At Basis Set Ventures merging venture capital and software development yields a $165 million new fund When Xuezhao Lan first formed Basis Set Ventures, the goal was to leverage technology to give venture capital investing super powers. From the earliest days, when Lan hired former TechCrunch reporter John Mannes, and then built out the team with the data scientist, Rachel Wong, former Upfront Ventures partner, Chang Xu, and former vice president of growth, Sheila Vashee, the focus was as much on technology products as it was on dollar investments and advisory services. Together with Niniane Wang, a former advisor who now serves as the firm’s chief technology officer, Basis Set grounded its decisions in the technical bona fides of Lan’s firm. And product development isn’t something that the firm simply pays lip service about. Basis Set ships about three different updates to a massive suite of internal and external products every week, according to the partnership.