Consumer applications, future of media, online video, developer platforms
Ethan Kurzweil serves as Partner, Investments at Bessemer Venture Partners. He was a Board Member at Stratim. He as eleven when he started his first business - The Cat Corporation. In charge of family cat care, he "awarded" all labor-intensive jobs to his sister (Cat Feeder, Cat Brusher) and claimed all management jobs for himself (CEO, VP of Cat Welfare, Executive Director of Grooming). He would now discourage founders from letting sibling rivalry influence their org charts. As a Stanford undergrad, Ethan eventually was a co-founder of a real company: SSB-Bart Group, which helps make the Web accessible to users with disabilities. Before joining Bessemer in 2008, he worked for Dow Jones & Co., managing the turnaround of The Wall Street Journal's international editions, and Linden Lab, the creator of Second Life. At BVP, Ethan focuses on investments in consumer technologies and developer platfor He is particularly excited about consumer video start-ups and companies "developerizing the enterprise," his phrase for companies that provide non-technical business users with powerful tools and potential impact without requiring them to code. Ethan's investments include consumer companies Twitch (acquired by Amazon), Periscope (acquired by Twitter), Dropcam (acquired by Google), Playdom (acquired by Disney), Zirx, Life360 and Piazza; developer platforms Intercom, Twilio, PagerDuty, npm, and Sendgrid; and SaaS companies Hightower and Simply Measured. He was also involved in the firm's investments in adap.tv (acquired by AOL) and Skybox Imaging (acquired by Google). Ethan graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University and earned an MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School. He serves on the Bay Area advisory board for New Leaders. Raised in Boston, he remains a Red Sox fan for life. He also serves as a Board Member at Periscope Data.
Todd Kimmel is the Founder and serves as Managing Director & Managing Partner at Montage Ventures. He is also a Co-Founder and serves as Board Member at Batch. He is also a Co-Founder and serves as Chairman at Parasail. Kimmel is a Board Member at Sure, Pager, WorkIt Health, and Peek Travel Services. He served as Principal at Advanced Technology Ventures. Kimmel joined Mayfield from Advanced Technology Ventures, a bi-coastal venture capital firm, where he led cleantech investing in its West Coast office. Kimmel was also the co-founder and President of Coskata, a leading next-generation bio-fuels company, where he helped drive key product development, technology and financing milestones. Prior to venture capital, Kimmel was a co-founder and Senior Vice President at Innovance, a Canadian-based developer of optical networking solutions for telecommunications service providers and worked in investment banking with Wasserstein Perella & Co., Inc. in New York. He served as the Board Member at Project September. Kimmel holds a B.A. from Amherst College and was a history major.
Santo Politi is a Co-Founder and serves as General Partner at Spark Capital. He has led Spark's investments in eToro, Convert Media, Genie, Oculus, Orchard, Qriously, Storenvy, Triggit and Zazma. He also led Spark's previous investments in Adap.TV (acquired by AOL), Admeld (acquired by Google), CT-100/CNET (acquired by CBS), IPWireless (acquired by General Dynamics), KickApps (acquired by KIT Digital), Lexity (acquired by Yahoo!) and OneRiot (acquired by Walmart). He served as a board member of 5Min (acquired by AOL) and thePlatform (acquired by Comcast). He was previously a Partner at Charles River Ventures (CRV) where he led investments in BigBand Networks (NASDAQ: BBND), Broadbus Technologies (acquired by Motorola) and Groove Mobile (acquired by LiveWire). Prior to Charles River Ventures, he served as President of New Media for Blockbuster Entertainment (NYSE: BBI). He also previously co-founded BT Venture Partners, an early-stage venture capital firm affiliated with Bankers Trust where he led successful investments in Aether Systems (NASDAQ: AETH), DigitalThink (NASDAQ: DTHK) and Novatel Wireless (NASDAQ: NVTL). He previously held various engineering and management positions at Matsushita Electric Industrial, Panasonic and Weston Instruments. He holds an MBA in finance from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from NJIT and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Physics from Bogazici University in Istanbul, Turkey. He serves as a Board member at Qriously, PreVeil, Uncommon and Lightmatter.
Ihar Mahaniok
Investing in Software (Web Marketplace Saas..) &b...
Software (Web Marketplace Saas..) • Media • Businesses Solutions • A.I. (& Big Data) • Consumer • Woman Focused
Description
Partner, First Round Capital
Founding Partner, @first-round-capital; Founder @half-com (sold to EBay)
Linked In Description:
Josh is a founding Partner at First Round Capital, a seed-stage technology venture fund. Josh has been an active entrepreneur and investor in the Internet industry since its commercialization.
