Nathan Lian

Building and investing in early-stage companies.

Building and investing in early-stage companies.

We partner with disruptive technology companies across software, marketplaces, fintech, and digital health by offering founders, early investors, and limited partners the most transparent, research-driven, and operator-centric capital. We believe it’s important to have a meaningful point of view on a space and sector *before* meeting teams so their most precious resource - time - is well spent. Our investment themes and specific company targets are substantially generated by a network of operators: a special class of Limited Partners which we call our Advisory Partners. We have strong conviction that operators who are actually in the arena each day are best positioned to identify the differentiated people and ideas we want to back. We reject wholeheartedly the growing sense that VCs should be hands off cheerleaders - we want to be tremendously helpful and positive thought partners on a weekly basis. We believe founders and early employees deserve honest, empathic capital partners who are supportive, emotionally invested and transparent. We take extreme personal accountability for helping to make each of our portfolio companies successful. We participate alongside and after world-class investors, and encourage our extensive network in the later-stage growth capital industry to follow behind us when companies have demonstrated successful scale. We believe the best founders come from diverse backgrounds and we enter first meetings with no preconceived notions of the “correct” background for a founder. We don’t compromise in one area, however: unquestioned integrity.

Various board memberships

Engineering fundraising and GTM machines that just work. At Protean Group, we build bespoke financial models and craft precision-driven content for the worlds most disruptive founders. Our approach is rooted in competitive and cultural intelligence, meticulously fine-tuned to win. Our clients are backed by top-tier investors, including a16z, Accel, Canaan, Coatue, Craft, DST Global, Forerunner, Lightspeed, NEA, NVIDIA, Quiet Capital, SoftBank, Tiger Global, Valor Equity, and many more.

We are a fintech company with teams in New York and London, building the first mobile app that allows you to unify all of your shopping into a single private interface. With the nate® app, you can buy, gift, and save products from online stores, and share shopping lists and shopping profiles with friends and family. Available for iOS in the US App Store. Roles and our five leadership principles are available at nate.tech/careers TikTok @nate IG @nate_app Twitter @nate_app