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Technicolored Glasses
Talks about Israel, poetry and REALITY venture trip
MP
Maria Palma
General Partner at Freestyle Capital
San Francisco Bay Area
Overview
Maria Palma is currently a General Partner at Freestyle Capital in San Francisco Bay Area, specializing in investing in Seed and Series A stages within sectors like Web3/Crypto, FinTech, and Consumer Internet. With a background in industrial engineering and a Master of Business Administration from Harvard Business School, Maria has held key roles at prominent firms such as RRE Ventures and has made successful investments in companies like Fung Payments and Pattern Brands.
Work Experience
General Partner
2024 - Current
Freestyle is a venture capital firm that focuses on early-stage technology companies.
Scout
2024 - 2024
Accel is an seed and growth-stage venture capital firm that helps a global community of entrepreneurs.
General Partner
2021 - 2024
Maria Palma is a General Partner at Kindred Capital, a seed and early-stage venture firm focusing on European technology companies. • As Kindred is a GP-only fund (modeled after Benchmark) Maria was responsible for sourcing, winning, and helping all of her portfolio companies, and helping with firm operations & day to day management from LP relationships to managing the team or launching new initiatives for the fund. • She has lead investments in companies like Fung, Mojo, Lottie, and Vitaance. She's recently been spending a lot of her time in AI infrastructure making firm investments like Dunia and made personal angel investments in companies like Lovable, .txt and Clusterfudge.
Investor & Board Director
2022 - 2024
Investor & Board Director
2022 - 2024
Investor & Board Director
2021 - 2024
Lottie is a care home marketplace for the elderly, and a SaaS business selling into care homes.
Investor & Board Director
2021 - 2024
Investor & Board Director
2021 - 2024
Mojo is a sexual wellbeing community.
Principal
2015 - 2020
• Source & diligence 400+ deals per year. Lead thesis deep dives within core verticals. • Led investments in Ladder (Board Observer), Pattern (Board Observer), Lightning Labs, Mobot, Moov, and Novo. • Actively involved with portfolio companies, such as Avant (Board Observer), Amount (Board Observer), Bend (Board Observer), Bread, Gem (Board Member) and Fi (Board Observer). Key point of contact for 12 other portfolio companies. • Co-founder & President of NYC BLEND, a nonprofit connecting underrepresented founders to venture in NY.
Vice President Business Development (’17-’18) and Director of Platform (’15-’17)
2015 - 2018
• Developed Platform function and built out Platform team, accelerating the growth of our ~150 active portfolio companies, while growing RRE’s brand and ecosystem presence. • Ran firm’s business development efforts between F500 leadership teams and portfolio, enabling 350+ corporate introductions and millions of dollars of revenue.
Chief of Staff to the CEO
2014 - 2015
• Established and ran company operating rhythm as the team scaled from 23 to 100+ to more effectively translate strategy into execution. Developed KPIs and strategic planning tools. Set up operating mechanisms to enable scalable growth of business operations. • Supported CEO during financing round. • Managed key strategic cross-functional initiatives across departments. • Developed relationship with Eyeview's biggest data partner, driving 5x partnership revenue growth. • Also Executive Director Business Development March 2015-October 2015 - Managed 20+ partnerships with premium publishers and data partners to enable revenue growth, new product creation, international expansion and corporate development opportunities.
Director Business Development
2013 - 2014
• Opened up the European market across six countries through partnership. • Drove key partnerships to cross-sell product, drive direct sales, and improve the product and unit economics. • Established marketing department and hired team.
Eyeview is a video advertising technology company providing brands with ROI on their video advertising spend.
Raised $76,850,000.00 from Israel Secondary Fund (ISF), Innovation Endeavors, Qumra Capital, Nauta Capital and Gemini Israel Ventures.