Spotlight: From a Chinese town to Alma’s CTO

Alma wouldn’t be what it is today without Shuo. Finding the right tech co-founder is one of the biggest challenges for any tech startup. It’s even harder when you’re building something ambitious that demands both technical excellence and shared vision. Shuo is that person for Alma. I truly believe that without him, we wouldn’t have been able to raise the funding we needed to grow.But there’s so much more to Shuo than his technical brilliance. Recently, I sat down with him to learn more about his journey: what brought him to the U.S., the challenges he’s faced along the way, and the events that eventually led him to join Alma as a co-founder.

I hope his journey resonates with other ambitious immigrants, just as it did with me.

In conversation with Shuo Chen — CTO and Co-founder, Alma

Tell me a bit about your early life — what shaped you into the person you are today?I spent most of my time at my grandparent’s place and education was always a priority for us, I think mostly because my mother was brought up that way. I grew up with my cousins but I remember I wasn’t allowed to play until I finished all of my homework!Middle school got pretty competitive and I saw how expensive education can be if your scores are not good enough. I think that’s where I got my early motivation to focus on my studies. I didn’t want to put financial pressure on my parents by not performing in school. By the time I graduated, I was the top student in the entire town. Early discipline and the value placed on education shaped my drive for success.

The first couple of years in high school were a bit of a blur. I was unsure about what I wanted to do with my life and lacked a clear direction. However, everything changed in my third year. A senior who had been accepted into Tsinghua University—China’s premier engineering institution—gave a presentation about how life could transform if you made it there. I was inspired. That moment shifted the trajectory of my life. From then on, I consistently ranked at the top of my class and excelled in the entrance exams for Tsinghua University.I was eligible for electrical engineering and I just took it — I didn’t even know what it was. Just being there was a great feeling in itself. Three years went by again and people started talking about “what next?”. Some were in favor of moving abroad but that was never something I had considered since none of my friends or family had been outside of China.But you eventually moved to the US. What inspired this shift?It was simply curiosity—about this world and what more life had to offer. I wanted to explore what life could be like outside of China and see what opportunities existed in other parts of the world. While staying and completing my PhD was an easy option because I had good rankings and got admitted w/o application, I decided to apply to universities abroad. Eventually, I narrowed it down to choosing between UCLA and Cornell, and I ultimately chose UCLA for its research opportunities. I won’t bore you with the details but the research project I was involved with was more theoretical than practical.So I left that and focused on finishing my master’s degree. I also wanted to explore my luck in the tech industry. I could always go back to my university and finish my research if things didn’t work out.Being on an F-1 visa, I found myself interning at Sony as part of my CPT where they were experimenting with Smart devices and integrations with Android. Came back, finished my degree early, and started prospecting for job opportunities.What was the moment that kickstarted your career in tech?This was about a year after the recession so the market was just warming up, and as you can imagine, getting a job wouldn’t have been as easy as maybe a few years down the line. I consider myself lucky because I had a few friends at Caltech who told me to attend their job fair.I had a friendly chat with a Senior Director of Engineering at eBay. I didn’t think much of it until I got a call from him to join eBay as a software engineer. And I also needed to complete my OPT so I joined eBay!Why did you take the leap from eBay to the startup world?In about a year I realized how slow corporations move. Things weren’t as fast as I wanted them to be so I moved on.While working at eBay, I spent some time volunteering at a Chinese entrepreneur community in the Bay Area, funded by graduates from Tsinghua. This was where I got more hands-on exposure to the startup culture and how fast things can work.The startup culture fascinated me but I never seriously considered doing it. Where I came from, what I was exposed to, and the restrictions of being new to the US made me not think about it enough. And so I thought maybe I should try working for a startup now.What was it like being part of a small, fast-growing startup like Jelli?I joined a 2-year-old startup called Jelli which had a team of no more than 8 people back then. Initially, I didn’t quite understand how business in a startup environment worked but what motivated me the most was the VP of Engineering at the company who I looked up to immensely, and still do — he is more of a mentor now and doing his start-up as well. From starting out as an SDE to managing 2 teams — it was a learning curve that flattened almost 4.5 years into my work there. We had to change business models in between to survive and I really appreciate that experience. Eventually Jelli ended up being acquired by iHeartMedia in 2018.I knew that I wanted to learn and grow my engineering skillset by working at a company that dealt with a massive scale of users. I didn’t quite see myself at Jelli (or iHeartMedia) doing that and I moved on again and joined Uber.Why did you choose Uber?It’s kind of a funny story, actually. I had offers from Uber and Snowflake in 2016. I decided to go with Uber because I’d already worked with the enterprise side of things at Jelli, and so now I wanted to explore the consumer side of business. Also, Uber was a really hot unicorn back in 2016 when I joined.FYI, the offer from Snowflake is worth $15 million today.Do you regret not taking that job?I don’t think I regret it. There’s no remorse, as such, that I feel for having joined Uber. My time there was definitely very valuable and I also believe that whatever happened, happens for a reason.Had I joined Snowflake, maybe Alma would’ve never happened for me. We wouldn’t be having this conversation right now!That’s true! I’m glad you went to Uber. Tell me about your time there.It was great. I learned a lot from the people at Uber back in the days who were at a very different calibre. I ended up spending about 5.5 years at Uber and things were pretty fast-paced for a while until they weren’t; things were slowing down again for me. Another part of the reason I spent at Uber was because they were helping me with my green card process.Did you face any issues with immigration around that time? How did that shape your career?In fact, I did face a bit of a hiccup with the H1-B transfer when I joined Uber. The experience wasn’t great. I had to figure things out with an immigration law firm that they were working with. Eventually, I was able to get it transferred and get the extension since my 3 years were up. I understood that Legal Immigration was a challenge for the first time then.I continued working at Uber for a few more years heading efforts and teams of building ML products and infra. After about 5 years, I decided to take a sabbatical and think about what I wanted to do. Things at Uber were also slowing down quite a bit which is necessary for business to focus on profitability, I understand, but not so much for personal growth.

You moved on again?I did. Having worked at an early-stage company before, I decided to work for a slightly more established startup (Series B at least) and experience what that’s like.I joined SupportLogic and helped build the team from 3 to 20 people in about 9 months. But, a couple of years later, I felt like the company still wasn’t moving as fast as I wanted it to and so I thought — it’s now time to start something of my own.How did you decide you wanted to join Alma?Like most founders, I decided to begin with my network and meet more people. I think you already know this part but I spoke to Norm (he co-founded Kodif with your husband — Chyngyz). He wanted me to join them to lead their engineering team but I was done working for others at this point; I wanted something of my own. That’s when he introduced me to you!Our first meeting was at the Philz Coffee Redwood City Downtown. It’s scheduled for an hour and we went on chatting for 3 hours. Then Assel, you and I had a second chat a few days later. We were kicked out of Philz first at 5:30 pm, went to Starbucks and got kicked out of Starbucks at 7:30 pm.We did the trial for about 2 months and it just felt right. I think what stood out is that we’re all immigrants, we share a lot of core values, and I think the 3 of us have a very clear responsibility. I’m here for tech, Assel connects the tech side to business requirements, and You (Aizada) know how to run the business.Meeting Shuo was one of those moments of serendipity that founders dream of. From the very beginning, it was clear that the three of us—Shuo, Assel, and I—had a natural synergy. Each one of us has certain expertise that we bring to the table and we know how to trust each other. We know that our cohesive skills keep the company together and translate into coherent outcomes. As long as we have that, Alma is in capable hands.Oh yes, a very happy New Year to everyone reading this!