seed-investing
(47)
Rami Katz and the business of helping people begin
He came to Rochester for an MBA and stayed to help build young companies. Now Excell’s CEO, Rami Katz brings a lawyer’s discipline to early-stage investing - and keeps making time for the next generation.
Theresa Mazzullo and the business of seeing what comes next
A banker, seed investor and unlikely fashion muse, Theresa Mazzullo has spent decades helping other people put their ideas to work. Her next concern is getting Rochester’s young companies far enough to grow.
John Borthwick and the four-hour trip to the future
In 1993, John Borthwick drove to MIT to use a web browser. Three decades later, the Betaworks founder is still looking for the interface that changes what people can do.
Donna Harris and the business of getting started
After co-founding Washington’s 1776 startup hub, Donna Harris turned her attention to the ideas that never make it into the room. At Builders + Backers, she is working on the awkward, promising distance between “someday” and a first experiment.
Wenyi Cai and the question that took her to Colombia
After helping run a Silicon Valley startup acquired by eBay, Wenyi Cai went to Colombia to listen. Her work at Polymath Ventures grew from a question about what technology could do for Latin America’s emerging middle class.
Charlie Hipwood and the art of the first yes
After three startups of his own, Charlie Hipwood moved to the other side of the table. At MassVentures, he helps first-time founders turn Massachusetts research into companies that can stand on their own.
Chad Byers
Chad Byers is co-founder and General Partner at Susa Ventures, a San Francisco seed-stage firm he started in 2013 with Leo Polovets and Seth Berman. He wrote one of the first institutional checks into Robinhood at age 26 - a $250k bet that grew past $400M - and has led Susa into Flexport, Andela, Newfront, Mux, Stord and Viz. In March 2025, Susa closed its fifth fund at $175M. He focuses on marketplaces, fintech, healthcare and logistics, and describes himself as a quiet introvert in a loud business.
David Cheng
David Cheng is a General Partner at Costanoa Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm in Palo Alto focused on data, AI infrastructure, cybersecurity, and fintech. With over a decade of investing experience - including nine years at DCM Ventures, where he became the youngest VP in the firm's 30-year history - Cheng has backed breakout companies including EvenUp (now valued at $2B+) and Brigit (acquired for up to $460M). A Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree and Wharton graduate, he is also co-founder of Coreline Ventures and publishes the 'Earned Intuition' newsletter on Substack, sharing lessons from a decade of early-stage investing.
Jake Seid
Jake Seid is Co-Founder and General Partner at Ballistic Ventures, a cybersecurity-only venture capital firm managing over $700M in assets. A MIT-trained engineer with the school's highest student honor, he helped commercialize broadband at Cisco, launched Lightspeed Venture Partners as a founding team member, ran the 800-person team at Auction.com through its $1.6B acquisition, then backed 12 unicorns solo at Stone Bridge Ventures before co-founding Ballistic to go all-in on securing the digital world.
James Detweiler
James Detweiler is a General Partner at Felicis, the venture firm behind investments in Shopify, Fitbit, and Twitch. Promoted to General Partner in February 2026, he has sourced, led, or co-led 25+ investments across AI, robotics, vertical software, and defense - including Skild AI (now valued at $14B), RunwayML, and Mercor. A summa cum laude Dartmouth grad in Physics and Mathematical Finance, he honed his AI investment lens at Zetta (the first AI-focused venture fund) and SVB Capital before joining Felicis. He founded the Felicis Fellows program to bridge top AI researchers and entrepreneurship, and coined the investment thesis 'The Great Splintering' - the idea that as thinking becomes cheap, value shifts to trust, judgment, and presence. He grew up in Santa Clara as the youngest of five children of an actress and a painter.
Jennifer Carolan
Jennifer Carolan is co-founder and general partner at Reach Capital, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm she helped build from the ground up to become the most active dedicated edtech investor in the US. A former K-12 history teacher in Chicago who spent nine years learning venture capital at NewSchools Venture Fund, she has since deployed four funds totaling over $500M across 100+ education technology companies. Her portfolio has produced five unicorns including ClassDojo and Handshake, and she continues to teach at Stanford while backing the entrepreneurs she believes are removing the obstacles standing between people and opportunity.
John Cowgill
John Cowgill is a General Partner at Costanoa Ventures, a Palo Alto-based early-stage venture firm with over $2 billion in assets under management. Promoted to GP in September 2024, he has spent nearly a decade building the firm's cybersecurity and space practices, backing category-defining companies like AppOmni, Cyberhaven, Muon Space, and Kepler Communications. A Northwestern University alumnus and former McKinsey consultant who describes himself as a 'wayward Kentuckian and theater school dropout,' Cowgill invests in Seed and Series A startups across applied AI, AI infrastructure, cybersecurity, space, and B2B fintech—leading with a founder-first philosophy anchored in conviction, humility, and grit.
