kapor-capital
(4)
Carolina Huaranca Mendoza
Carolina Huaranca Mendoza is co-founder and General Partner of First Close Partners, a fund-of-funds backing venture firms led by underrepresented managers. She got her start in M&A banking, built Girls Who Code's Clubs program from zero, became a Principal at Kapor Capital where she designed the firm's first LP strategy for diverse emerging managers, and now writes checks into 100+ funds worldwide.
Mitch Kapor
Mitch Kapor is the Brooklyn-born software pioneer who created Lotus 1-2-3 - the killer app that made the IBM PC indispensable - then co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation to protect digital civil liberties, and eventually built Kapor Capital into one of venture capital's most deliberately diverse funds. At 74, he made headlines completing the MIT Sloan master's degree he started in 1979 before leaving to launch Lotus. He and his wife Freada Kapor Klein run Kapor Capital from Oakland, investing in founders building tech for underserved communities - arguing that inclusion isn't charity, it's good business.
Freada Kapor Klein
Freada Kapor Klein, Ph.D. is a founding partner at Kapor Capital, a social-impact venture firm that has invested in 200+ startups founded by underrepresented entrepreneurs while outperforming 75% of peer VC firms by financial returns. Long before #MeToo, she co-founded the first U.S. organization dedicated to combating workplace sexual harassment (1976), earned a Ph.D. studying harassment in federal employment, and built diversity programs at Lotus Development Corporation. She co-founded SMASH (Summer Math and Science Honors Academy), the Level Playing Field Institute, Project Include, and the DAIR Institute, and co-authored 'Closing the Equity Gap' (HarperCollins, 2023). Former NAACP National Board member and Obama Foundation Tech Policy Council member, she has spent five decades dismantling the belief that fairness and financial return are mutually exclusive.
Ulili Onovakpuri
Uriridiakoghene 'Ulili' Onovakpuri is a trailblazing venture capitalist who spent 10+ years at Kapor Capital, rising from analyst to Co-Managing Partner and co-raising the firm's largest-ever fund - $126M Fund III in 2022. One of very few Black female managing partners in VC history, she backed 70+ companies with a focus on digital health, health tech, and people operations, while also founding the longest-running VC fellowship program for underrepresented individuals. Her own childhood diagnosis of Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis in Hunter's Point, San Francisco, where she grew up, directly shaped her conviction that healthcare access is a systemic justice issue. In May 2025 she departed Kapor Capital for what she called 'a purposeful pause,' and has since joined Motley Fool Ventures as a Venture Partner.