Essence VC is a rare "engineer-first, solo GP" fund led by Timothy Chen, who was initially rejected as "too technical/too nerdy" for traditional VC but built Essence into what's considered "one of the hottest startup funds in tech," backed by top-tier LPs like Marc Andreessen and Martin Casado. The fund explicitly positions itself as investing in infrastructure companies before they exist, backing founders at the repo/demo stage with comfort writing checks when there's only GitHub traction and an alpha—much earlier and more technically driven than most infra-focused VCs.