Tim Chen, solo VC at his firm Essence VC, said he just closed his fourth fund, a fresh $41 million, without even trying. Limited partner investors were so eager to invest, they preempted it, he told TechCrunch. “That basically, pretty much returned our whole fund,” Chen told TechCrunch, and put him “on the map,” as he described. “He told me, ‘Tim, I think you could go raise a $1 million Fund 1 and try it out.’ I said, ‘Wow. After investing, Chen advised the founders to become a developer platform of the models they were fine-tuning.