Playground Ventures

Bruce Leak is a Founding Partner at Playground Global. He holds a Master's in Electrical Engineering from Stanford and began his career at Apple, where he led work on 32-bit Color QuickDraw and helped establish QuickTime, after earlier internships at Microsoft. He later co-founded Rocket Science Games and WebTV (acquired by Microsoft), founded other startups serving mobile operators and automotive OEMs, and co-founded Playground Global.

Jory Bell is a General Partner at Playground Global, which he joined as Vice President in 2015. He holds three undergraduate degrees from MIT in architecture, literature, and earth atmosphere & planetary studies, and previously worked on the joint MIT/Woods Hole climate change program building autonomous deep-sea robotics. Before venture, he spent six years as a laptop designer at Apple and founded OQO, a computer hardware and software manufacturer. At Playground he focuses on deep tech areas including advanced manufacturing, aerospace, genomics, and synthetic/computational biology.

Laurie Yoler is a Venture Partner at Playground Global with decades of experience building, scaling, and advising companies. Her earlier career included roles as President of Qualcomm Labs, founder and Managing Director at technology investment bank GrowthPoint Technology Partners, and computer science work in AI at Accenture, PwC, Visa, and Sun Microsystems, where she helped launch Sun Microsystems Ventures. She has served on more than 25 boards across public companies, startups, and nonprofits, and continues studies and guest lecturing at Stanford.

Matt Hershenson is a Founding Partner at Playground Global, which he helped start in late 2014. He previously worked as a hardware engineer at Apple, co-founded Danger in 2000 (maker of the T-Mobile Sidekick, later acquired by Microsoft, where he became a Partner in Hardware Engineering), and served as Director of Hardware on Google's Android team, shipping multiple generations of phones, tablets, and streaming devices.

Pat Gelsinger is a General Partner at Playground Global, a deep tech venture capital firm managing $1.2 billion in assets. Over a career of more than 45 years in Silicon Valley, he held roles as CEO, CTO, and technologist at Intel, EMC, and VMware, working on semiconductors, microprocessors, and industry standards. He serves as Executive Chair of Playground portfolio company xLight and sits on the board of Gloo.

General Partner at Playground Global focused on deep technology investing, including quantum computing, semiconductors, energy, and materials.

Director with over 20 years of experience in venture capital and public company markets. She previously administered substantial assets, private placements, and financings at Canaccord Genuity before becoming an investor and founder/executive in resource and tech ventures, with extensive public-company board experience.

Director and entrepreneur in the tech and entertainment sectors who has been a founding member of several venture-backed startups in film and mobile gaming, leading concept development, corporate strategy, and private equity fundraising.

Chairman of Playground Ventures and former Operating Partner at merchant bank HSD Capital. He previously served as President & CEO of Super Electric Corporation and Managing Director of SEGA Entertainment Canada, with a decade in capital markets and past leadership of the Toronto Investment Dealers Association.