Nate Doran
Venture Partner at Sybilla
Seattle, Washington
Overview
Work Experience
Business Director
2015 - Current
SWAN Venture Fund is a series of four Seattle-based angel investor funds. We are currently investing into early-stage west-coast US and Canadian startup companies with a compelling team, market(s), working minimum-viable-product with first-customer revenues, and a real competitive advantage. Feel free to reach out, but make sure to let me know what you're all about.
SWAN Venture Fund is a Seattle-based fund leading in pre-seed rounds.
Venture Partner
2022
Mastersfund is in its 2nd fund and invests in pre-seed and seed stage, women-led, tech companies with sales.
Sybilla Masters Fund is a private equity fund that invests in women-led companies.
Board Member
2023
Bold Reuse sells end-to-end reusable packaging programs to help customers eliminate waste, build customer loyalty, and reduce costs.
Bold Reuse is a full-service reuse platform that makes transitioning to reusables easy.
Raised $710,000.00 from Sybilla Masters Fund.
Board Observer
2018 - 2023
Curvafix is a a medical device company focused on an unmet need for fixation of curved bones in orthopedic trauma. Curvafix received U.S. FDA clearance for its device and is currently conducting the RESTORE Study focused on gathering clinical evidence in advance of commercial launch. Curvafix is a SWAN Venture Fund I and SWAN Venture Fund II portfolio company. www.curvafix.com
CurvaFix is a medical device company that is developing a novel solution to an unmet need in orthopedic trauma.
Raised $60,217,148.00 from MVM Life Science Partners and Sectoral Asset Management.
Partner
2019 - 2020
As Partner and the Business Development Director, I contributed my expertise in managing the process of sourcing large volumes of startups, filtering that down to a set of investable opportunities, and evaluating opportunities in due diligence. www.swanvg.com
SWAN Venture Group is forming a family of funds for investing in early stage Seed and Series A rounds.
Advisory Board Member
2014 - 2016
Jordan Schindler, asked me to advise him during the earliest stages of his company. I was happy to. Their smart-textile platform delivers active ingredients to and through the skin; for dermal and transdermal benefit. They support most modern garment manufacturing businesses that work with cotton, nylon, and polyester. From socks to shorts, shirts to linens, and everything in-between, their patented “Active” yarns consistently deliver differentiated value to their customers, and remain completely washable without degrading performance.
Entrepreneur Director
2013 - 2014
Responsibilities broadened at Kereitsu. I managed a deal sourcing network of 600 companies at any given time for the group, scheduled companies for deal screening, coached entrepreneurs with their business and pitch, and managed due diligence reporting for the group. By the end, I had interviewed well over 1000 entrepreneurs and led over 70 through the investment process to raise $53 million in collective investments.
Keiretsu Forum is a California-based angel group that offers early, seed, and later stage venture, and debt financing investments.
Senior Due Diligence Project Manager
2012 - 2013
In my 2nd year with Element 8, I coordinated with the executive director, members, interns and entrepreneurs to develop, improve, and manage efficient deal screening, due diligence, and due diligence reporting, leading to roughly $4.25 million in investments. • Organized monthly screening calls: coordinated with entrepreneurs and the screening committee to ensure companies seeking funds are evaluated, and the best applicants pitch to E8 members • Lead weekly calls among due diligence project managers; trained and coached DD project managers to ensure deals were evaluated properly • Standardized investment screening evaluation criteria, designed new screening processes; saved dozens of hours of time for committee members, the executive director, and the interns • Recruited, interviewed, and evaluated project managers for the 2012-2013 year
Due Diligence Project Manager
2011 - 2012
After C6 systems (below), I realized that I could learn from successful business people who had built and sold companies, and I began my internship with Element 8 Angels. I coordinated with many angel investors, venture capitalists, and startup clean tech companies to manage different parts of an angel group operation: screening, due diligence, and term-sheet negotiations. Roughly $2.7 million of investments were made into the companies I worked through the process.
E8 Angels is an investment company that provides capital, guidance, and networking opportunities to early stage cleantech companies.
CoFounder
2010 - 2011
In my first year as an MBA student, I co-founded my first startup, C6 Systems, a sustainable gardening product company, with 6 PhD students. I pitched at UW's Environmental Innovation Challenge, Business Plan Competition, I pitched the idea to the Jones Milestones Program, and we applied for NSF Phase 1 grant funding and were approved.
Data Engineer
2006 - 2009
I managed the back-end data quality and processing for multiple federally-funded research studies while the data was being collected. I worked on about 8-10 studies at any given time, but I felt particularly fortunate to support studies like the After the JD 2 Study, the Health and Retirement Study, and Study of NFL Retired Players. This involved writing/editing scripts in SAS and SQL to load 10's of thousands of records received from the client into our systems, to automate testing of data quality as it was collected, to clean data, and deliver data to the client (the PI) at the end of each study.