Ep 22 – Dafina Toncheva, General Partner, USVP

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Jun 6, 2023

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ANECDOTE

From Bulgaria To Harvard

Dafina applied broadly to US schools from Bulgaria with help from the US embassy and nonprofits, requesting fee waivers and aid.
She applied to about 50 schools, got into 12, and ended up at Harvard after a year-long effort.

ANECDOTE

Career Path Through Tech And Business School

After Harvard, Dafina worked at Microsoft as a developer and product manager before pursuing an MBA at Stanford.
At Stanford she met a Vanrock partner who offered a two-year associate role that launched her venture career.

ADVICE

Pick Teams That Need You Most

Choose organizations where your success is aligned with the firm's needs and where you can add visible value.
Join teams that need you most because they will invest in your development and reward your contributions.

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Learn more about Jeffrey Pfeffer and where you can buy or listen to his books:
JeffreyPfeffer.com

Ep 22 – Dafina Toncheva, General Partner, USVP

SHOW NOTES:

Dafina Toncheva, General Partner at USVP, discusses how she’s strategically used the Rules of Power concepts to manage her career. From a small town in Bulgaria to now being a major figure in Silicon Valley, she has succeeded in an industry that has not traditionally welcomed women. Join us and learn how the principles of power apply to women and men, and how to use those principles of power to navigate an extraordinarily successful career for yourself.

You'll learn from Dafina:

Where she’s from, how she got to the U.S., and her career trajectory
What political forces led her to desire to look for opportunities abroad
How she ultimately ended up at Harvard and the only way she knew to get there
Her path between college and her current career
The lens she used to decide to join USVP in 2012
The use of power in her career to make the most impact
The importance of aligning your success goals with the company’s goals
How she navigated in a less-than-welcoming business environment
How she has stood up for herself and put the Rules of Power into action
The importance of developing constructive professional relationships with board members
A surprising take on what is as important as the investments that are made
How managing the narrative of the firm is incredibly important

GUEST BIO:

Dafina Toncheva (dafina@usvp.com), a general partner at USVP, invests in emerging technologies in the enterprise space with focus on Enterprise SaaS applications and security. She has led investments in and joined the boards of Luma Health, Arkose Labs, Raken, Percepto, Carrot Fertility, Nfinite, Sepio Systems, Trust Lab and Surgical Safety Technologies. Dafina served on the board of Prevoty, a leader in application security, who was acquired by Imperva where USVP was the lead investor and largest shareholder.

Prior to joining USVP, Dafina was a principal investor with Tugboat Ventures. Before that, she spent two years at Venrock helping to expand the firm’s investments in SaaS, virtualization, security, infrastructure and enterprise applications. Dafina led the first institutional investment round in Cloudflare (NYSE: NET). Her other investments included Aria Systems, Kenna Security (acquired by Cisco) and Matrixx Software. Before becoming an investor, Dafina held positions in development and product management at Microsoft focusing on authentication systems, digital signatures and business workflow. She has co-authored several key patents.

Dafina holds an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business and a BS in Computer Science, magna cum laude, with special focus on cryptography, efficient algorithms and database systems from Harvard University.

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dafinat/

Produced by The MunnAvenuePress.com