Founder
Ryan Chen
Founder
•
DevProxy
Pre-Seed Developer Tools
Location
CA, US
Offers Posted
1
Member Since
Jan 2026
Pre-Seed Developer Tools
Jan 2026
Member Since
+7 days
Last Active
Individual
Legal Entity
PST
Timezone
CA, US
Location
Preferred Projects
Open To
- Pre-Seed Investment partners
- Developer Tools expertise
- Strategic introductions
Not Interested In
- Passive investors only
- Restrictive term sheets
- Non-aligned advisors
About
Ryan Chen is building DevProxy, a developer tools platform that provides instant access to production-quality mock APIs and test data for software development. Currently raising a $1M pre-seed round after achieving early traction with 3,000 developers and several design partner customers.
Ryan's background is pure engineering: seven years as a software engineer at Stripe, most recently as Tech Lead on the Developer Experience team. He experienced firsthand the pain of building against third-party APIs - waiting for sandbox environments, dealing with inconsistent test data, and the productivity drain of mock setup.
DevProxy solves this by providing: instant mock API generation from OpenAPI specs, intelligent test data that mimics real API responses, and a recorded mode that captures production patterns. Early users report 60% reduction in time spent on API integration development.
Current metrics: 3,000 registered developers, 500 weekly active users, 5 design partner companies (including a Series C fintech and a major healthcare platform), growing 30% month-over-month organically. Usage patterns suggest strong product-market fit among integration-heavy development teams.
The team includes Ryan (CEO/Product), a former Cloudflare infrastructure engineer (CTO), and a Stanford CS PhD candidate specializing in API testing (Head of ML). The founding team met at Stripe and shares a passion for developer experience.
Ryan is seeking pre-seed investors with developer tools expertise, particularly those who have backed companies in the API economy (Postman, RapidAPI, Kong). He values investors who can provide access to developer communities and enterprise engineering leaders.
Target raise: $1M pre-seed on $6M post-money valuation. Use of funds: hire 2 additional engineers, launch paid tier, expand enterprise design partner program. Timeline: close Q1 2026.
Ryan holds a BS in Computer Science from MIT and is based in San Francisco. DevProxy is fully remote with team members across the US. Previously, he built internal developer tools at Stripe that are still used by thousands of engineers.
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