kauffman-fellow
(16)
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.
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!.
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.
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.
Jake Saper
Jake Saper is a General Partner at Emergence Capital, the San Francisco-based venture firm that backed Zoom, Salesforce, and Veeva before the rest of the world caught on. Over a decade at Emergence, he has become one of the loudest and most credible voices on AI-native services — companies that combine human expertise with AI to displace the $200B consulting industry. His 2024 essay 'The Death of Deloitte' earned him a cease-and-desist from Deloitte and a loyal readership of founders rebuilding professional services from scratch. A Yale and Stanford-trained operator-turned-investor, he grew up in Austin watching serial-entrepreneur parents build companies, started his own career selling rocks door-to-door from a Radio Flyer wagon, and today holds board seats at category-defining enterprise companies while maintaining a side career as a self-described 'mediocre guitar player.'
Jonathan Root
Jonathan Root is a General Partner at U.S. Venture Partners (USVP) in Menlo Park, California, where he has invested in early-stage companies since 1997. A board-certified neurologist who spent nine years in clinical medicine - including as a Director of the Neurology-Neurosurgery ICU at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center - Root brings a rare clinician's lens to venture investing. He focuses on medical devices, biotech, and healthcare IT, with a portfolio that spans Omada Health, Carlsmed, Cleave Biosciences, and Inari Medical (acquired by Stryker in 2025). His guiding principle: 'The greatest idea in the world will not be successful if it's not practical.'
Neeraj Gupta
Neeraj Gupta is a Co-Founder and General Partner at Cervin Ventures, a Palo Alto-based early-stage venture firm he co-founded with Preetish Nijhawan. Cervin has deployed capital across 50+ companies focusing on enterprise software, data & AI, cybersecurity, DevOps, and cloud - with over $335M in assets under management after closing a $162M flagship fund in September 2023. Before venture, Gupta ran two companies: Cymbal Corporation, a telecom consultancy he sold to Patni Computers, and Nexient, a digital experience consulting firm. He holds a MSEE from the University of Alabama, a BS from Punjab University, and is a Kauffman Fellow (Class 20). Outside the office he hikes, travels, and reads widely on Stoicism and public policy.
Rick Lewis
Rick Lewis is a General Partner at U.S. Venture Partners (USVP), a storied Silicon Valley venture firm based in Menlo Park. A two-time startup founder turned investor, he joined USVP in 2004 and was promoted to General Partner in 2012. He focuses on early-stage enterprise SaaS, cybersecurity, and consumer services, with a track record that includes exits to Airbnb, Viacom, Microsoft, Slack, PayPal, IBM, Oracle, and Nordstrom. Lewis holds degrees from UC Davis, UC Berkeley, and Harvard Business School, and is a Kauffman Fellow (Class 10).
Steve Reale
Steve Reale is General Partner & CFO at Ulu Ventures, a Palo Alto-based seed-stage venture firm with $400M+ AUM known for backing diverse founders using a rigorous, data-driven decision analysis framework. A Kauffman Fellow (Class 14) with a CFA designation and 25+ years of Silicon Valley experience spanning equity research, early-stage startups, and venture investing, Reale brings an unusually analytical lens to seed-stage bets - applying probability-weighted risk modeling borrowed from pharmaceutical R&D and oil & gas exploration to evaluate founders and markets. His portfolio work spans 10 unicorns including Guild Education, BetterUp, and Figure.
Annie Case
Annie Case is a Partner (and current Advisor) at Kleiner Perkins, one of Silicon Valley's most storied venture firms, where she backs early-stage founders building in consumer tech, digital health, and enterprise AI. A Stanford-educated defender who won the 2011 NCAA soccer championship, she traded cleats for cap tables after stints at Bain & Company and Uber — where she helped scale UberEats internationally — and has since built a portfolio spanning mental health (Modern Health), AI healthcare infrastructure (Ambience), fitness coaching (Future), and next-generation shopping (Phia). Known for investing at the intersection of human behavior and technology, Case brings rare operator empathy to the boardroom.
