Rafael Corrales
Founder of Background Capital
United States
Overview
Work Experience
Founder
2018 - Current
I invest in early stage startups with a path to becoming fundamental businesses. I am solely backed by top founders, executives, and super connectors - this is to create a multiplier on my own efforts to support the next wave of great founders. Before, I was an early advisor to Instacart (IPO $CART) and a first round angel to Blockchain ($14b by DST), Webflow ($4b by YC Continuity), Clearbit (acq. HubSpot), and Luxe (acq. Volvo). Because this is my full time profession and I take the same dilution alongside the teams I back, I’m the most aligned early stage individual investor for founders.
Background Capital is a venture capital firm.
Founding Investor, Board Member
2016 - 2017
Founding investor and board member of Vercel (f.k.a. ZEIT) from solo founder / idea stage.
Vercel is a software company that provides cloud infrastructure services to save and secure personalized web.
Raised $563,000,000.00 from Tiger Global Management, SV Angel, Google Ventures, Notable Capital, Geodesic Capital, 8VC, Bedrock, Accel and CRV.
Partner
2013 - 2017
Received a promotion after a year and a half, becoming the youngest check writer in CRV's +50 year history. I led the initial round for Vercel ($3.25b by Accel) and sourced Airtable ($11.7b by XN, Franklin Templeton, Silver Lake) and PillPack (acquired by Amazon for ~$1b).
CRV is a venture capital firm that invests in investments in technology companies.
Advisor
2012 - 2015
Advisor to Instacart from idea stage, before YC. Helped the company through many financings, strategic issues, and key hires including the President.
Instacartshopper is an online grocery platform.
CEO / Co-founder (acquired by Wordpress)
2010 - 2013
LearnBoost pioneered major Node.js libraries like Socket.io and Express. Acquired in 2013 by Automattic (WordPress) as the largest of their first 12 acquisitions.
LearnBoost is web-based software providing grade book, lesson plan, attendance, and calendar tools for teachers.
Raised $2,875,000.00 from Naval Ravikant, Othman Laraki, Bessemer Venture Partners, Karl Jacob, Atlas Venture, Bill Lee, RRE Ventures, CRV, Michael Broukhim and James Hong.