Series A investors
Firms that report investing at series a — with the sector focus, cheque range and headquarters currently held for each. A firm spanning several stages appears on each hub it answers.
7,784 firms · page 1 of 163
Pereg Ventures
Mr. Itzhak Fisher is the Founder and serves as Chairman and Partner at Pereg Ventures. He also serves as a Board Member at Nielsen Innovate. He leverages over three decades of mergers, acquisitions and initial public offerings experience, as an entrepreneur, investment manager and acquirer. As the former executive vice president of Global Business Development for Nielsen (until 2014), he was responsible for strategic business development initiatives and mergers and acquisitions that enhanced Nielsen's capabilities. Itzhak deployed over $3 billion of investments for Nielsen, in over 30 ventures, ranging in size from $500,000 investments to over $1.3 billion, and serves as an advisor to Nielsen. Prior to joining Nielsen, Itzhak executed multiple start-up-to sale successes. He was co-founder and chairman of Trendum, a leader in Internet search and linguistic analysis technologies. In 2005, he led Trendum's acquisition of BuzzMetrics, an online word-of-mouth research leader, and negotiated its 2006 acquisition of Intelliseek. Itzhak served as chairman of the combined entity, BuzzMetrics,which was subsequently acquired by Nielsen in 2007 at a $110 million valuation. Following the acquisition, Itzhak served as the Chairman of Nielsen BuzzMetrics, the Executive Vice President of Global Product Leadership and the Executive Chairman of Nielsen's Online division. Previously Itzhak founded and served as president and CEO of RSL Communications (NASDAQ: RSLC), a telecommunications firm with operations in 22 countries across four continents with more than $1.5 billion in revenues. Under Itzhak's leadership, in 1997 the business acquired a majority stake in internet protocol telephony, Delta Three Inc. for $10 million, which was separately publicly listed three years later with an initial public offering over $300 million. Itzhak also led RSL's $33 million investment in Telegate (a German international directory assistance firm) and sold the interest approximately 2 years later for €300 million. In 1997, Itzhak led RSL Telecommunications' listing on the NASDAQ at a valuation of over $1 billion. Itzhak holds a Bachelor of Science (Computer Science) from New York Institute of Technology and has pursued advance studies in computer science at New York University.He serves as Executive Vice President of The Nielsen Company with responsibility for guiding the strategy, development and delivery of all Nielsen product solutions to the global marketplace. Prior to this role, Itzhak served as Executive Chairman of Nielsen's Online division. Itzhak has been a prominent entrepreneur in high-technology businesses for three decades, leading numerous ventures through mergers, acquisitions and initial public offering.He is a Co-Founder and serves as the Chairman at Brandsforce.
Seaccusa
LocationSan Francisco, CaliforniaType of CapitalLoanType of FundLoan FundStage of CapitalEarly Stage, Growth StageMax Capital$50,000Focus AreaAsian American Pacific Islander FoundersDisadvantaged / Low-IncomeFinanceFinancial ServicesLow-Income BusinessesMicro BusinessMinority / DiverseNearly BankableNorthern California-BasedSan Francisco-BasedSmall Business OwnersStartups The Southeast Asian Community Center’s programs support self-sufficiency, economic viability, advocacy, community empowerment, leadership development, acculturation, and cultural preservation in these communities. An important part of our work is advising and financing small businesses in the region. We work with entrepreneurs and organizations of all ethnicities who are interested in small business and economic development in the Greater San Francisco Bay Area. SEACC’s Business Department offers technical assistance and microloans to entrepreneurs and small businesses in the Greater San Francisco Bay Area. As a nonprofit service provider funded by the City of San Francisco and the US Small Business Administration, we work with entrepreneurs and business owners at the beginning and early stages of their businesses, and as they grow but are not yet ready for commercial lenders. Our staff is multilingual in Vietnamese, Cantonese, Mandarin, and English. We are a SBA 7(m) Microloan provider. This is a program for small businesses that need up to $50,000 for an existing or startup business but typically, cannot qualify for a conventional bank loan. The business must be located in the 9-county Greater San Francisco Bay Area. Businesses in Sacramento and Stockton can be considered if there is no other available Microloan lender in that area. Microloan details: Loans of $5,000 to $50,000 for two to six year terms as needed. No loan fee. Interest rates are competitive. No lines of credit. Loans can be used for working capital, leasehold improvement, equipment purchase, marketing, start-up expenses, business purchase, and for other business purposes. For businesses needing to borrow more than $50,000, we maintain relationships with a number of local banks and non-bank lenders and can make referrals as appropriate. Contact us at 415-885-2743 or by e-mail to: info@seaccusa.org for loan inquiries.
Lrcmke
LRC provides creative financing solutions to small businesses and nonprofits in Milwaukee’s underserved markets. Our loans may be made in partnership with bank, credit unions and other financial institutions. Because of our flexibility and mission, LRC often assumes more risk, either by making a loan that could not be made by a conventional lender or by taking a subordinate position to conventional financing. LRC provides financing that: Fosters community development in Milwaukee, enhances the ability of the borrower to eventually attract “market” rate financing, and is based on a clear understanding of the inherent risks of the product and market. LRC offers a variety of financing products to help qualifying small businesses and nonprofits succeed. Including: Emerging Business Loans: LRC considers loans to emerging and start-up service, product, and device/technology businesses that are led by management teams that have relevant experience and have successfully completed a training program through a qualified regional business incubator. LRC Microloan Product: LRC extends credit to qualifying microenterprise and small businesses that do not have access to loans from commercial sources. We offer loans ranging from $5,000 to $50,000 for established businesses and start-up businesses. Predevelopment Loans: Predevelopment financing assists both individual developers and community organizations by providing funding for costs incurred in the early stages of a project, such as environmental studies or appraisals that facilitate the project’s ability to find traditional financing. Real Estate Loans: Real estate financing helps support the development of commercial residential and mixed-use projects. LRC evaluates loans to experienced developers of residential real estate and neighborhood retail centers. Small Business Association (SBA) Loans: Through the SBA’s Community Advantage initiative, LRC can provide qualifying local small businesses with loans up to $250,000. Subcontractors Gap Financing Line of Credit: LRC offers qualifying subcontractors a revolving line of credit to be used for working capital on approved development projects. Each loan is secured by pre-approved forecasted developer fees that will be paid out throughout the project.
Homebrew
Mr. Satya Patel is a Co-Founder of Homebrew and serves as General Partner at Homebrew. He also serves as Board Member at the Skimm. He serves as the Chairman at Clementine Labs. He also serves as Advisor at Gogobot and ProsperWorks. Prior to Homebrew, he served as Director of Product Management at Twitter. He joined Twitter from Battery Ventures in early 2011. Mr. Patel joined Battery in 2007 and focused on the software, consumer internet and digital media markets. He served on the boards of BlueKai, Freewheel Media, and Lotame and is a board observer for Angie's List, Bazaarvoice, and Adisn. His prior experience spans more than a decade in online media and software, both in operating and investing roles. Before joining Battery, he spent several years at Google, most recently as Senior Product Manager for AdSense. Beginning in 2003, he helped to build the AdSense business through various partner development and product management activities. Before Google, Mr. Patel was a Senior Product Manager at DoubleClick, leading the company's efforts in the search marketing business. Mr. Patel also worked on various product and operational initiatives for the DART adserving platform, including with both publishers and advertisers/agencies. Earlier in his career, Mr. Patel was a Senior Associate at Impact Venture Partners, an early stage venture capital firm based in New York, where he focused on investments in the Internet software, services and media markets. Representative investments include OpenTable and MessageOne. Mr. Patel began his venture capital career at Geocapital Partners, a trans-Atlantic technology venture capital firm. Representative investments from Geocapital include Homestore, StepStone, and Geneva Technology. He also worked for Monitor Company, the strategy consulting firm, as a strategy consultant in its New York and Tel Aviv offices. Mr. Patel is the co-inventor of 14 pending patents related to online advertising. He also serves on the board of Spredfast and KIPP Bay Area Schools. Mr. Patel graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a BS in Finance from the Wharton School and a BA in Psychology from the College of Arts & Sciences. He serves as an adviser at Metamorphic Ventures.
