Brian Rothenberg
Partner at defy.vc | ex-VP of Growth at Eventbrite & 2x Founder
San Francisco, California
Invests in
Sectors:
Locations:
Min Investment:
$100,000.00Max Investment:
$10,000,000.00Target Investment:
$5,000,000.00
Skills
Education
- NS
Lists including Brian
Investments
Safara
Total Funding: $4M
Perfect Venue
Total Funding: $4M
Novi Connect
Total Funding: $52M
Moment House
Total Funding: $26M
OfficeTogether
Total Funding: $2M
Fourthwall
Total Funding: $20M
Novi
Total Funding: $12M
PocketSuite
Total Funding: $1.2M
Aalto
Total Funding: $23M
Wonderschool
Total Funding: $47M
Work Experience
2019
Partner
2019
Early stage VC supporting founders in building and scaling exceptional companies. Defy is a new $700M+ venture capital firm. – Aalto (https://aalto.com/): The private real estate market; a different way to buy & sell homes. Backed by Defy and Sequoia Capital. -Almanax (https://www.almanax.ai/): AI-powers security tools to make web3 safer. Incubated company from idea to MVP, brought on co-founders and invested initial capital. Board of Directors. - Elements (https://www.elements.io/): The most flexible payments platform for developers. Backed by Defy, Accel, Harrison Metal. Acquired by Circle to accelerate global crypto payments. – Fourthwall (https://fourthwall.com/): Helping creators turn passion into income. Backed by Defy, Lightspeed, Initialized, and 776. - Moment (https://moment.co): Elevated digital experiences for the masses. Backed by Defy and Forerunner. Acquired by Patreon. – Novi (https://noviconnect.com/): B2B marketplace providing supply chain transparency for the multi-trillion dollar consumer goods and chemicals industries. Board of Directors. Backed by Defy, Greylock, and Tiger Global. – OfficeTogether (https://officetogether.com/): OfficeTogether helps companies with hybrid work. Acquired by Envoy. – PerkUp (https://www.perkupapp.com/): Perks & rewards that employees love. Backed by Defy and angels. Board of Directors. - Safara (https://www.safara.com/): The next-gen online travel agency for millennials & gen Z. Backed by Defy & Sequoia Capital.
2012 - 2019
VP of Growth & GM
2012 - 2019
I helped grow Eventbrite from a startup into the world’s largest event technology platform and live experiences marketplace. As Eventbrite’s first VP of Growth, CMO, and VP/GM of the company’s largest segment of revenue, played a key role scaling globally to $300M in revenues, and through our IPO (NYSE: EB) with a nearly $3B market cap. I served as VP & GM of Eventbrite's self-service business/product with global revenue responsibility ($100M+ revenue line). I led a cross-functional team spanning product, engineering, analytics, marketing, finance, and others to grow our business around the world. I was also Eventbrite's first Head/VP of Growth, and was interim CMO. Select areas of responsibility in these roles: - Leadership of a 50+ person global team working to grow Eventbrite across four continents. - Co-founded our cross-functional growth team, working with product, UX, engineering, & analytics to rigorously test and scale creative data-driven user growth strategies. - More than tripled our viral conversion rate of event attendees into event creators, driving massive near zero-cost customer growth – a key strength listed in our IPO prospectus. - Responsibility for global user acquisition efforts including paid and organic channels, inbound/demand generation, as well as our category-focused marketing efforts - Built out our SEO program from scratch to being listed as a key strength in our IPO filing. Over this span the team grew SEO traffic 20x to hundreds of millions of annual visits. - Led growth analytics to measure, learn, and make data-informed decisions Each year, Eventbrite serves hundreds of thousands of event creators and 100M+ active ticket buyers around the globe, generating billions of dollars in ticket sales since inception. Eventbrite was backed by Sequoia Capital and is now public on the NYSE (EB).
2018 - 2019
Scout
2018 - 2019
Angel / seed / series A investor through Sequoia's scout program.
2018 - 2019
Growth Advisory Council
2018 - 2019
"If we imagine Y Combinator as the university degree for startups, the Growth Program is grad school." Advising companies such as Gusto, Webflow, and other scale-stage YC startups.
