Tagged: early-stage
30 results
Aliisa Rosenthal
Aliisa Rosenthal is a General Partner at Acrew Capital and the firm's first GP hire since founding in 2019. She was the first commercial leader at OpenAI, where she scaled enterprise revenue from roughly $10M to roughly $10B and built ChatGPT Enterprise's go-to-market motion. She invests in AI-native companies reshaping enterprise software.
AngelList
AngelList is the software platform behind a meaningful slice of U.S. early-stage venture capital. What started in 2010 as a way to introduce founders to angel investors has become the infrastructure layer for fund managers - the place where funds, SPVs, syndicates, and rolling funds get formed, administered, and reported on. Today thousands of investors run capital through AngelList, and a sizeable share of every new American startup round touches its rails.
Ali Tamaseb
Ali Tamaseb is a General Partner at DCVC, the Palo Alto deep-tech venture firm, and the author of Super Founders, a bestselling, data-first dissection of what actually separates billion-dollar startups from the rest. A former hardware founder and biomedical engineer trained at Imperial College London, he hand-collected one of the largest startup datasets ever assembled - 30,000 data points across roughly 300 unicorns - and now backs founders across biotech, climate, fintech, and industrial AI.
Amrit Rao
Amrit Rao is a General Partner at Village Global, the early-stage venture firm backed by Reid Hoffman, Jeff Bezos and a network of luminary LPs. A Stanford-trained biologist turned Wall Street investor turned advanced-manufacturing founder, he writes pre-seed and seed checks across tech and consumer, drawing on a dozen years of public-market investing and the bruises he collected building a furniture startup.
Andrew Verhalen
Andrew Verhalen is a General Partner at Matrix Partners who has been investing in infrastructure and communications companies since 1992. A former Intel product manager for the 8086 microprocessor and a divisional VP at 3Com, he brought operator scars to venture before that was a phrase. He helped seed Grand Junction Networks (later a major division at Cisco), led Matrix into Unwired Planet, SiTera, and Alteon WebSystems, and serves as lead independent director at semiconductor company Ambarella.
Antonio Key
Antonio Key is Co-Founder and General Partner of Sunset Ventures, a pre-seed fund based in Los Angeles and San Francisco that has backed more than 70 early-stage companies, including Ready Player Me, Yuga Labs, Wonder Dynamics, BlocPower, and Flow Carbon. Before Sunset, he was Director of Investments at Samsung Next and an M&A banker at Bank of America Merrill Lynch who worked on roughly $26B in deals. He's a Kauffman Fellow (Class 28), Wharton MBA, and Stanford grad.
Ashu Garg
Ashu Garg is a General Partner at Foundation Capital in Palo Alto, where he writes the first check into deeply technical, pre-revenue founders building AI-first enterprise companies. He was an early investor in Databricks and six unicorns including Cohesity, Eightfold, Amperity, Turing, Anyscale, and Alation. He hosts the B2BaCEO podcast and convenes Foundation's annual CEO Summit.
Brian Cho
Brian Cho is the Co-Founder and General Partner of Patron, a San Francisco seed-stage venture firm investing at the intersection of games, consumer software, and emerging technology. A former founding member of Andreessen Horowitz's investment team and the long-time head of corporate development, ventures, and M&A at Riot Games, Cho launched Patron in 2021 with Jason Yeh and closed a $100M Fund II in September 2024.
Chad Byers
Chad Byers is co-founder and General Partner at Susa Ventures, a San Francisco seed-stage firm he started in 2013 with Leo Polovets and Seth Berman. He wrote one of the first institutional checks into Robinhood at age 26 - a $250k bet that grew past $400M - and has led Susa into Flexport, Andela, Newfront, Mux, Stord and Viz. In March 2025, Susa closed its fifth fund at $175M. He focuses on marketplaces, fintech, healthcare and logistics, and describes himself as a quiet introvert in a loud business.
Charlotte He
Charlotte He is a General Partner at Cardinal Ventures, the student-led accelerator at Stanford backing early-stage tech and bio startups. She studies Biology and Data Science at Stanford and fences saber for the Cardinal varsity team. Foster City native; National Merit Scholar; Pan American Cadet silver medalist.
