early-stage
(155)
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.
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.
Alex Hartz
Alex Hartz is a General Partner at Shine Capital, a New York seed-stage venture firm with about $435M across three funds. He came up at SciFi VC over eight years, trained as an applied physicist at Caltech, and writes checks into ambitious founders working at the intersection of hard sciences, financial infrastructure, and applied 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.
Andre Bliznyuk
Andre Bliznyuk is a General Partner at Runa Capital, where he leads North American investments in software for regulated industries: fintech, edtech, and digital health. Before VC, he spent a decade in capital markets at Goldman Sachs and UBS, running 20+ IPOs. He has backed Brainly, Mambu, Lendio, Smava, and Zopa, with exits at Cloudflare, Goldman Sachs, and Colt Telecom.
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.
Arielle Zuckerberg
Arielle 'AZ' Zuckerberg is a General Partner at Long Journey Ventures, a San Francisco seed firm that backs the 'magically weird' - founders pursuing unconventional ideas at the earliest stages. A former product manager turned investor with stops at Wildfire Interactive, Google, Humin, Kleiner Perkins, and Coatue, she pairs a product-first lens with a hands-on, founder-friend approach. In March 2025 the firm announced a $181.8M fund (the number nods to chai - 18, life).
Arpan Shah
Arpan Shah is a General Partner at Spark Capital in San Francisco, where he leads early-stage investments in AI, fintech, and data infrastructure. A Stanford-trained engineer from Kolkata, he was on the founding team at Robinhood, later founded Flannel (acquired by Plaid in 2021), and was a partner at Pear VC and a Sequoia Scout before joining Spark in November 2024.
Arthur Kaneko
Arthur Kaneko is Co-Founder and General Partner of Coreline Ventures, a boutique early-stage firm investing across the US, Japan and other key markets. He spent a decade running RealScout, a real estate technology company, after starting his career as an investor at DCM Ventures and a product manager at Togetherville. Coreline's pitch is restraint: a small number of high-conviction bets and a decade-plus commitment to each founder.
Ashish Aggarwal
Ashish Aggarwal is a General Partner at Chamaeleon, a San Francisco-based early-stage venture firm. He invests in seed and Series A consumer, vertical SaaS, AI, and crypto startups, drawing on 18+ years as an operator, two-time founder, and investor. A Kauffman Fellow (Class 24), he previously led investments at Grishin Robotics in companies like Ziva Dynamics (acquired by Unity), Taskade, ClubFeast, and Spin (acquired by Ford). Before VC, he ran M&A and corporate strategy at Opera Software, marketing analytics at Dell, and built ad infrastructure at Yahoo!.
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.
Bilal Zuberi
Bilal Zuberi is the founder and managing partner of Red Glass Ventures, a Menlo Park early-stage fund backing companies where AI touches atoms. He spent 12 years as a General Partner at Lux Capital, leading 65+ investments across deep tech, defense, robotics and industrial AI. An MIT physical chemistry PhD who studied under Nobel laureate Mario Molina, he was born in Karachi and built his first company in advanced materials before turning to venture.
Brendan Rogers
Brendan Rogers is the co-founder and general partner of 2am VC, an India-only early-stage venture fund betting on the country's Gen Z founders. Before turning investor, he co-founded Wag!, the on-demand dog-walking app that listed on NASDAQ after raising over $360M, and a social discovery service later acquired by IAC. From bases in Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Los Angeles, he is one of the most visible American VCs operating inside India today.
Brent Fulfer
Brent Fulfer is the Co-Founder and General Partner of TBV, an early-stage Web3 venture firm built around deal flow, advisory, and the now-infamous 'The Best Event' party series. He has helped raise over $110M for early-stage startups across deep tech and crypto, and previously ran investor relations at Asymmetry Ventures and the venture program at Blockchain Founders Fund.
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.
Brittany Walker
Brittany Walker is a General Partner at CRV in San Francisco who writes first checks to technical founders in AI, infrastructure software, and frontier technology. She joined CRV in 2020, was promoted to General Partner in 2024, and co-founded The Table, a community for women building in enterprise.
