Theresia Gouw

Last updated
Theresia Gouw
Theresia Gouw.jpg
NationalityAmerican
Alma mater Brown University, Stanford Graduate School of Business
Occupation(s)Co-founder and Managing Partner, Acrew Capital
Website acrewcapital.com

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. [1] 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. [2] [3]

Contents

Early years and education

Gouw's family fled Indonesia when she was three to escape the persecution of the country’s ethnic Chinese minority under the Suharto dictatorship. A dentist and a nurse in Jakarta, her parents settled outside Buffalo, New York, working as a dishwasher and a waitress before her father re-earned his dental certification in the United States. [4]

Gouw earned a Bachelor of Science in Engineering from Brown University, graduating magna cum laude, [5] and an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business. [6]

Career

Gouw speaking during 2019 TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco Theresia Gouw 2019.jpg
Gouw speaking during 2019 TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco

Early career

Gouw began her career at Bain & Company. She left Bain to become a founding member of Release Software, a startup founded by business school classmates, [1] where she served as Vice President of Business Development & Sales.

After Release Software, Gouw joined Accel Partners, eventually becoming Managing Partner.

Aspect Ventures

In 2014, Gouw co-founded Aspect Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm, with fellow venture capital investor Jennifer Fonstad. [7] Gouw and Fonstad worked together early in their careers at Bain & Company and at Release Software. [1]

During the first year, Aspect Ventures made several Series A and seed investments funded by the co-founders' personal capital. Aspect secured $150 million for its debut fund, [8] which included outside capital from Limited Partners, [9] and followed it with a second fund of $181 million in early 2018. [10] [11] It had 116 rounds of investments in 67 companies and had 13 exists. [12]

The firm made investments in companies including Exabeam [13] and The Muse. [14]

The founders decided to split in 2019 over clashing management styles. [10] Both founders started new venture capital firms. Fonstad started a new firm called Owl Capital [10] and Gouw along with some other Aspect Venture staff started aCrew Capital. [15] [16]

2019 - present

In 2019, Gouw co-founded Acrew Capital with Lauren Kolodny, Vishal Lugani, Asad Khaliq and Mark Kraynak. [17] Acrew's first fund was a ~$250MM fund. They've since announced a new initiative called Acrew Diversify Capital Fund (DCF) to diversify the boards and cap tables of market leading, late stage companies. [18]

In 2024, Gouw was part of a consortium of venture capital and private equity executives that purchased a minority stake in the Buffalo Bills. [19]

Board member and advisor

She serves as Treasurer on the Brown University Corporation Board. [5] She serves as vice-chair of the board of DonorsChoose, [20] and is a member of the Stanford Graduate School of Business Advisory Council. [21] She also serves on the board of trustees of the Castilleja School. [22]

Related Research Articles

Sequoia Capital Operations, LLC is an American venture capital firm headquartered in Menlo Park, California which specializes in seed stage, early stage, and growth stage investments in private companies across technology sectors. As of 2022, the firm had approximately US$85 billion in assets under management.

Benchmark is a venture capital firm founded in 1995 by Bob Kagle, Bruce Dunlevie, Andy Rachleff, Kevin Harvey, and Val Vaden.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Steve Jurvetson</span> American entrepreneur and venture capitalist

Stephen T. Jurvetson is an American billionaire businessman and venture capitalist. Formerly a partner of the firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ), he was an early investor in Hotmail, Memphis Meats, Mythic and Nervana Systems. He is currently a board member of SpaceX among others. He later co-founded the firm Future Ventures with Maryanna Saenko, who worked with him at DFJ.

Accel, formerly known as Accel Partners, is a global venture capital firm. Accel works with startups in seed, early and growth-stage investments. The company has offices in Palo Alto, California and San Francisco, California, with additional operating funds in London, and India.

Norwest Venture Partners (Norwest) is an American venture and growth equity investment firm. The firm targets early to late-stage venture and growth equity investments across several sectors, including cloud computing and information technology, Internet, SaaS, business and financial services, and healthcare. Headquartered in Menlo Park, California, Norwest has offices in San Francisco and subsidiaries in Mumbai, India and Tel Aviv, Israel. The firm has funded more than 700 companies since inception.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Insight Partners</span> American investment manager

Insight Venture Management, LLC is a global venture capital and private equity firm that invests in high-growth technology, software, and Internet businesses. The company is headquartered in New York City, with offices in London, Tel Aviv, and Palo Alto.

Lightspeed Venture Partners is a global venture capital firm focusing on seed stage, early stage investments and growth stage investments in the enterprise, fintech, consumer and healthcare sectors. Lightspeed has eleven offices globally and as of 2023 had approximately US$25 billion in assets under management.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jim Breyer</span> American venture capitalist (born 1961)

James W. Breyer is an American venture capitalist, founder and chief executive officer of Breyer Capital, an investment and venture philanthropy firm, and a former managing partner at Accel Partners, a venture capital firm. Breyer has invested in over 40 companies that have gone public or completed a merger, with some of these investments, including Facebook, earning over 100 times cost and many others over 25 times cost. On the Forbes 2021 list of the 400 richest Americans, he was ranked #389, with a net worth of US$2.9 billion.

AH Capital Management, LLC is an American privately held venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. As of April 2023, Andreessen Horowitz ranks first on the list of venture capital firms by assets under management, with $42 billion as of May 2024.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mike Volpi</span>

Michelangelo "Mike" Volpi is an Italian-American businessman and venture capitalist.

BetterCloud, an independent software vendor based in New York, NY and with engineering offices in Atlanta, GA, builds unified SaaS management software. A venture-backed startup, BetterCloud has raised $187 million in total funding, with the most recent round was led by Warburg Pincus with series F funding with $75 million raised to date. A previous round of funding was done in April 2018 which was led by Bain Capital Ventures. In December 2016, BetterCloud completed pivot from G Suite to general SaaS management.

