Eric Chen

It's hard to pick one thing. When I look around at the founders we're working with, I see incredible talent and vision, and I see a huge opportunity for us at the Fund to help them realize those visions. Where it gets really exciting, in my mind, is the synergies we're supporting within the ecosystem of companies in our portfolio. I think that bringing these founders together in a fully resourced and supportive context is going to have revolutionary effects on technological innovation, and even on how business works.

They're all driving toward a data-enabled future. That's the journey that they're all already on, and it’s our job to help them on that path. I think they're also all entrepreneurial and successful to the point that they're not looking for investment just for the sake of the capital. I think they're looking for a much bigger kind of opportunity, and that goes back to their participation in our ecosystem.

I've learned that people constantly underestimate how fast technological evolution can take place, and how deeply it can impact everything around us. We need to shift our expectations and truly acknowledge the current pace of change. We need to believe that human society is in a moment of technology-driven transformation. When we properly acknowledge that, we can do the work of adapting to it. It’s coming no matter what, so we should be ready.

Technological advancement makes me hopeful. If you look at history, technology has liberated billions of people from the constants of life: the struggle for food and shelter, the difficulties of transportation, the poor quality of healthcare, and so on. Technology has already improved the lives of huge swaths of humanity. Now, it hasn't always been evenly distributed, which is something we need to focus on. So when I look at the future, I'm hopeful that we can accelerate those positive trends.

Technology has always been a leveling force. I could go into the history of technology and the rise of democracy, but suffice it to say that technology has already changed how we think about human potential. I think that's just going to increase as technology takes care of more of the mundane tasks and unleashes the full potential of human creative power. I’m talking about the arts here as well as scientific discovery. I'm deeply appreciative of the emotional and creative aspects of every human being, and I think technology can help liberate all of us.