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Propel is on a mission to reinvent product development
Talks about Startup, Product and Product Design
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Chris Farmer
Founder of SignalFire
San Francisco, California
Overview
Chris Farmer is the Founder and CEO of SignalFire, a venture capital firm where he has successfully invested in companies like Formant and Stampli, among others. With a background in product management and private equity, he has held key roles at General Catalyst Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners, contributing to his expertise in entrepreneurship and building successful startups.
Work Experience
Founder & CEO
2013 - Current
SignalFire is a complete redesign of the modern venture firm based on years of careful study and development by a team of world class investors and engineers. The end result is a radically different tech enabled model that brings unparalleled firepower to solve the biggest entrepreneur pain points. We invest out of two funds (seed/small A) and a later stage fund for companies that have found strong traction and are "breaking out". Our distributed network approach provides expert advice from some of the world's best entrepreneurs, product & engineering leaders in virtually every key discipline and industry. We have developed a first of its kind centralized infrastructure to help with recruiting exceptional talent, business development, customer acquisition as well as educational & community events. We don’t follow the crowd, and almost always lead our investment rounds as the first institutional investors in exceptional companies. You can read more at www.signalfire.com and at: https://medium.com/signalfire-fund
SignalFire is a venture capital firm that invests in seed stage companies and breakout companies.
Venture Partner
2010 - 2013
Focused on consumer & software investments including mobile, ecommerce, digital media, gaming, SaaS & big data. Responsible for General Catalyst's seed investment program - GC Seed - which included seed investments in Alation, ClassDojo, Coinbase, Discord, FiveTran, Game Closure/PlayCo, Getaround, Stripe, Venmo [acq by Braintree], Zapier, & Zenefits, among many others.
General Catalyst partners with ambitious founders to drive resilience and applied AI from seed to growth.
Vice President
2005 - 2009
Focused on digital media & consumer mobile. Investor/Board Member/Observer for Millennial Media [IPO; acq by VZ/AOL], Access Sports Media, Goal.com [Acq by Perform Group] & Enforta Wireless [acq by ER Telecom]. Personal angel investments alongside BVP funds in LinkedIn [IPO], Broadsoft [IPO], Endeca [Acq by Oracle], Cornerstone OnDemand [IPO], Lifelock [IPO], Diapers.com [acq by Amazon], OLX [Acq by Naspers], Postini [Acq by Google], Vertica [Acq by HP], Gracenote [Acq by Sony], Hunch [Acq by eBay], PA Semi [Acq by Apple], etc.
BVP Forge operates as a private equity firm that focuses on software-enabled businesses.
Consultant - Private Equity
2004 - 2005
Focused on large scale leveraged buyouts & strategy consulting to technology companies
Vice President, Product Management & Business Development
2000 - 2004
VP of Product Management & Business Development for wireless enabled SaaS business serving several enterprise markets. Responsible for product management, fundraising, partnerships, recruiting and the business functions. Managed product definition, launch & rapid growth of full suite of core products & services that took business from $0-$35M in Revenue & $5M in EBITDA before its acquisition by Telular.
SkyBitz, a mobile asset management company, delivers real-time tracking and information management solutions.
Raised $48,000,000.00 from Motorola Solutions Venture Capital, AIG Investments, AIG Highstar Capital, Inverness Graham Investments, CIBC World Markets and Information Technology Ventures.
Education
BA
1993 - 1997
Investments
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