Centerview Capital
Mr. David Dorman is a Co-Founding Partner at Centerview Capital Technology. He is also the Founder and serves as Partner at Knoll Ventures. He brings over 38 years of senior executive, operational, Board and investment experience and has driven business expansion and restructuring at the CEO level, always striving to find growth and to extract the maximum value for both employees and shareholders. Prior to Centerview, Dave was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of AT&T Corp., the largest telecommunications company in the world. During his time at AT&T he led the company through a profound reinvention and transformation prior to completing the merger of AT&T Corp. and SBC Communications in November 2005. David joined AT&T as President in December 2000 and was named Chairman and Chief Executive Officer in November 2002. Previously, he had been serving as the CEO of Concert, the global venture created by AT&T and British Telecommunications. Prior to Concert and AT&T, Dave was CEO and Chairman of Pacific Bell where he led an $11 billion business with 50,000 employees serving more than ten million households and one million business customers. As the youngest CEO ever of a Bell operating company, Dave helped eventually to facilitate its sale to SBC Communications. Dave’s career in telecommunications began in 1981, following his early work in software development, technical sales and marketing, when he became the 55th employee of the then-fledgling long distance carrier now known as Sprint. By 1990, he became president of Sprint Business, with 10,000 employees, and grew the company’s revenues from $5 million to $4.5 billion. Dave is currently Non-Executive Chairman of the Board of CVS Health Corporation and serves on the boards of PayPal Holdings, Inc., Yum! Brands, Inc. and the Georgia Tech Foundation. Dave was a board member of Motorola, Inc. since 2006, was elected Non-Executive Chairman of the Board in 2008 and retired from his board position in May of 2015. Dave also was a board member of Scientific Atlanta until the company was acquired by Cisco Systems in 2006. David holds a BS in Industrial Management from Georgia Tech.
High Alpha
Mr. Scott Dorsey serves as Managing Partner at High Alpha. He serves as Board Member at TechPoint (Indiana) and Lessonly. He is the President of Structural. He serves as the Chairman at TinderBox. Mr. Dorsey co-founded and served as the Chief Executive Officer and Chairman at ExactTarget since December 2000. Mr. Dorsey is responsible for the overall leadership and direction of ExactTarget. He serves as a Member of Executive Committee at Indy Partnership. He has significant Internet Marketing and leadership experience. Prior to founding ExactTarget, he served as the Chief Sales and Marketing Officer of One of divine, first portfolio companies. Mr. Dorsey served as Internet Marketing Subject Matter Expert of Unext.com. Prior to his Internet Marketing experience, he served as the youngest Vice President of Sales of MetroFurniture. He developed his sales and marketing leadership skills during a 10 year career with Steelcase. He has been a Director of ExactTarget, Inc. since December 2000. He serves as a Member of Board of Governors at BidPal Network. He serves on the Dean's Advisory Council for the School of Informatics at Indiana University and serves on several non-profit boards including NPower, Indy Partnership and Techpoint. He serves as Member of Advisory Board of Allos Ventures LLC. He has received numerous awards for his business and civic leadership, including BtoB Magazine's Who's Who List in 2008 and 2007, Indianapolis Business Journal's "Forty Under 40," and Junior Achievement KPMG's "Best and Brightest" awards. In 2003, he received The Indiana Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year in the Emerging Business category. He frequently speaks on the future of the email marketing industry and has recently been featured in various publications, including Franchising World Magazine, CFO Magazine, Computer World and Investor's Business Daily. Mr. Dorsey earned BS degree in Marketing from Indiana University and completed his MBA at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University, he focused on Entrepreneurship and E-Commerce & Technology coursework.
Peoplefund
PeopleFund provides flexible loans to small businesses, start-ups, and nonprofit organizations across Texas. PeopleFund’s small business loans help entrepreneurs enhance their businesses and keep local economies growing. With financing available for equipment purchases, permanent working capital term loans, and revolving lines of credit, we provide access to capital with low down payment or equity contribution, flexible underwriting, no pre-payment penalties, and a lending team dedicated to help you succeed through one-on-one training and business assistance & education. We focus on women, minorities, veterans, and businesses in low to moderate income areas to make sure everyone has a chance at the American Dream. The City of Eagle Pass has partnered with PeopleFund to implement the Downtown Revolving Loan Fund (DRFL). The DRFL provides a low interest financing option to individuals looking to open a new business in the Central Business District, with a high emphasis on Main Street. Our SBA 504 loan is designed for procurement of long-term assets such as land, buildings, and equipment with a useful life expectancy of at least 10 years. The Community Advantage Loans are offered through the SBA and are designed to meet the credit, management, and technical assistance needs of small businesses in underserved markets. Offering larger loans (up to $250,000), the Community Advantage loan helps existing small business meet their expansion and growth needs. PeopleFund offers startup businesses a microloan of up to $50,000 to help entrepreneurs who have been in business for less than two years. The Microloan program also includes MICRO, our onsite and online technical assistance program to help small business owners grow their skills. Does your small business need funds in a flash? We understand that for small businesses to start or grow, they need capital quickly. We offer Flash Funds up to $25,000 so you can get a boost for your business right when you need it most. With low interest rates and fees, you don’t have to worry about a price for speed.
Golden Seeds
Dr. Una Ryan serves as Managing Director at Golden Seeds. She is currently Research Professor of Medicine at BU School of Medicine and serves on its Board of Visitors. Her board positions include AMRI (Lead Director, Nominating and Compensation committees) and MSH (Audit and Compensation committees). Dr. Ryan was most recently President and CEO of Diagnostics For All (DFA), a non-profit organization developing inexpensive diagnostics for global health and agricultural uses. Previously, she was President and CEO of AVANT Immunotherapeutics, Inc, (NASDAQ) a company developing vaccines and immunotherapeutics for cancer, travelers, food safety, and global health, and also a member of its Board of Directors. Prior to AVANT, she was director of Health Sciences at Monsanto Company. Before that, she held a number of positions in academia, including Research Professor of Surgery at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Professor of Medicine at the University of Miami School of Medicine. She was also Chair of the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, served on its Board, as well as the Biotechnology Industry Organization, New England Healthcare Institute, Board of Associates of the Whitehead Institute, Strategy & Policy Council of the MIT Center for Biomedical Innovation, Massachusetts Life Sciences Collaborative Leadership Council and the Goddard Council on science, technology, engineering and mathematics education. Dr. Ryan holds a PhD in Cellular and Molecular Biology from Cambridge University and BS degrees in Zoology, Microbiology and Chemistry from Bristol University. She received an Honorary Doctor of Science degree from Bristol University in 2009. In 2007, Dr. Ryan received the Albert Einstein Award for outstanding achievement in the life sciences. In 2002 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II awarded Dr. Ryan the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to research, development and promotion of biotechnology. She is also an Angel Investor. She also serves as a Board Member at Nativis.
Travel Capitalist Ventures
Mr. Abrar Ahmad serves as Partner TravelCapitalist ventures, the first travel focused private equity and venture capital firm. Since 2010, he’s lead investments in 6 countries in 5 person travel startups to 300 person $100M a year travel companies. He also leads the firms co-investor relationships with leading sovereign wealth and global PE funds and sits on the Board of the NDC Innovation Fund; a historic partnership with the International Air Transport Association (IATA). Starting his 15th year in travel, he is an expert in identifying travel trends to leverage, discerning companies to invest in and tactically shaping a company’s expansion strategy. In October 2014, Travel Capitalist and the International Air Transport Association (IATA) established a "first in travel industry" and "first ever partnership between a trade association and an investment firm" partnership through The NDC Innovation Fund; an early stage investment fund supporting innovation in airline distribution using the New Distribution Capability (NDC) standard. Travel Capitalist was the first to identify FishFishMe (a leading B2B2C fishing charter platform) and Guiddoo (an award winning travel app) as investments and where Mr. Ahmad serves on the Advisory Board. Mr. Ahmad is also a recognized Mentor to in5 (Dubai's leading incubator) companies. Mr. Ahmad is a well-known and selective speaker on emerging travel trends and opportunities, travel monetization and growth strategies and travel focused investments. He has spoken at numerous international events, including The Economist Magazine "Future of Travel Summit" (Madrid), IATA World Passenger Symposium, at Singapore’s Web In Travel, the largest travel conference in Asia, at Dubai Tech Nights, the leading technology group in the UAE and at in5 Innovation Hub, a leading Dubai incubator. He has also spoken on entrepreneurship to the graduating MBA classes of both Tulane University and Loyola University in the United States. He is also an Angel Investor.
