Sarah Smith
Managing Partner at Sarah Smith Fund
Menlo Park, California
Overview
Work Experience
Founder and Managing Partner
2022 - Current
Sarah Smith Fund is a differentiated pre-seed/seed fund built on a thesis that early feedback for founder CEOs gives them a significant advantage to go the distance and create top performing companies. I write $150 - $500K+ collaborative checks into marketplaces, fintech, future of work, dev tools, and more. In return for my allocation, founders get access to a comprehensive CEO 360 review process and people operations office hours. Current investments include: Pika, Casca, Bandana, TakeoffAI, Costa Security, Soulside, Flitch, Scope Zero, Pinnacle, Momentum, Grupago, SellOut, and Concept Art.
Sarah Smith Fund is an investment fund that invests in companies focused on the future of work, marketplaces, fintech, and developer tools.
Teaching Team
2023
ENGR 245: Lean Launchpad
Angel Investor and Limited Partner
2013
Personal investments include Airtable, Sorare, Pocus, OnDeck, Winnie, Biobot, Truehold, Arc, HeyJane, and more.
Senior Advisor
2022
Active board member and serving portfolio founders.
Partner
2018 - 2022
-Led investments out of BCV's $1B fund into future of work, fintech, marketplaces, dev tools, and more primarily at pre-seed and seed. -Current announced investments include Lime, Rightfoot, Mathison, Specto (acq: Sentry), Archive, Truehold, Arc, Disclo, and Perksy. -Board Member of Lime and Mathison; Board Observer of Archive. Previously Board Member of AllyO (acq: HireVue). -Led Seed Fund Manager program, backing 50+ emerging managers and micro-VCs focused on collaborative pre-seed and seed investments.
Bain Capital Ventures invests in seed to growth-stage startups that uses tech to disrupt existing markets or create entirely new ones.
Board Member
2020
Lime is an electric vehicle company that provides e-bike and e-scooter rental services.
Raised $1,458,000,000.00 from UBS O'Connor.
Board Observer
2021
Archive is a technology company that builds innovative, scalable, and profitable resale businesses for global brands.
Raised $24,335,000.00 from Fernbrook Capital Management LLC, Lisa Bougie, Wendy Yang, G9 Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Bain Capital Ventures, Dawn Dobras, Adrienne Lazarus, Julie Bornstein and Kerry Cooper.
Board Member
2020 - 2024
Mathison is the first all-inclusive platform for diversity hiring and retention.
Raised $31,200,000.00 from ANIMO Ventures, JP Morgan, Gaingels, SemperVirens Venture Capital, F-Prime Capital, Flucas Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures, Springbank Collective and GTMfund.
Partner
2015 - 2018
Seed stage investment firm at http://www.graphventures.com/ Our partnership backs a variety of companies at Seed and Series A stage across diverse industries. Sourced and led 20+ seed investments including: BetterUp, LunchClub, Winnie, Knoetic (fka Twine), Strive (acquired), Heartbeat, Stel, Kurbo (acquired), Sapling (acquired), Simpl, ELSA, OhmniLabs and more.
Early stage investment group of operators/founders with experience starting and scaling technology companies globally. 200+ investments.
Advisory Director
2017 - 2018
VP, Advertising Sales and Operations
2016 - 2017
VP, Recruiting, HR, & User Operations
2012 - 2016
- Member of executive team responsible for HR, recruiting, and operations scaling company from 40 to 160+ employees in 3.5 years - Managed and grew recruiting team to ~5 members, streamlining candidate evaluation process, implementing Lever ATS, determining prioritization of roles, overseeing deployment of time and budget to achieve annual hiring targets - Directly recruited and closed all levels of positions from entry level to executives in all functions (engineering, data, design, product management, sales, operations, G&A) totaling ~65 hires in four years including Parlio team acquisition - Oversaw headcount and compensation planning including development and roll-out of equity refresher program resulting in one of the most competitive, pro-employee programs in market - Hired HR team and developed processes and programs including onboarding, employee engagement survey, performance review process, benefits and broker selection, employee handbook, HRIS, retention tracking, coaching, and training for managers - Organized diversity and inclusion initiatives including unconscious bias trainings with Paradigm consulting, Grace Hopper conference, Women Who Code, hosting women's events - Grew operations team to ~7 members, assisting ops leaders in building user support queues and quality workflows including moderation at scale - Pushed longer-term strategy to contract with various vendor partners resulting in efficient global coverage maintaining critical product standards
Quora is a question-and-answer platform that allows users to ask and answer questions on a wide range of topics.
Raised $301,000,000.00 from Andreessen Horowitz.
Director of SMB Growth - North America
2011 - 2012
- Directly managed SMB Growth North America team including 20+ team members across Menlo Park and Austin offices; represented global SMB teams (EMEA, APAC, Latam) at HQ - Led strategic shift from reactive support channel to proactive data-driven sales team designing test and control service treatments to drive sustainable revenue growth and customer satisfaction - Surpassed all quarterly targets building team revenue to over $1bn ARR, 33% greater customer satisfaction, 9% churn reduction - Proposed and led first Global SMB Growth Summit to bring together 80+ global team members and XFN partners - Spearheaded transfer of Ad Review workflow into Risk Operations resulting in greater efficiency and capacity
Director of Online Operations and Head of Office - Austin
2010 - 2012
- Coordinated office opening, recruiting, and training to scale site to 185+ employees in less than two years with solid and dotted line management of all teams - Oversaw daily operations and culture of Austin office including User Operations, Risk & Payments, Mid-Market Sales, SMB Growth, Ad Operations, Finance, Recruiting, IT, Training, and Hardware Engineering teams - Represented office and company with external print/broadcast press and speaking events at national conferences - Helped build a culture and management team resulting in site scoring above company average in employee engagement survey on 78% of questions; scored significantly above on 50% of questions
Head of Online Sales Operations - Account Management
2009 - 2010
- Launched North America AM team and support strategy for mid-market advertisers acquired by Inside Sales - Grew team to 10 reps managing ~35% of company revenue including clients Zynga, Groupon, Playfish - Developed specs for early infrastructure projects including CRM, online invoicing, and reporting working with XFN teams of engineering, product, legal, finance, marketing, and biz ops through implementation - Promoted Facebook Marketplace Ads adoption as external speaker at conferences and gathered market feedback to influence ad product development
Manager of Online Operations
2008 - 2009
- Coordinated opening of Dublin office including landing team launch, tax implications, and communications - Built operational and risk models for future credits business accurately predicting 3 year headcount needs
Stay N' Alive Productions, LLC is a social media marketing firm that provides clients with measurable profits.