BN

Brian Nichols

Founder of Angel Squad | I teach professionals how to invest in startups with help from seasoned VC investors | Investor & Advisor

San Francisco, California

Work Experience

  • Angel Squad Co-Founder

    2020

    Angel Squad is an angel investing community run by Hustle Fund that was created to teach how to invest in startups and provide access to invest in the most promising ones. TechCrunch referred to Angel Squad as the "YC of Angel Investing."

  • Angel Investor

    2019

    The best place to learn more is @ my personal website: nicholsb.com I lead an active syndicate with 3.5k members that's deployed $25M+, and have formally Advised 5 companies.

2020 - 2020

  • Program Director, On Deck Angel Fellowship

    2020 - 2020

    Created, launched, and ran the first two cohorts of the On Deck Angels program. The program pioneered On Deck's expansion into verticals outside of the founder fellowship. The success of the program led to On Deck developing the org structure to hire Program Directors to lead verticals that were complementary to the founder fellowship.

  • Head Of Partnerships

    2020 - 2020

    - Responsible for procuring sponsorships for On Deck Founder and Angel Fellowships. - Built and manage program to introduce our founders to investor partners as founders begin fundraising process.

2018 - 2020

  • Head Of Business Development

    2019 - 2020

    BlackBird was acquired by Surf Air in February, 2020 - Instrumental in Series A fundraise ($10M from NEA) - Focused on strategic partnerships / the future of flight (electric aircraft)

  • Head Of Operations

    2018 - 2019

    - Grew team from 5 to 40+ full-time employees and contractors. - Recruited and hired leadership from Lyft, Postmates, Uber, Caviar to support the rapid growth of the business.

2019 - 2019

  • Angel Track

    2019 - 2019

    Angel Track is a masterclass and community for angel investors whose full-time jobs are in leadership roles at tech companies. 1 of 16 selected out of 1k+ applicants.

2017 - 2018

  • Operations Manager

    2017 - 2018

    Zoox was acquired by Amazon in June, 2020. - Responsible for standing up remote teleoperation unit to support fleet of autonomous vehicles during live operation. - Represented Zoox’s operations organization when meeting potential investors during our Series B fundraise ($500M, $2.7B valuation).

2014 - 2017

  • Market Operations Manager (National)

    2016 - 2017

    - Responsible for building out Lyft's local presence in all top 25 Lyft markets. - Hired local leadership, scaled repeatable playbooks, and provided analytics solutions for Lyft's highest growth markets across the country.

  • Market Manager, California

    2014 - 2016

    - First Market Manager on the West Coast, drove efficient growth for all of the CA Markets - Accounted for 50%+ of all Lyft rides

2011 - 2014

  • Co-founder

    2011 - 2014

    RewardTag was bootstrapped and acquired by STM Goods (https://www.stmgoods.com/). Main partners included Logitech, Seidio, STM Goods which lead to over 2.5M RewardTag units distributed globally.