Dev C. Ittycheria
Mr. Dev Ittycheria serves as the President, Chief Executive Officer and a Board Member at MongoDB. He also serves as an Operating Avisor at Red Oak Growth Partners. He serves as Advisor at Lead Edge Capital. He also serves as Executive Advisor at OpenView Venture Partners. He also serves as the Board Member and an Advisor at ActionIQ. He is an entrepreneur, operator, and investor who recently joined MongoDB as the company's CEO. He was previously Managing Director at OpenView and, prior to that, a Venture Partner at Greylock Partners, where he got exposed to the inner workings of the venture capital business. Earlier, he was the President of BMC Software, where he was responsible for a business with $1.4 billion in annual revenue and over 4,000 employees. During his tenure at BMC, Dev and his team radically transformed a mature software business to deliver superior financial results that far outperformed its competitors. Previously, Dev was the co-founder and CEO of BladeLogic, one of the fastest growing enterprise software companies of the last decade. After co-founding the business in 2001, he went on to take the company public in 2007, and then sold it to BMC in 2008 for approximately $900 million. Earlier in his career Dev was a pioneer in cloud computing. He co-founded and served as the CEO of Applica, one of the first venture-backed cloud companies. He eventually merged the business with Breakaway Solutions and the combined company went public in 1999. Dev began his professional career at large and growth-stage telecom companies developing advanced broadband services for large enterprise customers. Dev is an investor and a member of the board of directors of AppDynamics, athenahealth (Nasdaq: ATHN), Bazaarvoice (Nasdaq: BV), Datadog, and Signpost. Dev received a bachelor's in electrical engineering from Rutgers University, was awarded the Medal of Excellence, and was recognized by the School of Engineering as its 2010 Alumnus of the Year.
Clear Ventures
Mr. Rajeev Madhavan is a Co-Founder of and serves as the Chairman at Robin Systems. He is a Co-Founder of and serves as General Partner at Clear Ventures. He focuses on early stage technology investments. Rajeev's operational specialties are recruiting, software-oriented technology, product definition, sales acceleration, and scaling. He has been a venture investor in over 35 companies. Prior to founding Clear in 2014, Rajeev founded three successful startups. The most recent, Magma Design Automation, became the 4th largest Electronic Design Automation company in the world under his leadership. Rajeev served as Magma's Chairman and CEO from when he co-founded the company in 1997 through its acquisition by Synopsys in February 2012 for $580 million. Magma was listed on Nasdaq in 2001 and was ranked as the 2nd fastest growing Technology Company in 2005 by Forbes. Magma provided core infrastructure software to mobile pioneers such as Apple, Qualcomm, and Samsung, which was used to design the core processors at the heart of the smartphone era. Prior to founding Magma, Rajeev co-founded and served as President and CEO of Ambit Design Systems, which was acquired by Cadence in 1998 for $280 million. Rajeev also co-founded and served as Director of Engineering of LogicVision, Inc (IPO under LGVN, then acquired by Mentor). Rajeev is a recipient of the Red Herring Top Innovator award, the lifetime achievement award at NITK, India and various other awards. Rajeev earned a bachelor's degree in electronics and communication from KREC, Surathkal, India, and an M.S.E.E from Queen's University, Ontario, Canada. When Rajeev is not working he can be found with his wife and two children, trail running, tending to his rose gardens, or holding court with technologists figuring out what comes next. He serves as Board Member at Virtual Power Systems. He also serves as an Advisor at Innovium.
Prospect Venture Partners
Dr. Russell Hirsch is a Co-Founder and serves as a Partner & Managing Director at Prospect Venture Partners. Russell co-founded Prospect Venture Partners II and III, as dedicated life science funds with over $1 billion in capital under management. Prior to establishing Prospect Venture Partners II and III, Russell was a member of the Health Care Technology Group at Mayfield. He joined Mayfield in 1992, served as a Venture Partner from 1993 to 1994 and as a General Partner from 1995-2000. Russell played a key role in Mayfield's investment activities in the biotechnology and medical device sectors. As an Associate, he participated actively in the incubation of Millennium Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Takeda) and as a General Partner he was responsible for the incubation of Intuitive Surgical Devices (NASDAQ:ISRG). Prior to Mayfield, Russell was at the University of California San Francisco from 1984-1992 where he was engaged in biomedical research. His work, published in a variety of respected journals, focused on important aspects of hepatitis B viral replication. His descriptions of the reverse transcription and packaging functions of polymerase gene products merited publication in Nature. Russell serves or has served on the Board of Directors of Intuitive Surgical (NASDAQ: ISRG), Hansen Medical (NASDAQ: HNSN), Opus Medical (NASDAQ: ARTC), Orquest (NASDAQ: JNJ), AVEO Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: AVEO), Visiogen (NYSE: ABT acquired), Baxano, DFine, SentreHEART, NinePoint Medical, Portola Pharmaceuticals and several other privately-held companies. Russell served as the Vice Chairman of the BOD of Interplast and on the Genetics Advisory Council of the Harvard Medical School-Partners Healthcare Center for Genetics and Genomics. Russell holds an M.D. and Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of California, San Francisco and a B.A. in Chemistry from the University of Chicago.
Cycle Capital
Our mission: Fostering a sustainable future through impact investment in entrepreneurial teams! Our belief: Prosperity goes hand in hand with the needs of a sustainable global future. As a cleantech venture capital fund manager, we are pioneers in our field. Our commitment: To partner with entrepreneurs and investing in leading cleantech companies producing more with less, using less resources and transforming those efficiencies into significant returns. Our goal: Building and growing companies focused on disrupting their industries by challenging the status quo and creating large scale market value and sustainable benefits. Sustainable Prosperity: a bold vision requiring dedicated, committed and seasoned professionals who share a common belief and desire to grow the leading companies of tomorrow today: Fueled by the participation of our strategic partners, we direct venture capital investment to the best early or growth stage companies, supported by our seasoned team of financiers, engineers, operators working in collaboration with the best entrepreneurial teams to maximize returns on investment. Our “smart money” approach also leverages our vast network of contacts with industrial and business partners. From agriculture technologies to green chemicals, including the new generation of biofuels, biomass transformation, smart grid, energy storage technologies, renewable energies, energy efficiency, Internet of Things (IoT) applied to resources management, big data and technologies dedicated to Smart Cities, we are working with companies that are rapidly and continuously changing the way we live and how we will be doing business in the years to come. Cycle Capital is a part of Beyond the Billion, a pledge campaign aimed at mobilizing a global consortium committed to invest $1 BILLION in women founders.
Next Frontier Capital
Mr. William Price is the Founder and serves as General Partner at Next Frontier Capital. He founded Next Frontier Capital to partner with mission-driven, talented entrepreneurs to build Montana technology companies of impact, utility, value. Will's career spans venture capital investing as well as operational, transactional, and advisory roles at both public and private companies. With a Montana family history dating to the 1870s, Will is passionate about investing in the state's promising future. Prior to Next Frontier Capital, Will served as CEO of Flite, an advertising and analytics platform. During his six year tenure, Will built a market leading organization capable of serving and analyzing billions of ad interactions, sold enterprise customers such as Procter & Gamble, The New York Times, and LinkedIn, raised $24m from leading venture capitalists, including Sequoia Capital, General Catalyst, and strategic customers Conde Nast, Jive Software, and Publicis. Will continues to serve on the board of Flite. Previously, Will served as a Managing Director at Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, where he focused on SaaS and open source. Will helped lead investments in Mulesoft, Sonatype, SlideRocket, Flite, among others. Will joined Hummer Winblad from Pequot Capital, where he focused on software investing. Earlier in his career Will worked for Morgan Stanley in NYC, Hong Kong, and the ASEAN markets focused on the privatization of state-owned assets. Will represents Next Frontier Capital on the board of SiteOne Therapeutics and Submittable. Will graduated from Harvard College, studied Mandarin at Nanjing University, and earned his M.B.A from Northwestern University, where he graduated at the top of his class. Will writes about venture, leadership, and entrepreneurship on LinkedIn.
Tola Capital
Ms. Sheila Gulati is the Founder and serves as Managing Director at Tola Capital. She is a seasoned software expert with a wide range of experience as a software-focused investment banker, an M&A leader within a tech megacap, a web developer, and a business strategist and business owner for a large software division inside Microsoft. Ms. Gulati blends her financial and strategic acumen with her deep knowledge and passion for software businesses. Ms. Gulati was the business and marketing leader for the Enterprise Application Platform for Microsoft. This responsibility included the company's Database and Developer Platform and Tools businesses, SQL Server, Visual Studio Development Tools, and the .NET platform, contributing $5 billion in annual global revenue. She led a global team that managed all aspects of marketing for the Application Platform product portfolio, including the product definition, value proposition, messaging, pricing and offers, and all external product communication. She co-owned the Enterprise IT strategy for Microsoft to drive a successful major business shift to capture more revenue share and seize new computing trends, including the shift to cloud computing and the evolution of data technologies. Ms. Gulati spent over a decade at Microsoft in other roles, including Developer and Platform Evangelism, Business Management, Corporate M&A, and Strategy. Prior to Microsoft, Ms. Gulati was an investment banker for Robertson Stephens, where she closely partnered with her clients to drive financing, acquisitions, investments, and joint ventures. Early in her career, she spent time as a web developer for public and private sector organizations. Ms. Gulati is a second-generation software entrepreneur. She also serves as Venture Advisor at Unitus Seed Fund.
