Calvin Chen

I just exited my last company, Fetchr. Now, I'm figuring out what's next.

Most days I read, write, build things, and meet other interesting people. If that's you, say hi.

Fetchr was an AI shopping agent for clothes. A few users loved it, but we couldn't scale.

Before that I ran two e‑commerce software startups. I bootstrapped one to $1.5M ARR and sold it for $9M.

I did a short stint at Goldman Sachs in the TMT investment banking group—I enjoyed it, but not what I wanted my life's work to be.

I studied business and CS at USC, before dropping out for Y-Combinator. I wandered around for 18 months, trying shopping ideas that didn't work.

Founders rarely write about the messy early days, so I'm starting to, check out my essays below.

Essays