growth-stage
(25)
Martin Payne
Martin Payne is the CEO of TextUs, the Denver-based business texting platform built for recruiting, inside sales, and customer service teams. A career operator of growth-stage technology companies, he came up through the U.S. Air Force, Global Healthcare Exchange, GutCheck, and Mersive Technologies before taking the TextUs helm in 2020. He runs the company on a 'do the right thing' philosophy and is betting that text - conversational, human, and immediate - is the future of how businesses talk to people.
Ken Fine
Ken Fine is the CEO of Affinity, the AI-powered relationship intelligence platform trusted by more than half of the top venture capital firms for deal sourcing, portfolio management, and relationship-driven dealmaking. A Stanford MBA and Arjay Miller Scholar with engineering degrees from RPI and Virginia Tech, Ken brings a rare arc - US Navy officer to Goldman Sachs to serial SaaS operator - having guided Financial Engines, Medallia, and Heap through IPOs and acquisitions before taking the helm at Affinity in May 2024.
Alex Nichols
Alex Nichols is a General Partner at CapitalG, Alphabet's independent growth fund. He invests in companies reinventing large markets through novel economic or distribution models, then compounding through scale - a thesis carved out across deals like Stripe, Duolingo, Whatnot, Rippling, UiPath, Waymo, Odoo and Zach Dell's Base Power. Promoted to GP in January 2026 alongside Jill Chase, the first time CapitalG named two GPs at once since the firm's 2013 founding.
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.
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.
Everett Randle
Everett 'Ev' Randle is a General Partner at Benchmark, one of Silicon Valley's most legendary and selective venture capital firms. A Colorado native who graduated top of his class from CU Boulder's Leeds School of Business, Randle cut his teeth at Vista Equity Partners before moving through Bond Capital, Founders Fund, and two stints at Kleiner Perkins. He backed companies like Rippling, Anthropic, Databricks, Flock Safety, and Huntress across those roles. He is also a respected essayist in the VC world, best known for 'Playing Different Games' (2021), a widely-cited breakdown of Tiger Global's disruption of venture capital, and 'Operating Yield' (2023), a new framework for measuring SaaS growth efficiency. In April 2025, Benchmark announced Randle as its newest General Partner - a firm that manages roughly $425M per fund with only five partners.
Frédérique Dame
Frédérique Dame is a General Partner at GV (Google Ventures), where she leads investments in consumer technology, life sciences, and AI. A French immigrant who moved to Silicon Valley at 24, she built her career as a product and engineering leader at Yahoo!, Photobucket, SmugMug, and Uber — where she helped scale the company from 80 employees to 7,000+ across 68 countries. At GV she co-leads the Women's Health investment team and has backed companies including Midi Health, Found, Allara, Oula Health, and TMRW. She serves on the board of Les Mills International and previously on Ubisoft's board, and was named to Rock Health's Top 50 in Digital Health.
Jason Kong
Jason Kong is a General Partner at Base10 Partners, a San Francisco-based Black-led venture capital firm that backs founders automating the 'real economy' - the large, often overlooked industries that make the world run. Named to Forbes 30 Under 30 in Venture Capital in 2021 while at Institutional Venture Partners (IVP), Kong backed breakout companies including Attentive, Brex, Datadog, Discord, Figma, and UiPath. A Summa Cum Laude graduate of Penn's elite M&T program who qualified twice for USAMO and won the We the People national civics competition, he joined Base10 in 2023 to lead Series B+ investments, bringing a singular blend of investment banking, late-stage VC, and hedge fund analysis discipline to growth-stage bets on vertical SaaS, cybersecurity, and fintech.
Karim Faris
Karim Faris is a General Partner at GV (Google Ventures), where he leads investments in enterprise software, AI, cybersecurity, data analytics, and frontier technology. A self-described 'grounded optimist,' he brings a rare combination of deep engineering roots - he published peer-reviewed neural network papers at Brown University and was a product manager for the Pentium processor at Intel - and decades of venture experience. He joined GV at its inception, and has backed companies including DocuSign, Duo Security (acquired by Cisco), Cohesity, FullStory, and SecurityScorecard, while serving on 25+ boards across his career.