DBL Partners
Ms. Nancy Pfund is a Co-Founder & serves as a Managing Partner at DBL Investors. She is also the Chairwoman at portfolio company Off Grid Electric. She currently sponsors or sits on the board of directors of a number of private companies, including PowerGenix, Primus Power, SolarCity, Solaria, Ecologic, PowerGenix, and BrightSource Energy. She also worked closely with exited portfolio companies Tesla Motors and Pandora. Previously, She was a Managing Director at JPMorgan. Ms. Pfund joined JPMorgan (then Hambrecht & Quist) in 1984 as a securities analyst and later joined its venture capital department as principal and then Managing Director in 1989. In addition to her private equity responsibilities, Ms. Pfund also built and directed H&Q’s external affairs and philanthropic programs from 1996 to 2001. In 1988, President Bush appointed Ms. Pfund as a charter member of the National Advisory Council for Environmental Policy and Technology. In 1999, Ms. Pfund was appointed by President Clinton to serve on the Congressional Web-Based Education Commission. Ms. Pfund is a member of the board of directors of the California Clean Energy Fund (CalCEF), a not-for-profit fund mandated by the California PUC to invest in companies pursuing fossil-fuel alternatives, and is a founding officer and director of ABC2, a foundation aimed at accelerating a cure for brain cancer. She is also a member of the Advisory Board of the UC Davis Center for Energy Efficiency. Prior to joining JPMorgan, Ms. Pfund worked at Intel Corporation, Stanford University, the State of California, and the Sierra Club. Ms. Pfund received her BA and MA in anthropology from Stanford University, and her MBA from the Yale School of Management. She also serves as Member of Investment Committee at PRIME Coalition.
QED Investors
Mr. Nigel Morris serves as Managing Partner & is the Co-Founder of QED Investors. He serves as Managing Partner at Newid Capital. He also serves as Managing Partner at QED Investors. Nigel Morris serves as an Advisor at Signifyd. He serves as Chairman as Brightbridge Ventures. He is also a Board Member at Nubank. He serves on the board of numerous for-profit companies, including Red Ventures, Klarna, CANCapital, MediaMath, Prosper, and borro. He is also on the board of the Brookings Institution, National Geographic Ventures, ideas42, and the London Business School. Previously, Nigel co-founded Capital One Financial Services in 1994. Under Nigel's leadership, Capital One pioneered an information-based strategy that fundamentally transformed the consumer lending industry. Combining advanced statistical marketing techniques with nascent information technologies, the company reduced costs to conventional borrowers, extended capital to overlooked consumers, expanded internationally, and produced extraordinary returns for investors. During Nigel's ten-year tenure, Capital One's sales grew at a compound annual rate of more than 40%. Over this same decade, earnings per share growth and return on equity both exceeded 20% per year, a financial performance attained by only a handful of American companies. Upon his retirement in 2004, Capital One's 15,000 employees across the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom managed over $80 billion of loans for 50 million customers. Generating over $1.5 billion in earnings, Capital One had successfully transitioned from an emerging start-up into an established public company valued at over $20 billion. Nigel has a BSC in Psychology from the East London University and a MBA with distinction from London Business School.
Madrona Venture Group
Mr. Greg Gottesman is a Co-Founder of and serves as the Managing Director and Board Member at Pioneer Square Labs. Greg serves as a Venture Partner at Madrona Venture Group. He also serves as Investment Committee Member at The W Fund. He serves as a Investment Committee Member at The W Fund. In addition to Jobaline, he currently serves on the boards of BuddyTV, Cheezburger, Intrepid Learning Solutions, Nimbic, and WildTangent. Greg is also the founder, current board member, and former CEO of Rover.com, the world's largest pet sitting marketplace. Greg recently served on the boards of Decide (acquired by eBay) and ThisLife (acquired by Shutterfly) and helped manage the firm's investment in Wavii (acquired by Google). He also managed Madrona's investments in Dantz Development Corporation (acquired by EMC), Rendition Networks (acquired by Opsware), Singingfish.com (acquired by Thomson Consumer Electronics), LiveBid.com (acquired by Amazon.com), and AdRelevance (acquired by Media Metrix). Greg serves on the board of UP Global and as the President of the Evergreen Venture Capital Association. He is on the investment committee of the W Fund, a University of Washington-based venture fund. He is the author of three books. Greg is also an adjunct faculty member at the University of Washington Business School, where he teaches a course on Entrepreneurship. Greg graduated Phi Beta Kappa with honors and distinction from Stanford University, with honors and distinction from the Harvard Business School, and with honors from Harvard Law School where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. Currently serves on the boards of Bocada, BuddyTV, Cheezburger, Intrepid Learning Solutions, Jobaline, ThinkFire, and WildTangent. He is a Board Member of Spare5.
IDG Ventures
Mr. Alexander Rosen serves as a Managing Director at IDG Ventures USA. He has been an investor and “consigliere” to early-stage technology entrepreneurs for over 20 years. Today, he focuses on investments in cloud infrastructure, SaaS applications, ad tech, and consumer marketplaces. In particular, he’s passionate about companies at the intersection of consumer and enterprise technologies. Alex currently serves as board director at Chubbies (e-commerce for the weekend), Krux (Data Management Platform software), MindMeld (AI-powered intelligent interfaces), Minted (design-driven e-commerce marketplace), Smartling (translation management SaaS), Tempered Networks (security for industrial IoT), and Uplift (payment management and marketing for online merchants). He also led IDG Ventures’ investments in multiple companies including Appboy, cClearly, Datanyze, Fastly, Indiegogo, Motivate, Nuzzel, Prism Skylabs, Projector, The League, and Trifacta. Previously, he was a General Partner at Sprout Group, where he was head of the Internet and Software group. Alex has been a board member, observer, or investor at Flowdock (acquired by Rally), MyNewPlace (acquired by RealPage), mySimon (acquired by CNET), Quintus (IPO, acquired by Avaya), Fogdog (IPO, acquired by GSI Commerce), Sapient Health Network (acquired by WebMD), SideStep (acquired by Kayak), Rhythms (IPO, acquired by AT&T), and Vidible (acquired by AOL). Alex started his venture capital career as an associate with General Atlantic Partners, served as an advisor to Vector Capital, and developed software for Telcordia and AT&T Bell Labs early in his professional life. He holds BS degrees in electrical engineering and economics from MIT and an MBA from Stanford University.
Blue Startups
Blue Startups is a Top 20 Accelerator in the US (Techcrunch) focused on helping scalable-technology companies compete globally. Blue Startups aims to stimulate economic growth in Hawaii and create new business opportunities by providing promising entrepreneurs with mentorship, access to business expertise, product testing, peer review, pitch development, introductions to investors, and seed funding. Blue Startups was founded with the goal of diversifying Hawaii’s economy by leveraging its unique strengths. Historically dependent on the tourism industry, we envision a Hawaii with a thriving technology sector, creating high paying and interesting jobs for our “keiki” (children). As one of the first accelerators in Hawaii, Blue Startups has been essential in the creation of “Startup Paradise,” now a thriving new startup ecosystem in Honolulu, Hawaii. Founded in 2012, Blue Startups was the brainchild of Henk Rogers and Maya Rogers of the Tetris company and Chenoa Farnsworth of Hawaii Angels. The partners saw an opportunity to leverage Hawaii’s strengths to develop and bring more technology companies (such as Tetris) to the islands. Targeting scalable technology companies that could grow and thrive here, taking advantage of our sector strengths such as tourism and sustainability, and our unique global position between the Asian economies and the West. Blue Startups was founded as a public-private partnership funded by the state of Hawaii, Hawaii Technology Development Corporation, the Tetris Company and private investors. Blue Startups is a part of Beyond the Billion, a pledge campaign aimed at mobilizing a global consortium committed to invest $1 BILLION in women founders.
