From Building Startups to Backing Founders: Why I Joined Joyance Partners

4 min readAug 28, 2025

For most of my career, I’ve lived and breathed in the health-tech startups in Silicon Valley. I’ve seen brilliant ideas transform into working products, felt the thrill of signing the first customers, and witnessed science make a real difference. I’ll never forget being stopped in a Starbucks by a customer who saw my company jacket and wanted to thank me for a service that had profoundly changed his life.

But I also know the heartbreak of watching it all fall apart. I’ve watched promising companies stumble, not because the science failed, but because the business side did. A poorly timed M&A deal, an investor walking away, or a funding gap at the worst possible moment could completely tank the entire business. The flow of capital, the structure of partnerships, and the vision of investors play just as important a role in shaping whether innovations thrive or disappear.

That realization is what ultimately led me here: to Joyance Partners.

From Scientist to Builder

I began my journey as a scientist, trained in bioinformatics and molecular biology. My curiosity drew me toward genomics just as next-generation sequencing (NGS) was reshaping the field. I was considered a technical and data-driven individual, from early R&D roles to later business and strategy positions at Invitae, Illumina, and Complete Genomics. During my career, I evolved from analyzing data to building markets: I helped design strategies, launch products, and initiate partnerships. One of the highlights was helping bring a spatial genomics platform from zero to millions in revenue in under two years. It was exhilarating to see customers adopt a technology that had the power to reshape basic and clinical research.

But alongside those wins, I also carried with me the scars of all the startups that failed because the funding fell short and all the brilliant ideas that never scaled. Those experiences left me with an unshakeable conviction: Great science doesn’t fail in the lab. It fails in the market. The bridge between the two is capital — the right kind of capital from the right kind of partner.

Discovering Joyance: A Different Kind of VC

When I first learned about Joyance, something clicked.

This was a firm that spoke a different language. Most venture funds lead with talk about returns. Some focus narrowly on specific technologies or markets. Joyance was unique and refreshing. The firm’s thesis, to invest in science and technology that cultivates joy and improves human health, resonates instantly with me and my belief that science shouldn’t just solve problems but should enrich the human experience, making life more livable, vibrant, and joyful.

Why This Shift Matters

We are at a pivotal moment in the intersection of health and technology. Genomics is maturing. AI is transforming how we analyze data, design drugs, and even interact with healthcare systems. Diagnostics, therapeutics, and consumer health are converging in ways that would have seemed impossible a decade ago.

And yet, in spite of this progress, the fundamental bottleneck remains: Which ideas get the resources to scale? Which founders get the right partners at the right time? Which innovations make the leap from potential to real-world impact?

This is why I made the switch from builder to backer. I want to apply every lesson learned — and every scar earned — into helping the next generation of founders navigate those fragile moments and cross that science-to-market bridge successfully.

What Inspires Me About Joyance

Since joining, I’ve been struck by the sheer breadth of life-changing ideas our team evaluates. Some are rooted in deep scientific research, while others originate from consumer health and wellness. All of them share one thread: they aim to improve the human experience in tangible, meaningful ways.

The potential to transform healthcare is only beginning to unfold. While my background fuels a deep passion for the intersection of AI, clinical data, the microbiome, and neurotech, I am equally energized to support founders across the full spectrum of health and well-being, including emerging areas such as mental health, nutrition, and innovative consumer technologies.

Why I’m Here

I’ve known the challenges of building health-tech startups. I’ve lived the exhilarating highs of breakthroughs and the crushing lows of setbacks. And I’ve seen, again and again, how critical the right investors are. Now, I want to be that investor who provides more than just a check. I want to provide conviction, experience, perspective, belief, and a steady hand to guide founders through those pivotal moments.

Joyance gives me the platform to do that, while staying true to a mission that matters: Bring happiness to people’s lives with innovation.

To me, it is the ultimate return on investment.

By Investment Partner Shan Yang