Joe Eandi
Joe Eandi is a General Partner and Co-Founder of Cyber Mentor Fund, a mentorship-driven early-stage venture fund exclusively focused on cybersecurity startups. A former attorney turned tech executive turned founder turned investor, Eandi brings an unusually wide arc to his work: he started as a corporate lawyer at Wilson Sonsini, served as General Counsel at Inktomi through its Yahoo acquisition, spent seven years as SVP and GM at LiveOps, founded and ran BrightPoint Security (acquired by ServiceNow in 2016), and then co-founded Cyber Mentor Fund in 2018 alongside Tim Eades. CMF deploys $100K-$5M from pre-seed through Series A into cybersecurity startups, with over 35 portfolio companies, three unicorns, and four successful exits including Okera (Databricks), Revelstoke (Arctic Wolf), Message Control (Mimecast), and LeakSignal (F5).
John Balen
John Balen is a General Partner at Canaan Partners, one of the oldest venture capital firms in the US, where he has been investing since 1995. With a background in electrical engineering and an MBA from Cornell University, he brings both operational and financial depth to early-stage investing across consumer internet, fintech, enterprise software, medtech, and digital health. His portfolio includes companies that have gone public (Cardlytics, Commerce One, eStamp) and been acquired by major players including Akamai, Dell, Expedia, and Oracle. He resides in Hillsborough, California, and is an active Cornell trustee and mentor.
Maria Salamanca
Maria Salamanca is a General Partner at Ulu Ventures, the largest Latina-led venture capital firm in the United States with over $400M AUM. Born in Bogotá, Colombia and raised in Orlando, Florida, she became the first Latina named to Forbes 30 Under 30 for Venture Capital in 2018. She co-founded SomosVC to increase Latinx representation in VC and was elected as the youngest and first LGBTQ+ school board member of Orange County Public Schools (Florida's 8th-largest district) in 2022. Her investing approach is rooted in data-driven decision-making, and she champions diverse founder teams at the seed stage.
Patrick Yang
Patrick Yang is the Founding General Partner of Amity Ventures, a San Francisco-based early-stage venture capital firm he co-founded in 2016 with CJ Reim after the two crossed paths at Highland Capital Partners. Betting on obsessive, high-agency founders at Seed and Series A, Yang has helped build a portfolio with a 20% unicorn hit rate - 7 of 35 companies reached $1B+ valuations, including CaptivateIQ, Evisort (acquired by Workday), Talkdesk, and Socure. A Bay Area native who studied business at UC Berkeley, he cut his teeth at Morgan Stanley's Menlo Park tech investment banking group before moving to Highland, where he spotted and backed nuTonomy - the autonomous vehicle startup Delphi snapped up for $450 million.
Seth Berman
Seth Berman co-founded Susa Ventures in 2013 and has since backed 10 unicorns across roughly 100 seed-stage investments, including Robinhood, Flexport, and Expanse. He brings an unusual background to venture capital - nearly a decade as VP of Strategic Marketing at Richemont Group (Cartier, Net-A-Porter, Montblanc) - giving him a luxury-brand consumer lens that shaped Susa's focus on distribution, compounding moats, and founder-market fit. He has since launched Kivu Ventures, a Series A/B fund targeting vertical AI, healthcare, and logistics, with investment partners including Frame.io co-founder Emery Wells and Pinterest co-founder Paul Sciarra.
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.
Wayee Chu
Wayee Chu is Co-Founder and General Partner at Reach Capital, a San Francisco-based venture firm with $570M+ under management and 140+ portfolio companies across learning, health, and the future of work. A daughter of Chinese immigrants who came to the US for education, Wayee spent eight years at NewSchools Venture Fund - co-founding its Seed Fund in 2006 - before building Reach Capital into one of edtech's defining early-stage firms. She is a founding member of All Raise, sits on the SFMOMA board, and was named an ASU+GSV Power of Women honoree in 2025. Her portfolio spans Replit, ClassDojo, Clayful, Gradescope, and dozens of other companies reshaping how people learn and work.
Wayne Hu
Wayne Hu is a General Partner at SignalFire, the AI-native venture capital firm he helped build from its first investment team in 2015. A Princeton-trained mathematician turned Google strategist turned VC, he led the YouTube ads monetization operation at Google before pivoting to investing — backing companies like Grow Therapy, EvenUp, and Solace from the earliest stages. His edge is equal parts pattern recognition and proprietary data: SignalFire's Beacon AI platform ingests signals about talent, market trends, and founder trajectories that most investors never see. He invests where incumbents haven't bothered — sectors ripe for end-to-end reinvention.
