Lan is an entrepreneur and investor. She founded Basis Set to create universal abundance by uniting the power of machine intelligence with human ingenuity. Since making her first seed investment in Scale in 2016, she has become one of the earliest investors in dozens of startups, often leading their seed rounds. These companies have grown to a total value exceeding $20 billion in a short amount of time.
 
Lan started her career as a PhD researcher modeling the human brain and publishing in top journals such as Science. She founded a brain training company and later led teams at McKinsey after the company’s exit. After joining Dropbox in 2013, she built and ran the Corporate Development Strategy team. She holds an M.A. in Statistics and a Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Michigan, where she now serves as a board member at the School of Information.
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Lan loved climbing up and jumping off literal cliffs around the world — rocks in the ocean in Thailand, frozen waterfalls in Canada, and out of planes mid-sky in New Zealand. These days, she's found an evergreen-rollercoaster in the startup world — founding a firm from scratch and serving as a 24/7 support hotline for early-stage founders. She believes all problems can be solved with rigorous thinking, experimentation, and a little humor.
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Many years ago, Lan came to the U.S. with full scholarships, a suitcase and $20 in her pocket after ranking in the top 0.001% at a top school in China.