Norwest Venture Partners
Mr. Sean Jacobson serves as Partner and Venture Investor at Norwest Venture Partners. Sean is a former SaaS executive with broad technology, sales and business development expertise. He focuses on early to late stage investment opportunities in enterprise cloud, including SaaS, mobile-first business applications, B2B marketplaces, VR, AI, and machine learning in the enterprise, and industry cloud solutions in the following sectors: healthcare IT, financial services, real estate, transportation, manufacturing, oil & gas, and agriculture.Sean was previously a venture partner at Emergence Capital Partners where he focused on business cloud investments, after being an executive and advisor at Emergence Capital portfolio companies Hightail and Doximity, respectively. Previously he was VP of Channel Management at Cornerstone OnDemand (Nasdaq: CSOD), a human capital management software-as-a-service provider. Sean helped grow the company from $7 to $75 million in revenue and 300,000 subscribers to over 7.5 million. Before his tenure at Cornerstone OnDemand, Sean was VP of Sales and Partner Development at WageWorks (NYSE: WAGE), a leading provider of consumer-directed spending solutions, which grew from $3 million to $82 million in revenue during his tenure. Prior to WageWorks, he was at Elance, the world's largest marketplace of contractors.Sean holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BBA in marketing, finance and International business from the University of Wisconsin. In addition to serving on the Satmetrix board, he is co-President and co-founder of the HBS Alumni Angels, the largest university-affiliated angel group in the world.
Foundry Group
Mr. Ryan McIntyre serves as Co-Founder & Managing Director at Foundry Group. He was a Board Member at ThreatWave. He also serves as Board Member at Roli. He started his career in venture capital at Mobius Venture Capital in January 2000. While at Mobius Venture Capital, Ryan led the firm's investments in Postini (acq. GOOG) and Sling Media (acq. DISH). Prior to joining Mobius Venture Capital, Ryan co-founded Excite in 1993, which went public in 1996 and later became Excite@Home following the $6.7 billion merger of Excite and @Home in 1999. At the time this acquisition was the largest internet transaction to date and created a company that achieved peak revenues of $616 million in 2000. There Ryan held the role of Principal Engineer and was a key technological contributor to the company's search engine and content management systems and also led the design and implementation of Excite's community and commerce platforms. Ryan was also responsible for integrating engineering teams and technologies into Excite's infrastructure following the acquisitions of several companies based in Seattle and Austin. Prior to Excite, Ryan was a member of the technical staff for the Hewlett Packard Division at Oracle Corporation, where he worked on several releases of the Oracle Office platform. Before joining Oracle, Ryan was a software engineer at Canon Research of America, where he focused on the development of optical character recognition algorithms. He serves on Board on Two Bit. He also serves as a Board Member at Sensu. He did his BS (Bachelor of Science) from Stanford University in Symbolic Systems.
Alatepartners
Alate is an early-stage venture capital fund focused on real estate technology. We invest in courageous founders and transformational technology that will change the built world for the better. Founded as a partnership between Relay Ventures and Dream, our team has decades of experience in venture capital, operations, and real estate. In addition to providing capital, Alate has unique access to expertise and customers through our network of influential real estate partners, investors, and founders. If you’re building the next generation of real estate technology, let’s talk. We see early potential. We typically partner with founders at seed and Series A, although it’s never too early or too late to reach out. We’re there in the early days and provide support throughout the life of your business. We back courageous teams. We look for diverse founding teams with bold ideas and founder-market-fit, a unique advantage or insight that makes you the right ones to bring this vision to life. We are hands on. We know there is no “one size fits all” when it comes to working with companies. Our team and partners aren’t afraid to roll up our sleeves to help you tackle what’s next. We are sector specialists. We exclusively invest in real estate and construction technology, so you can skip explaining the basics and focus on what matters most. Our knowledge and network are here to accelerate your growth. Alate Partners is a part of Beyond the Billion, a pledge campaign aimed at mobilizing a global consortium committed to invest $1 BILLION in women founders.
Amplify Capital
Amplify Capital is the evolution of the MaRS Catalyst Fund, investing in mission-driven, double-bottom-line disruptors in health, education and clean tech. Every dollar invested in these companies generates a financial return and a social return. That’s how we amplify capital. And we further amplify our impact by encouraging partners, investors and co-investors to invest in companies where purpose drives profit. As investors, what we invest in today shapes the world of tomorrow. Amplify Capital is a seed stage venture fund investing in technology companies solving for social and environmental market gaps. We believe that a thriving economy is one of reduced inequality based on a foundation of affordable clean energy, quality education and healthcare. These three sectors represent at least $12 trillion annual market opportunity. We are based in Canada and primarily invest in Canadian mission-driven teams that are creating scalable for-profit business solutions to build highly profitable and sustainable companies. We invest early, but expect teams to have proven their technology and product-market fit. Our initial investments range from $500K to $750K in seed and Series A and we reserve additional capital for follow-on funding potential. Our investors include family offices, foundations and individuals who believe in investing for both financial return as well as social impact. Amplify Capital is a part of Beyond the Billion, a pledge campaign aimed at mobilizing a global consortium committed to invest $1 BILLION in women founders.
Newwestcapital
We offer a variety of loans for borrowers looking to positively impact the community. Our affordable housing loans finance affordable housing projects that help an array of underserved populations including families, seniors, at risk teens and the homeless. Our community facility loans provide borrowers working in local nonprofits, health and human service organizations, charter schools and childcare providers with loans to complete construction of new facilities, and refurbish old ones, that help communities thrive. Our community economic development loans provide economic development loans that put money to use where it is most needed. NewWest provides a wide variety of loan types for borrowers, including: Affordable Housing Loans: NewWest finances affordable housing projects that help an array of underserved populations including families, seniors, at risk teens and the homeless. Community Facility Loans: Communities are strengthened when everyone has access to early childhood education and quality healthcare. We work with local nonprofits, health and human service organizations, charter schools and childcare providers. We provide borrowers working in these areas with loans to complete construction of new facilities, and refurbish old ones, that help communities thrive. Community Economic Development Loans: The people who best understand a community’s needs are the ones who live and work in that community. We work with community-based partners to provide economic development loans that put money to use where it is most needed.
Rbacloan
We are designated as a Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI), CDC, and SBA lender, and exclusively offer three SBA loan products (504, microloans, and 7(a) Community Advantage) ranging in size from $1,000 to $5.5 million. RBAC is committed to providing small businesses access to capital in underserved populations and communities. We step in when businesses cannot get funding needed through conventional lending sources. Small business entrepreneurs usually come to RBAC because they don’t have access to conventional bank financing. Either they have less than two years of operations (startups) or have financing needs that cannot be met by conventional financial institutions. RBAC can offer loans to businesses in spite of derogatory, limited or no prior credit history. RBAC offers a wide range of financing options that other financial institutions may not offer such as SBA microloans, Community Advantage loans and 504 loans. SBA 504 Loan: Funds can be used for a number of business purposes including purchase owner occupied commercial real estate, heavy equipment financing and/or ground up construction. SBA 7(a) Community Advantage: Loans up to $250,000. Funds can be used for a number of business purposes including purchase commercial real estate, equipment, leasehold improvements, inventory, debt refinance and working capital. SBA Microloan: Loans up to $50,000 at fixed rates. Funds can be used for a number of business purposes including equipment, inventory, debt refinance and working capital
Spider Capital
Mr. Philippe Suchet serves as a Venture Partner at Spider Capital Partners. Previously, he served as a Chief Strategy Officer at Shopzilla. He was the Chief Executive Officer and a Co-Founder at Zappli. He is an entrepreneur, advisor and investor, in internet companies and in real estate. Prior to that, he was the CEO and co-founder of Kefta, a leader in real-time dynamic/behavioral targeting solutions enabling large corporations to optimize customer experience and boost online sales. He and his team founded Kefta in 2000, gained investment from leading VCs/Angels, launched suite of innovative online marketing solutions, signed dozens of Fortune 1000 companies, survived the internet bubble crash and became profitable after a few years. He and his team then sold Kefta in 2007, to Acxiom Corp (ACXM), a global leader in data and multi-channel marketing solutions. Prior to starting Kefta, he worked for the Boston Consulting Group, Goldman Sachs, Abuzz (acquired by the NYT), and Keeboo. and had the chance to live/work in Asia/Europe/US. In addition, he has built and is currently managing a portfolio of residential properties acquired over the last 20 years. In January 2010, he led New Scholars' first Business Training Workshop for over 50 Sudanese refugees and Kenyans, has seen his and New Scholars' impact firsthand, and is committed to helping New Scholars grow, scale-up, and magnify that impact in East Africa and beyond. He is a graduate of the Harvard Business School, HEC School of Management, and ENSAE.