Bryan Faust
Bryan Faust, PhD is an Investment Partner on the Bio + Health team at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), where he backs seed and Series A companies at the intersection of biology and technology. A trained biophysicist with a PhD from UCSF, he published research in Nature, Science, and Cell before pivoting to venture—studying antibody-protein interactions, GPCR signaling, and COVID-19 nanobodies along the way. At a16z he has co-led investments in Stipple Bio, Tessera Labs, Gate Bioscience, and Formation Bio, and writes widely on AI in life sciences, biotech financing, and the coming era of programmable medicine. When he's not reading pitch decks, he's surfing, roasting coffee, or hunting down the perfect tacos al pastor.
Carra Wu
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.
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.
Steven Lee
Steven Lee is a Venture Partner and founding member of Draper Athena (DFJ Athena), where he focuses on deep-tech investments spanning agricultural productivity, biomanufacturing, and automation. An MIT-trained electrical engineer with a US patent in internet-based audio transmission, he bridges the worlds of hands-on technology and venture capital. Before co-founding Draper Athena, he led US investments for STIC International, a global VC fund operating across the US, China, and Korea, and worked at Athena Technology Ventures, Chromatic Research, and InVision Interactive. With over 13 years of engineering and startup experience before entering venture, Steven brings rare technical depth to the table at one of Silicon Valley's most storied VC lineages.
Josh Coyne
Josh Coyne is a Partner at Kleiner Perkins, one of Silicon Valley's most storied venture capital firms, where he has backed category-defining companies including Figma, Rippling, Loom, UiPath, and Synthesia since joining in 2017. A summa cum laude Boston College graduate in Computer Science and Finance, Coyne cut his teeth at Qatalyst Partners advising on multi-billion dollar tech M&A before pivoting to backing founders himself. He focuses on enterprise software, applied AI, fintech, and data infrastructure - and co-hosts Kleiner Perkins' Grit podcast, where he probes founders on product-market fit and go-to-market strategy. Originally from Cleveland, fluent in French, and apparently devoted to Chick-fil-A.
Kenan Saleh
Kenan Saleh is an Investment Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) focused on early-stage consumer AI and emerging interfaces through the a16z Speedrun program. Before joining a16z, he built and sold two companies - Halo Cars (acquired by Lyft in 2019 within 9 months) and Stable Finance (acquired by Aave Labs) - grew Lyft Media from zero to $10M+ in revenue as General Manager, and angel-invested in 50+ startups. A Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree and Wharton alum, Saleh brings rare founder-operator credibility to institutional venture capital.
Rajko Radovanović
Rajko Radovanović is an investing partner on the AI and infrastructure team at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), where he backs the builders reshaping how software is made. He has led or co-led investments in Cursor, Mistral AI, Udio, Luma AI, Black Forest Labs, World Labs, and Braintrust, and runs a16z's Open Source AI Grant Program. Before a16z, he was a venture investor at New Enterprise Associates (NEA), where his portfolio included Perplexity AI, Sentry, and Weaviate. He studied economics and computer science at Harvard, did language studies in Beijing, and attended the United Nations International School — a biography that reads like someone engineered to operate at every intersection of tech, capital, and global culture.
Rob Hayes
Rob Hayes is a Board Partner at First Round Capital, the seed-stage venture firm famous for backing companies before anyone else dares. Over 12 years as a full partner beginning in 2006, Hayes made some of the most consequential bets in tech history - writing the first institutional check into Uber when it was worth $4 million, backing Square before payments were cool, and leading investments in Mint.com, eero, Planet Labs, and Gnip. A former Palm product manager turned Omidyar Network pioneer turned VC legend, Hayes built First Round's San Francisco office from scratch and helped define what 'founder support' actually means in venture capital.
Stephanie Zhan
Stephanie Zhan is a General Partner on Sequoia Capital's early-stage team, where she has been backing founders from the first check since 2015. A Stanford computer science graduate who grew up across Hong Kong and Beijing during the early internet era, she brings a global lens and a deep technical instinct to bets on AI, developer tools, and the physical world. She was first partner to Linear, Reflection AI, Skild AI, Ricursive Intelligence, Mach Industries, Middesk, and Tavus - a portfolio that reads like a map of the next decade of computing. Her TED AI talk on superintelligent AI captures what makes her unusual among her peers: she's not just predicting the future, she's actively funding the people building it.
Troy Kirwin
Troy Kirwin is an Investment Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Cohort Lead for a16z speedrun, the firm's pre-seed accelerator program. A native New Yorker now based in San Francisco, he focuses on B2B AI and creative tech - including next-gen storytelling and design tools, marketing technology, 3D simulations, and vertical AI agents. Before a16z, he spent roughly 4.5 years as a Senior Manager at Unity Technologies, where he orchestrated over 20 acquisitions including Parsec and IronSource. He started his career as an investment banking analyst at Jefferies covering media and tech clients. His portfolio includes K-ID, Hedra, Backflip, Nunu.ai, and a dozen more.