Kristina Shen

Kristina Shen is a co-founder and Managing Partner of Chemistry, an early-stage venture firm she launched in October 2024 alongside Ethan Kurzweil (ex-Bessemer) and Mark Goldberg (ex-Index Ventures). The firm debuted with a $350M Fund 1 dedicated to leading a concentrated set of high-conviction seed and Series A investments in software. Their pitch is structural alignment with founders — the three GPs describe themselves as a "lean" firm that personally works "in the trenches" rather than scaling like legacy platforms, citing a collective track record of leading early investments in more than a dozen unicorns and serving on 50+ boards.

Before Chemistry, Shen spent about four years (joining December 2019) as a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, where she led the firm's B2B / enterprise software investing practice, covering everything from developer tooling and core infrastructure to non-traditional vertical SaaS. Prior to a16z, she spent roughly seven years at Bessemer Venture Partners, where she became a Partner working on cloud and SaaS investments and co-authored Bessemer's widely read "State of the Cloud" report and Cloud Index. She held board roles at SaaS companies including ServiceTitan and Gainsight during her Bessemer tenure.

Earlier in her career, Shen worked in technology investment banking at Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse — where she worked on IPOs of companies such as Palo Alto Networks, Zynga, Fusion-io, and Infoblox — and was an associate at growth-equity firm JMI Equity, focused on sourcing software investments. She earned a B.A. in Operations Research & Management Science from the University of California, Berkeley. She is widely recognized in the industry for a rigorous, metrics-driven approach to SaaS analysis (cohorts, net dollar retention, unit economics). She is a mother of three.

• Stage: Leads seed and Series A rounds; concentrated, high-conviction model (each partner does only ~2–3 deals/year).
• Sectors: B2B/enterprise software broadly — SaaS, fintech, infrastructure, developer tools, and vertical/"work" software. At a16z she focused on enterprise SaaS, core infrastructure, horizontal middleware, and developer tooling.
• Core philosophy (Chemistry): "What would a venture firm look like if its success was fully aligned with its founders' success?" The partners position themselves as the portfolio-services team, bringing "founder energy" and deep personal involvement rather than scale.
• What makes her say yes: A reputation for "phenomenal" SaaS-metrics analysis — she scrutinizes cohorts, retention/NDR, and durable unit economics, and has a documented thesis on how AI is reshaping the SaaS landscape (a recurring theme in her SaaStr talks).
• Style: Described in a16z's announcement as "one of the top analytical minds in the industry," with a strong stated commitment to entrepreneurs.