Ted Hou

Ted Hou is a Founding Partner at the Berkeley Catalyst Fund, an early-stage venture capital firm based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Established in 2015, the firm closed its inaugural fund in February 2017 to target Seed and Series A investments while sharing returns with the UC Berkeley Foundation. Before transitioning to venture capital, Hou held several corporate leadership positions, including General Manager at JDS Uniphase, Vice President of Marketing at Hanwha SolarOne, and Vice President of Product Strategy at NRG Residential Solar. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the IBM Almaden Research Center after earning a PhD in Physical Chemistry from UC Berkeley in 1995 under the mentorship of Nobel Laureate Yuan T. Lee. Hou currently focuses on bridging academia and industry by financing commercial applications in life sciences, biotechnology, and material sciences.