In the last Summer 2022 batch, Guillaume Luccisano, Shawn Low, Jessica Chao, and Zaizhuang Cheng joined us as Visiting Partners. Over the course of 3 months, they helped us with…
- Hosting Office Hours. Office hours are weekly 1 hour sessions between a partner and the founders of a company. This is where the partners help the founders identify and solve their most pressing problem
- Attending Group Office Hours. Every other week, multiple partners meet with a handful of companies to lend their experience. These are designed to have founders learn from other founders, see what’s working and not working for other companies and get perspective by hearing about other companies.
- Preparing for Demo Day. Our Visiting Partners also help founders prepare for Demo Day via the Fundraising Bootcamp. This is typically around the last month of the program, where they help founders iterate on their pitch.
Having the Visiting Partners onboard was immensely valuable, and we wanted to scale it for the next batch. We're excited to announce that for batch W23, we have seven amazing Visiting Partners - welcome back Jessica Chao and Shawn Low, and welcome Chinmay Chauhan, Hy Sia, Sylvia Yin, Tessa Wijaya and YC Ng!
Meet our Visiting Partners:
Chinmay Chauhan
Chinmay Chauhan is the co-founder and President of BukuWarung (YC S20), which builds bookkeeping, digital payments, and e-commerce solutions for the 60 million MSMEs in Indonesia. At BukuWarung, Chinmay led product and technology functions, grew the organization to 400 people, and helped raise $80M in funding. Prior to BukuWarung, Chinmay was the Director of Product at Carousell and the Product Lead at Grab.
Chinmay has a BTech. in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology (Bombay).
HY Sia
Sia is the co-founder of Tranglo, a payment processing company that powers the last-mile cross-border payout for various banks and fintech globally. In 2021, Ripple purchased a 40% stake in Tranglo for an undisclosed amount. During his time there, Sia was responsible for growing Tranglo's cross-border payment volume to more than USD10 billion as well as Tranglo’s payment network globally by developing partnerships and connectivity with 800 financial institutions and MSMEs. Sia was also the Co-Founder of Xendity, an eKYC specialist in SE Asia.
In 2020, Xendity was acquired by Green Packet Berhad for $10M. Sia has a BS in Information Technology from Multimedia University (Cyberjaya, Malaysia) and alumnus of EY Tech Entrepreneur.
Jessica Chao
Jessica is a Visiting Partner at Iterative, where she leads healthcare investments. She's also a Venture Partner at SVLC, a Latin America focused venture fund, as well as a Biotech Advisor to Berkeley SkyDeck, UC Berkeley’s official startup accelerator.
Previously, Jessica was the Director of the Clinical Innovation Center at Univrsity of California, San Francisco (UCSF) where she developed the infrastructure and capacity to accelerate innovations that solved the most critical delivery system problems in healthcare. There, she's worked with over 100+ startups. She was also a Product Designer at Weave (YC S14), Principal at Sage Growth Partners and Co-Founder of Healtho, a consumer health information company.
Jessica has an MBA from John Hopkins University, a PhD in Pharmacy and a BS in Biochemistry from the University of Washington.
Shawn Low
Shawn is the co-founder of Unsearch which helps organizations search for people using natural language. He's also a Visiting Partner at Iterative, as well as an advisor to Huspy, a Sequoia and Founders' Fund-backed Proptech operating out of the UAE and Spain.
He was the co-founder and Head of Operations at Better.com, a homeownership platform integrating mortgage lending, real estate services and insurance. Better.com has raised over $905M and valued at over $6B. Shawn was part of the core leadership serving as the functional equivalent of a COO. In his role, he oversaw the Mortgage and Real Estate business lines, in addition to company strategy, people and talent, and the international support teams.Prior to Better.com, he was a consultant with BCG where he was part of the emergency response to the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa. The fast-paced and highly iterative nature of the work was what first got him to explore startups. Shawn has a BA in Molecular Biology from Harvard.
Sylvia Yin
Sylvia Yin is the Batch Director at Iterative. At Iterative, Sylvia is responsible for the accelerator and building new programs, products, and services to continue helping founders even after graduation.
Before Iterative, Sylvia was the Co-Founder of Omnilytics, a retail insights platform. At Omnilytics, Sylvia led Customer Success, growing NRR to >100% and serving global clients like Uniqlo, Lenzing, and Lidl. In 2016, Sylvia was the youngest tech entrepreneur on the Asia Forbes 30 Under 30 Retail & eCommerce list.
Sylvia has a BA in Economics from Durham University.
Tessa Wijaya
Tessa Wijaya is the Co-Founder and COO of Xendit, a leading payment gateway in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Southeast Asia. Xendit became a unicorn in 2021, making Tessa the only female unicorn founder in Indonesia. At Xendit, Tessa oversees finance and operations and also initiated Xendit’s Women in Tech Indonesia program.
Before co-founding Xendit, Tessa worked as a private equity investment professional at Mizuho Asia Partners and Principia Management Group. She took the leap into building Xendit because she wanted to learn about emerging technology businesses.
Tessa has an MPhil in Philosophy from the University of Sydney.
YC Ng
YC Ng is a partner at AC Ventures, an SEA-focused venture fund that invests in early-stage technology companies. There, YC oversees the SE Asia Mobility Fund. Previously, YC founded and sold an e-commerce subscription eyewear company to Essilor in 2015. A year later, he led the global technology investments and partnerships at Sinarmas Group and Latitude Venture Partners in Indonesia, focusing on fintech, AI, and healthcare investments. In 2019, YC co-founded Rukita, a proptech company in Indonesia, where he led sales, finance, and HR to scale the company to its first $3M in revenue.
YC has a BA and MA in Economics from Cambridge University.
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