HCI Industry Guest Talk with special guest Joe Chen

Join us for our next HCI Industry Talk with special guest speaker Joe Chen, entrepreneur, investor, and market pioneer in the IT industry. Joe will share reflections on his career path and will answer questions from the floor. Friday 11 April 12-1pm, TRiSS Seminar Room, Level 6 Arts Building, Trinity College Dublin. All welcome.

Joe immigrated to the U.S. in 1989. During college, he worked various jobs, from flipping burgers to driving a delivery truck. In 1997, while at Stanford, Joe co-founded a pioneering social media network, raising capital from Goldman Sachs, KKR, and ten of his classmates. In 2002, Joe founded 1000 Oak Inc. in Dallas, which later became Moatable Inc., aiming at the emerging mobile internet market. The company went public as Renren Inc. on the NYSE in 2011 after significant funding from venture capital investors, including Softbank, General Atlantic, Accel Partners, and Technology Crossover Partners. Wang Xin, Renren’s co-founder, later founded Meituan, one of the world's largest online retail networks with over 700 million active subscribers. Joe was one of the original investors. 

Since 2011, Joe has directed investments in tech companies such as SoFi, Fundrise, Kiavi, Loadstar Capital, Paydy, Snowball Finance, BacklotCars, FiscalNote, Talech, XtalPi, and Chrystal Pharmaceuticals, serving on many of their boards. Starting in 2016, Joe spearheaded Moatable’s shift from B2C Internet to B2B SaaS. He oversaw the launch of Lofty, originally called Chime, to assist real estate agents in 2018 and serves as Lofty's CEO. In 2017, Moatable acquired Trucker Path, a popular mobile app for truck drivers in North America, as a result of Joe's early trucking experiences. In 2024, LoftyWorks was relaunched to cater to the property management sector after acquiring UK-based Rentancy in 2022.