HealthX Ventures
Mr. Mark Bakken serves as Managing Partner at HealthX Ventures. He founded Bedrock Managed Services & Consulting. He served as President and Chief Executive Officer of the company. He also serves as advisor at Health Enterprise Partners. The epitome of an entrepreneur, he has seen the peaks and valleys of starting, operating and assuming the risks of a new venture. He's come up against payroll, had a few bad hires and even swept the floors early on. Collectively, his companies have done over $360 million in sales, raised more than $38 million in venture capital, and he has successfully bought and/or sold 8 companies. Among his companies is Nordic Consulting, the industry leader in EHR consulting services to organizations using Epic. As CEO, Mark grew Nordic to a #1 ranking in KLAS, where it has been since 2012. Nordic now has over 400 consultants working across 44 states. In 2014, the company was recognized as the 46th fastest growing company in the U.S. Prior to Nordic, Mark started and grew Goliath Networks to be #97 on the Inc. 500 fastest-growing companies list. He sold that company in 2002. He's worked with Eric Schmidt on Novell's Partner Advisory, and was also was asked by Bill Gates to serve on Microsoft's first partner Advisory Council, which he did from 2001-2007. A Badger at heart, Mark grew up in the Milwaukee area before attending the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he holds a degree in computer science. He serves as board member at Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce.
Clevelandnp
The success of our region is inextricably linked to the success of Cleveland’s neighborhoods. We will serve as a leader in small business growth and entrepreneurship by providing training services and financial products to CDCs to enhance neighborhood businesses. Safe Operations Grant Programs: The City of Cleveland is prepared to help businesses through the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. In order to help maintain our business community, and in accordance with Mayor Frank G. Jackson’s ReSTART CLE plan, the Department of Economic Development has established the Emergency Working Capital Program - Safe Operations Grant offering grants up to $10,000 for costs incurred to operate safely during the pandemic. ReStartCLE Emergency Working Capital Fund Loan: The City of Cleveland is prepared to help businesses through the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. The continued vibrancy of Cleveland’s commercial corridors is vital to our community. In order to help maintain our business community, the City has established an Emergency Working Capital Program loan up to $25,000 to reimburse for operating costs. The Neighborhood Economic Development Portfolio is focused on developing thriving commercial areas, successful neighborhood businesses and supportive entrepreneurial environments through neighborhood level actions. The portfolio consists of: microfinance loans, entrepreneurial, start-up and early stage microbusiness resources, and neighborhood retail/commercial district support.
Aspect Ventures
Ms. Theresia Gouw is the Founding Partner at Aspect Venture Partners. She has also joined as Board Member at Cota Networks. She is an engineer, an experienced entrepreneur, and successful investor in the new mobility space, focused primarily on Consumer, Social Commerce, and Security opportunities. Prior to co-founding Aspect Ventures, Theresia was a partner at Accel for 15 years, with a number of successful exits, including IPOs for Imperva (IMPV), PeopleSupport (PSPT), Trulia (TRLA), and acquisitions of Kosmix (WMT), Xoopit (YHOO) and Zimbra (YHOO). Theresia serves on the boards of several private and public companies. She led the series A or seed rounds in several leading Mobile/Consumer Internet companies (Birchbox, HotelTonight, LearnVest, Trulia, Joyus) and Security Software companies (Imperva, ForeScout, TRUSTe). As an entrepreneur, Theresia was founding VP of Business Development & Sales at Release Software, a venture-backed company that provided SaaS to enable digital rights management and payment technologies for the software industry. Earlier, she worked at Bain & Company and as a product manager at Silicon Graphics. Theresia holds a ScB in Engineering from Brown University, magna cum laude, and an MBA from Stanford University. Theresia serves as a Fellow on Brown University's Corporation Board, vice-chair of DonorsChoose.org and at Stanford co-teaches a course on Venture Capital at the GSB. She also serves on the GSB Advisory Council and DAPER investment fund.
Sand Hill Angels
Mr. Sherman Ting serves as President Emiritus and Board Member at Sand Hill Angels. Sherman has over 25 years of experience in the high technology industry, in engineering, executive management and as an entrepreneur. He is an active investor in start-up ventures. Most recently, Sherman was Founder and CEO of Century A Technologies, a company which built a marketing/sales/support infrastructure in China, for new breeds of Internet-based enterprise software products designed in the US. Previously, Sherman was Vice President at Oracle Corporation, where he founded the HP Products Division and grew the business into the number one product line, with over $300M in product license revenue. While at Oracle, he also established the Asia Products Division to spearhead the cultivation of business in the Asia Pacific region, which later became the fastest growing market for Oracle. As a result, Oracle's Japanese subsidiary experienced one of the most successful high tech IPOs in Japanese history. In addition, Sherman was on the Oracle CEO's hand-picked team to start up a Network Computer business, to revolutionize how people and businesses use the Internet. Prior to Oracle, Sherman held engineering positions at Hewlett Packard, developing relational database systems for HP's cutting edge RISC computer servers and at Intel, developing computer language processors for Intel's advanced chip architecture. Sherman received an MSE in Computer Science from the University of Pennsylvania.
Walden International
Mr. Steve Ahn serves as Venture Partner at Walden International. He founded Leadis Technology, Inc. in May 2000 and served as CEO from its formation to November 2005. Under his leadership, Leadis rapidly became a leading manufacturer of display drivers for mobile devices. Leadis completed its initial public offering at NASDAQ in June 2004. From 1992 until founding Leadis, Steve held several senior positions at Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. in Korea, including Vice President and General Manager of the LCD Driver Division and Flash Memory Division both of which have eventually grown into multi-billion dollar businesses. Prior to serving in these positions, he was the Senior Manager of the Process Technology Team during which time his team played a major role in the successful development of the world's first 256Mb DRAM in 1994. Steve also worked as a research engineer at Sharp Corporation in Japan from 1989 to 1992 and as a member of the research staff at National Semiconductor Inc. from 1988 to 1989. In 1994, he received the Grand Prize of the Samsung Group Technical Achievement Award for his contribution to the development of the next generation DRAM. Steve also has published over 60 technical papers. Steve holds a B.S. in Metallurgical Engineering from Seoul National University, an M.S. in Materials Science from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, an M.S. in Electrical Engineering and a Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from Stanford University.
T-Mobile Ventures
Mr. John Legere serves as President, Chief Executive Officer and Board Member at T-Mobile. He has served as a director of our Company since April 30, 2013 and is a member of the Executive Committee of our Board of Directors. Mr. Legere joined T-Mobile USA in September 2012 as President and Chief Executive Officer and became our President and Chief Executive Officer on April 30, 2013 upon the consummation of the Business Combination. Mr. Legere has over 34 years' experience in the U.S. and global telecommunications and technology industries. Prior to joining T-Mobile USA, Mr. Legere served as Chief Executive Officer of Global Crossing Limited, a telecommunications company, from October 2001 to October 2011. Before joining Global Crossing, he served as Chief Executive Officer of Asia Global Crossing; as president of Dell Computer Corporation's operations in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa; as president Asia-Pacific for Dell; as president of AT&T Asia Pacific; as head of AT&T's outsourcing program and as head of AT&T global strategy and business development. Mr. Legere serves on the CTIA Board of Directors. Mr. Legere received a Bachelor's degree in Business Administration from the University of Massachusetts, a Master of Science degree as an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a Master of Business Administration degree from Fairleigh Dickinson University and he completed Harvard Business School's Program for Management Development.
True Beauty Ventures
True Beauty Ventures (“TBV”) pursues $1-5 million investments in beauty and wellness brands leveraging decades of sector expertise, knowledge, and network. The partners’ extensive beauty investing and operating experience allow them to identify winning brands at an inflection point of growth and help them scale and exit successfully.From traditional categories of skin care, hair care, personal care, and color cosmetics, to expanded definitions of wellness and self-care, the beauty industry is growing. At TBV, we explore all aspects of this ubiquitous consumer demand for both inner health and outer beauty.We leverage decades of beauty-focused institutional investment experience, first-hand operating expertise, and extensive industry insider networks to help businesses scale into successful, resilient, and long-lasting beauty brands.TBV is proud to be a LatinX Female co-led investment fund. One of the fundamental ways we can try to close the funding gap for women is by increasing the number of female General Partners since women are twice as likely to invest in female founders than their male counterparts. We strive to accelerate the success of female founders and funders. We believe that more equitable access to capital and investing in diversity, creates greater opportunities and delivers stronger returns.Notable investments include K18 Hair, Aquis, Caliray, Crown Affair, Kinship, Maude, Moon Juice, Dieux Skin, BeautyStat, Cay Skin, Youthforia, Vacation and Feals.
