I am a new analyst on the investment team at Union Square Ventures. I came to venture capital from the trading floor at Goldman Sachs. Before that, I worked in the Internet of Things group at Intel building out a pipeline for go-to-market solutions in different verticals (healthcare, energy, transportation, retail, etc). I completed my undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering at Stanford. I also have a minor in human biology as I am fascinated by the interdisciplinary approach to understanding humans beings – biological, behavioral, social, and cultural – especially how it ties into my design and engineering background.
In keeping with USV, I’m not necessarily focused on a sector, but on companies that broaden access to knowledge, capital, and well-being. I believe that a negative user experience is a big roadblock to consumer uptake across industries. Among USV’s investments are companies such as Codecademy, which finally made it easy to learn programming, Funding Circle, an easier way to access capital, and Splice, an easier way for musicians to create. The common thread among these companies is that the user is the priority. I look forward to working with companies across many industries to learn how the user experience can be transformed with technology and data.
In my free time I love to travel, read, and ski. Recent trips include Gujarat and Rajasthan in India, the Argentinian side of Patagonia, and national parks in Utah and California. In terms of books I like, previous coworkers recommended Grit by Angela Duckworth and Decision Traps by J. Edward Russo, both of which are fantastic reads. I am currently re-reading Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States and slowly making my way through Shantaram.
Please reach out anytime at naomi AT usv DOT com or follow me on Twitter @naomics2. Talk soon!