SignalFire

Alex Hooshmand is an entrepreneur and investor working at the intersection of technology, data and strategy. He co-founded ZaiNar, a Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) company targeting logistics, telecom and space applications, and previously co-founded BlueKai, a Data Management Platform and data exchange for marketers that Oracle acquired in 2014, after which he led product management teams for Oracle Marketing Cloud. He earlier led teams at DoubleClick and Right Media, holds an MBA from Wharton and a BS from Carnegie Mellon.

Ben Davenport is CTO and co-founder of BitGo, which provides infrastructure for Bitcoin and other digital assets. He previously co-founded Beluga, acquired by Facebook and folded into Facebook Messenger, and worked as an engineer at Microsoft and Google. He is an active early-stage angel investor across more than 50 companies.

Bobby Lent cofounded Ariba. He currently serves as Managing Director at Hillsven, a $40M seed venture firm investing in internet, cloud, e-commerce, and mobile companies.

Chris Farmer founded a quant-style VC that grants engineers, data scientists and portfolio support equal carry with investing partners, bootstrapped by advisory projects and building Beacon as a full-stack platform.

Deb Ray is co-founder and Chief AI Officer at InferenceCloud.ai. He was previously CTO of EndCue in Los Angeles, where he led an AI platform for analyzing and generating original content, and earlier founded and led technology for two adtech startups. He holds a PhD from Caltech and has worked as a researcher in deep learning and AI for over a decade.

Ellen Levy is the Founder and Managing Director of Silicon Valley Connect and manages a portfolio of around 50 angel investments. Her career includes roles in venture (Softbank, NeoCarta, DFJ), universities (Harvard, Stanford, ASU), large companies (PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Apple), and startups, including serving as head of Corporate Development and Strategy at LinkedIn. She holds a BA from the University of Michigan and an MA/PhD in Cognitive Psychology from Stanford University.

Evan Richardson works as an entrepreneur, investor, and advisor. He was part of the founding management team at Grand Rounds, serving as SVP of Medical Network and Corporate Development.

Frank Williams is co-founder and a board director of Evolent Health (NYSE: EVH), which supports payers and providers in value-based care transformation; during his time there the company went public, surpassed $1B in annualized revenue, and served over 15 million patients. Earlier he was chairman and CEO of The Advisory Board Company (NASDAQ: ABCO), a health care research and technology firm that also completed an IPO and grew past $450M in annual revenue. He holds a BA from the University of California, Berkeley, and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Jack Huffard is a software executive with over two decades of leadership, go-to-market, and operational experience, having taken a company from founding through IPO. He co-founded cybersecurity company Tenable (NASDAQ: TENB) in 2002, serving as President and COO and later COO, and led its Series A, Series B, and 2018 public offering. Before Tenable he was Director of Corporate Development at Enterasys Networks and held roles at John Hancock and Marriott. He holds a BS from Washington and Lee University and an MBA from Babson College.

Jeff Butler is the founder of Privia Health (NASDAQ:PRVA), which he led as Chairman and CEO for over a decade before moving to its Board of Directors in 2017 and retiring from the board in November 2022, following the company's 2021 IPO. He previously co-founded and served as CEO of BroadReach Healthcare, helped launch the technology and consulting business at The Advisory Board Company, worked as a hospital COO/Interim CEO, and was on the founding team for the spin-off of LifePoint Health from HCA. He holds a Masters in Health Administration from The Medical College of Virginia and a Bachelor of Science from Florida State University, and invests through his fund, Elusive Ventures.

Jerry Yang is Founding Partner at AME Cloud Ventures, focusing on companies built around data, cloud, and hardware advances. He co-founded Yahoo! in 1995 and served on its board and executive team until 2012, helping develop Yahoo!'s relationships with Yahoo! Japan and Alibaba. He currently serves on the boards of Workday, Alibaba, and Lenovo.