In 1992, while he was a student at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Josh co-founded Infonautics Corporation – and took it public on the NASDAQ stock exchange in 1996. Josh founded Half.com in July of 1999, and led it to become one of the largest sellers of used books, movies and music in the world. Half.com was acquired by eBay in July 2000 -- and Josh remained with eBay for three years, running the Half.com business unit and growing eBay’s Media marketplace to almost half a billion dollars in annual gross merchandise sales. In late 2003 Josh helped to found TurnTide, an anti-spam company that created the world's first anti-spam router. TurnTide was acquired by Symantec just six months later.
Josh founded First Round Capital in 2004 to reinvent seed-stage investing. And since that time the firm has invested in over 350 emerging technology startups – becoming one of the most active venture capital firms in the country. Josh was ranked 3rd on the 2018 New York Times list of Top Venture Capitalists and consistently ranks in the top 20 of the Forbes Midas List of the top 100 tech investors. Josh has been named as one of the top ten ‘angel investors’ in the United States by Newsweek magazine, one of "Tech's New Kingmakers" by Business 2.0 magazine and a "Rising VC Star" by Fortune magazine. Josh also is the proud winner of a second place ribbon in the 2011 Nantucket Watermelon Eating competition.
Josh is an inventor on sixteen U.S. Patents for his work in Internet technology. In June 2000, he was awarded Ernst and Young’s prestigious “Entrepreneur of the Year” award for the Greater Philadelphia region.
Josh earned a Bachelor of Science degree cum laude in Entrepreneurial Management and Marketing from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Marlon C Nichols
Investing in Software (Web Marketplace Saas..) &b...
San Francisco Bay Are..., U.S.A.
Previous Investments
• Edge Delta:
$3000000 (Seed Round)
• GridRaster:
$2400000 (Seed Round)
• Tactyc:
• Exponential Exchange:
$7000000 (Seed)
• StoreCash:
$4000000 (Seed)
• StoreCash:
$3000000 (Seed)
• Fin:
$7000000 (Seed)
• LOST iN:
$4000000 (Seed)
• Shekel Mobility:
$3000000 (Seed)
• Exponential Markets:
$9000000 (Seed)
• PredictionStrike:
$10000000 (Series A)
• PredictionStrike:
$3000000 (Seed)
• PredictionStrike:
$2000000 (Seed)
• Mansa:
$8000000 (Seed)
• Zevvy:
$5000000 (Seed)
• Stears:
$3000000 (Seed)
• Spleet:
$3000000 (Seed)
• AMP Global Technologies:
$6000000 (Seed)
• Big Cabal Media:
$2000000 (Seed)
• Afya Rekod:
$2000000 (Seed)
• SOTE:
$4000000 (Seed)
• SOTE:
$4000000 (Seed)
• Rares.io:
$4000000 (Seed)
• Ryff:
$12000000 (Series Unknown)
• Ryff:
$5000000 (Series Unknown)
• OCX Cognition:
(Seed)
• Yobe:
(Seed)
• LIT Videobooks:
$5000000 (Seed)
• Pipe:
$250000000 (Series Unknown)
• Pipe:
$10000000 (Seed)
• Pipe:
$6000000 (Seed Round)
• Pipe:
$6000000 (Seed)
• PureStream Trading Technologies:
$14000000 (Series A)
• Everywhere Apparel:
$3000000 (Seed)
• FINESSE:
$5000000 (Seed)
• Bridgefy:
(Seed)
• Antara Health:
$2000000 (Seed)
• Ocean Freight Exchange:
$2000000 (Seed)
• Good Money:
$30000000 (Series A)
• Encantos:
$800000 (Pre Seed)
• Firefly:
$22000000 (Seed)
• Firefly:
$22000000 (Seed Round)
• Phiar Technologies:
$3000000 (Seed)
• Airspace:
$20000000 (Series B)
• Airspace:
$8000000 (Series A)
• Mayvenn:
$23000000 (Series B)
• Mayvenn:
(Convertible Note)
• Mayvenn:
$10000000 (Series A)
• PlayVS:
$15000000 (Series A)
• mSURVEY:
$4000000 (Series A)
• mSURVEY:
(Seed)
• mSURVEY:
(Seed)
• Blavity:
(Seed)
• Blavity:
(Seed Round)
• Ready Responders:
(Seed Round)
• Ready:
$700000 (Seed)
• Wonderschool:
$2000000 (Seed)
• Wonderschool:
(Seed Round)
• Wonderschool:
(Seed)
• Skurt:
(Convertible Note)
• Skurt:
$10000000 (Series A)
• One Preschool:
(Seed Round)
• MessageYes (formerly ReplyYes):
$7000000 (Series A)
• MessageYes (formerly ReplyYes):
$6500000 (Series A)
• Thrive Market:
$110000000 (Series B)
• Thrive Market:
$30000000 (Series A)
• Hingeto:
(Seed Round)
• Hingeto:
(Seed)
• mSurvey:
(Seed Round)
• Sidestep:
$900000 (Seed)
Marlon C Nichols
San Francisco Bay Area - Los Angeles - California, U.S.A.
