The Long Game
In Silicon Valley, where funds fold and partners pivot every few years, Steve Krausz has done one thing for four decades: show up early, stay on the board, and let the compounding do the work. He joined U.S. Venture Partners (USVP) in 1985 - before the web, before cloud, before "Series A" was a phrase most founders knew - and he is still there.
Before venture capital, Krausz was a NASA and IT executive - the kind of engineering background that turns abstract startup pitches into technical first principles. Holding a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford and an M.B.A. from Stanford's Graduate School of Business (where he was named an Arjay Miller Scholar, an honor for the top 10% of graduates), he came to Sand Hill Road with blueprints in his head and enough patience to wait for the market to catch up.
It usually did.
Check Point Software went public. So did Guidewire Software, Box, Imperva, Xylan, Epic Design, New Focus, and Harmonic Lightwaves. Trusteer was acquired by IBM. Vontu by Symantec. CipherTrust by Secure Computing. The pattern is consistent: find the company before the category exists, get on the board, and hold.
"Entrepreneurs are people who can paint a picture of success that makes others want to join them, who can liberate others to be their best."- Steve Krausz
Why Security, Before Security Was Hot
Krausz's focus on cybersecurity and enterprise software wasn't a sudden pivot when these sectors became fashionable. He was studying network security when "firewall" was still an engineering term, not a product category. Check Point Software - which became one of the world's leading network security vendors - was a USVP bet long before enterprise security had its own conference circuit.
His investment lens stays close to areas where market disruption meets technical defensibility. Cybersecurity companies tend to have sticky customers, recurring revenue, and problems that don't go away. Big data analytics - another area where he has concentrated - follows similar logic: the data problem only gets harder, the infrastructure more valuable.
His current board roster reflects this: Cato Networks (cloud-native network security, raised $1.2B+), Quantifind (risk analytics and financial crime detection), Informed.iq (AI-driven income verification), Badge (biometric authentication without stored biometrics), and Human Interest (retirement savings platform, raised $540M+). All of them sit at the intersection of security, data, and trust.
What Krausz looks for beyond the sector: founders who can recruit through vision. He describes the best entrepreneurs as people who can paint a picture of the future so clearly that talented people rearrange their lives to be part of it.
Companies That Defined Categories
"I get excited about creation in technology."- Steve Krausz
From NASA to Sand Hill Road
Asteroids, Athletes, and Arjay Miller
A venture capitalist who advises an asteroid-tracking nonprofit is either eccentric or simply consistent in his risk calculus. Steve Krausz serves as a Strategic Advisor to the B612 Foundation, whose mission is to track near-Earth asteroids and develop planetary defense strategies. It's the kind of long-horizon, technically serious problem that plays directly to Krausz's engineering background.
He is also President of the Stanford DAPER Investment Fund - the investment vehicle for Stanford's athletic department - and serves on the board of the Stanford GSB Venture Capital Fund. The connection to Stanford runs deep: Krausz earned both his undergraduate and graduate degrees there, was designated an Arjay Miller Scholar (a distinction awarded to roughly the top 10% of each GSB graduating class, named after a Ford Motor Company CEO who later led Stanford's business school), and has remained in the university's orbit for decades.
His civic footprint includes the World Affairs Council (now the Commonwealth Club of California), where he is a board member. And in the broader venture ecosystem, he served as both Treasurer and Executive Board Member of the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) and as President of the Western Association of Venture Capital (WAVC).
When he's not studying term sheets, Krausz is skiing, traveling with family, or absorbed in world history - particularly the histories of the Middle East and Asia. For someone whose investing career spans the entire modern technology era, a preference for ancient civilizations feels right.
USVP: Four Decades, 13 Funds
U.S. Venture Partners was founded in 1981 and has backed over 400 companies across its history. The firm focuses on early-stage investments - primarily Series A and B - in four core sectors: cybersecurity, enterprise software, consumer, and healthcare. Its geographic sweet spot is companies based in the U.S. and Israel.
Across its four most recent fully-invested funds, USVP has achieved a 3.5X track record on realizations. The firm has had 93 portfolio companies complete IPOs and 100 companies acquired profitably. Steve Krausz has been part of the investment team for the majority of those outcomes.
The December 2022 close of USVP XIII at $400M - the firm's largest fund in years - underscored institutional confidence in the USVP strategy. The fund's investment range sits between $2M and $10M per initial investment, with a sweet spot around $6M. The team has over 100 years of combined VC experience across six partners.
Stanford, Twice
The Arjay Miller Scholars program is awarded to the top 10% of each Stanford GSB graduating class. The honor is named after Arjay Miller, former president of Ford Motor Company and later dean of Stanford's business school.