Kevin Zhen

In his many endeavors, Kevin Zhen ’16 hopes to build community. Currently, the Yale University junior is using his entrepreneurial skills to turn this goal into a reality. In the past year, Zhen has worked with several others to launch Homecooked, a social dining app that, as the Yale Daily News reports, “feed[s] the city’s appetite for friendship.”

This appreciation for community is not new to Zhen. At Exeter, he experienced the benefits of a supportive network. “[I noticed that people] were really gunning for my success, and they were really trying to help me grow as a human being,” he said. “I have a lot of touching Exeter stories. But at the end of the day, it’s the combination of these stories that really blows me away … There wasn’t a specific incident [that touched me]—there was a string of moments.”

His desire to foster deeper relationships led him to take on a number of leadership roles at the Academy. He served as Senior Class President, proctor for Cilley Hall and an editor of The Exonian’s Humor Section. Zhen also spent his free time building stronger connections with his dormmates. “I played a lot of League of Legends with my friends,” he joked.

Despite holding these positions, he recalled his work with the Harris Family Children’s Center and Breakdancing Club most fondly. “Honestly, [I most enjoyed] the small clubs, where I could really engage with people—where I could spend time with them on an individual basis,” he said.

Zhen discovered his love for breakdancing while at Exeter. “I didn’t know how to dance when I first came to Exeter, but Rudy Oku [class of 2013] would coach me through many, many individual sessions. Whatever I wanted to learn, he was always willing to teach,” he said.

Oku was not Zhen’s only mentor at the Academy. When he sought writing advice, Robert Conner ’15 came to Zhen’s aid. “When I first came to Exeter, I was a pretty bad writer,” he said. “[Conner] would coach me at night. We would print out my narrative, and he would grab three colored pens and look at what’s showing, what’s telling, how to convert telling into showing, how to balance the ratio [and so on].” In his lower and upper years, Zhen’s improvement earned him the Vasiliou Prize in English.

The willingness of mentors to take him under their wing inspired Zhen to do the same. In Cilley Hall, Zhen held tutoring sessions to help students with papers during his years as an upperclassman. “We would go through narratives togethers, and I would show them what was effective, what was not effective, what to avoid and what to strive for,” he said. “We looked at lots of different prize papers, and I would try break it down for them.”

Zhen’s peers recall his willingness to engage with others, especially younger members of the community. “[Instructor in Physical Education Bruce] Shang's daughter was in our dorm, and [Zhen would] always say he couldn't do something [until] late at night since he was enjoying his time with her and enjoyed spending time with younger kids,” Hiroyuki Kuwana ‘16 said.

His actions left a lasting impact in the underclassmen he mentored. “Kevin Zhen is like a big brother to me,” senior Troy Marrero said. “From taking the three preps who he called his ‘sons’ out to breakfast at Rogan’s to tutoring us in almost every class to editing all my papers, there are numerous [things I admire about him]. All of them say the same thing: Kevin Zhen is an unreal human being.”

As a senior, Zhen saw the community embrace him back when he delivered his meditation in Phillips Church. “It was crazy. It was packed beyond belief. I saw people sitting in the aisles,” he said. As he shared his meditation, Zhen cried before his audience. “It was a really vulnerable story that I told. When I was done, there was a line of people—out through the door—coming up and giving me hugs… I think it was a life-changing experience. I had always wanted to share my story, but I had no idea so many people would listen and react in the way that they did.”

Today, Zhen brings the sense of community he found at Exeter to the world at large. Through Homecooked, he has organized dozens of events that have brought people together. His journey with the startup began when another Exonian, Hojung Kim ’14, approached him about the initiative in his sophomore year. “Hojung was at the University of Chicago, and he started cooking for his friends in order to pay rent. It started with three or four friends that he would see that on a weekly basis before it grew,” Zhen said.

At first, Zhen was skeptical about Kim’s proposal. “I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is the worst idea I've ever heard. Somebody’s going to get food poisoning,’” Zhen recalled. Still, Kim signed Zhen up for a pitch competition at the Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale. “I was half-furious, half-nervous. I was shaking—in front of people pitching an idea that I didn’t really care about. It turns out, though, that a ton of people at Yale thought the idea was a brilliant one.”

After its incorporation, Homecooked continued to expand. The startup brought in Yale University junior Eric Duong, who helped the founders launch an app. Now, Homecooked is operational in New Haven and New York City. The Yale Daily News further reports that, after receiving an award from the Missouri-based 1ST50K startup competition, Homecooked plans to expand into Cape Girardeau, Missouri.

Friends are not surprised by Zhen’s devotion to his startup. “A lot of that is because of his status as a second generation immigrant: in a time when his parents struggled to keep their Chinese restaurant afloat and give Kevin the opportunity to achieve his own dreams, he bonded the most closely with them over the meals they had together and the food they made for him,” Cam Rider ‘16 said. “He doesn't just want Homecooked to grow as a company—he wants it to spur on a new cultural phenomenon.”

Zhen believed that his experiences at Exeter further informed his work with Homecooked. “There are very few people in the world, in the course of human history, who have built a company all by themselves. I'm not even sure it's possible. It's inherently collaborative,” he said. “At Exeter, I learned about dialogue, collaboration, open communication—these are absolutely crucial. They’re key.”

Despite its successes, Homecooked has not lost sight of its mission: reaching different communities and drawing them together. “We employ a community-building approach over food,” he said. “We built Homecooked with a specific goal in mind … We’re in the middle of a mental health crisis. This is the most connected age in human history, yet we're lonelier than ever before. [Homecooked] is about conversation, about relationships.”

And, as an Exonian, Zhen certainly knows how to engage in a discussion. “Homecooked is Harkness around the dinner table,” he said.