Chris Lyons
Chris Lyons is a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), the legendary Silicon Valley venture capital firm, where he spent over a decade reshaping how culture and capital intersect. Starting as Chief of Staff to co-founder Ben Horowitz in 2013, he rose to General Partner by 2021 and founded the Cultural Leadership Fund (CLF) in 2018 - Silicon Valley's first VC fund composed entirely of Black Limited Partners, uniting athletes, musicians, and entertainers as investors in frontier technology. A former sound engineer trained under Grammy-winning producer Jermaine Dupri, Lyons brings a rare cross-industry fluency to tech investing, bridging entertainment, sports, Web3, and enterprise software. As of early 2026, he announced his departure from a16z to launch his own fund, citing the AI revolution as the defining moment to build independently.
Sydney Thomas
Sydney Thomas is the Founding General Partner of Symphonic Capital, a $13.5M debut fund investing at the intersection of health, wealth, and climate resilience for the 99%. She was the first hire at Precursor Ventures in 2016, scaled the firm from 10 investments to 400+ and $200M+ AUM over seven years, and then left to build on her own terms. She created the landmark Black Women in VC list, co-founded the Women of Color in VC network, and relocated from San Francisco to her hometown of San Diego to anchor her firm there. A Kauffman Fellow, Duke and Berkeley Haas alum, she backs pre-seed founders outside coastal tech hubs who are building essential systems for people the industry routinely ignores.
Jennifer Fonstad
Jennifer Fonstad is a veteran Silicon Valley venture capitalist and co-founder of Owl Capital Group, with a 25+ year career that spans DFJ, Aspect Ventures, and her current early-stage fund. She helped grow DFJ's AUM from $150M to $3.5B, co-founded Aspect Ventures with Theresia Gouw in 2014, and is a champion of diverse founding teams. A Kauffman Fellow mentored by Tim Draper, she has backed companies including Tesla, SpaceX, Athenahealth, and ForeScout, racking up 8 IPOs and 23 M&A transactions. She co-founded Broadway Angels, is a founding member of All-Raise, serves on the Mastercard Foundation board, and was named to Forbes 50 Over 50 in 2025.
Anarghya Vardhana
Anarghya Vardhana is a venture partner at Maveron, the consumer-only VC firm co-founded by Howard Schultz, where she has spent nearly a decade backing iconic consumer brands in health, wellness, and social tech. A Stanford grad who published a math theorem at 17, she moved from Sandia National Labs nuclear research to Google international ops to the boardrooms of startups like Co-Star, Bend Health, and Alife. Forbes named her a 30 Under 30 in VC and their First Diversity Champion across the entire class. Simultaneously serving as Investor in Residence at Vanta, she is one of the few investors who credibly bridges deep technical rigor with consumer intuition - and who also runs trail marathons and dances Bharatanatyam.
Claire Diaz-Ortiz
Claire Diaz-Ortiz is a venture capitalist, angel investor, bestselling author of 10 books, executive coach, and former Twitter Corporate Social Innovation Director - the early employee Wired dubbed 'The Woman Who Got the Pope on Twitter.' A Stanford and Oxford-educated polymath who co-founded a nonprofit in Kenya, live-tweeted the birth of her child, holds the prized @claire Twitter handle, and now runs The Angel Collective to fund female founders across Latin America while coaching Fortune 500 executives through 100 Coaches Agency.
Lea Bajc
Lea Bajc is a serial entrepreneur, investor, and board member with over two decades of experience spanning Silicon Valley and Europe. Born in Croatia and raised in Sweden, she holds degrees from Stockholm School of Economics, HEC Paris, and Harvard Business School. At Northzone Ventures, she co-led landmark investments in iZettle ($2.2B exit to PayPal) and Trustpilot (LSE IPO). She later co-founded Averon in Silicon Valley, raising $20M from Marc Benioff. Now based in Paris, she invests through Blue Horizon and Ozone X Ventures (backing underrepresented founders), serves on corporate boards, and is authoring 'Love After Love' — a forthcoming book reframing divorce as an opportunity for reinvention. A Kauffman Fellow and Forbes Technology Council member, she speaks six languages and is a certified nutritionist.