Jonathon Triest is the Founder and serves as Managing Partner at Ludlow Ventures. In 2011, he was awarded the Crain's Detroit Business award for 20 in their 20's. That same year, he co-founded Funded by Night, a vehicle to help internet startups launch and get discovered. Previously, he served as creative director for New York's Discovery Productions. In 2005 he launched the Atlanta-based Triest Group, a mid-level advertising firm. In addition to his role at Ludlow, he is a mentor at The Brandery and a board member of The Trico Foundation, and Venture for America. previously creative director for New Yorks Discovery Productions. In 2005 he launched Triest Group, a mid-level advertising firm. He sits on the Board of the Trico Foundation and the Board of Investors for Venture for America.
Matt Cohler serves as General Partner at Benchmark Capital. He also serves as the Board Observer at Greenhouse Software. He has several years of experience working with great entrepreneurs to build lasting consumer Internet companies, having served in senior management roles at Facebook and LinkedIn. Most recently, he served as vice president of product management at Facebook, overseeing the company's product development organizations. Matt joined Facebook in early 2005 as one of the first five employees hired by the company's founders and its first external executive hire, and he's been credited with helping drive Facebook's strategy, organizational growth and product direction. Previously, Matt served as vice president and general manager at LinkedIn, where he was a member of the company's founding team. Before LinkedIn, he was a consultant in McKinsey & Company's Silicon Valley office and worked in Beijing for AsiaInfo, the telecom solutions provider that built China's Internet infrastructure, prior to the company's initial public offering. His investments are 1stdibs, Asana, Baixing, CouchSurfing, Domo, Dropbox, Edmodo, Instagram, Quora, Peixe Urbano, ResearchGate, and Zendesk. He is also a special advisor at Facebook, board of governors at San Francisco Symphony. He holds a B.A. with honors and distinction from Yale University. He is the Board Member at Zendex.
Lance Dietz
Investing in Software (Web Marketplace Saas..) &b...
Software (Web Marketplace Saas..) • Media • Businesses Solutions • Entertainment (& Sports) • IoT (& Wearables) • A.I. (& Big Data) • HealthTech (& Fitness) • Gaming (& eSports) • Healthcare (& Wellness) • Online Social • Consumer
Description
VC at KB Partners
Most Interested In
Our core verticals include: digital fitness/wellness, immersive media (OTT/streaming, AR/VR, fan engagement), smart venue applications, esports, sports betting/fantasy. If you're doing anything in these spaces, feel free to reach out.
Not Interested In
We typically won't invest before the core team is in place and the product/service is in market (pilot stage works), but appreciate getting to know founding teams before then.
How to connect with Angel Investors in the Media industry?
In the Media industry, angel investors such as Troy Carter, Chris Sacca, and Ron Conway are highly active. These investors focus on startups offering innovative solutions in digital media, content creation, and media distribution. Troy Carter, known for his work with artists like Lady Gaga, invests in media startups that bridge entertainment and technology. Chris Sacca, an early investor in Twitter and Uber, looks for disruptive media technologies with strong growth potential. Ron Conway, with investments in companies like Google and Facebook, seeks out startups that can transform the media landscape. To connect with these investors, attend media tech conferences, digital media expos, and networking events where they are likely to be present. Utilize platforms like AngelList and LinkedIn to identify and reach out to potential investors. When pitching, emphasize how your media solution addresses key challenges, such as improving content delivery, enhancing user engagement, or optimizing media monetization. Highlight any traction you’ve gained, such as partnerships with media companies, user growth, or successful content projects. Building relationships through initial informal meetings or discussions at industry panels can help establish trust with these investors. Demonstrating the impact of your technology or service through case studies or user testimonials can also add credibility. Personalize your outreach by referencing the investor’s previous investments and explaining how your venture aligns with their interests. Demonstrating a sustainable business model with clear revenue streams, such as advertising, subscription fees, or content licensing, will further strengthen your pitch. Leveraging endorsements or case studies from media industry experts can also enhance your credibility.
Case Studies: Successful Funding Rounds with Angel Investors on Angels Partners
Exotic Orange & Angels Partners: Turning Financial Simplicity Into Investment Success
