Brian Nichols
Founder of Hustle Fund
San Francisco, California
Overview
Work Experience
Angel Squad Co-Founder
2020 - Current
Angel Squad is an angel investing community run by Hustle Fund that was created to teach how to invest in startups and provide access to invest in the most promising ones. TechCrunch referred to Angel Squad as the "YC of Angel Investing."
Angel Investor
2019
The best place to learn more is @ my personal website: nicholsb.com I lead an active syndicate with 3.5k members that's deployed $25M+, and have formally Advised 5 companies.
Program Director, On Deck Angel Fellowship
2020 - 2020
Created, launched, and ran the first two cohorts of the On Deck Angels program. The program pioneered On Deck's expansion into verticals outside of the founder fellowship. The success of the program led to On Deck developing the org structure to hire Program Directors to lead verticals that were complementary to the founder fellowship.
Head Of Partnerships
2020 - 2020
- Responsible for procuring sponsorships for On Deck Founder and Angel Fellowships. - Built and manage program to introduce our founders to investor partners as founders begin fundraising process.
On Deck is a community platform designed to develop different ideas and build companies.
Raised $20,000,000.00 from Pioneer Fund.
Head Of Business Development
2019 - 2020
BlackBird was acquired by Surf Air in February, 2020 - Instrumental in Series A fundraise ($10M from NEA) - Focused on strategic partnerships / the future of flight (electric aircraft)
Head Of Operations
2018 - 2019
- Grew team from 5 to 40+ full-time employees and contractors. - Recruited and hired leadership from Lyft, Postmates, Uber, Caviar to support the rapid growth of the business.
BlackBird is on a mission to make flying as convenient and affordable as driivng
Raised $15,034,999.00 from Lunch Partners and New Enterprise Associates.
Angel Track
2019 - 2019
Angel Track is a masterclass and community for angel investors whose full-time jobs are in leadership roles at tech companies. 1 of 16 selected out of 1k+ applicants.
First Round Angel Track is a community of operators and founders looking to develop their skills and identities as early-stage investors.
Operations Manager
2017 - 2018
Zoox was acquired by Amazon in June, 2020. - Responsible for standing up remote teleoperation unit to support fleet of autonomous vehicles during live operation. - Represented Zoox’s operations organization when meeting potential investors during our Series B fundraise ($500M, $2.7B valuation).
Zoox is an AI robotics company that provides mobility-as-a-service and self-driving car services.
Raised $1,005,000,000.00 from Alium Capital, Employee Stock Option Fund and Grok Ventures.
Market Operations Manager (National)
2016 - 2017
- Responsible for building out Lyft's local presence in all top 25 Lyft markets. - Hired local leadership, scaled repeatable playbooks, and provided analytics solutions for Lyft's highest growth markets across the country.
Market Manager, California
2014 - 2016
- First Market Manager on the West Coast, drove efficient growth for all of the CA Markets - Accounted for 50%+ of all Lyft rides
Lyft’s Atlanta driver service center is a high quality, fairly-priced vehicle services.
Co-founder
2011 - 2014
RewardTag was bootstrapped and acquired by STM Goods (https://www.stmgoods.com/). Main partners included Logitech, Seidio, STM Goods which lead to over 2.5M RewardTag units distributed globally.