Alex Chen

Alex grew up in San Jose, California, surrounded by the energy of Silicon Valley. He remembers visiting his parents' friends' garages — where companies were being born — and knew early on that he wanted to be part of that world.

At USC, he co-founded TrojanEats, a campus food delivery platform that scaled to 3,000 weekly orders before being acquired by a larger player. That experience — the highs of product-market fit and the lows of co-founder disagreements — shaped his philosophy on what makes a great founding team.

After interning at Sequoia Capital, where he helped evaluate early-stage consumer deals, Alex started 18VC to bring institutional-quality venture thinking to the USC campus. He believes the best founders are hiding in plain sight at universities, and they deserve backers who truly understand the student founder journey.

Alex is drawn to founders who are relentlessly resourceful and deeply obsessed with the problem they're solving. He's especially excited about AI-native applications, campus infrastructure, and tools that empower the next generation of creators and builders.

He prefers founders who have a unique insight — something they know that most people don't — and the grit to push through the inevitable hard times. A strong technical co-founder is a big plus, but what matters most is velocity: how fast can you learn and ship?