Meet the 2022 rising stars of Venture Capital

Together with the annual Midas list, TrueBridge and Forbes have partnered again this year to publish a Brink List that is making a name for itself in the increasingly competitive world of talented, emerging investors venture capital. Nominees are evaluated based on qualitative and quantitative measures that weigh an investor’s speed, position, reputation and other variables. This year, we’ve again listed the skills of a panel of investors who were previously listed on the Brink list to give them insights into the selection process: Jesse Berutte of IA Ventures, Mar Hershenson of Pier Ventures and Elliott Robinson of Bessemer Venture Partners.

Our 2022 list of new investors represents a variety of problem solvers whose unique experiences, backgrounds and skills position them in the VC world. We hope that they will continue the trend and shape the future of the industry as we move into a year that may be much different than in 2021. We are delighted to present this year’s Brink List.

Nina Achadjian

Index Ventures

Partner

Key Deals: Czech, Gong, ServiceTitan, ShopMonkey

Nina joined Index Ventures as a partner in 2017 and has led investments across Enterprise SaaS, Vertical Software and Voice and AI to help legacy industries modernize workflows and adopt software and payment solutions. He believes that legacy industries will continue to adapt to digital transformation and adopt more modern, vertical-specific solutions.

Prior to the index, Nina was an FP&A lead at Google, managing a multi-billion-dollar business book. He is currently serving on the boards of ServiceTitan, ShopMonkey and Dipscript. He founded HIVE Ventures, the first venture fund focusing on Armenian entrepreneurs, where he invested in more than 30 companies.

After graduating from Harvard in 2008, Nina began her career as a high-yield bond trader at Citigroup, where she met Michael C. Was a recipient of the Rockefeller Scholarship.

Reed Christian

CRV

General partner

Key Deals: Factory, Gtmhub, Tinybird, Vercel

Reid joined CRV in 2017, and in just five years, the 50-year-old firm found tremendous success in the early stages of crowdfunding tech space, helping founders across the United States and Europe realize their full potential. Products on the market with wide scope.

Reid joined CRV in 2017, and in just five years, the 50-year-old firm found tremendous success in the early stages of crowdfunding tech space, helping founders across the United States and Europe realize their full potential. Products on the market with wide scope.

Recent investments have spilled over into the hot sector, including collaborative work, open source, and APIs with Vercel, Postman, GreyNoise, and others. He also currently serves on the boards of Bbot, Carrot, (acquired by DoorDash), Checkly, Factorial, Gtmhub, Lokalise, Squire and Talon.One. Prior to joining CRV, Reid gained experience in battery ventures and was a Growth Equity Fellow at Symmetric Capital after working in investment banking at RBC Capital Markets. He graduated from Bates College, where he captained the basketball team.

Christopher Janz

Point Nine Capital

General partner

Key Deals: 15 Five, Algolia, Contentful, Factory, Loom, NextHealth, TypeForm

Christoph co-founded Berlin-based Point Nine Capital in 2011 and, with partner Powell Chudjinsky, has led investments in some of the most exciting European SaaS and marketplace startups over the past decade.

Content management platforms Contentful, SaaS, search engine Algolia and others are at the forefront of point nine in global VC investments in 2021.

Before starting Point Nine Capital, Christoph co-founded several successful European Internet companies, starting with El Dorado Software in 1993. Other initiatives include DealPilot.com (acquired by Shopping.com), Friendity.de (acquired by the top three), German ISP) and PageFlex (acquired by LiveUniverse). His successful turn as an angel saw him return to companies such as FreeAgent, Geckoboard and Gendesk. He is known for his handshakes with Point Nine’s portfolio companies, working as a trusted advisor to Cleo and Momox, among others.

Jesse Lee

Sequoia Capital

Partner and Chief Product Officer

Key Deals: Ironclad, Maven Clinic, Moss, Otter, Pace, Proteg, Onolo

Jesse Lee became a partner of Sequoia in 2016. In addition to investing, he has served as Chief Product Officer and has led engineering, product, design and data science teams in the United States and Europe. After working as a product manager for Google Maps and co-founder and CEO of fashion app Polivor, he found his way into the industry.

After Polyvor was acquired by Yahoo! In 2015, Jess briefly served as VP of the product, when he contacted Roelof Bothar, head of Sequoia Capital’s Midas list. Since joining Sequoia, Jess has led seed and early-stage investments in technology companies, focusing on issues ranging from maternal health to stuffing. He graduated from Stanford University in 2004, where he studied computer science. He is a founder and board member of All Rise, a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing diversity in the technology industry.

