From Monastery to Market: How Lilly Chen is Disrupting GovTech

Chen’s path to Silicon Valley was anything but linear. Following a diagnosis of Graves' disease, she and her mother sought solace in monastic life, spending two years in a remote monastery without electricity. This period taught her the art of listening—a skill she now applies to the complex, often bureaucratic world of government technology. Upon the advice of her head monk, she returned to the United States to pursue higher education, eventually earning a perfect 36 on the ACT despite lacking a high school diploma. After a stint as a software engineer at Meta, she founded FSH Technologies to address the systemic inefficiencies within state agencies and school districts.

Her company has secured $25 million in funding, including a $20 million Series A round led by Lachy Groom. Unlike the traditional consulting firms that dominate government contracts, FSH focuses on end-to-end solutions rather than billable hours. Chen credits this philosophy to a lesson learned while tending a koi pond at the monastery: "Be the pond, not the fish." By viewing government software as part of a larger ecosystem—encompassing procurement rules and human resistance to change—rather than a single technical fix, her firm has successfully unseated established competitors. While Chen acknowledges that the public sector remains risk-averse, she bets that tangible results will eventually outweigh the comfort of hiring familiar names.