The people who run Direct.
A small team. Everyone on it sources, provides due diligence, or manages the capital and the platform.
Tuff Yen
LinkedInInventor of the Structured Angel Fund™. Before founding Seraph Group in 2002, Tuff worked at Hambrecht & Quist and Chemical Venture Partners, and as a bioengineer at Genentech. He holds an MBA from the Yale School of Management and a B.S. from UC Berkeley, and co-founded the Play Lab accelerator at MIT.
Whitney earned a B.S. in Finance from Rutgers Business School. She spent four years in Investor Services at Warburg Pincus in New York City, focused on back-office operations, and before that worked with the primary research teams at Point72 Asset Management and Third Bridge Group.
Jian is a technology executive and systems architect with 20+ years of experience in AI, cloud communications, and autonomous sensor systems. He held senior engineering leadership roles at WebEx/Cisco and RingCentral, led LiDAR and AI perception development as CTO of Neuvition, and led generative AI and multi-agent platform development at Easiio Systems. He holds a Ph.D. in Biophysical Chemistry from Caltech.
David brings more than 20 years of experience across private equity, wealth management, financial services, and the public sector. A product leader at heart, he has led technology programs from early-stage startups to large-scale enterprise transformations. He graduated summa cum laude from New England College of Business.
Elan joined full-time after a year-long internship. A Finance graduate of San Diego State University, he focuses on building genuine relationships, supporting founders, and exploring emerging opportunities across industries.
Talk to us.
Meet the team in the deal room.