeley-Haas, where he is the Co-President of Food@Haas and on the Berkeley Entrepreneurs Association’s leadership team. He is a recipient of both the Maxwell Fellowship and the Larson Fellowship for dedication to entrepreneurship as an MBA student. At Haas, he has co-founded a farm-to-consumer startup (Nearfarms) that was part of the LAUNCH accelerator’s 2018 cohort. Before Haas, Shom worked at a food ecommerce company in New York and was a management consultant. Shom is an avid foodie, and spends his free time exploring new restaurants and trying new recipes.

Ironfire Fellow

Jeremy is U.S. Navy veteran business student at UC Berkeley Haas School of Business with a heavy focus in entrepreneurship. He is a Fung Fellow alum and dual founder; winning multiple Deans Seed Grants and graduating from the LAUNCH accelerator with his startup Bear Founders that has been branded as the LinkedIn for university entrepreneurs. Prior to Berkeley, Jeremy was a RADAR technician, managing and repairing a $500mm system as well as a surface rescue swimmer in the Navy, for 6 years, with one sea tour in Japan on the USS John S. McCain. Jeremy is passionate about bringing people and resources together to catalyze positive change in the world. In his spare time he’s an avid tennis player and golfer, enjoys exploring new places and meeting inspiring people.

Ironfire Fellow

Hannes’ entrepreneurial spirit has been in high gear since his early teens, when he scaled a task automation platform powered by artificial intelligence to over 15,000 users. Having previously held roles as a data scientist, software engineer, and bioinformatics researcher, Hannes brings eclectic insights from academia and industry to Ironfire Ventures, where he analyzes startups and uncovers new investment opportunities.

Ironfire Fellow

Jaimie is an MBA student at UC Berkeley Haas with a focus on technology and entrepreneurship. He has been involved with startups from Skydeck and has experience assessing investments in the Enterprise and AI space for a local venture capital firm. Before Haas, Jaimie’s background in Mechanical Engineering has led him from consulting at Deloitte to product management at Alarm.com, where he managed and launched several hardware and software products in the IoT space. Jaimie is always up-to-date on the latest consumer technology trends and loves to travel and play tennis in his free time.

Ironfire Fellow

An experienced innovator currently pursuing his MBA in Berkeley, Thomas supports the Berkeley Startup Ecosystem as part of Berkeley Entrepreneurs Association’s leadership team, responsible for developing Partnerships. Before coming to Berkeley, Thomas held various positions at Daimler (Mercedes) in Germany, creating multiple products such as a crowdsourced idea-sharing platform and a finance planning system. Later he managed a worldwide optimization program for Daimler, leading nine international project teams. In his free time, Thomas is a passionate traveler, who has visited over 50 countries worldwide.

Ironfire Fellow

Andrew is a student at UC Berkeley studying computer science and statistics. He is actively involved in the entrepreneurship and machine learning communities at Berkeley, and he is passionate about leveraging data and technology to solve real-world problems. Previously, Andrew co-founded Goodpoint, a cloud-based feedback tool backed by Pear VC, The House, and Free Ventures. On campus, he works on machine learning research at the Berkeley AI Research Lab and the RISE Lab. Prior to Ironfire, Andrew held roles in portfolio management at AQR, quantitative research at Citadel, and data science at Branch. In his free time, Andrew enjoys playing basketball, solving brain teasers, and meeting interesting people.

Ironfire Fellow

Jeff is an MBA student at UC Berkeley Haas School of Business, where he is an Investment Partner at Dorm Room Fund, a member of Haas Venture Fellows, and a Berkeley Chapter InSITE Fellow. Prior to Haas, Jeff spent 10 years working in fixed income sales and trading in New York and Chicago. Most recently, he managed institutional interest rate sales for RBS in the Midwest. Jeff is passionate about building new businesses, and is studying entrepreneurship and venture capital at Haas. Jeff holds a BA in Economics and Geography from Middlebury College.

Ironfire Fellow

Venture Partners

Jimmy founded Semeiotics in 2003. Currently acting as Chairman/CEO, overseeing both the Hong Kong and Paris offices. An initial college drop out, he later acquired a degree from Parsons in New York. The company philosophy is simple: Do right by design and creation. This translates into both the business administration to creative arms of the company. Before Semeiotics, Jimmy has been in both retail and graphic design. Experiences he acquired from Toronto, Stockholm, Hong Kong and Paris in his 20+ professional years.

