PersonInvestorFounder
Semil Shah
Semil Shah is the Founding General Partner of Haystack, a seed-stage venture capital firm he started from scratch in 2013 with $1M and zero management fees. Through seven funds totaling over $200M, he has backed companies including DoorDash, HashiCorp, Figma, and Instacart at seed stage. He also serves as Venture Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners. Named to the Forbes Midas Seed List four consecutive years (2022-2025), he built his career the hard way — through writing, blogging, and relentless deal-flow generation after being repeatedly turned down by top VC firms.
venture-capitalseed-investinghaystacklightspeedsilicon-valleystartup