What separates startups from SMBs is the ability to leverage technology to scale and grow.

Given the importance of growth to the success of startups, this session gives an overview of the systems and frameworks that form the foundation of successful growth strategies for entrepreneurs. We will cover what are the best growth frameworks to leverage, why implementing a growth strategy is important early on and how to leverage some of the best growth strategies seen from hyper growth startups in Silicon Valley.

Shuo Chen is a General Partner at IOVC, where she invests in early stage startups in Silicon Valley with a focus on future of work and enterprise/SaaS. She is also Faculty at UC Berkeley, where she teaches entrepreneurship. Shuo serves on the Board of Directors for Decode, the largest tech and entrepreneurship community co-hosted between Berkeley and Stanford, as well as on the Board of Advisors for Reed Smith, a 150-year global law firm with 3,000 employees across 30 offices.

(In her venture role, Shuo has invested in companies now acquired by Goldman Sachs, Ford, Caterpillar, Binance and Dialpad, as well as now unicorns including Boom, Checkr, Grubmarket, Instacart and Rescale. She has helped portfolio companies close deals with Amazon, Apple, Google, Mercedes-Benz and NASA among others, as well as scaled portfolio companies into Europe and Asia.

Outside of venture, Shuo is appointed by California Governor Gavin Newsom to serve as 1 of 14 voting members on California's Mental Health Commission, which includes overseeing ~$10 billion annually in state budget and advising the Governor or the Legislature on mental health policy.

Prior, Shuo worked at Goldman Sachs in investment banking, where she worked with clients including Alibaba and Tencent, as well as represented the firm on the Board of Women in Finance. Before that, Shuo was at PwC, where she worked on Google’s $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola and LinkedIn’s $119 million acquisition of SlideShare. Shuo has also co-authored one of the leading books on financial regulations published by Cambridge University Press in 2019, and sits on the Advisory Board of Forbes China, where she advises on content and awards for Asian Americans in North America.)

March 2023