Carra Wu is a Partner on the a16z crypto investment team, where she leads investments in gaming, media, consumer, and infrastructure. She became the youngest check signer in the firm's history at age 23, ascending from intern to deal partner in under a year - a trajectory that started with a six-sentence cold email to Arianna Simpson. A Harvard applied math dropout fluent in three languages, former HoloLens AR/VR engineer at Microsoft, and one-time ballet dancer, Wu brings a builder's instincts to some of crypto's biggest bets, including Axie Infinity, Friends With Benefits, Yield Guild Games, Story Protocol, and CCP Games.
Jennifer Moy is the Chief Operating Officer of Boldstart Ventures, a New York-and-Miami-based seed fund with over $1 billion in assets under management that backs engineering-driven founders from day one. With 18+ years in venture capital, she brings rare operational depth to an early-stage shop - spanning LP relations, FINRA compliance, broker-dealer oversight, and firm-wide infrastructure. Before Boldstart, she was VP at Dawntreader Ventures and has held CFO/FINOP roles at broker dealers. A Cornell economics grad and self-described Pac-Man enthusiast, she is the operational engine behind one of the most founder-focused inception-stage funds in the country.
Josh Kopelman is the co-founder and managing partner of First Round Capital, one of the world's most influential seed-stage venture firms, and a serial entrepreneur who sold Half.com to eBay for $300 million in 2000. A Wharton grad who started his first company as a sophomore in 1992, Kopelman has backed over 500 startups including Uber, Square, Warby Parker, and Notion. Known for the legendary Half.com/Halfway-Oregon PR stunt and the 'Penny Gap' essay, he is a consistent Forbes Midas List honoree who describes his career as a deliberate effort to stay permanently in the first 18-24 months of company-building - the phase he loves most.
Mike Maples Jr. is a legendary Silicon Valley seed investor and co-founder of Floodgate, the firm behind some of the most category-defining startups of the internet era - including Twitter, Twitch, Lyft, and Okta. An 8-time Forbes Midas List honoree, Maples pioneered seed-stage venture capital before it was a recognized asset class, developing frameworks like 'Thunder Lizards' and 'Inflection Theory' that have shaped how the VC world thinks about breakthrough startups. His 2024 book 'Pattern Breakers' became a USA Today national bestseller.
Satya Patel is the co-founder and Partner at Homebrew VC, the San Francisco-based seed fund he launched in 2013 alongside Hunter Walk. A dual-degree Wharton graduate, Satya spent formative years building AdSense at Google (2003) and then leading product at Twitter as VP of Product before pivoting to investing. Homebrew has backed some of the most consequential startups of the past decade - Plaid, Chime, Cruise, Anchor, Mercury - and Satya has developed a reputation as a founder-first investor who takes a hands-on, process-driven approach to helping portfolio companies nail their first hire, first product, and first fundraise. In 2021, he co-launched Screendoor, a $50M+ initiative to back underrepresented emerging fund managers. He is known for his blunt, practical writing on venture-generated content and his deep belief that great companies are built by founders who learn to say no.
Shauntel Garvey is a Co-Founder and General Partner at Reach Capital, a $300M+ San Francisco-based venture firm laser-focused on education technology. A chemical engineer turned edtech investor, she parlayed an MIT degree and a Stanford MBA/MA in Education into backing some of the most consequential learning platforms of the last decade - ClassDojo, Epic, Outschool, and Handshake among them. She co-founded Reach Capital in 2015 after her stint at NewSchools Venture Fund, building it into a firm with 132+ portfolio companies, five unicorns, and one IPO. A Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, founding member of All Raise, and Pahara Institute Fellow, Garvey is one of the most influential figures at the intersection of capital and educational equity.
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.
Devdutt Yellurkar is a General Partner at CRV (Charles River Ventures) and Co-founding Partner at Propeller VC, a $100M ocean-climate tech fund. A former early Infosys employee who helped sell the offshore software model, and co-founder/CEO of Yantra Corporation (acquired by Sterling Commerce/IBM), Yellurkar has spent 15+ years as a venture investor backing iconic companies including Zendesk (first institutional investor), Airtable, and Postman. He was named to the Forbes Midas List in 2020, 2021, and 2022. His investing style blends deep operator empathy with a team-first philosophy forged on cricket pitches in India.
Omri Amirav-Drory, Ph.D., is a General Partner at NFX leading NFX Bio, a pre-seed and seed venture fund focused on scientist-founders at the intersection of technology and biology. A former Fulbright Scholar and Stanford postdoc turned biotech entrepreneur, he co-founded Genome Compiler (acquired by Twist Bioscience), launched Tech.Bio, and now backs breakthrough life sciences companies while co-founding Renewal Bio - a longevity company building synthetic embryo-derived tissues to combat aging. His stated mission is ending involuntary death.
Valerie Mahoney is a Principal at NFX, one of Silicon Valley's leading seed-stage venture capital firms managing ~$1.5B across four funds. A Materials Science engineer from Imperial College London who earned both an MBA and MPP from Stanford as a Knight-Hennessy Scholar, she brings an operator's lens to early-stage investing after stints at Funding Circle (through IPO), SumUp, Tala, and Cash App/Block. At NFX she focuses on AI, fintech, enterprise software, and marketplaces - backing founders at the pre-seed and seed stages where network effects can be built from the ground up.
Murat Bicer is a General Partner at CRV (Charles River Ventures), one of Silicon Valley's oldest and most storied early-stage venture firms. Born in Turkey and educated at Middle East Technical University and Babson College, he has spent two decades hunting for the next breakout enterprise software company. His signal achievement: backing Datadog at the seed stage in 2011 - before cloud monitoring was a recognized category - and riding it to a $30B+ public company that burned under $25M to get there. A five-time Forbes Midas List honoree (ranked #24 in 2024), Bicer is known for investing in developer-first companies, his contrarian willingness to back pre-product teams, and a portfolio that spans Datadog, Signal Sciences (acquired by Fastly for $775M), Iterable, Voyage AI (acquired by MongoDB), LanceDB, and Gorgias.
Kanyi Maqubela is a South African-born venture capitalist, entrepreneur, and thinker who grew up as a refugee in the United States - from homeless shelter in New York City to Phillips Academy and Stanford - and built a career as Managing Partner of Kindred Ventures, a $156M+ AUM seed-stage firm he co-founded with Steve Jang in San Francisco. With a portfolio market cap exceeding $200B (including early bets on Uber, Coinbase, Reddit, and Upstart), Kanyi also co-founded Heartbeat Health, the largest virtual heart health platform in the US. He bridges philosophy, social impact, and frontier technology with a writer's eye and a founder's instinct.
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.
Rex Salisbury is the founder and solo general partner of Cambrian Ventures, a $20M early-stage fintech fund born out of one of the largest fintech founder communities in the US. A former Merrill Lynch banker turned bootcamp-trained software engineer turned a16z partner, Rex built his reputation by running grassroots fintech meetups for years before a single dollar of fund capital. His Cambrian newsletter reaches 20,000 subscribers, his founder-only Slack has 1,100+ members, and his Fund I achieved a ~50% seed-to-Series A graduation rate against a 15.4% industry average. Early backer of Deel, now a $10B+ decacorn.