Tom Zheng

Tom Zheng is an ambitious and proactive young entrepreneur, having co-founded Clado (formerly Linkd) as a freshman at UC San Diego. The company, which is an agentic people-search platform, was accepted into the Y Combinator X25 batch and has demonstrated significant growth, amassing 20k daily users and achieving thousands in MRR. ycombinator+1

Tom possesses strong leadership and technical skills, serving as Co-founder and CTO of Clado, which focuses on reliable and cost-efficient people search infrastructure. He has also demonstrated academic excellence, maintaining a 4.0/4.0 GPA in Aerospace, Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering at UC San Diego. forbes+1

He has a proven track record of collaboration and resilience, having worked on numerous projects with his co-founder Eric Mao since elementary school. Their shared experiences include founding a non-profit, winning major data science and physics competitions, and undertaking physically demanding adventures such as long sailing and canoeing trips, which he attributes to their strong co-founder relationship. ycombinator+1

Tom is also an active angel investor, supporting early-stage startups such as Human Delta, Nozomio, Shofo, and Hillclimb, indicating an interest in fostering new ventures within the tech ecosystem. tyzheng

He is keen on sharing his entrepreneurial journey and insights, as evidenced by his participation in the SDx @ UC San Diego fireside chat where he discussed starting and scaling a startup as a student, building distribution channels, and offering advice to student founders. He also contributes to industry discourse through publications like Forbes Technology Council. startupsd+1