Chris Scoggins has worked as an entrepreneur, executive, and investor in technology for about twenty-five years, concentrating on SaaS, data services, and applied AI. He most recently led global strategy, revenue, and partnerships at Oracle Data Cloud, joining Oracle in 2015 via its acquisition of Datalogix, where he had built and run the digital business. Earlier in his career he worked in venture capital and co-founded Internet Reports in 1997 (acquired in 2000); he holds an MBA from Stanford and a BS from Trinity University.

Ellen Blix joined SignalFire in 2020 to lead investor relations, overseeing limited partner strategy and communications. She was previously a Managing Director at Commonfund Capital and spent six years as a Vice President and investment strategist at BlackRock, with earlier roles as an investment banker at Lehman Brothers and Wasserstein Perella & Co. She holds an S.B. in Biology from MIT and an M.B.A. from Columbia Business School.

Ilya Kirnos co-founded SignalFire and serves as its CTO. He previously spent 2004-2012 as a software engineer at Google, holding technical leadership roles including Technical Lead for Gmail Ads and AdWords Performance and Scalability, and founding Google Prediction Markets. He later led backend platform development at CardSpring, a payment company acquired by Twitter, and earlier worked at Bell Labs and Oracle. He holds a B.S.E. in Computer Science with a minor in Applied Mathematics from Princeton University.

Jim Stoneham is an Operating Partner at SignalFire focused on go-to-market strategy, where he works with portfolio companies on sales and marketing. He was previously founder and CEO of Opsmatic, CEO of Payvment, and CMO of both New Relic and Stripe. His work centers on data-driven go-to-market programs, customer growth, and product-led growth.

Jon Lim is a Partner at SignalFire, which he joined in 2020, focusing on early-stage venture investments. He previously helped build KKR's Next Generation Technology Fund as one of its earliest US team members, and worked as a software investor at TCV and an investment banker at Jefferies. He graduated with honors from USC with a double major in Accounting and Finance.

Yuriy Groysman is a Partner in Data Science at SignalFire, a venture capital firm. He develops the firm's machine learning models and contributes to a data platform used to identify and evaluate startups across sectors and stages. His background includes experimental particle physics and machine learning.

Tony Pezzullo is a Partner at SignalFire, a venture capital firm with over $3 billion in assets under management. Based in New York City, he leads investments ranging from Seed through Series B.

Wayne Hu is a General Partner at SignalFire, an early-stage investment firm. He previously worked at Google and YouTube, as well as at Kleiner Perkins. His investment focus includes early-stage entrepreneurs operating in established markets.

Yuanling Yuan is a Partner at SignalFire, where he leads Series A-B stage investments with a focus on vertical AI. He works with entrepreneurs across the firm's portfolio companies.

Varun Ramakrishnan is a Principal on the investment team at SignalFire, where he focuses on seed to Series B investments in AI companies. He has a background in computer science and robotics.

Elaine Zelby is co-founder and Chief Revenue Officer at Tofu, an agentic demand generation platform for B2B marketing teams. Previously, she worked as an early-stage investor at SignalFire and held go-to-market and marketing leadership roles at early and growth-stage startups. Zelby publishes a weekly newsletter called 3 Things and hosts the (un)sexy podcast.

Josh Constine is a Venture Partner for Consumer at SignalFire. Previously, he spent eight years as Editor-At-Large at TechCrunch, where he published over 3,000 posts covering product design, social networks, blockchain, and early-stage companies. He holds a Master's degree in cybersociology from Stanford and has moderated over 190 talks across 18 countries with technology leaders and public figures.

Taylor Barada is a Venture Partner at SignalFire with background as a general manager in corporate and business development, strategy, and product marketing. His experience spans deal leadership, operations, and advisory work across new product strategy, mergers and acquisitions, and go-to-market planning. His investment interests include consumer healthcare, social commerce, online media, mobile applications, and SaaS.

Aayush Sharma is a Senior Associate at SignalFire, focusing on venture and growth-stage software investments. He was previously a growth equity investor at JMI Equity in San Diego, working on late-stage and pre-IPO software opportunities, and began his career at the Boston Consulting Group. He holds a B.B.A. in Finance from UT Austin, where he founded a student-led consulting organization.