Innovatecapitalgrowth
Innovate Capital Growth Fund, an SBIC fund, will invest in minority and women-owned businesses in the Mid-Atlantic region. Minority-owned firms have failed to grow and reach scale at an equitable rate with their non-minority-owned counterparts. The issue significantly impedes job growth, asset building, and economic opportunity in minority communities. At the same time, there is renewed focus by public and private markets on increasing their investment in supplier diversity spend which will provide significant contract opportunities and drive revenue growth and capital needs at these businesses over the Fund’s life and beyond. The Fund targets small minority and women-owned businesses (51% or more ownership) with a minimum of $2 million in revenue, preferably $0.5 million in proforma EBITDA, a strong management team, and identifiable growth opportunities. The Fund is industry agnostic. All investments will be primarily in the Mid-Atlantic region - Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, District of Columbia, New York, and Virginia. The Fund has an experienced, committed, and diverse team - Della Clark, Bob Palmer, and Blessy Thomas - with deep expertise in investing in minority-owned and women-owned businesses. The team shares a passion for this mission and has complimentary skills and experience to execute the strategy. The Fund’s current commitments of nearly 30 million are from some of the largest companies, institutions, banks and private equity groups.
Correlation Ventures
Mr. Trevor Kienzle is a Co-Founder and serves as Managing Director at Correlation Ventures. He helps lead the firm, manages its Bay Area office and leads its information technology, consumer and business services investment practices. Trevor began his venture capital career in 1997. Prior to Correlation, Trevor was a Managing Director of Newbury Ventures, a technology-focused venture capital fund headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area. There, he led investments in the technology sector, including in such companies as MetaLINCS (acquired by Seagate) and Onaro (acquired by NetApp). Previously, Trevor was Vice President at GE Equity, the $2 billion venture capital arm of GE Capital, most recently as co-head of the Software Group. He had responsibility for a team of investment professionals managing 26 portfolio companies. He led GE Equity’s investments in Okena (acquired by Cisco) and RSA Security (RSAS) (successful PIPE investment, acquired by EMC) and co-led its investment in Netscreen (NSCN, acquired by Juniper). Trevor also was co-founder and CFO of Loans USA (acquired by Mariner Finance). Prior to that, he worked as a management consultant at Deloitte & Touche as well as Furash & Company, and as an investment banker at Bankers Trust Company. The son of a U.S. diplomat, Trevor has lived in seven foreign countries. He received an M.B.A. from the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration and a B.A. with distinction from the University of Virginia.
WXR Fund
The WXR Fund invests in gender-diverse seed-stage companies that are transforming business and human interaction with spatial computing (VR/AR) and artificial intelligence (AI). We are the only venture firm at the intersection of the next wave of computing and female founders. This is the ideal time to invest in these areas. Similar to the broad impact of the internet, spatial computing will be the next way we will communicate and consume digital content. Combined with the power of artificial intelligence, new companies will be created and most industries will be transformed. Also, diverse teams are building stronger products and companies but female founders still struggle to raise money. There is a BIG opportunity here. One study of over 300 early-stage companies, over the course of 10 years, found that teams with at least one woman founder outperformed all-male teams by 63%. Time after time, research has shown that diverse teams lead to better financial outcomes. Beyond our extensive networks, our deal pipeline comes from an accelerator program. Working closely with companies in the program allowed us to create and test a playbook for supporting portfolio companies. We also support entrepreneurs through the early stages of the start-up with broad relationships across VR, AR, investment and media communities with expertise as a serial entrepreneur and corporate M&A. The next computing paradigm is on the verge of growth and early winners are raising now.
KKR
Mr. Richard Sarnoff serves as Managing Director, Private Equity and Co-Head of TMT, Americas at Kohlberg Kravis Roberts. He also serves as the Head of Media & Communications industry group for KKR's Private Equity platform in the Americas. Prior to this position, he served as a Senior Adviser to KKR, working closely with both investment teams and portfolio companies. Until 2011, he was Co-Chairman of Bertelsmann, and President of Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments (BDMI.) A longstanding senior executive at Bertelsmann, Mr. Sarnoff served as Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President of Random House beginning in 1998 and became the first US executive to serve on the Supervisory Board of Bertelsmann AG in 2002. Starting in 2006, he established and ran its corporate digital media investing arm, BDMI, and concurrently served as Chairman of the Association of American Publishers. He was named the publishing industry's Person of the Year by Publishers Weekly magazine in 2009. Mr. Sarnoff graduated summa cum laude, from Princeton University with a BA in Art and Archaeology, and earned an MBA from Harvard University. He serves on the Board of Directors of Weld North, Cengage, and Chegg; and of not-for-profit organizations including the Center for Communication, the Bronx Lab School, Princeton University's Center for Information Technology Policy and New Classrooms/School of One. Previously, he served on the board at Activision Blizzard.
Bay Partners
Mr. Dempsey serves as a Managing General Partner at Bay. He serves as Board Member at Crowdynews. He is a Board Member at Enphase Energy. Through cycles of change, Neal’s investment thesis has been to find entrepreneurs with domain expertise and the fine art of listening. At the end of the day, customers decide whether startups will succeed or not and without listening to customers, entrepreneurs are seldom successful. This thesis has served him well through investments in category creating companies like Brocade, Informatica and Shiva. Neal balances the stresses of his workload by giving back to the community. In addition to serving on over a dozen boards of Bay portifolio companies, he also serves on the Board of EMQ Children and Family Services (a.k.a. Eastfield Ming Quong). Neal’s leadership helped establish the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Program at the University of Washington Business School. Neal made the largest gift ever from an alumnus to the University of Washington. Last but not least, Neal is a passionate college sports fan. He is very actively involved with The University of Washington basketball and football programs. To support these athletic programs at his alma mater, Neal sponsored the Dempsey Indoor Training Stadium at the University of Washington. He serves as a Board Member at BoardVantage. He also serves as a board member of Apigee. He is also a Board Member at International Spine & Orthopedic Institute.
Qvcdc
Quaboag Valley Community Development Corporation is a member-based, nonprofit organization committed to economic development and helping small businesses grow and prosper. We offer many programs and services with a focus on community and economic development and supporting small business in our region. QVBAC makes loans from $500 to $100,000 to existing and startup businesses operating within our area that cannot access equivalent funding through conventional resources. Categories of borrowers include: Microenterprise businesses: A microenterprise is usually defined as a small business with a limited number of employees, although sometimes as many as ten. Some microenterprise loans are made to businesses in rural locations and some are made to businesses where the owners are low-moderate income. Loan amounts can range from $500 up to $50,000; our average “micro” loan is $35,000 Job-creating small businesses: We offer loans to small businesses planning to create jobs in the near future. Borrowers have received loans for many purposes, including: startup equipment, purchase of assets, working capital, and expansion or acquisition of business-related real estate. Other small businesses: Occasionally we receive a loan request from a business that does not qualify as either a microenterprise or a job-creating small business. If you are one of these, let’s talk. We have made loans outside of these categories for compelling reasons.
Graph Ventures
Mr. Sebastien de Halleux serves as Co-Founding Partner at Graph Ventures. He is a Co-Founder and serves as the Chief Operating Officer at Saildrone. He served as the Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer at Playfish. He serves as a Board Member at Vittana. In his role within EA Interactive, Sebastien drives distribution, monetization, business development, and relationships with key partners across the division's three business units, Playfish, Pogo and EA Mobile. He was chief operating officer and co-founder of Playfish leading up to the company's acquisition by Electronic Arts in November 2009. Prior to Playfish, Sebastien was part of the team that incubated Nokia Ad Service, a business unit aimed at monetizing mobile traffic across Nokia's 850 million mobile devices worldwide. Sebastien also was an early team member of Macrospace Ltd., a company which merged with Sorrent Inc. to become Glu Mobile (NASDAQ: GLUU), where he was instrumental in building the sales and marketing functions of the organization. He later expanded Glu's distribution footprint in Europe, forged key partnerships with network operators Vodafone, T-Mobile and Orange, and reorganized the company's financial planning and sales operations in preparation for its IPO on NASDAQ. Sebastien holds a Master's in Civil Engineering with honors from Imperial College London. He has resided in Brussels, Bangkok and London, and presently lives in San Francisco.
