Team

Management

Richard Chan is a serial entrepreneur and seasoned veteran in the technology industry with a global footprint in Asia, Europe and North America. Richard has a very diverse background, trained as a CPA with PwC, co-founded three startups in Silicon Valley, and then led product management at Microsoft. Since joining Microsoft in 2005, Richard led the market research and worldwide brand launch for Bing and pioneered the development of social search and multimedia search. Before joining Ironfire Ventures, Richard was a mentor at Microsoft Ventures in Beijing and led the China Innovation Group at Microsoft Research. 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 has been an angel investor since 2006 and received his bachelor and MBA degree from UC Berkeley Haas School of Business.

Managing Partner

Jacky holds a Master of Management and Professional Accounting degree from University of Toronto and a Bachelor of Arts from Western University. He is a CFA charterholder and a CPA. He previously worked for Ernst & Young and subsequently a private investment company in Hong Kong in 2000. During his tenure, Jacky was involved in investment due diligence, litigation support, corporate finance & transactions and portfolio management. In addition to being the Managing Partner of Ironfire, Jacky took on the role as the Chief Operations Officer at Semeiotics, Inc., a creative company, between September 2009 and December 2013. Jacky is also the vice chairman of a private charitable foundation, in which his primary role is to manage the endowment investment.

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

Dylan has been actively involved in the startup community in Silicon Valley for the past four years working with startups, corporate VC’s, and accelerators. Prior to Ironfire, Dylan held various positions at HP New Ventures, Plug and Play Ventures, The Batchery, and UC Berkeley’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology. He has also previously founded his own finch startup focusing on a more seamless foreign exchange experience. Dylan joined Ironfire on April 2016 as an Ironfire Fellow and is responsible for actively engaging with the UC Berkeley ecosystem and Ironfire’s regional partners. Dylan graduated from UC Berkeley with a double major in political economics and public health, and a minor in public policy.

Associate

Addy oversees and manages the technical aspects of IT projects at Semeiotics Design Technologies. He is responsible for its design and implementation. Addy’s prior experience includes working as an IT consultant, and he also led the development of critical services and data processing systems at the Aviation Weather Services of the Hong Kong Observatory. He holds a Master of Philosophy in Computer Science and a Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Science from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He is also a PMI certified Project Management Professional (PMP).

Project Manager and

Senior Analyst

Designer in Residence

Vanessa works as a Graphic Designer at Semeiotics Design Technologies. She joined the company in 2018 and works in design development, website design and graphics and print. She also helps in liaising and building relationships with the company’s suppliers. Prior to this, Vanessa worked at Harvey Nichols Hong Kong, a luxury British department store chain with a flagship store in Knightsbridge, London.

Graphic Designer

Entrepreneur in Residence

Shom is an MBA student at Berkeley-Haas, where he is the Co-President of [email protected] 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 is a serial entrepreneur, product innovator and investor with global startup experience in San Francisco Bay Area, London, Hong Kong, Guangzhou and Beijing. His latest startup, PredictionIO, is an open source Machine Learning Server that empowers engineers to build smart software. After the acquisition of PredictionIO, Simon joined Salesforce to build up the new Einstein product team and to launch AI-related platform products. Simon holds a B.S.E. in Computer Science from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and a PhD in Machine Learning from University College London.

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.