Davis Treybig
Davis Treybig is General Partner at Innovation Endeavors, a deep tech venture firm in Palo Alto co-founded by Eric Schmidt. After graduating valedictorian from Duke's engineering school and spending three years as a Product Manager at Google working on Chrome, Google Assistant, and Pixel, he joined Innovation Endeavors and rose from Associate to General Partner in six years. His investment focus spans software and computing infrastructure, AI/ML tools, developer tooling, cybersecurity, and data systems. A prolific writer on Substack and Medium, he is known for research-driven due diligence - spending months in a space before writing a check - and for being the first call many founders make when sparring a new idea.
Eileen Tanghal
Eileen Tanghal is the Founder and General Partner of Black Opal Ventures, a women-led early-stage venture capital firm based in New York investing at the intersection of healthcare and frontier technology. With over 20 years of VC experience spanning corporate venture (Applied Ventures, ARM Holdings), national security investing (In-Q-Tel), and European VC (Amadeus Capital, Kennet Partners), she co-founded Black Opal in 2021 alongside Dr. Tara Bishop - a friend of 30 years from their days as MIT engineering students. The firm raised a $58M debut fund with backing from Eli Lilly, Bank of America, and J.P. Morgan, and invests in companies using AI, bioengineering, and advanced computing to reshape how healthcare is delivered and who can access it.
Eric Norman
Eric Norman is a General Partner at Pioneer Fund, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm that pools resources from 500+ Y Combinator alumni to back top-performing YC startups. A former hardware founder himself - he built and led Cinder Precision Cooker through Y Combinator - Norman brings firsthand operator experience to his investing, with recent portfolio activity in AI identity, healthcare AI, and enterprise tooling.
Evan Neu
Evan Neu is Partner and General Counsel at Venrock, the storied venture capital firm born out of the Rockefeller family's investment legacy. Based in Palo Alto, he leads the firm's legal and regulatory strategy while overseeing operations and administration. Before joining Venrock in November 2022, Neu served as Managing Director and Deputy General Counsel at TPG, one of the world's leading global alternative asset managers, and earlier built his legal foundation as an Associate at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP in New York. He holds a B.S. from Cornell University and a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
Forest Baskett
Forest Baskett is a Special Partner at New Enterprise Associates (NEA) in Menlo Park, California, where he has been investing in technology companies since 1999. A systems-level computer scientist by training, he co-designed the original Sun workstation with Andy Bechtolsheim, designed the operating system for the Cray-1 supercomputer, founded DEC's Western Research Laboratory, and served as CTO of Silicon Graphics during the formative years of 3D graphics. He earned a BA in Mathematics from Rice University and a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin, later becoming a professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at Stanford. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1994. At NEA, he has guided dozens of technology investments to successful IPOs and acquisitions, backing companies across semiconductors, storage, cloud security, robotics, and AI.
Hannah Chelkowski
Hannah Chelkowski is Co-Founder and General Partner at Blank Ventures, a $65M specialist fund investing at the intersection of fintech and commerce. A native Londoner now based in San Francisco, she brings an unusual backstory to venture - energy risk modeling at Total S.A. led to startup investing at Initialized Capital and Inovia Capital before she launched her own firm in 2022. Named to Business Insider's 71 Rising-Star VCs in 2022, she runs a deliberately concentrated portfolio with an LP base architected as a go-to-market asset: C-suite executives from major financial institutions, billion-dollar startups, and global family offices who become direct distribution channels for her portfolio companies.
Michael Fanfant
Michael Fanfant is a General Partner at Runa Capital, a $200M+ early-stage VC firm, where he backs B2B SaaS and regulated-industry startups in fintech, edtech, and digital health. Before turning investor, he co-founded Octane Lending — a point-of-sale financing platform for powersports vehicles that hit a $900M+ valuation in 2021. A Stanford economics graduate, Kauffman Fellow (Class 27), and Events & Community Chair at BLCK VC, Fanfant brings the operational credibility of a builder and the pattern-recognition of an investor to every check he writes.
