Hillcrest Venture Partners

Darin Chen

Managing Director

Darin Chen is a co-founder and Managing Director of Hillcrest Venture Partners. He focuses on investments in the following sectors: Enterprise Applications, Information Technology Infrastructure, and Life Science Research Tools. Darin manages the firm’s investments in GenieDB, Jeda Networks and MomentFeed.

Prior to co-founding Hillcrest, Darin was Senior Associate at Arcturus Capital, where he evaluated and sourced investment opportunities from diverse industries. Darin led the firm’s investment in and served as board observer to High Throughput Genomics (now HTG Molecular Diagnostics, IPO, NASDAQ: HTGM). Darin also recommended investments in Artes Medical (IPO, NASDAQ: ARTE) and Incuity Software (Acq. by Rockwell Automation, NYSE: ROK). Darin began his career in venture capital as an Analyst at Hopewell Ventures, where he evaluated deal flow and helped raise the firm's inaugural fund. Before Hopewell, Darin co-founded Lan-CE, an industrial process improvement company, and E-volutionet.com, an Internet exchange for the procurement of services. Prior to his entrepreneurial work, Darin was an Associate at the law firm of Schaffer & Baumer, where he specialized in corporate law and represented cancer research organizations. Darin worked as a Research Scientist at Immunosciences Laboratories, a clinical immunology laboratory, before he began practicing law.

Darin has also served on the investment screening committee for the Southern California Biomedical Council Investor Conference, as a company mentor for the NIH Commercialization Assistance Program, and on venture panels for CONNECT and OCTANe.

Darin holds an MBA from the University of Chicago, graduating near the top of his class, a JD from Loyola University of Chicago, and a BA in Molecular Biology from Rice University.