2015 - 2019
Expert Network Advisor & Angel Track
2015 - 2019
Advisor within the First Round Expert Network, a carefully curated community of experts, helping First Round startups solve their biggest challenges. Also a member of First Round Angel Track — a masterclass and community for new angel investors. One of 15 people selected to the inaugural cohort from 500+ applicants including many of the highest-caliber operators in tech.
Angel Investor & Advisor
2012 - 2019
Angel investor and early advisor to a group of startups now valued at more than $10.5B with co-investors including Defy, Sequoia, Index, Bessemer, First Round, IVP, a16z, GGV, Initialized, Tiger Global, Coatue, and others. Attentive Mobile - Mobile CRM and marketing platform for e-commerce. Seed to $7B valuation, raised $843M from Sequoia, IVP, Tiger Global, Coatue, & Bain Ventures. Rupa Health - Improving human health by making integrative medicine more accessible, available, and approachable for every patient on the planet. Backed by First Round, Bessemer, Defy, and others. Wonderschool – Building a marketplace creating micro-entrepreneurs out of educators, and helping hard-working parents find better childcare. Backed by $24M from a16z, First Round, Goldman Sachs, & more. Braid - Spend together: create flexible group accounts for shared spending. Backed by Index, Unusual Ventures, and more. Fishbowl - A social network that connects professionals within the same industry, company, and/or affinity groups to have candid conversations about workplace topics. Backed by GGV & others. Acquired by Glassdoor. FundersClub - The world's first online startup investing platform, with $105M+ invested in 280+ startups, generating $7.6B of portfolio valuation across Coinbase, Instacart, Flexport, Teespring, & more. Backed by YC, First Round, Spark, a16z. The Mission - The Mission is a next-generation media network (#1 publisher on Medium), connecting its audience with relevant enterprises via a new inbound marketing solution. 2x “Best of” podcasts by Apple. Stealth Startup - Self-service SaaS startup founded by a stellar serial entrepreneur. Earnest - A unique merit-based lender. Backed by a16z, Battery, First Round, Maveron. Acquired for $155M. LifeLock - Growth advisor to LifeLock (NYSE: LOCK) leading up to their $2.3B sale to Symantec. Immediately - Seed investor. Mobile platform for modern sales professionals. Acquired by New Relic. And others...
2011 - 2013
Co-Head of Marketing
2011 - 2013
Joined via acquisition of my company, SkillSlate, which we integrated in the first quarter of 2012. TaskRabbit was acquired by IKEA in October 2017. I co-led the marketing team heading up user acquisition & retention, helping the company more than 3x our business volume and revenue over my tenure. TaskRabbit is the leading peer-based local labor marketplace that enables individuals and businesses to outsource small jobs to others in their community. The company was backed by Founders Fund, Lightspeed, Shasta, and First Round Capital.
2009 - 2011
Co-Founder
2009 - 2011
Co-founded SkillSlate, a local services marketplace backed by First Round Capital, Canaan Partners, and angel investors. I led product, growth, and marketing for the business. SkillSlate was acquired by TaskRabbit December 2011 (later acquired by IKEA). Hire people, not companies – SkillSlate connects consumers with great independent service professionals, and provides service businesses with tools to earn more customers.
2009 - 2010
Venture Capital MBA Intern
2009 - 2010
MBA investment intern at Canaan Partners, an early-stage venture capital fund with $3.5B of capital under management, and with more than 85 acquisitions and 53 IPOs to date. Prior/current investments: Instacart, TheRealReal, LendingClub, Doubleclick, Match.com, Kabam, RelayRides, Urbansitter, Zoosk and more.
2004 - 2008
Product Manager
2004 - 2008
Promoted 4 times in 4 years from Intern (Yahoo!'s first formal internship class) to youngest PM in the company at the time. Drove consumer product and user growth initiatives for one of Yahoo!'s fastest growing and most profitable business units. - Grew Y! Real Estate 10x to the #1 most visited real estate site (up from #14 at start date). - Earned a Webby Award for the real estate category - Scaled our SEO traffic more than 2,900% to millions of SEO visits / mo - Held concurrent role as Team Lead (the only non-Director in our division to hold this role) for cross-functional Search Engine Optimization (SEO) projects and consulting across the Local Marketplaces & Commerce division (includes Local, Hotjobs, Shopping, Travel, Autos, Real Estate and Personals)