Jiani Chen

Jiani Chen

Jiani Chen is a Partner at Protagonist, a $100M early stage venture capital firm focused on building and investing in future-defining web3 companies and protocols.124

Background

• Jiani graduated from the University of Chicago with a B.A. in Economics26
• Prior to joining Protagonist, she was an investor at Felicis Ventures where she sourced investments in Sourcegraph ($2B+) and helped close investments in Xilis and Opsera12
• She also helped manage Felicis's investments in several unicorns including Canva ($40B+), Cultureamp ($1B+), Hyperscience and Dialpad ($1B+)1
• Jiani was previously on the investment teams at ICONIQ Capital and Goldman Sachs12

Current Investments

At Protagonist, Jiani leads investments in a variety of web3 companies and protocols, including34:

• Aptos Labs - Scalable Layer 1 Blockchain
• EigenLayer - Shared security to hyper-scale Ethereum
• Insomnia Labs
• Spectral
• Switchboard
• Databricks
• Sourcegraph
• Puzzle
• xilis

Personal

• Jiani is an accomplished pianist and passed the highest-level certification (Level 10) in China1
• Her favorite piece is Chopin's Fantasie Impromptu in C# Minor (Op. 66)
• She grew up in Shanghai, China and speaks fluent Mandarin, Spanish, and French1
• Her favorite sports are alpine skiing, hiking and boxing5