Hubert Thieblot
Hubert Thieblot is a French-born entrepreneur and General Partner at Founders, Inc. (f.inc), a San Francisco-based venture fund and community campus occupying 42,000 sq ft at Fort Mason. He built Curse, Inc. - a gaming media empire with 30M+ monthly visitors - from a World of Warcraft fan site he started as a teenager in Paris, grew it into an Inc. 500 company, and sold it to Twitch (Amazon) in 2016. After serving as VP of Emerging Markets and Mobile at Twitch, he joined Founders, Inc. to back early-stage founders tackling hard problems in AI/ML, hardware, web3, AR/VR, and other frontier tech sectors.
Ilana Stern
Ilana Stern is a General Partner at Peterson Ventures, a seed-stage venture firm based in Salt Lake City, Utah. A Stanford GSB alumna and former founder, she built and sold Weddington Way - a direct-to-consumer bridal fashion platform - to Gap Inc. in 2016 before joining Peterson Ventures in 2019 as its first San Francisco-based partner. She invests primarily in early-stage consumer, enterprise, and healthcare technology companies, while also lecturing at Stanford GSB and writing a Substack newsletter called 'View from the Bottom.'
Kevin Spain
Kevin Spain is a General Partner at Emergence Capital, one of Silicon Valley's leading early-stage enterprise technology venture firms. A native Texan who cut his teeth founding atMadison.com after winning the inaugural Wharton Business Plan Competition, Spain brings an operator's instincts to his investing — shaped by stints at Electronic Arts (where he helped launch the online gaming division) and Microsoft's Corporate Development group. At Emergence, he has led landmark investments including Doximity (NYSE: DOCS, ~$10B market cap), Blend (NYSE: BLND), and Augmedix (NASDAQ: AUGX), and sits on the Doximity board. More recently he has focused on physical robotics, AI-native services, and healthcare GenAI, with positions in Physical Intelligence and Bedrock Robotics.
In Sik Rhee
In Sik Rhee is the Founder and General Partner of Vertex Ventures US, a Palo Alto-based venture firm focused exclusively on early-stage enterprise software. He co-founded two companies that sold for a combined $1.8 billion - Kiva Software (acquired by Netscape in 1997) and Opsware (acquired by HP in 2007 for $1.6 billion) - before transitioning into venture capital. At Vertex Ventures US, he backs pre-revenue founders in enterprise infrastructure, data platforms, and open-source software at the Seed and Series A stages, with notable portfolio wins including LaunchDarkly, Cyberhaven, and Evisort (acquired by Workday).
Jake Storm
Jake Storm is a General Partner at Felicis, the early-stage venture firm behind companies like Shopify, Fitbit, and Canva. He focuses on AI, DevTools, cybersecurity, and deeptech — investing from pre-seed through Series B — and brought to Felicis a track record from IVP where he backed Lyra Health, Whoop, and CircleCI. A Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree in Venture Capital (2023), Storm grew up across multiple U.S. regions and Brazil, giving him a cross-cultural perspective he credits as foundational to how he evaluates founders and markets.
James Detweiler
James Detweiler is a General Partner at Felicis, the venture firm behind investments in Shopify, Fitbit, and Twitch. Promoted to General Partner in February 2026, he has sourced, led, or co-led 25+ investments across AI, robotics, vertical software, and defense - including Skild AI (now valued at $14B), RunwayML, and Mercor. A summa cum laude Dartmouth grad in Physics and Mathematical Finance, he honed his AI investment lens at Zetta (the first AI-focused venture fund) and SVB Capital before joining Felicis. He founded the Felicis Fellows program to bridge top AI researchers and entrepreneurship, and coined the investment thesis 'The Great Splintering' - the idea that as thinking becomes cheap, value shifts to trust, judgment, and presence. He grew up in Santa Clara as the youngest of five children of an actress and a painter.
Luke Day
Luke Day is Co-founder and General Partner at MAGIC Fund, a $30M seed-stage venture firm built on the conviction that the best founders want money from people who've built things themselves. Focused on gaming, metaverse, and sports investments, Day came up through engineering recruiting at Discord and Roblox before co-founding one of the few truly decentralized VC funds - a 12-partner, multi-continent operation where each GP invests autonomously from their own domain expertise. MAGIC Fund's portfolio spans 250+ startups across 30+ countries with one unicorn (Retool) and a reported 5x return on its debut fund.
