IA Ventures

Brad Gillespie

General Partner

Brad is a Partner at IA Ventures, helping start the firm in 2010. Since then, they’ve seeded over 100 companies including Datadog, The Trade Desk, TransferWise, Flatiron Health, Komodo Health, DataRobot, DigitalOcean, and Recorded Future. Prior to IA, he spent over fifteen years in product, technology, and leadership roles — including the Technology Advisor to Microsoft’s CTO. Brad holds a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Washington.

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Notable Investments

Drift, Simple Finance, Datadog, Digital Ocean, DataRobot, Canvas Medical

Questions & Answers

Origin Story: In a couple sentences, how would you describe your path to becoming an investor?

Completely random

Investment Approach: What are the key factors you consider when evaluating a founding team?

Customer domain experts who have a formidable strategic understanding of, and an ambitious non-obvious take on, a fast growing market

What's your style and approach when it comes to working with founders post-investment? What are the characteristics of founders you've worked well with?

Here is the full break down to give you a sense of this: http://j.mp/InvestmentPhilosophy

If I'm coming to pitch to you or your firm, what's the one piece of advice you'd give me?

Lead with the customer pain and the product demo

How would you describe your own personal mission and values, and how do they impact the way you invest?

My personal goal is to inspire others to reach for greatness and support them along the way. I want earn the trust of founders I work with and be their first call when they need to think things though and want an unbiased perspective.