Our community supports technical, product, and design leaders in founding venture-backed companies with no binding commitments and no need to quit your day job. Menlo Ventures is now accepting candidates for a selective program designed for future founders feeling the itch to start a company from scratch. Post-college, the Scale Venture Partners vice president started as a product manager at the financial-software company Intuit before moving to Personal Capital, a startup specializing in financial tools and advisory. Menlo Security provides a cloud-based isolation platform that protects organizations from cyberattacks by eliminating the threat of malware from websites, documents, and emails. Since joining Andreessen Horowitz in 2018, he has continued to champion innovation in healthcare while developing deep subject-matter expertise. Liben currently invests in fintech and Web3 startups as a principal at the seed-stage VC firm Primary Venture Partners. MENLO PARK, Calif., Oct. 15, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today, Menlo Ventures launched Menlo XV, a flagship $500M venture fund to help early-stage. Bent looks for early-stage startups that are helping members of underserved communities in tech and business create and build personal wealth, whether it's through crypto, fintech, career mobility, or the creator economy. Though Sui started her career on the operating side at Visa and Brex, the Craft Ventures principal told Insider that she always knew she wanted to break into investing. MENLO PARK, Calif., Oct. 15, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- In a release issued under the same headline earlier today by Menlo Ventures, please note the Menlo XV link in the first paragraph and. When scouting new investments, Ephrati says, he looks for founders with clarity of vision, depth of thinking, and grit. Shang joined IVP in 2021 after a three-year stint as a technology-investment banker at Morgan Stanley. Watch Our New Limited Series: Zone of Genius. "He is usually my first phone call if I am looking at anything in the space," said one of last year's rising stars Christopher Harper. Lowercarbon Capital's mission is to invest in startups working on solutions to the climate crisis, something that Laplaza has been passionate about for years. We have a strategic partnership with Microsoft, the top-tier pioneer in the tech industry. Through his career he's been an avid angel investor and helped found Angel Track, a platform and community for emerging angel investors across the country. In the two years since she made the jump from journalism to investing, Farr, who was a healthtech reporter for CNBC, has quickly become one of the premier investors in the healthtech space, specifically when it comes to women's health startups. He serves on multiple boards and has overseen successful exits at companies such as the video-technology provider Connatix, which was acquired by Court Square Capital Partners; the earthquake-modeling-software company Insite Software, which was acquired by Episerver; and the mortgage-processing company LoanLogics, which was acquired by Sun Capital Partners. Investors Management team Amir Ben-Efraim CEO Poornima DeBolle Chief Product Officer Naresh Bansal Chief Financial Officer Devin Ertel CISO Pejman Roshan Chief Marketing Officer Kate Terrell Chief Human Resources Officer John Wrobel Chief Revenue Officer Nick Edwards VP Product Management Tim Olson VP of Engineering Todd Wilson After joining Cowboy Ventures in 2021, Williams was promoted from principal to partner in December this year. It's a project he spent the better part of six years building, all while working at Goldman Sachs across investment management, investment banking, and merchant banking. Working with healthcare startups is especially fulfilling, Rughani said, because he's helping people live healthier, happier lives. Michelle Aguinis posted about Learn from founders who have - LinkedIn He's also backed a few marketplace startups, including StockX. Menlo Ventures on LinkedIn: #futurefounders #startups #venturecapital In this article, we explore three important lessons that startup founders can learn from the story of Thomas Edison: 1. "I can help them build a complementary team around weaknesses," she said, "but they must be exceptionally strong in at least one valuable area, like leadership and vision, extreme customer empathy, or extraordinary technical capability.". Pai loves founders who can learn and evolve. Prior to joining BCV, Hummer was a growth-equity investor at Goldman Sachs. Through Collide Capital, Hollins writes checks ranging from $500,000 to $1 million for companies across enterprise SaaS, supply-chain infrastructure, and Gen Z-minded consumer software. At Haystack, Sanghvi focuses his investing on young software-and-tech startups such as the data-streaming platform Redpanda and the universal-commerce API Rutter. She leads the firm's Future Founders Program and partners with entrepreneurs to conceptualize new opportunities into successful businesses. A data scientist by training, Lu spent the early days of his career at Google, where he helped to launch and grow YouTube's first paid-subscription businesses. Read More. 5 And that brings me to Menlo Labs. That future is one that will disrupt SEO and e-commerce and require . Inc.'s sixth annual Female Founders list highlights entrepreneurs with world-changing companies Mountain View, CA, April 4, 2023 - Menlo Security, a leading cloud security company, today announced that Poornima DeBolle, the company's co-founder and Chief Product Officer (CPO), has been recognized by Inc. in its sixth annual Female Founders list, honoring a bold group of. She's using that experience in her role as an investor. The firm focuses on the three stages of early investment: 1 Labs Inception through Seed 2 Venture Seed + early-stage And as you mentioned, I was recruited