Chris Farmer
Founder of SignalFire
Chris Farmer
Founder of SignalFire
San Francisco, California
Overview
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
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.
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.
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.
Education
BA
1993 - 1997
Investments
Latest Articles
Propel is on a mission to reinvent product development
Talks about Startup, Product and Product Design
From Farm to Pizza and Beyond
Talks about Food Delivery, Robotics and Venture Capital