Joe Saijo
Founder of Counterpart Ventures
Joe Saijo
Founder of Counterpart Ventures
San Francisco, California
Overview
Work Experience
Co-Founder and Partner
2018 - Current
Stage-agnostic VC embracing an innovative and flexible funding model. $2M-$8M investment range with emphasis on speed, conviction and partnership.
Investor
2014
DocuSign operates a cloud-based electronic signature platform that helps small- and medium-sized businesses, enterprises, and individuals collect information, automate data workflows, and sign on various devices. The company’s platform automates manual and paper-based processes that allow users to manage various aspects of documented business transactions, including identity management, authentication, digital signature, forms and data collection, collaboration, and workflow automation and storage.
Investor
2016
ShipBob is a smartphone application, allowing its users to ship items by a simple click of their phone camera. It enables users to take photos of the items that they want to ship and connects to a ship captain that provides pick up, package, and shipping services. ShipBob also provides its users with a tracking number that allows them to track their shipment.
Investor
2014
Founded in 2013, ClassPass is a monthly subscription service providing access to the world’s largest network of boutique fitness studios and gyms. With tens of thousands of classes available at over 8,000 locations worldwide, ClassPass makes working out more engaging, accessible, and affordable, giving members unprecedented choice and flexibility by offering a diversity of options, including cycling, Pilates, yoga, boot camp, strength training, dance and more.
Investor
2017
ShoCard is a digital identity that protects consumer privacy and is as easy to understand and use as showing a driver’s license. It’s optimized for mobile and so secure that a bank can rely on it.
Investor
2016
Brickwork is the first scalable SaaS platform for retailers to create a seamless customer path between online and store shopping. While 90% of sales still occur in physical stores, over 65% of customers start their path to purchase online. Brickwork enables retailers to fully integrate their physical stores into their online presence and empower local teams with new digital marketing and customer service tools to engage customers to enter stores with greater intent to purchase. The Brickwork platform includes features around services & appointments, events & promotions, and associates & stylists, all delivered to the customer via immersive store pages and widgets embedded within e-commerce.
Investor
2016
Savioke (pronounced "savvy oak") is creating autonomous robot helpers for the services industry. We are passionate about delivering easy-to-use yet sophisticated robots that can help people. We aim to improve the lives of people by developing and deploying robotic technology in human environments - the places people live and work. Over time, personal robots will help people to achieve their potential, enhancing our strengths, overcoming our weaknesses, and endowing us with new capabilities we are just beginning to imagine. We are inspired by people who use technology to overcome disabilities, and we believe that robots have the potential to make all of our lives better. We treat our employees, our customers, our suppliers, our partners and most importantly those who use our technology with the respect that is due to all people. We enjoy what we do, and aim for our technology to bring joy those who encounter it. And we hold each other to a high level of responsibility and performance, so that as a company we can achieve great things. Focus, focus, focus. Every great journey begins with a single step. We will build the simplest mobile robot we can that provides value in the service industry, get them into the world, and grow from there. We are revolutionizing the way things move in hotels, elder care facilities, hospitals, restaurants… anywhere people sleep or eat. Our first product is not announced yet, so please stay tuned for more information.
Investor
2016
Alignable is the network exclusively for local business owners to connect. By providing a platform available on both desktop and mobile, local business owners have the opportunity to build meaningful relationships, collaborate, engage in valuable Q+A, learn and create new referral opportunities together.
Investor
2015
Bench is a four-year-old fintech company that automates accounting tasks to organize the financials of small businesses. Pairing its intuitive software with a live bookkeeping team, Bench combines the convenience and efficiency of modern technology with the expertise and time-savings afforded by a professional service. Bench was founded by Forbes 30 Under 30 winner, Ian Crosby along with Jordan Menashy, Adam Saint and Pavel Rodionov in 2012. Bench has raised $33M to date, services thousands of business owners across the country and currently employs 250 people out of its headquarters in Vancouver, Canada.
Investor
2011
DataRobot offers a machine learning platform for data scientists of all skill levels to build and deploy accurate predictive models in a fraction of the time it used to take. The technology addresses the critical shortage of data scientists by changing the speed and economics of predictive analytics. The DataRobot platform uses massively parallel processing to train and evaluate 1000's of models in R, Python, Spark MLlib, H2O and other open source libraries. It searches through millions of possible combinations of algorithms, pre-processing steps, features, transformations and tuning parameters to deliver the best models for your dataset and prediction target.
Education
BA
1997 - 2001