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Ernestine Fu | |
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 Fu in 2024 | |
| Born | April 30, 1992 Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | Stanford University (BS, MS, MBA, PhD) |
| Occupations |
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Ernestine Fu (born April 30, 1992) [1] is an American venture capitalist, investor, and author.
Fu was born in Los Angeles, California, [2] where she attended North Hollywood High School's Highly Gifted Magnet program. [1]
Fu graduated with her B.S., M.S., MBA, and Ph.D. from Stanford University. [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]
Fu is an investment partner at Brave Capital. [8] Inspired by her colleagues' government and national security backgrounds, particularly their work at the NSA and In-Q-Tel, she started her career at Alsop Louie Partners while still as an undergraduate at Stanford University and has since been a venture partner at the firm. She closed her first deal in her first two months at the firm, and was recognized for bringing a fresh face to venture capital as a young Asian-American woman. [1] [9] [10] [11]
She is frequently cited on the topic of autonomous vehicles. She has made investments in early-stage technology companies like Zoox (now a subsidiary of Amazon) and nuTonomy (now part of the Motional autonomous driving joint venture between Aptiv and Hyundai Motor Group). [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] She completed her doctoral thesis on autonomous vehicles at Stanford University's Volkswagen Automotive Innovation Lab, and her research has received awards at academic conferences such as the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. [18] She has been a director at Hyundai Motor Group. [19]
Fu has been an advisor to DBS Bank. She helped launch the bank's venture debt program for financing startups and was the face of DBS BusinessClass, a program to foster entrepreneurship in Asia. [20] [21] [22]
Fu has taught courses on the effects and applications of emerging technology as an adjunct professor and is co-director of the Frontier Technology Lab. [23]
Forbes named her to its inaugural 30 Under 30 list; Vanity Fair named her to its Next Establishment list; and Business Insider named her to its Silicon Valley 100 list. [24] [25] [26] Prior to including her on its 30 Under 30 list, Forbes featured her on the cover of its print magazine in the United States. [27] She received the Kauffman Fellowship for venture capitalists and Eisenhower Fellowship for mid-career professionals. [28] [29]
Vinod Khosla is an Indian-American billionaire businessman and venture capitalist. He is a co-founder of Sun Microsystems and the founder of Khosla Ventures. Khosla made his wealth from early venture capital investments in areas such as networking, software, and alternative energy technologies. He is considered one of the most successful and influential venture capitalists. Khosla was named the top venture capitalist on the Forbes Midas List in 2001 and has been listed multiple times since that time. As of August 2024, Forbes estimated his net worth at US$7.2 billion.
Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in terms of number of employees, annual revenue, scale of operations, etc. Venture capital firms or funds invest in these early-stage companies in exchange for equity, or an ownership stake. Venture capitalists take on the risk of financing start-ups in the hopes that some of the companies they support will become successful. Because startups face high uncertainty, VC investments have high rates of failure. Start-ups are usually based on an innovative technology or business model and often come from high technology industries such as information technology (IT) or biotechnology.
James J. Goetz is an American venture capitalist and businessman who is a partner with Sequoia Capital. Goetz is known for his focus on mobile and enterprise startups, including successful investments in AdMob, WhatsApp, Chartboost and GitHub. In 2017, Goetz announced he was stepping back from his leadership role with Sequoia, but continues to invest and represent the firm on company boards.
Super angel was a term used in the early 2010s to describe venture capital investors who had once been angel investors and subsequently raised small venture capital funds.
Alexia Bonatsos, née Tsotsis, is an American venture capitalist and former co-editor of TechCrunch, a technology news website. In 2011, she was listed by Forbes magazine as among the top 30 under 30 in the Media category.
Floodgate Fund is a venture capital firm based in the United States created by Mike Maples Jr. and Ann Miura-Ko. It was originally named Maples Investments, but was renamed Floodgate Fund in March 2010. It is focused on investments in technology companies in Silicon Valley.
StartX is a non-profit startup accelerator and founder community associated with Stanford University.
Neil Rimer is a Swiss-Canadian venture capitalist who is the founding partner at Index Ventures, a venture capital firm that invests in Europe, the United States, and Israel. He is also the co-chair of the board of directors at Human Rights Watch.