Michael McBride
Michael McBride is a General Partner at GV (Google Ventures), where he leads early-stage investments in enterprise technology, AI, and open-source-powered companies. A Stanford-trained mechanical engineer who spent three decades building high-growth startups before pivoting to venture capital, McBride brought operational credibility from five years as GitLab's CRO - where he oversaw a 100x+ revenue run-rate expansion before its 2021 IPO. He joined GV in December 2023 and quickly became one of its most active dealmakers, leading GV's $319 million Cribl Series E - the firm's second-largest investment ever.
Ren Riley
Ren Riley is a General Partner at Fin Capital, a San Francisco-based B2B fintech-focused venture capital firm managing over $800 million in assets. With 25+ years in financial services and 20+ years in venture capital, Riley brings deep sector expertise spanning enterprise AI, banktech, payments, and risk technology. He joined Fin Capital in November 2020 and was promoted to General Partner in January 2023, where he sources and leads primary and co-investment opportunities. Previously, he was a General Partner at Oak Investment Partners (1999-2015), a Partner/CEO at Robertson Stephens (2015-2019), and co-founded Enclave Liquidity Partners (2019-2022), a firm providing liquidity solutions to late-stage private company stakeholders. Fin Capital exclusively backs repeat founders and invests across the full startup lifecycle from pre-seed through IPO.
Upal Basu
Upal Basu is a General Partner and Managing Member at NGP Capital, a Nokia-backed venture capital firm in Palo Alto. A three-time wave rider of mobile transformation - first as an engineer, then as the founder and CEO of Mformation Technologies (which became the world's largest mobile device management company, managing 500M+ devices before being acquired by Alcatel-Lucent), and now as a lead investor in the 5G and connected enterprise era. With an engineering degree from Imperial College London, an MS from Stanford, and an MBA from Harvard Business School, Basu brings a rare blend of operator grit and institutional rigor to backing founders in cybersecurity, AI, autonomous robotics, satellite navigation, and industrial technology.
Alex Immerman
Alex Immerman is a General Partner on the Growth investing team at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), where he leads growth-stage investments across AI, consumer, fintech, crypto, and the physical world. Promoted to GP in January 2026 after seven years with the firm, he has spearheaded investments in category-defining companies including ElevenLabs, EliseAI, Flock Safety, Hebbia, Kalshi, Revolut, Sardine, Stripe, and Waymo. Before a16z, Immerman worked at General Atlantic as a growth-stage investor, served as Chief of Staff for the CFO of Facebook and CEO of Gainsight, and was an investment banker at Allen & Co. He graduated summa cum laude from Wharton and earned his MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School.
Anas Biad
Anas Biad is a Partner at Sequoia Capital based in London, where he invests in early-to-growth-stage companies across enterprise software, AI, SaaS, gaming, and fintech. A mathematics graduate of Ecole Polytechnique who grew up in Casablanca, he spent time at Bain & Company and Silver Lake before joining Sequoia in 2021 as one of its first European partners. He backs founders building enduring companies across Europe and is known for his passion for gaming, quantum computing, and his admiration for Richard Feynman.
Cole Pergament
Cole Pergament is a Partner on Sequoia Capital's growth team, one of the most storied venture platforms in Silicon Valley. A Wharton summa cum laude graduate who founded his university's undergraduate fintech group, Cole cut his teeth at Morgan Stanley's Global Technology Group before spending four years at BOND Capital, where he backed companies that became household names in AI and enterprise software - including OpenAI, Decagon, AlphaSense, Weights & Biases, and Wiz. He joined Sequoia in July 2025, bringing a reputation for seeking founders who embrace discomfort, question convention, and are fully committed to their vision.
Douglas Leone
Douglas Leone is an Italian-born American billionaire venture capitalist and former Global Managing Partner of Sequoia Capital, one of the most storied VC firms in Silicon Valley history. He joined Sequoia in 1988 after stints at Sun Microsystems, HP, and Prime Computer, rose to Managing Partner in 1996, and led the firm's global expansion into China and India. With investments spanning ServiceNow, RingCentral, Nubank, Medallia, and Wiz, Leone helped shape the modern cloud and enterprise software landscape. He stepped back from the senior operational role in 2022 but remains a general partner. As of late 2025, his net worth is estimated at $10.8 billion.
Isaiah Boone
Isaiah Boone is a Partner on Sequoia Capital's growth team, focusing on enterprise applications, infrastructure, commerce, and marketplaces. A Pomona College math and statistics graduate, he cut his teeth at RBC Wealth Management and Leonard Green & Partners before joining Sequoia in December 2020. His portfolio includes category-defining companies like Ramp, Rippling, Mercury, Meter, Faire, and Island - businesses reshaping how companies manage money, people, and infrastructure.
