The Power of Personal Branding in VC

This chapter explores the critical role of personal branding for venture capitalists and its impact on founders' decisions when selecting their partners. It also reflects on the challenges faced by third-generation VC firms in a changing industry, punctuated by a personal anecdote related to the joy of participating in rugby.

Transcript

chevron_right

Play full episode

chevron_right

Transcript

Episode notes

On this episode of Invested, Michael hosts Sarah Tavel. Sarah is a General Partner at Benchmark, where she invests in network effect businesses and applications leveraging AI. Sarah currently sits on the boards of Agentio, Chainalysis, Hipcamp, Rekki, Glide, Cambly, Medely, and 11x. She is also a founding member of All Raise, the nonprofit organization working to accelerate the success of women in the venture capital and VC-backed startup ecosystem. Prior to Benchmark, Sarah was a General Partner at Greylock Partners, where she led their investment in Sonder ($SOND) and Gixo (acquired by Openfit), and represented Greylock on the board of both companies. Sarah joined Pinterest in 2012 after co-leading the Series A investment while at Bessemer Venture Partners. There she was the product lead for search, recommendations, machine vision, and pin quality at Pinterest. As one of the first 35 employees, her first order of business was to launch Pinterest internationally and close the Series C financing. She also led three acquisitions as she helped the company scale through a period of hyper-growth. Sarah graduated from Harvard College with a degree in Philosophy.

Please rate this episode 5 stars wherever you stream your podcasts!

KEY TOPICS