Josh Stein is an American businessman and venture capitalist. He is a managing partner at Threshold Ventures and was featured in the Forbes Midas List in 2013, 2014 and 2015 in recognition of his accomplishments as an investor. He was also the recipient of the 2015 Deloitte Fast 500 Venture Capitalist of the Year award. Stein holds board responsibilities at Box (company), Chartbeat, LaunchDarkley, LendKey, Lumity, and Talkdesk—and led Box’s first round of institutional investment. He is also an investor in AngelList, Doximity, Front, Loftium, Periscope Data acquired by Sisense, and Rippling.
NuTonomy was an MIT spin-off technology startup company that made software to build self-driving cars and autonomous mobile robots. The company was founded in 2013. In August 2016, it launched its robo-taxi service in Singapore. In October 2017, Delphi Automotive purchased the company, which then became part of the Motional autonomous driving joint venture between Aptiv and Hyundai Motor Group.
Theresia Gouw is an entrepreneur and venture capital investor in the technology sector. She worked at Bain & Company, Release Software and Accel Partners before co-founding Aspect Ventures, a female-led venture capital firm, in 2014. According to Forbes, Gouw is the richest female venture capitalist, with a net worth of approximately $500 million, primarily due to her involvement with Accel's early investment in Facebook.
Avid Larizadeh-Duggan OBE is an Iranian-French-American entrepreneur and venture capitalist. She is a managing director at Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Innovation Platform, EMEA and is a non executive director of Barclays Bank UK.
Sue Khim is an American education entrepreneur. She is the co-founder and current CEO of Brilliant.org, an educational platform and online community that features problems and courses in mathematics, physics, quantitative finance, and computer science. She also co-founded edtech start-up Alltuition, which helped students find low-cost college loans and assisted with financial aid forms. In 2012, she was named one of Forbes' 30 Under 30 in education.
Mamoon Hamid is a Pakistani-American venture capitalist currently serving as a Managing Member and General Partner at the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins.
Drive.ai, a subsidiary of Apple Inc., is an American technology company headquartered in Mountain View, California that uses artificial intelligence to make self-driving systems for cars. It has demonstrated a vehicle driving autonomously with a safety driver only in the passenger seat. To date, the company has raised approximately $77 million in funding. Drive.ai's technology can be modified to turn a vehicle autonomous.
Cyan Banister is an American angel investor and entrepreneur. She is a partner at Long Journey Ventures, an early stage venture capital fund. She was an early investor in Uber, Niantic, Postmates, DeepMind, Carta, Thumbtack, Flexport, Affirm, and SpaceX, and co-founded Zivity, an adult-themed social networking site. Banister was the first woman investing partner at the venture capital Founders Fund, where she led seed and early-stage investments.
Young Sohn (Korean: 손영권) is a Korean-American business executive and investor. He currently serves as Chairman of the Samsung Semiconductor Advisory Board, Chairman of the Board at HARMAN International, and is a Founding Managing Partner at Walden Catalyst Ventures. He is also a board member of Cadence Design Systems and ARM. Previously he was the president and chief strategy officer of Samsung Electronics. He also served as CEO of two successful public Silicon Valley companies, Inphi Corporation and Oak Technology, and has been recognized as "the best-connected chip executive in the semiconductor industry." Sohn co-founded the Extreme Tech Challenge (XTC), one of the world’s largest global startup competitions, inspired by the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). He was also a senior advisor to the private equity firm Silver Lake Partners.
Avride Inc. is a developer of self-driving cars and delivery robots. It is organized in Delaware and headquartered in Austin, Texas, with offices in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Tel Aviv, and Seoul. It is a subsidiary of Nebius Group and was formerly an affiliate of Yandex called Yandex SDG.
Freestyle Capital is an early-stage venture capital firm based in San Francisco, California. General Partners Dave Samuel and Jenny Lefcourt are both entrepreneurs who entered venture capital after founding multiple companies. The firm was founded in 2009 and typically invests in 10-12 companies per year with an average investment between $1.5 million to $3 million. Previous investments include Intercom, Patreon, Narvar, Digit, Betterup, Airtable and Snapdocs.
Mar Hershenson is a Spanish-American venture capitalist, electrical engineer, professor, and business executive in the electronic design automation industry. She is the co-founder and managing partner at Pear VC. In 2021, she ranked #29 on Forbes' Midas List.
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