Giovanni Ahern
Giovanni Ahern is an Investing Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), one of Silicon Valley's most influential venture capital firms, where he focuses on growth-stage investments. A dual-degree MIT graduate in Mathematics and Computer Science with Economics, Ahern built his investment acumen through roles at Blackstone, Houlihan Lokey, and three years as a Private Equity Associate at Bain Capital specializing in healthcare and technology. Joining a16z in September 2025, he brings a quantitative rigor and cross-sector perspective to backing the next generation of market-defining technology companies.
Ilya Fushman
Ilya Fushman is a Partner at Kleiner Perkins, one of Silicon Valley's most storied venture firms, where he invests in early and growth-stage companies reshaping enterprise software, infrastructure, financial services, and AI. Before VC, he was a senior product leader at Dropbox (employee #75) and a General Partner at Index Ventures. A trained physicist with a Stanford PhD and a Nature paper on quantum computing, Fushman brings rare scientific depth to the investment table - having backed transformative companies including Slack, Robinhood, Rippling, Harvey, and Loom.
Kathleen Forte
Kathleen Forte is an Investor Relations Partner at Sequoia Capital, one of the world's most storied venture capital firms. With over two decades of experience across investor relations, business development, and fundraising, she has held senior roles at Lightspeed Venture Partners, SVB Financial Group, ADM Capital, and Clearwater Capital Partners. Known for her deep expertise in LP relationships and fund management, Forte joined Sequoia in July 2022, bringing a rare blend of financial acumen and relationship-driven dealmaking to one of Silicon Valley's most prestigious platforms.
Justin Kahl
Justin Kahl is an Investing Partner on the Growth team at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), where he focuses on growth-stage software, enterprise AI, fintech, and consumer technology. A Stanford-trained engineer and economist who played varsity soccer, he cut his teeth investing in later-stage software and consumer internet deals at Bain Capital before joining a16z in 2021. At a16z, he has become a leading voice on enterprise platform dynamics, Gen AI adoption, and how software companies navigate down markets—co-authoring widely-cited research with colleagues Sarah Wang, David George, and Alex Immerman on topics ranging from the anatomy of enterprise platform companies to how 100 CIOs are deploying AI in 2025.
Santiago Rodriguez Lebrija
Santiago Rodriguez Lebrija is a Deal Partner on the Growth investing team at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), where he focuses on fintech, consumer, and crypto technology companies. A Stanford chemical engineering graduate originally from Mexico City, he cut his teeth as an Investment Analyst at Stanford Management Company and a Business Analyst at PEMEX before joining Bain Capital's global private equity division. Since joining a16z in August 2022, he has co-led investments in companies like Kavak - Latin America's leading used-car marketplace reimagined around AI - and hyperexponential, a London-based insurtech modernizing how insurers price risk. He brings an unusual combination of deep operational instinct and cross-cultural fluency to growth-stage bets, with a particular eye for operationally complex businesses being rebuilt around AI.
Shangda Xu
Shangda Xu is an Investing Partner on the Growth team at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), one of Silicon Valley's most influential venture capital firms. Focused on enterprise technology companies - from AI infrastructure to enterprise SaaS - he brings a dual lens: the analytical rigor of a Harvard summa cum laude economist-mathematician and the operator pattern-recognition of someone who has worked across private equity (Warburg Pincus), investment banking (PJT Partners), and corporate strategy (Disney, Warner Bros.). At a16z, he co-authors influential research on enterprise AI adoption, including how Fortune 500 CIOs are actually deploying generative AI - making him one of the more data-grounded voices in an arena full of hype.
David George
David George is a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), where he leads the firm's Growth investing practice - a $15 billion operation he built from scratch after joining in 2019. A former General Atlantic investor who backed Airbnb, Slack, CrowdStrike, and Uber at growth stage, George brings a ruthlessly analytical, 'business model snob' approach to late-stage venture. He has since backed Roblox, Databricks, SpaceX, Stripe, Figma, OpenAI, and Anduril, developing distinctive frameworks around 'what vs. how' innovations, push vs. pull market dynamics, and winner-take-all market structures. A Kentucky native with a wrestling background, a Notre Dame summa cum laude degree, and an MBA from Stanford GSB, George is known for his competitive intensity, deep intellectual frameworks, and a Post-it note on his computer that reads: 'Is the market demanding more of my product?'