Andrew Reid joined SignalFire in 2023 to support the portfolio with talent acquisition across Go-to-Market functions. He previously built and led the Talent function as Head of Talent at Lead Edge Capital, a growth equity firm, and earlier worked at retained executive search firms Artisanal Talent and SPMB in the San Francisco Bay Area, placing executives for enterprise and consumer clients. He holds a B.A. in Geography/Environmental Studies from UCLA with a minor in Geospatial Information Systems & Technology.

Asher Bantock joined SignalFire in 2023, where he produces data analyses that inform the firm's investment strategy and builds internal tools and systems supporting decision-making. He previously worked as a Staff Data Scientist at Block's Cash App covering banking product analytics, and held data science roles at Medium, Facebook Messenger, and SoundCloud. He holds a BA in Economics from UC Berkeley.

Bill MacCartney is CTO in Residence at SignalFire. He previously served as VP of Machine Learning at Cohere, where he led a team of 50+ scientists and engineers on large language models, and held roles including Director of Proactive Intelligence at Apple, Consulting Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University, Managing Director at BlackRock, and Senior Research Scientist at Google.

Brad Hoover previously served as CEO of Grammarly, where he worked on product strategy, team building, business development, and operations. Before that, he was an investor at General Catalyst Partners, focusing on consumer internet, SaaS, and mobile companies, and worked as a consultant at McKinsey & Company and Arthur Andersen. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Operations Research and Industrial Engineering from Cornell University.

Cali Tran is CEO of Cision, an earned media and PR software company, and CEO of Brandwatch, a consumer intelligence and social media management company. He previously served as CEO of Valassis Digital, a business unit within Harland Clarke Holding Company. He holds an AB in History from Bowdoin College and an MBA from Harvard.

Carrie Wheeler is the CFO of Opendoor and previously served on the company's board. Before Opendoor, she spent over two decades at TPG Global, where she was a partner leading the firm's consumer and retail investments. She has served on the boards of companies including Neiman Marcus, Petco Animal Supplies, Dollar Tree, and APi Group.

Diane Tang is a Google Fellow who works on analytics and data science across Google, having joined the company in 2003 with earlier roles on the AdsQuality team and in life sciences and health. Her work has covered logging, large-scale data analysis and infrastructure, experiment methodology, and ads systems. She holds a bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Harvard (1995) and a master's and PhD in Computer Science from Stanford (2001), along with multiple patents and publications.

Ding Zhou is a software engineer and data scientist focused on building and optimizing intelligent systems. He currently serves as Head of Ads Engineering at Pinterest, and previously held engineering roles at Facebook, Square, and DoorDash. He earned a Ph.D. from Penn State and a bachelor's degree from Fudan University, both in computer science.

Doug Merritt is President and CEO of Splunk, a role he has held since 2015, after joining the company as Senior Vice President of Field Operations in 2014. His earlier career includes senior roles at Cisco Systems, CEO of Baynote, executive positions at SAP, and General Manager of the Human Capital Management Product Division at PeopleSoft; he also co-founded and led cloud company Icarian. He holds a B.S. from the University of the Pacific.

Ellen Salisbury is Managing Director of Start Smart Labs, an incubator focused on startups building data-intensive applications on Hadoop. She previously served as Vice President of Business Operations at Altiscale and as Vice President of Engineering at Yahoo!. She earned a BA in Humanities from the University of Minnesota and an MBA from Loyola University of Chicago.

Emma Hanley joined SignalFire's Product Operations team in 2025 to scale the firm's programs and resources. She previously worked in Go-to-Market strategy at Lumafield, served as Director of Business Initiatives at AppFolio, and worked at Amazon on Whole Foods delivery; she began her career as a specialist in Impressionist and Modern art at Christie's. She holds an M.B.A. from Stanford Graduate School of Business and a B.A. in History of Art from UC Berkeley.

Gana Rajasegaran joined SignalFire in 2026 as Director of Technical Talent, working with portfolio companies on technical talent acquisition across Engineering, ML/AI, Design, and Product. He previously spent about four and a half years at Atlassian as a Lead Technical Recruiter, building engineering and machine learning teams across the US, India, Europe, and Australia, and earlier helped grow Lyft's autonomous vehicle division in Palo Alto. Earlier in his career he recruited for startups in biotechnology, medical devices, SaMD, and digital health with US search firms.