Noosphere Ventures
Mr. Watt serves as a President & CFO at Noosphere Ventures. He is also an Angel Investor. He joined William Blair & Company in 2010 as the head of Internet and digital media investment banking. Prior to joining the firm he was a Partner in America’s Growth Capital’s Menlo Park investment banking group. Before joining AGC, Mr. Watt was a Director in the Technology Investment Banking Group at Merrill Lynch, where he was a leading member of its Global Internet and Digital Media investment banking practice. He joins AGC with 10 years of investment banking experience, having advised on over $10 billion of equity and debt financings, as well as over $20 billion of mergers and acquisitions for clients including Blue Nile, eBay, eHealth Insurance, FTD, InterActiveCorp, HP, Move.com and Research in Motion. Previously, Mr. Watt was a member of Merrill Lynch’s European Financial Sponsors Banking Group, based in London, UK, where he focused on strategic advisory and debt financing assignments for leading European and US private equity funds. A native of Scotland, Mr. Watt began his career at Ernst & Young. Immediately prior to joining AGC, he was a Managing Director at TriplePoint Capital, a global specialty finance company, where he focused on later stage venture investing. Mr. Watt holds a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Aberdeen (Scotland) and is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland (CA).
Benchmark Capital Partners
Mr. Robert Kagle is a Co-Founder and serves as General Partner at Benchmark Capital. He has several years of venture capital investment experience, Bob is a veteran of the venture industry. Prior to Benchmark, Bob spent 12 years as a General Partner with Technology Venture Investors. Before TVI, Bob worked for the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) where he focused on issues of corporate strategy in industries ranging from retail distribution to high technology manufacturing. His various investments are AllPosters.com, Ariba (ARBA), Art.com (acquired by Getty Images), Arteis, Axiom Global, eBags, eBay (EBAY), E-Loan (EELN), Friendster, Gaia Interactive, Get2Chip (acquired by Cadence), Jamba Juice, Logoworks (acquired by HP), Mint, PeopleSupport (PSPT), Potbelly, Prosper, Stitcher, Synopsys (SNPS), uShip, WorldWinner.com (acquired by Fun Technologies), Zipcar and zipRealty (ZIPR). Most recently, Bob's investments have been focused in the consumer internet arena. Bob is a past president of the Western Association of Venture Capitalists, a former director of the National Venture Capital Association, and the Chairman Emeritus of the Board of Trustees at Kettering University. He holds an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business, 1980, General Motors Fellow, BS in Electrical and Mechanical Engineering from General Motors Institute (renamed Kettering University), 1978, Sobey Scholar. He is the board member at eBags.
Signia Venture Partners
Mr. Sunny Dhillon is a Co-Founder & serves as a Partner at Signia Venture Partners. He joined the Signia team in 2012 after launching his own location-based mobile startup named Barstool and investing in early stage technology companies for New World Ventures in LA and Chicago. He was previously an M&A analyst in technology investment banking at Rothschild in London, a business development manager at a venture backed spin-off of New Line Cinema, and a corporate strategist for Warner Bros.He is a mentor for various incubators in Silicon Valley and is on the board of Cents of Relief, a charity based in Connecticut that focuses on reducing human trafficking in Indian urban slums. He is also a board member for Next Gen Partners, the Valley's leading venture capital mentoring organization.Sunny invests across consumer and enterprise sector startups, with a particular interest in gaming, consumer, and digital health.Sunny graduated with his MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, where he was a Lee Hague Scholar. He has an undergraduate honors degree in Economics & Management from Oxford University and a master's in International Relations & History from the London School of Economics (LSE), where he graduated with distinction. He served as Board Observer at Artillery Games. He also serves as Board Member at Drifter Entertainment. He serves as an Advisor at TheWaveVR.
Fyrfly VC
Mr. Philipp Stauffer serves as Venture Partner at Allegro Venture Partners. Mr. Stauffer is also a Co-Founder and serves as General Partner at FYRFLY Venture Partners. He an Advisor at Doky and serves as the Board Member at Beekeeper. He brings domestic and international mobile, online, ecommerce, digital marketing, cloud, data-science and enterprise software experience. Philipp is the Founder & CEO of Onor, a start-up in native & immersive marketing. Philipp is also a Founding Principal at Dropimpact, an Innovation Catalyst and Think Tank in Silicon Valley. He was part of the Senior Executive Team at Adchemy (acquired by Walmart) and led strategic sales and client services. Prior to Adchemy, Philipp was a Managing Partner at Accenture focusing on growth strategy and innovation. Most recently he was a Founding Partner of Accenture Interactive (now Accenture Digital), a now leading global marketing practice with more than 4,000 digital marketing and data sciences professionals globally. Philipp is an active investor and advisor to start-ups such as Playspan (acquired by Visa), NoiseToys (acquired by Jawbone), Appstores (acquired by InMobi), PubMatic, Angellist, Powerinbox, Pley, Active Replay, and Philz Coffee among others. Philipp holds a MS in Economics from the University of Applied Sciences in Zurich, Switzerland and an MBA from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.
Howard Stanley Marks
Mr. Howard Marks is an Angel Investor. He is the Founder & serves as Co-Chairman at Oaktree Capital Management. Since the formation of Oaktree in 1995, Mr. Marks has been responsible for ensuring the firm's adherence to its core investment philosophy, communicating closely with clients concerning products and strategies, and managing the firm. From 1985 until 1995, Mr. Marks led the groups at The TCW Group, Inc. that were responsible for investments in distressed debt, high yield bonds, and convertible securities. He was also Chief Investment Officer for Domestic Fixed Income at TCW and President of TCW Asset Management Company, the largest of the TCW companies. Previously, Mr. Marks was with Citicorp Investment Management for 16 years, where from 1978 to 1985 he was Vice President and senior portfolio manager in charge of convertible and high yield securities. Between 1969 and 1978, he was an equity research analyst and, subsequently, Citicorp's Director of Research. Mr. Marks holds a B.S.Ec. degree cum laude from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania with a major in Finance and an M.B.A. in Accounting and Marketing from the Graduate School of Business of the University of Chicago, where he received the George Hay Brown Prize. He is a CFA® charterholder and a Chartered Investment Counselor. Mr. Marks chairs the Investment Board of the University of Pennsylvania.
Northern Initiatives
Northern Initiatives is a Community Development Financial Institution. We’re in business to provide loans and business services to small business owners and entrepreneurs who create jobs and enable the communities of Michigan and neighboring Wisconsin to thrive. Loan types are: Micro Loans: $1,000-$50,000. Great for starting a new business, purchasing equipment, or working capital. Business Loans: $25,000-$500,000. Great for starting a new business, buying existing business, expanding your business or purchasing equipment. Healthy Food Access: $2,500-$300,000. Great for new and existing healthy food production, distribution, processing, and retail projects that will increase fresh food in underserved communities. Contract/Purchase Order Financing: $5,000-$250,000. Great for supplementing cash flow or expanding your business. Commercial Real Estate Loans: $50,001-$500,000. New and existing businesses that need funds to finance real estate that will be 50% or greater owner-occupied. This is not a passive investment; financing is usually combined with operating capital. Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Loan Program: New and existing businesses that will either: 1) create new jobs for HUD-designated low- to moderate-income individuals via a loan to start, acquire, maintain, or expand a business or 2) remediate slum and blight properties in designated communities.
Lux Capital
Mr. Tuvia Barak serves as Board Member at WeatherBell Analytics. Mr. Tuvia Barak serves as Venture Partner at Lux Capital. In 1982, Mr. Barak joined Tadiran, the North American subsidiary of Tadiran, the largest electronics conglomerate in Israel. During his 12-year tenure, over $3 billion in revenue was achieved under his direction, and Tadiran became one of the major suppliers of tactical communications to the U.S. Army. Mr. Barak developed strategic alliances and partnerships with some of the largest aerospace and defense companies. In 1993, Mr. Barak established his own marketing and consulting practice, advising U.S. and international companies on business development, marketing strategies, technology assessment, and mergers and acquisitions in the aerospace and technology fields. Mr. Barak is a member of the Board of Directors of Skyline Software, Arinc Corp., WhiteCanyon Software, Funley's Delicious, and Toonimo and special advisor to Siluria Technologies, Kymeta Corp., and Heller Industries. His many clients have included The Carlyle Group, Boeing, L-3 Communications, ITT, General Dynamics, AAI/Textron, BAE, EDS, DRS, Elbit Systems, Schott, Selex, Ness Technologies, Vought Aircraft, SanDisk, United Defense, Mantech International, NanoSys, MapInfo, Rockwell Collins and Raytheon. Mr. Barak has a M.Sc. in E.E. from the Technion Institute of Technology, Israel.