to join the Menlo Labs as part of the founding team and help launch the studio. She has also personally backed companies including the green-skincare line Apothekary. "Start sending deals, sharing thoughts, and building rapport with members of the team without expecting anything in return. We recommend keeping your pitch to a maximum of 250 words (the length of this post so far). Until recently, Ritika Pai, an investor at ICONIQ Growth, has spent the majority of her life in the heart of the tech ecosystem as a Bay Area native, cutting her teeth at Morgan Stanley as a tech-investment banker before pivoting to growth-stage investing. For the past decade, Han has risen through the ranks of the Boston-based growth-equity firm. "He helped DCM to expand beyond the usual VC comfort zone," Lin said. "It was so exciting to get to participate in supporting a company at that level," Sukin said. MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., April 04, 2023--Menlo Security, a leading cloud security company, today announced that Poornima DeBolle, the company's co-founder and Chief Product Officer (CPO), has been . The month after the implosion, Guillermo Shnlein, who co-founded OceanGate with Rush in 2009, told Business Insider he plans to send 1,000 people to live in Venus' atmosphere by 2050 through . "Additionally, many emerging fund managers will take investment from 'micro LPs' who can provide support to their portfolio companies.". There isn't one single characteristic that can make a founder successful, Hu told Insider. These insights should reflect your novel understanding of the customer or market that others might not have. Earlier this year, Aguinis launched Menlo's Future Founders program, a network of aspiring entrepreneurs that aims to identify and nurture a new generation of high-impact startups. Despite the ravages of the crypto-winter, Beller remains a big believer in the transformative power of the blockchain. As the founder and managing partner of her solo fund Worklife Ventures, Kimmel works to help operators from high-growth companies start businesses of their own. Weinberg tells anyone who wants to break into early-stage venture capital that becoming knowledgeable in a specific area and then building relationships is the key to success. Originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina, Michelle is fluent in Spanish and English. To make sure youve hit each component, it can be helpful to color-code your pitch. Now a principal at Playground Global, Sun is passionate about backing startups in the "techbio" sector, including logistics, agriculture, and manufacturing. Guerra has invested in a number of healthtech and biotech startups, including House Rx, Oshi Health, Rupa Health, and Turquoise Health. She was previously a managing director at the AI-focused fund Deep Ventures, and prior to that led AI investments for the VC fund Social Capital from 2017 to 2019. Menlo Security co-founder Poornima DeBolle on Inc.'s 2023 Female She helped identify and source promising new investments as a venture partner at Contrary Capital, a VC firm designed to back student entrepreneurs at universities and colleges. "At the early stages, when there isn't much else to go on, CEOs must convince new hires, customers, investors, or the press to rally around their vision," she said. She's now one of Bessemer's youngest investors and has played "an essential role in the acceleration of the firm's consumer strategy," said Jeremy Levine, a partner at the firm. Change the game. 15 Investors Reveal The Biggest Surprises In H1 2023 Company Overview | Skan.ai "Today, everyone is an investor," Bakhai wrote in an investment memo, "yet in private markets, VCs are still serving as gatekeepers to innovation, and their backers are not reflective of the communities they serve.". Bent's best advice for aspiring venture capitalists is to learn through doing, by writing out investment theses and memos and sharing them with investors who could be prospective employers. Timing is everything, and history is littered with failed startups that arrived too early or too late. Before joining Lightspeed, Sykes was a principal at Wave Capital and an investment analyst at New Enterprise Associates. 1 quality he looks for in a founder is the ability to handle adversity. Nine months later, she took the leap to working as a full-time VC. Wu previously told Insider that she cold emailed Arianna Simpson and asked to be the firm's first crypto intern, and reflected on breaking into venture capital as, "I climbed through a window," she said. Securing the Modern Software Supply Chain The code that runs the world today is rarely written from scratch. She's brought that belief to NFX, where, since 2021, she has led some of the firm's biggest crypto investments, including a seed investment in the crypto-infrastructure provider Ramp and a pre-seed investment in Carapace, which provides protection against crypto-default risk. By using this website, you agree to our use of cookies. of a data-analytics startup called Mixpanel, had come from San Francisco to Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, where many of the world's most prestigious. He cofounded the consumer exercise-class marketplace ClassPass in 2011 and worked as the chief product officer at Arcadia, a green-energy data-analytics company, before joining Day One Ventures as a climate-focused venture partner in January 2022. Heck joined Bain Capital Ventures in 2020, after working as an associate at Long Ridge Equity Partners for a year. Ramakrishnan has identified a number of promising startups for IVP, including sourcing the firm's investment this year in Jasper AI, which valued the company at $1.5 billion. SERVING BOLD BUILDERS OF THE FUTURE. During his time at Volition, Han has deployed more than $250 million into startups, leading Series A investments in the unicorns Assent and Securonix.