Eugene Lin
Chop Chop co-founder Eugene Lin builds organizations that create disproportionate positive impact in the world. He’s spent the last decade helping elevate Asian food brands globally, most recently as Chief Marketing Officer at Seesaw Coffee, China’s pioneer and leader in specialty coffee, headquartered in Shanghai. With roots in Yunnan, the heartland of China’s coffee producing region, Seesaw Coffee is at the forefront of China’s specialty coffee movement, providing unique and inspiring coffee experiences to communities across its 30 stores. Seesaw was selected in 2018 to take up a month-long residency at the prestigious La Marzocco Café Residence program in Seattle.

Prior to Seesaw, Lin was a Managing Director at IDEO, China, responsible for building IDEO’s business, growing a multidisciplinary team, and nurturing a creative culture that helped companies scale through innovation. Born to Taiwanese immigrants, Lin has street food in his blood. It is through food that he connected with Steve Har, then also working at the firm, the two collaborating on a number of food and beverage brands, guiding their brand strategy and growth efforts. This included the founding of Food Forward, an annual Michelin Guide event series with the mission to elevate the prominence of culinary excellence in the region. While there, Lin also setup a partnership with Bits x Bites, China’s largest food-focused accelerator and venture capital fund that invests in sustainable food startups. He continued his work with food entrepreneurs as a mentor at CPG accelerator SKU in Austin. Chop Chop is Lin and Har’s latest and most personal joint effort, one in which they help address good food and representation at the frozen aisle.

Lin began his career in and around corporate boardrooms, beginning as an investment banker at Salomon Smith Barney in New York, and later joining McKinsey & Company. He holds an MBA degree from Columbia University and a Bachelor’s degree from The University of Texas in Austin.

Steve Har
Steve Har lives to eat. As co-founder of Chop Chop, Har is on a mission to uncensor food. Growing up in Hong Kong, Har developed a love for street food at a young age. It is a place that instilled the belief in him that cooking nose-to-tail and eating with the people you love is the way to live life. However, his family would later move to Adelaide, Australia, where those familiar favorites were watered down. Eventually, he would move back to Hong Kong to reacquaint himself with those childhood aromas and flavors as well as new ones, living nomadically across Sydney, London, Tokyo, Taipei and Bangkok.

Inspired by street culture, a subculture that uncensored fashion, music, and art and made it for the people, Har would come to bring those influences to his creative process. For Har, it is just as much about the craft of the food itself as it is about the entire experience around the food. He is particular about the details. Together with Lin, they led Seesaw, making specialty coffee a topic of conversation across popular culture in Shanghai, eventually scaling it across multiple cities in China. They also launched a conference series in partnership with the Michelin Guide to foster a more critical conversation around food. Now based in Austin, Texas, the co-founders are realizing both of their missions coming together by creating Chop Chop.

In doing so, Har wants to bring food to the people in the most accessible and authentic way possible, highlighting bold flavors through natural ingredients, and letting those who couldn’t otherwise experience street food in Asia to do so conveniently at home. He hopes that Chop Chop’s street style flavors will help people open up to trying different things.

Chop Chop
Chop Chop is an Asian CPG food brand that makes better-for-you products, fresh from the United States of Asian America.