Uncork Capital is an American venture capital firm based in San Francisco, California, that was founded by Jeff Clavier. In 2016, it was considered one of the most active established seed funds in Silicon Valley, with investments in companies such as Postmates, Eventbrite, Fitbit, and SendGrid.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Spark Capital</span> American venture capital firm

Spark Capital is a venture capital firm in the United States which specializes in funding early-stage startups of consumer, commerce, FinTech, software, frontier, and media sectors. It has branches in San Francisco, Boston, and New York City.

CapitalG Management Company LLC is the independent growth fund under Alphabet Inc. Founded in 2013, it focuses on larger, growth-stage technology companies, and invests for profit rather than strategically for Google. In addition to capital investment, CapitalG's approach includes giving portfolio companies access to Google's people, knowledge, and culture to support the companies' growth and offer them guidance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aileen Lee</span> American investor

Aileen Lee is a U.S. venture capital angel investor and co-founder of Cowboy Ventures.

Women in venture capital or VC are investors who provide venture capital funding to startups. Women make up a small fraction of the venture capital private equity workforce. A widely used source for tracking the number of women in venture capital is the Midas List which has been published by Forbes since 2001. Research from Women in VC, a global community of women venture investors, shows that the percentage of female VC partners is just shy of 5 percent.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carta (software company)</span> American software company

eShares, Inc., doing business as Carta, Inc., is a San Francisco, California-based technology company that specializes in capitalization table management and valuation software. The company digitizes paper stock certificates along with stock options, warrants, and derivatives to allow companies, investors, and employees to manage their equity and track company ownership. The company also operated CartaX, a private stock exchange, which was shuttered in 2024.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jennifer Fonstad</span> American venture capital investor (born 1965)

Jennifer Fonstad is an American venture capital investor and entrepreneur. She is the managing partner and a co-founder of the Owl Capital Group, a venture firm based in Silicon Valley. Fonstad was the Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) for 17 years. She is also a co-founder of angel investing network Broadway Angels.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pear VC</span> Seed-stage venture firm

Pear VC is a seed-stage venture firm based in Menlo Park, California. It was founded by Pejman Nozad and Mar Hershenson in 2013. Pear VC works with early-stage companies. The company was originally based in Palo Alto, California before relocating to Menlo Park.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thrive Capital</span> American venture capital firm

Thrive Capital Management, LLC, commonly Thrive Capital, is an American venture capital firm based in New York City. It focuses on software and internet investments. The firm was founded by Joshua Kushner who is also co-founder of Oscar Health and minority owner of the Memphis Grizzlies.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Bridging The Funding Gap: An Interview With The Women Behind Aspect Ventures". Forbes.
  2. ↑ Au-Yeung, Angel. "How Theresia Gouw Became America's Richest Female Venture Capitalist". Forbes. Retrieved 2021-04-10.
  3. ↑ "Theresia Gouw". Forbes. Retrieved 2022-11-15.
  4. ↑ "2019 Great Immigrants Recipient".
  5. 1 2 "Theresia Gouw". Brown University.
  6. ↑ "Stanford GSB Alumni Association: Theresia Gouw". Stanford Graduate School of Business. Standord GSB.
  7. ↑ "Accel's Theresia Gouw And DFJ's Jennifer Fonstad Partner To Launch Mobile-Focused VC Firm Aspect Ventures". TechCrunch. AOL, Inc. 5 February 2014.
  8. ↑ Boorstin, Julia (2015-05-14). "Aspect Ventures, a woman-led VC, raises $150 million fund". CNBC. Retrieved 2023-10-12.
  9. ↑ "VCs Jennifer Fonstad, Theresia Gouw raise $150M for Aspect Ventures' first fund". Silicon Valley Business Journal. American City Business Journals.
  10. 1 2 3 Konrad, Alex (January 23, 2018). "Aspect Ventures Raises $181 Million Second Fund From Investors Including Melinda Gates". Forbes .
  11. ↑ Loizos, Connie (2019-09-17). "Aspect Ventures, founded by Theresia Gouw and Jennifer Fonstad, is splitting up". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2023-10-12.
  12. ↑ "Aspect Ventures — 116 Investments, 13 Exits, 67 Portfolio companies". Unicorn Nest. Retrieved 2023-10-12.
  13. ↑ "Exabeam Raises $10 Million For Network-Tracking Security Software". TechCrunch. AOL, Inc. 10 June 2014.
  14. ↑ "Millennial Career Site The Muse Raises More Cash". Fortune. Time, Inc.
  15. ↑ "Cisco-Backed Acrew Capital Has $680 Million in New Venture Funds". Bloomberg.com. 2021-09-28. Retrieved 2023-10-12.
  16. ↑ Loizos, Connie (2019-12-18). "Theresia Gouw's 'multigenerational' new firm, Acrew, just closed a $250 million debut fund". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2023-10-12.
  17. ↑ Team, The Acrew (2019-12-18). "How our crew became Acrew". Medium. Retrieved 2021-08-03.
  18. ↑ Costa, Cameron (2021-02-04). "A new Silicon Valley idea to make the next Facebook or Google more diverse". CNBC. Retrieved 2021-08-03.
  19. ↑ Wilson, Brayton (2024-12-11). "NFL approves new minority ownership group for Bills". WBEN . Retrieved 2024-12-11.
  20. ↑ "Meet the Team: Theresia Gouw". DonorsChoose.org.
  21. ↑ "Stanford GSB Advisory Council". Stanford Graduate School of Business. Stanford GSB.
  22. ↑ "Castilleja School Board of Trustees". Castilleja School.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.