Joseph Ros
Joseph Ros is US Partner and General Manager at Entrepreneurs First (EF), the global talent-first investor that backs exceptional individuals before they have a co-founder or company. An EF alum himself - he founded edtech startup HowCloud during EF's third London cohort - Ros joined the team in late 2017, led expansion into Singapore, Hong Kong, and Bangalore, deployed over $20M via EF's Seed SPV, and now runs EF's North American operations from San Francisco, identifying and investing in the country's most ambitious founders from day zero.
Jeremy Schneider
Jeremy Schneider is General Partner at Webb Investment Network (WIN), the San Francisco-based single-family investment office founded by Maynard Webb, former COO of eBay. Since joining WIN in 2011, Schneider has helped build a portfolio of 121 companies including unicorns Ironclad, IPOs like Okta, PagerDuty, and AppLovin, and 48 acquisitions. A Dartmouth and Oxford-trained historian turned venture capitalist, Schneider is known for betting on founders over ideas, building WIN's affiliate network of 90+ seasoned operators, and offering hands-on support that one founder described as worthy of a statue.
Jennifer Vancini
Jennifer Vancini is Co-Founder and General Partner at Mighty Capital, one of Silicon Valley's few woman-owned venture capital firms. With 20+ years in technology investments and M&A, she co-founded Mighty Capital in 2017 alongside SC Moatti, leveraging a network of 600,000+ product leaders to identify breakout B2B tech startups early. The firm's track record includes six IPOs in eight years - including early bets on Amplitude and Groq - and the April 2026 close of a $91M Fund III, triple its predecessor. Before VC, Vancini built a career spanning enterprise BD roles at Certicom, Symbian, Nokia, and Telefónica, culminating in a family investment office that returned 15x cash-on-cash before she co-founded Mighty Capital.
Jin Ho Hur
Jin Ho Hur is a Co-Founder and General Partner at HRZ Han River Partners, a Menlo Park-based early-stage venture capital firm that bridges Silicon Valley and Korea's tech ecosystem. A PhD in Computer Science from KAIST and a serial entrepreneur who built and led internet companies in Korea from the mid-1990s, Hur helped shape the country's early internet economy and served as Chairperson of the Korea Internet Association. He later transitioned into institutional investing via Translink Investment before co-founding Han River Partners, which in October 2024 launched a $100 million fund focused on AI and consumer sectors within the 'Korea Graph.' He also writes the popular Substack newsletter 'Two Cents,' covering global tech and startup trends for over 9,000 subscribers.
Joe Eandi
Joe Eandi is a General Partner and Co-Founder of Cyber Mentor Fund, a mentorship-driven early-stage venture fund exclusively focused on cybersecurity startups. A former attorney turned tech executive turned founder turned investor, Eandi brings an unusually wide arc to his work: he started as a corporate lawyer at Wilson Sonsini, served as General Counsel at Inktomi through its Yahoo acquisition, spent seven years as SVP and GM at LiveOps, founded and ran BrightPoint Security (acquired by ServiceNow in 2016), and then co-founded Cyber Mentor Fund in 2018 alongside Tim Eades. CMF deploys $100K-$5M from pre-seed through Series A into cybersecurity startups, with over 35 portfolio companies, three unicorns, and four successful exits including Okera (Databricks), Revelstoke (Arctic Wolf), Message Control (Mimecast), and LeakSignal (F5).
Loren Straub
Loren Straub is a General Partner at Bowery Capital, a New York-based early-stage venture capital firm focused on enterprise software and B2B SaaS. Based in San Francisco, she spearheaded Bowery's West Coast expansion in 2019, leads investments in supply chain, B2B marketplaces, and enterprise resource planning (ERP), and serves on the boards of nine portfolio companies. Before joining venture capital, she held roles at Goldman Sachs (investment banking), Groupon (corporate finance and APAC FP&A), and Activision Blizzard (investor relations). She is also a Venture Committee Member at The Vinetta Project, supporting female founders.