Carl Fritjofsson
Carl Fritjofsson is a General Partner at Creandum based in San Francisco, where he focuses on AI infrastructure, vertical AI, and consumer bets. A Swede who co-founded the rewards startup Wrapp and the bootstrapped ad network AdProfit before turning investor, he built Creandum's Silicon Valley office and has backed companies including Cornershop (sold to Uber for $3.5B), Pipe, GoPuff, Cast AI, Planhat, SafetyWing, and H Company.
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.
Christopher Gottschalk
Christopher Gottschalk is a General Partner at Mouro Capital, a $400M fintech-focused venture capital firm headquartered in London and spun out of Banco Santander. Based in San Francisco, he anchors the firm's U.S. and Silicon Valley presence, bringing over 16 years of experience spanning investment banking at Cowen and Company, operations at Intel, early-stage investing at Menlo Ventures, and nearly seven years as a Principal at Blumberg Capital. At Mouro, he takes board seats at flagship portfolio companies including Upgrade, Trulioo, and Blueprint, applying a long-duration, multi-stage partnership model to back category-defining fintechs from seed through Series B and beyond.
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.
Daniel Karp
Daniel Karp is General Partner at Cervin Ventures, a Palo Alto-based early-stage VC firm with $162M in its latest fund. A veteran of Cisco's corporate venture arm - where his portfolio generated over $2.5B in exits including Habana Labs (acquired by Intel for $2B) and GuardiCore - Karp brings a rare combination of chip engineering roots, Microsoft Azure product strategy, Israeli IDF intelligence experience, and nearly a decade of corporate M&A deal-making to his current focus on enterprise infrastructure, DevOps, cybersecurity, and AI-native startups.
Dave Zilberman
Dave Zilberman is a General Partner at Norwest Venture Partners, where he focuses on early-to-late-stage investments in enterprise software, SaaS, cybersecurity, cloud infrastructure, data, and media. With over 20 years building companies as operator, advisor, and investor, he spent 15 years at Comcast Ventures before joining Norwest in 2020. His portfolio includes landmark wins like Slack (acquired by Salesforce) and DocuSign (Nasdaq: DOCU), and his current bets span AI infrastructure plays like LlamaIndex and security companies like Orion Security.
Dror Nahumi
Dror Nahumi is a General Partner at Norwest Venture Partners, a multi-stage global VC firm managing $15.5 billion in assets. Based in Menlo Park, California, he leads Norwest's Israeli investment portfolio - a practice he helped build since the firm established its Israel presence in 2009. A former Bell Labs research engineer who developed the RCELP speech coder (now the CDMA standard for North American cellular), Nahumi transitioned from deep tech to entrepreneurship before landing in venture capital in 2010. He has backed companies that have been acquired by Microsoft, Google, EMC, and Symantec, and has seeded unicorns including Gong.io, VAST Data, and Weka.
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.
Eric Ye
Eric Ye is a General Partner at Eastlink Capital, a Menlo Park-based early-stage VC firm backing AI and data infrastructure founders. A seasoned technologist turned investor, Eric spent over a decade at eBay as Director of Tech Platform and Principal Architect before serving as CTO, SVP of Technology, and Chief Scientist at Ctrip (NASDAQ: TCOM), the world's second-largest online travel agency, where he led 4,000+ engineers and architected the company's transformation into a cloud-native, mobile-first marketplace. Holder of 31 U.S. and China patents, winner of China's Best CTO Award, and a founding partner of Eminence Ventures, Eric now backs mission-driven founders at the seed-to-Series-B stage across AI/ML, distributed databases, cloud infrastructure, fintech, and enterprise software.
Abhishek Malani
Abhishek Malani is a Partner on Sequoia Capital's Growth team, based in New York. A Harvard Economics magna cum laude graduate (Class of 2022), he spent three years at Silver Lake Partners as a private equity associate before joining Sequoia in June 2025. He focuses on companies at inflection points - where market timing, product strength, and team ambition converge. His notable investments include Kalshi (federally regulated event trading, $22B valuation Series F) and Juicebox (AI recruiting platform, $30M Series A). He looks for founders who are deeply obsessed with their problem and willing to take bold action while staying open to course correction.
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.