Serena Wang

My Story

I've always been driven by people. I spent my childhood learning foreign languages like Arabic because I wanted to deeply understand how people completely different from me lived. I had this silly dream of becoming fluent in every language and then meeting every single person on earth.

This led to studying International Relations at Berkeley, then by proxy of being near Silicon Valley, finding a job in tech. I was one of the first marketing hires at a high-growth startup, where I learned everything there was to know about scaling a marketing and partnerships team from the ground up. I touched every point of GTM during those early days and loved the ambiguity of building from scratch.

I made the grave mistake of taking my second startup job for money and title. I was naive. Wanted to beef up my resume. But I lost myself along the way to get there.

My decision to then pursue an MBA at NYU Stern was about daring change. I knew very narrowly what it meant to be a great marketer in B2B SaaS, but I wanted to know everything. Every corner of every possibility out there. I decided to take a leap into something completely unknown — first by moving to Vienna for three months, then by committing to Stern's one-year accelerated Luxury & Retail focused program while still traveling through Europe. My plan was to join a consumer-facing startup, blending my background in tech and now fashion tech expertise.

Little did I know that through meeting so many startup founders, the dots would lead me to venture. I knew I wanted to make a positive impact to the world somehow through relationship building, just didn't know how or why.

What I Do

I'm now doing something I love. Which is community building. Meeting founders at the incubation stage and witnessing them go from 0 to 1.

Beyond hosting events, it's really about connecting people. Building these interactions between founders or on behalf of founders. The work is deeply meaningful to me, and the relationships last beyond just a surface-level networking conversation.

Beyond writing angel checks, it's really about being a first believer. It's not just the cash that moves the needle, but having someone who deeply understands the founder, what they're building, and willing to support them all the way to the end.

I started to write stories about interesting conversations I have with founders, who inspire me daily. These stories go deep into the why, because why choose to be a founder when you can make life so much easier just cruising along? Where does this conviction comes from?