I’ve been a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor for over 25 years. I founded Practical Venture Capital and 500 Startups, and previously worked at Founders Fund and PayPal. I’ve invested in hundreds of startups all over the world, including 15 unicorns and 5 IPOs. Forbes named me one of the top 100 VCs in the world in 2016 and 2017. I have a BS in Engineering and Applied Mathematics (*nerd alert!) from the Johns Hopkins University.
[Practical Venture Capital]
In 2019 I founded Practical Venture Capital, a microVC secondary firm that provides liquidity solutions for LPs and GPs in early-stage VC funds. We specialize in buying fund secondary in microVC funds at years 5-10 (“skip the J-curve”), as well as direct secondary in breakout companies within those portfolios.
[500 Startups]
In 2010 I founded 500 Startups, a Silicon Valley VC firm with >$500M AUM that has invested in 2,500 companies and 5,000 founders across 75 countries. Our investments include 15+ unicorns and IPOs: Credit Karma (acq INTU $7B), Twilio (IPO 2016), SendGrid (IPO 2017), The RealReal (IPO 2019), Life360 (IPO 2019), Grab, Intercom, Ipsy, Canva, Udemy, Lucid, Flywire, FabFitFun, TalkDesk, GitLab, Algolia, PlanGrid (acq ADSK $875M), Vungle (acq Blackstone $750M). We created 20 VC funds under the 500 brand, and invested in 20 other VC funds globally.
[Founders Fund, Facebook fbFund]
From 2008-10 I was a VC at Founders Fund with Peter Thiel and Sean Parker. I made seed-stage investments in 40 companies resulting in 4 unicorns / 3 IPOs (TWLO, SEND, LYFT, Credit Karma), and I led the seed round in Credit Karma (acq INTU, >400X return). My $3M portfolio returned $200M (~65X) in under 10 years.
[PayPal, Aslan, Johns Hopkins]
In 2001 I joined PayPal as Director of Marketing. Before PayPal I was founder/CEO of Aslan Computing (acq by Servinet, 1998). I graduated from Johns Hopkins in 1988 with a BS in engineering and applied mathematics, and played lots of ultimate frisbee with other engineers and CS nerds.
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Any unauthorized use of these names, or variations of these names, is a violation of Law No.5846 and international trademark laws.
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