Ellen Chisa
Partner at Generalist
Somerville, Massachusetts, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolEllen Chisa is a seasoned operator, founder, and investor with 13 years building product-led engineering organizations and developer-facing platforms. As Partner at Boldstart Ventures she invests at inception in the autonomous enterprise while also serving on multiple boards including Liveblocks, Generalist, and recent AI/biotech ventures, bringing a founder’s lens to early-stage strategy. Previously she co‑founded and led Dark, a programming language tightly integrated with its editor and infrastructure, growing the team and raising $5.5M to prove the product-market fit for a developer platform. Her background spans product leadership at startups like Lola and Kickstarter and early engineering/product roles at Microsoft, combining technical depth with customer-driven design. An MBA and engineering graduate, Ellen pairs hands-on product craft with venture instincts—she often spots opportunities at the intersection of developer experience and enterprise automation. Notably, she blends practical startup execution with board-level governance, making her equally comfortable shipping code, hiring teams, and shaping long-term strategy.
13 years of coding experience
14 years of employment as a software developer
Human Centered Design and Engineering, Human Centered Design and Engineering at University of WashingtonBachelor of Science (B.S.) Electrical and Computer Engineering, Bachelor of Science (B.S.) Electrical and Computer Engineering at Franklin W. Olin College of EngineeringInternational AcademyMBA, MBA at Harvard Business School
Github Skills (22)
functional-programming10
backend10
documentation10
editor9
programming-language9
react6
react-native-paper6
developer-tools5
emoji5
visualization5
data-visualization4
todoist3
react-native3
react-native-web1
quantified-self1
Programming languages (5)
Github contributions (5)
ellenchisa/wineweekdays
Apr 2015 - Jul 2017
Contributions:2 PRs, 6 pushes, 3 branches in 2 years 3 months
wineweekday
ellenchisa/website
Mar 2013 - Dec 2020
Contributions:296 commits, 153 pushes, 3 branches in 7 years 9 months
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