AM

Ankesh Madan

Principal at Obvious Ventures

San Francisco, California

Work Experience

  • Principal

    2024

    Obvious is a venture capital firm investing in early-stage, purpose-driven entrepreneurs reimagining trillion-dollar industries. Our three investment pillars are planetary, human, and economic health. Obvious has over $1 billion AUM. Invested in: Zanskar (Series B) Unannounced (Series B) Board Observer: Zanskar

  • Angel Investor

    2021

    Stealth - domestic energy Mission Barns - cultivated meat from fat cells TeachMeTo - sports coaching for beginner athletes Captura - direct ocean carbon removal Opine - transforming the buyer-vendor relationship

2020 - 2024

  • Principal

    2023 - 2024

    Invested in early-stage startups ($600M AUM) across industrial decarbonization, synbio, CDR, mobility, and energy: Proscia (Series B) inVia Robotics (Series C) Provectus Algae (Pre-Series A) Strangeworks (Series A) Captura (Series A) Pow.bio (Series A) Thea Energy (Series A) unannounced power electronics co (Series A) Board observer: Provectus Algae

  • Senior Associate

    2022 - 2023

  • Associate

    2020 - 2022

  • Venture Associate

    2019 - 2020

2016 - 2018

  • Business Operations Associate

    2016 - 2018

2013 - 2016

  • Co-Founder, former Chief Science Officer

    2013 - 2016

    - Raised $15M+ from Mark Cuban and other investors to commercialize and launch D2C product for date rape drug detection - Led early R&D, licensing, and IP commercialization efforts, recruited R&D team, established technical milestones and roadmap

2015 - 2015

  • Summer Associate

    2015 - 2015

  • Intern

    2013 - 2013