Simon Chan是一位连续创业者、产品创新专家和投资者，他先后在旧金山湾区、伦敦、香港、广州和北京等地拥有多年创业经验。他上一个创业公司PredictionIO是一个开源的机器学习服务平台，工程师可以通过它来构建智能软件。在PredictionIO被收购之后，Simon加入了Salesforce，组建新的Einstein产品团队并推出AI相关平台产品。 Simon拥有密歇根大学安娜堡分校计算机科学学士学位和伦敦大学机器学习博士学位。

Ms. Cheng was the vice president for Beijing Zifeng Culture Industry Group, in charge of the publishing and distribution of textbooks and teaching supplementary materials for the People’s Education Press in China. She also procured the co-development of digital and online education with several national publishing houses and National Education Examination Authority. During her time at Kotler Marketing Group as a consulting director, she helped many Chinese enterprises come up with marketing and branding strategy. In 2009, she carried out the Kotler’s Student Start-up Guidance Program and was invited by Tianjin University of Commerce as a special student mentor to assist college students to start up businesses. Currently, she is the convener of volunteers and the online classroom teacher for the Singapore division of Project VolunONLINE 2.0 sponsored by China Soong Ching Ling Foundation. Ms. Cheng has a Master’s Degree in Economics and a Bachelor’s Degree in Law.

Howie holds a Master of Computer Science degree from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Bachelor of Computer Engineering from University of Toronto. He joined Ironfire part-time since 2012, responsible for deal sourcing, technical evaluation and investment due diligence. Howie is currently leading Microsoft Advanced Technology Center Innovation group, where he oversees multiple initiatives ranging from large/cross screen interaction, big data analysis and visualization, Azure cloud as well as smart hardware innovation. He also led product development in Windows Embedded, regional healthcare and Windows Phone app development. Prior to Microsoft, Howie worked at Morning Star’s equity data group and Motorola, taking on technical role towards artificial intelligence, natural language processing and embedded communication development.

Ritik was most recently the co-founder and CEO of Streem, which was acquired by Box in June 2014. Streem was a venture-backed, Y Combinator summer 2012 startup that developed a cloud-based file system and fast video streaming technology. Prior to Streem, Ritik started and ran various other profitable businesses including a learning center for middle and high school students, a web hosting service, flash-based gaming websites, and more. He has been programming since the age of eight and is always hacking on a side project or two behind the scenes. Before going down the entrepreneurial track, Ritik worked as an engineer at Twitter, Intel, Agilent, and a few early-stage startups. Ritik pursued a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley.

Zach is a filmmaker and commercial director best known for his cult hit Netflix feature documentary film, The Final Member and his bevy of award-winning commercials. He’s worked with Coke, Volkswagen, AT&T, Comcast and the NFL, and his infamous collection of Kmart online shorts to date have over 100 million views on YouTube and have won several Cannes Lions and a Webby award. Two of his branded shorts are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. Zach studied film at both Queens University in Canada and The Tisch School of the Arts at NYU.

Dr. Ng obtained his Ph.D. in Management Science and Engineering at the Stanford University. He served as a consultant working at Nestle and General Motors before founding Yat Sen. Yat Sen invests in various technology companies including Cluster Technology, Dali Wireless, Yooyo, Jiabo360, Skykick, Pathsource, Loadout, etc.

Reed Shaffner is co-founder and co-CEO of Workpop. Reed’s career in technology and product development began at Microsoft in 2006, where he was the Senior Product Manager for Bing Social Search and a Product Manager for Microsoft Office. While at Microsoft, he earned “Rookie of the Year” honors. In 2011, Reed joined Zynga where he oversaw the highly trafficked “With Friends” network as General Manager. Prior to this role, he held a variety of positions at the company, including Director of Product and Lead Product Manager for Café World where he also opened the Zynga San Diego studio. While there he twice once Zynga’s highest honor for contributions, the Atlas Award. Reed’s expertise led him to Scopely, the mobile entertainment platform where he served as Vice President of Product until co-founding Workpop in 2014. He is an aspiring chef and graduate of Duke University.

Jason has been a food tech entrepreneur since 2011. His most recent venture Caviar, a food delivery platform, was acquired by Square in August 2014 after raising $15mm in venture capital. Prior to Caviar, he founded Munch On Me, a Y Combinator Summer 2011 company, which was acquired by College Budget in 2012. In early 2010, he also started a mobile app development company and produced profitable award-winning apps on the Windows and Android platform. As a personal hobby, he created a food blog in 2012, City Foodsters, where he travels and documents his experiences dining around the world. Before pursuing his entrepreneur dreams, Jason worked in various business and finance roles at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Google, and Microsoft. He holds a bachelor degree from UC Berkeley’ss Walter A. Haas School of Business.

Eric is a growth focused executive leader who helps organizations leverage technology to achieve customer driven growth. He is currently helping to scale Info-Tech Research Group where he oversees the research and advisory division that delivers the firm’s data-driven insight and guidance to IT leaders around the world. Prior to Info-Tech, Eric worked with Deloitte as a leader in the Customer Management practice where he assisted clients in driving growth through customer strategy and customer technologies. Eric holds a Master of Computer Science degree from the University of Toronto and a Bachelor of Computer Science from the Western University.