Shawn Xu

Shawn is Chief of Staff at Lowercarbon Capital.
When investing, Shawn aims to be the first believer in audacious founders’ bold solutions to the climate crisis.
As a builder, Shawn is working closely with our managing partners to scale our platform and founder products in ways that compound over time.
Over the last several years, Shawn has built an accomplished track record as a venture capitalist focused on investments at preseed and seed stages.
Immediately prior to Lowercarbon, Shawn was a Partner at On Deck’s venture fund and accelerator, where he backed companies in 20+ countries and earned a founder NPS of 100.
Before this, he was on the investing teams at Floodgate and First Round Capital’s Dorm Room Fund, and was ranked in the Forbes 30 Under 30 for Venture Capital.
Shawn has personally partnered with ~50 companies to date and brings with him a wealth of knowledge on helping founders go zero to one, from ideation to product-market fit.
Before he was an investor, Shawn was a startup executive who led international expansion for companies such as Square.
Shawn is also involved in political activism, and previously served as a tech policy advisor to California Governor Gavin Newsom.
Shawn holds an MBA/MA in International Affairs from Wharton and the Lauder Institute at the University of Pennsylvania, and completed his undergraduate studies at UC San Diego.
Shawn is a Silicon Valley native and is currently based in San Francisco (although his colleagues would argue he’s more often based out of a plane).
When he’s not hustling on behalf of the entrepreneurs we’ve partnered with, you can find him lost on travel adventures (ask him about his North Korea story), organizing happy hours & dinner parties, or nerding out about comic books.