Kani Makubela

Kindred Ventures

Managing partner

Key deals: Adyton, Basis Theory, CloudTrucks, Goldfinch, Tala

Kanyi is a managing partner at Kindred Ventures, where he has focused on investing in fintech, health and wellness, e-commerce, supply-chain and climate technology since co-founding the firm with Steve Zhang in 2014. They have created Kindred in both forms. And invest in new startups and have worked with companies like CloudTracks, Halosine, Just, Outschool and Upstart.

He has experience investing in collaborative funds, where he has worked as a partner and with companies including Buffer, Hopscoach, Spruce and TrueLink. As an entrepreneur and operator, he grew up in One Block of the Grid (acquired by $ NRG) and was an early employee of Dustang (acquired by Universal Global).

Kanye, a racist born in South Africa and came to the United States as a refugee, has had extensive experience as a Stanford design program teacher, including working on Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign since graduating from Stanford University, and a lecturer at the New York University Teach School of Arts and As helpful. He also co-founded and served on the board of directors of Heartbeat Health, a leading end-to-end virtual care platform for cardiology patients.

Ed Sim

Brave start-up initiative

Founder and managing partner

Key Deals: BigID, BlockDemon, Customer, SecurityScorecard, Sneak, Superhuman

Ed is a seasoned VC with more than 25 years of experience leading a first-round investment and passion for working with developer-first, engineering-driven founders. He founded Boldstart in 2010 and has served as a one-day partner and board member or observer for sophisticated technology names, including Common Paper, NV0 and Spectro Cloud.

In 2021, Ed saw the results of many of his early bets, with Snyk, BigID and Dooly raising more than $ 400 million in the last twelve months alone.

Previously, he co-founded Dawntreader Ventures where he worked with companies such as Divide (acquired by Google), Greenplum (acquired by EMC), and GoToMeeting (acquired by Citrix). He learned how to create coding and quantitative trading models at JP Morgan, where he worked in the Structural Derivatives Group and helped create a real-time trading application for global asset allocation. In 2017, he co-founded MSate, an enterprise blockchain lab, in partnership with IBM. MState seed investments include Fireblocks and Amberdata. He graduated from Harvard in 1993 and was a four-year letterman in the men’s lacrosse team.

Nick Tomaino

1 Confirmation

Founder and general partner

Key Deals: Cosmos, dYdX, OpenSea, Polkadot, SuperRare

Nick Hall is the founder and general partner of 1confirmation, a leading cryptocurrency-centric investment firm with a net worth of over $ 1 billion. By investing in OpenSea, Coinbase, dYdX, and more, Nick has repeatedly become an ever-important source of capital for companies on the brink of cryptocurrency space bleeding. He prides himself on his partnership with the founders – he works to support those who are solving the problems of the crypto community.

Long before the NFT headlined, he was at the forefront of NFT investing, supporting the marketplace OpenSea. He made initial bets between CryptoPunks and artists like Pak and Beeple.

After graduating from Bowden College and attending the Yale School of Management for a year, Nick left school to join Coinbase, where he worked in business development. He also spends time at Runa Capital, an early-stage VC firm focused on deep technology, cloud business applications, fintech, ad tech and digital health.

Alexa by Tobel

Inspired capital

Founder and managing partner

Key Deals: Main, Hobby, Orum, Public

In 2019, Seed and Series A founded Alexa Inspired Capital to help the consumer and enterprise technology business become a category-defined company.

Alexa has seen success through investing in B2B Fintech Row technologies, social calendar platform Saturn and customer-centric AI startup Forthott. He has more than a decade of experience as the founder and CEO of LearnVest, a learning platform that helped bring public money to the public by raising more than $ 75 million in venture capital before being acquired by Northwest Mutual in one of the largest fintech. Acquisition of 2010.

Outside of her role in Inspiration, Alexa writes as a columnist for Money Magazine and Cosmopolitan, and hosts both ‘Financially Fearless’ and ‘The Founders Project with Alexa von Tobel’ on SiriusXM. She is Fortune’s Most Powerful Women, Inc. Magazine’s 30 under 30 and recognized as the young global leader of the World Economic Forum. He holds degrees from Harvard University and Harvard Business School.

Jesse Walden

Alternative

Co-founder and general partner

Key Deals: Flashbot, Foundation, Mirror, Phantom, UnisApp

Jesse co-founded the variant at the beginning of the epidemic in 2020 and quickly distinguished the firm as a leader in the crypto investment and proprietary economy. Investments in Uniswap, Aleo and Phantom have touched on all aspects of crypto, from DeFi to privacy and security to wallet management.

Prior to founding the variant, Jesse Andresen was an investment partner in Horowitz’s first crypto fund and led the firm’s crypto startup school. He also led the blockchain R&D at Spotify after he founded a company – Mediachain Labs, which created a protocol to track ownership of digital media assets in public blockchain – acquired by the company in 2017. He also founded Cool Managers, an artist management firm. Advantages of technology platforms to help artists run their businesses independently. He graduated from McGill University.