Hayley Barna | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | New York |
| Alma mater | Harvard University and Harvard Business School |
| Occupation(s) | Entrepreneur, investor |
| Website | First Round |
Hayley Barna is an American entrepreneur and venture capitalist who co-founded Birchbox in 2009, while at Harvard Business School. [1] In 2015, Barna "stepped away from her day-to-day role" at Birchbox, [2] remaining a board member. In 2016, she became a partner of First Round Capital. [3]
Hayley Bay Barna was born in 1983. [4] Her parents, Eileen B. Maisel and Richard A. Barna of New York, both worked at RAB Lighting in New Jersey. [4] In high school, she was published in an international science research journal. [5] She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard [4] and has an MBA at Harvard Business School. [6]
Barna began her career shortly after she graduated from Harvard University joining Bain & Company in New York. [7] She moved to Christie's Hong Kong location where she worked in strategy and then in product management for Amazon.com. [8]
While working towards her MBA at Harvard Business School, Barna met Katia Beauchamp and a friendship was born. So, too, was the idea of Birchbox which Barna founded with Beauchamp. [6] What began as a business plan during B-School turned into a website where they began to acquire customers interested in "an ecommerce experience focused on new product discovery." [9] They founded the company Birchbox together in 2010. [2] In 2013, she and Beauchamp won the Leadership Award At Forbes Women's Summit. [10] Barna and Beauchamp opened the first Birchbox store in 2014. [11]
As of 2015, Birchbox had received over $70 million in venture funding and had one million subscribers. [12] In August 2015, [13] Barna ceased co-leading the company as co-CEO. [2] She spent the subsequent six months as an angel investor. [13]
Although she stepped down from her role as co-CEO of Birchbox in 2015, [14] [15] she remained a member of the board. [16]
After announcing it in February, [17] she joined First Round Capital as a venture partner in 2016. [13] On February 16, 2016, Barna shared a post on publishing platform medium.com about her first day at First Round stating, "I can’t think of a better place to do this than First Round, which led the seed round in my company Birchbox, and has always put founders first through good times and bad." [18] She was their first female partner. [19] [3] One of her first initial First Round investments was the travel startup Collective Hotels & Retreats, with her also joining the board. [20] By late 2017, she largely focused on e-commerce startups. [16] She was on the boards of Madison Reed and RAB Lighting. [16]
By late 2017, she was organizing a working group of women in technology in New York with monthly meetings. [21] Also in late 2017, she was promoted to general partner. At that point, she had invested in companies such as Collective Retreats, Keeps, CrowdJustice, and Mirror. [13]
Barna is based in Manhattan, [22] New York. [16] During her time at Harvard Business School she met her husband, Fredrik Vik Maroe. They wed in 2014 at a private estate located in Staatsburg, New York. [4]
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