Michael Vaughan
General Partner at Vera Equity
Greater Philadelphia
Overview
Work Experience
Co-Founder and General Partner (GP)
2021 - Current
Vera Equity is an early stage venture capital firm backing awesome entrepreneurs and innovative ideas at the pre-seed and seed stages. Vera offers founders not just access to capital, but also operations advisory and connections to transformative talent. The firm’s first fund has a US-focused fintech strategy, serving as a playbook for future expansion across sectors.
Vera Equity is a venture capital firm focused on early-stage investments.
Operating Partner
2022
As an Operating Partner, I'm focusing on the global fintech sector across both consumer and enterprise software.
Stripes is a growth equity firm that invests in software and consumer businesses.
Mentor to Startup Founder/CEOs
2019
I've had the privilege to mentor several great founders and be part of this amazing community that First Round has created.
Board Member
2019 - 2023
Stem Disintermedia helps creators, artists, and musicians collect digital revenue and enables them to track and share their earnings.
Raised $292,500,000.00 from Victory Park Capital.
Venture Partner
2019 - 2022
Oak HC/FT is a venture and growth equity investment firm that focuses on healthcare information services and financial service technology.
Board Member
2020 - 2021
CIBO scales regenerative advanced platform technology that connects growers to incentives and enterprises to growers.
Raised $67,399,997.00 from Flagship Pioneering and Indigo by Telkom Indonesia.
Board Member
2019 - 2020
Served as an independent board member until Square acquired the company in June 2020.
Venmo, Chief Operating Officer
2013 - 2019
Chief Operating Officer
2011 - 2019
As COO at Venmo for 8+ years, I helped lead the business from the ground floor to 40+ million active users, $300 million revenue annual run rate and a forecast of $100 billion in payments in 2019. Venmo has been recognized by Fortune as a global breakthrough brand, by TIME as a Top 50 App, by Fast Company as one of the Most Innovative Companies in Finance and Social Media and consistently ranks in the top 20 of all free apps in the iOS App Store. After I joined the five-person Venmo team in 2011, we were acquired by Braintree in 2012 and then by PayPal in 2013 as part of the $800 million Braintree deal. Venmo was originally venture backed by Accel, RRE, Greycroft and Lerer among others.
Venmo offers an app that allows users to share and make payments with friends for a variety of services.
Raised $1,300,000.00 from Lerer Hippeau, RRE Ventures, Accel and Greycroft.
Vice President of Business Development & Sales
2008 - 2011
Grew revenue 850% cumulatively over three years to gain the #7 spot on the 2011 Philadelphia 100 list of fastest growing private companies in addition to a spot on the 2011 Inc. 500 list of fastest growing private companies nationwide.
TicketLeap, powered by Leap Event Technology, elevates event ticketing with its intuitive interface, full set of tools, and fast setup.
Raised $10,252,185.00 from Nextstage Capital, Nextstage Capital, Nextstage Capital and Nextstage Capital.