# Maria Palma

> Maria Palma is a General Partner at Freestyle Capital, a San Francisco-based seed-stage venture capital firm. With over a decade of venture experience and investments in 35+ companies, she focuses on early-stage AI investments across application and infrastructure layers. Before Freestyle, she was a General Partner at Kindred Capital in London and a Principal at RRE Ventures in New York. She co-founded NYC Blend, a nonprofit connecting underrepresented founders to venture capital, and was named to Business Insider's 'The Seed 40: Best Women Early-Stage Investors of 2025.'

- **Role:** General Partner at Freestyle Capital
- **Organizations:** Freestyle Capital, NYC Blend, African Entrepreneur Collective
- **Nationality:** American
- **Education:** MBA, Harvard Business School, BS, Industrial Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison
- **Known for:** Named to Business Insider's 'The Seed 40: Best Women Early-Stage Investors of 2025', Co-founded NYC Blend nonprofit to connect underrepresented founders to venture capital, Invested in 35+ companies across multiple firms

## Career timeline

- **Early career** — Operations Management & Supply Chain at General Electric
- **Pre-2020** — Chief of Staff and Executive Director of Business Development at Eyeview, scaling from $0 to $40M revenue
- **~2018-2022** — Principal at RRE Ventures, New York - invested in Ladder, Moov, Novo, Lightning Labs
- **~2022-2024** — General Partner at Kindred Capital, London - invested in Fung, Lottie, Dunia
- **2024-08** — Joined Freestyle Capital as General Partner in San Francisco, focusing on early-stage AI

## Achievements

- Named to Business Insider's 'The Seed 40: Best Women Early-Stage Investors of 2025'
- Co-founded NYC Blend nonprofit to connect underrepresented founders to venture capital
- Invested in 35+ companies across multiple firms
- Angel investment in Lovable, which crossed $100M ARR in 8 months
- Board member at African Entrepreneur Collective
- Speaker at HumanX 2026 conference in San Francisco

## Latest updates

- **2026-04** — Spoke at HumanX Conference 2026 on 'Beyond Capital: What Great AI Investors Actually Do'
- **2025-08** — Featured on Venture with Grace podcast discussing AI infrastructure investing
- **2025-05** — Named to Business Insider's 'The Seed 40: Best Women Early-Stage Investors of 2025'
- **2024-08** — Joined Freestyle Capital as General Partner

## Links

- Website: https://freestyle.vc/team/maria-palma/
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/mapalma
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/mariabrw

---

Profile page: https://yespress.io/maria-palma
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-05-18