Sectors:
Locations:
Min Investment:
Max Investment:
Target Investment:
Total Funding: $1M
Total Funding: $40M
Total Funding: $43M
Total Funding: $96M
Total Funding: $130M
Total Funding:
Total Funding:
Total Funding: $14M
Total Funding: $3M
Total Funding: $3M
2019
Practical Venture Capital is a microVC secondary firm that provides liquidity for LPs and GPs in early-stage VC funds. We specialize in LP/GP fund interests in microVC funds at years 5-10 (“skip the J-curve”), as well as direct secondary in breakout companies in those portfolios.
2022
2022
Along with Chok Ooi, I co-founded 42 Geeks in 2022 to help connect entrepreneurs and investors in Silicon Valley and New York with other people around the world who are interested in startups, technology, and investing. Our goals are to help spread curiosity and innovation, and encourage people all over the planet to get more involved in startups and investing. We also like to eat a lot of great food.
2020
2020
I’m an investor and owner in the Ultimate Frisbee Association (UFA), the professional sports league for ultimate frisbee in the US and Canada. I’m also part of the ownership group for the Oakland Spiders and Los Angeles Aviators. I’ve been a player and fan of ultimate frisbee for over 30 years, and I started playing in college at Johns Hopkins in 1985.
2010 - 2017
2010 - 2017
I founded 500 Startups, a global venture capital firm headquartered in Silicon Valley with >$2B AUM and 100+ employees in 20 countries around the world. 500 has made investments in over 2,500 companies across 75 countries resulting in over 40 unicorns and 10+ IPOs, including Twilio (TWLO), SendGrid (SEND), Credit Karma (acq INTU $8B), Grab (GRAB), GitLab (GTLB), Udemy (UDMY), Talkdesk, Intercom, Lucid, Flywire (FLYW), Algolia, FabFitFun, The RealReal (REAL), Canva, Barkbox (BARK), PlanGrid (acq ADSK, $875M), Vungle (acq Blackstone $750M), MakerBot (acq SSYS $400M), Wildfire (acq GOOG $350M), WePay (acq JPM $300M), and Viki (acq Rakuten $200M).
2009 - 2017
2009 - 2017
I started GeeksOnaPlane back in 2009 when I was working at Founders Fund, and we did our first trip to East Asia with Christine Lu. Over the next 8 years, as I was building the 500 Startups platform, we took hundreds of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and investors on more than 20 GeeksOnaPlane trips around the world. We visited 30+ countries / 50+ cities and tech ecosystems and met thousands of other startup founders, angel investors, and venture capitalists. We also met with representatives of local and national governments involved with innovation, and many other corporate and academic groups related to tech startups, entrepreneurship and investing. Our goals were to help connect people, companies, and communities who were interested in technology and startups, and to help spread Silicon Valley's passion for entrepreneurship globally. We also had a lot of fun and ate a lot of great food along the way.
2008 - 2010
2008 - 2010
I invested and managed $3M (returned >$180M) in two early-stage portfolios: the FF Angel seed fund (part of Founders Fund II) and the Facebook fbFund, an incubator for Facebook-related startups. I made 42 seed-stage investments resulting in 4 unicorns / IPOs: Twilio (TWLO), SendGrid (SEND), Lyft (LYFT), and Credit Karma ($8B acq by INTU).
2004 - 2008
2004 - 2008
I was an investor and/or advisor in ~15 internet startups including: Mint.com (acq INTU), oDesk (NASDAQ:UPWK), Mashery (acq INTC), TeachStreet (acq AMZN), KissMetrics, Jambool (acq GOOG), Twilio (NYSE:TWLO), WePay (acq JPM) and SlideShare (acq LNKD).
2006 - 2008
2006 - 2008
Web 2.0 Expo (2006-2008): I helped create & co-chair the Web 2.0 tech conference. I organized 60 talks with 100+ speakers, and helped market the event to 10,000 attendees. Graphing Social Patterns (2007-2008): I created a tech conference for O'Reilly on Facebook and social platforms. We produced 3 events attended by >1,000 developers & investors.
2007 - 2007
2007 - 2007
I was a visiting lecturer and instructor at Stanford with Prof. BJ Fogg for CS377W, Creating Engaging Facebook Applications. We created and taught the first-ever course on building Facebook applications, and received national news coverage. In 3 months our students created 50 Facebook apps resulting in 20M installs and 1M users. 5 teams had >1M installs, 3 apps were acquired, and 2 teams raised venture capital.
2005 - 2006
2005 - 2006
I led the marketing team responsible for launch, PR, content, search marketing, metrics, and community. I helped create the Simply Hired brand and voice, and led strategic partnerships with LinkedIn and O'Reilly. I was an angel investor in the Series B round in 2005. The company was acquired by Recruit in 2016.