Jinlin Wang
Managing Partner
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- Full Name
- Jinlin Wang (Dr. Jinlin Wang)
- Title
- Managing Partner / General Partner
- Firm
- Foothill Ventures (formerly Tsingyuan Ventures)
- Firm Type
- Venture Capital firm (early-stage; roots in TEEC Angel Fund)
- Investment Stage
- Pre-Seed, Seed, and Series A
- Check Size
- ~$100K–$10M; sweet spot around $1M (Fund III minimum ~$500K)
- Target Company Profile
- Early-stage, technically deep startups led by technical, often immigrant/cross-border founders working at the intersection of multiple disciplines
- Sector Focus
- Enterprise software, AI applications, data & analytics, deep tech, life sciences
- Geographic Focus
- United States, primarily the San Francisco Bay Area (global network via Tsinghua/TEEC ties)
- Location
- Los Altos, California
Background
Jinlin Wang was born and raised in Nanjing, China, and earned his bachelor's and master's degrees at Tsinghua University in Beijing (Automation). He immigrated to the United States in 1996 to pursue doctoral studies, completing a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at the University of Connecticut, and later did further study at Stanford, specializing in optimization. He is a named inventor on roughly seven patents.
Before investing full-time, Wang built a long career as a technologist and operator, holding senior engineering roles at companies including Microsoft, Yahoo, Oracle, and PeopleSoft, and serving as COO of Answers. In 2016 he co-founded Auryc, a next-generation customer-experience/engagement analytics platform, where he served as CEO. This operator-and-founder background shapes his hands-on approach to evaluating product and technical teams.
Wang is a General/Managing Partner at Foothill Ventures, the Los Altos–based venture firm that rebranded from Tsingyuan Ventures in 2021 alongside an oversubscribed $100M fund close. The partnership grew out of TEEC Angel Fund, whose alumni seeded a remarkable roster of companies. He has also been a mentor with the Lighthouse Mentorship Program since its 2015 founding (and predecessor TEEC-sponsored programs), reflecting a continued focus on developing technical, immigrant founders.
Investment Thesis & Focus
- Invests at pre-seed, seed, and Series A, writing checks from roughly $100K up to $10M, with a typical sweet spot near $1M.
- Concentrates on enterprise software, AI applications, data & analytics, deep tech, and life sciences — often "cross-disciplinary" ventures that sit at the intersection of domains.
- Applies an operator's lens to product-market fit: "Product-market fit, or lack thereof, determines the life or death of a venture."
- Prioritizes founders with a commitment to lifelong learning and deep technical grounding; Foothill explicitly leans into backing immigrant and cross-border founders (mirroring Wang's own arrival in the US in 1996).
- Firm is known for an unusually content-heavy blog and structured, transparent guidance for portfolio founders.
Notable Investments
- WeRide — autonomous-driving company; became a Foothill/TEEC-linked unicorn and listed on NASDAQ in October 2024.
- Otter.ai — AI meeting transcription/notes (Foothill portfolio).
- PatentPal — generative AI for patent drafting (Foothill portfolio).
- Celential.ai — AI-driven technical recruiting (listed on Wang's personal Signal record, Series A ~2021).
- Subtle Medical — AI for medical imaging (Series A ~2020).
- MemVerge — big-memory software (Foothill portfolio).
- Metalenz — metasurface optics / imaging hardware (Foothill portfolio).
- Xola — booking/reservation software (Series A ~2016).
- NodePrime — data-center infrastructure software (Seed ~2015).
- *Firm/TEEC-lineage unicorns:* Zoom, Ginkgo Bioworks, Carta, Iterable, Quanergy, and Plus were seeded by the TEEC Angel Fund team from which Foothill's partnership formed.
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