Essence VC is an engineer-first, early-stage venture capital firm based in Seattle, founded by Timothy Chen in 2019. The firm invests in deeply technical founders building developer tools, data infrastructure, and AI at the pre-seed and seed stages.
Their most common stage is seed (59% of deals). Average disclosed round size is $11.7M (across 37 rounds with reported amounts).
Portfolio
40
Fund Size
$41M
Top Stage
Seed
Last 12 Mo
4
Team
TC
Timothy Chen
Managing Partner
BL
Bernard Liang
Partner
PT
Patrick Thompson
Partner
WW
Weihan Wang
Partner
Portfolio Breakdown
Stage Distribution
Sector Distribution
Investment Activity
DealsAvg Round Size
Portfolio
44 investments
| Company | Round | Amount | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
 Fearn | Seed | $5.5M | Jun 2026 |
 Standard Kernel | Seed | $20M | Jan 2026 |
 Infracost | Series A | $15M | Nov 2025 |
 Kernel | Seed | — | Oct 2025 |
 Zettablock | Series A | $18M | Sep 2025 |
 Cline | Series A | $27M | Jul 2025 |
 OpenInfer | Seed | $8M | Feb 2025 |
 Magic Patterns | Series A | $6M | Jan 2025 |
 Nuon | Series A | $16.5M | Dec 2024 |
 Workbrew | Seed | $5M | Nov 2024 |
 Letta | Seed | $10M | Sep 2024 |
 Restate | Seed | $7M | Jun 2024 |
 Lancedb | Seed | $8M | May 2024 |
 COANA APS | Pre-Seed | $1.6M | Jan 2024 |
 Genmo AI | Series A | $28.4M | Jan 2024 |
 Augmend | Unknown | $2M | Aug 2023 |
 Groundlight, Inc. | Seed | $10M | Apr 2023 |
| GGroundlight AI | Seed | $10M | Apr 2023 |
 Orb | Series A | $19.1M | Mar 2023 |
 Superframe | Seed | $5M | Jan 2023 |
 Common Fate | Seed | $3.1M | Dec 2022 |
 Immerok | Seed | $17M | Oct 2022 |
| CChiselstrike | Seed | $7M | Jul 2022 |
 Launchnotes | Series A | $15M | Jun 2022 |
 Graft | Pre-Seed | $4.5M | May 2022 |
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Top Co-Investors
Y Combinator10 shared
Felicis5 shared
Cowboy Ventures4 shared
Alumni Ventures4 shared
Mango Capital4 shared
General Catalyst4 shared
Sunflower Capital3 shared
K5 Global3 shared
Stonks3 shared
Designer Fund3 shared
a16z speedrun3 shared
8VC3 shared
HashKey Capital3 shared
Madrona Venture Group3 shared
CRV3 shared
Trinity Ventures2 shared
Essence2 shared
Sequoia Capital2 shared
Menlo Ventures2 shared
SV Angel2 shared
Last updated: 7 October 2026