Ginny Curley rejoined SignalFire in May 2021, where she supports the Talent Team and manages recruiting efforts, systems, and programs for portfolio companies. Before returning, she worked at True Search supporting the Head of the Consumer Practice, where she assisted with CXO searches across a range of sectors.

Greg Badros holds bachelor's degrees in Mathematics and Computer Science from Duke University and master's and doctoral degrees in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Washington, where his Ph.D. work on the Cassowary Constraint Solving algorithm was later incorporated into Apple's OS X and iOS. He spent over six years at Google as a Sr. Director of Engineering, leading AdSense and later the Gmail+ and Google Apps teams, then served as VP Engineering & Products at Facebook, where he led teams including Ads, Search, Photos, Messages, Growth, Data Infrastructure and Data Science. He subsequently founded Prepared Mind Innovations and advises startups while building prototypes.

Heliya Sohrabi joined SignalFire in spring 2021 to handle accounting and financial operations. She previously worked as a Senior Audit Associate at KPMG's San Francisco office, specializing in financial reporting for venture capital funds, and participated in KPMG's leadership program before working with Bay Area registered investment advisors. She is a licensed CPA in California and holds a B.A. in Economics and Accounting from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Jarod Reyes joined SignalFire in 2024 as Head of Developer Community. Over roughly 15 years he has built developer communities and marketing teams at companies including Twilio, Auth0, and PlanetScale, working at the intersection of engineering and marketing. His work focuses on serving and growing developer communities.

Jasmine Tong joined SignalFire in 2018, providing administrative support to the executive team, managing internal event planning, and running the firm's gift programs. Before SignalFire, she spent six years in administrative and operational roles at the Associated Students at San Francisco State University (2011–2017), where she relaunched the student banking program and supported over 150 student groups, and later worked in business development, marketing, and administration at Brown Reynolds Watford Architects. She holds a B.S. in International Business from San Francisco State University.

Jeanne Dewitt Grosser is COO of Vercel. She previously spent several years at Stripe, most recently as Chief Business Officer overseeing financial partner relationships, technology partnerships, and business development, and earlier as Head of Revenue & Growth for the Americas, where she helped build the sales organization and go-to-market strategy. Before Stripe she was Chief Revenue Officer at Dialpad and led SMB and Mid-Market Sales for Google Workspace across the Americas and APAC. She holds a BA from Duke University and an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Jordan Clark joined SignalFire in 2025 on the investor relations team, focusing on limited partner strategy and communications. He previously spent four years in investor relations and product management at Ares Management in New York City and Los Angeles, and earlier worked at Morgan Stanley in private wealth management and at the youth sports broadcasting startup BallerTV. He holds a B.A. in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley.

Mario Espindola is Senior Director, Talent and Operations at SignalFire, where he develops recruiting and talent acquisition strategies and collaborates with stakeholders on retention, people operations, and total rewards. His career spans organizations ranging from startups to large public companies.

Michael Abramson is Associate General Counsel at SignalFire, a venture capital firm. He is licensed to practice law in California and focuses his work on the venture capital and startup space.

Nik Shkrob is a Software Engineer at SignalFire, focusing on distributed systems and large scale performance optimization. He has experience in service-oriented architecture and backend systems engineering, and works with Scala, Java, Ruby, and Python.

Tawni Cranz is an Operating Partner at SignalFire, where she advises founders, CEOs, and leadership teams on company strategy, talent, organizational design, and scaling, with a recent focus on building AI-native startups. She spent a decade at Netflix helping build its global streaming business, co-authored its culture deck, and wrote its unlimited parental leave policy, and has also worked with leaders at Waymo, Cruise, Bausch & Lomb, and FedEx Kinko's. She serves as a board director and advisor, is the founder of Nazario Ranch Vineyards, and is a graduate of the Drucker School of Management at Claremont Graduate University and the University of California, Santa Barbara.