Bain Capital Ventures Hires Sarah Smith as Newest Partner

Smith brings valuable experience to the team, having been an active seed investor and an executive at two marquee Silicon Valley companies, Facebook and Quora. Most recently, Smith was an investor with Graph Ventures, where she sourced and funded more than 20 seed and Series A investments, including BetterUp, Winnie, Motion, OhmniLabs, Heartbeat, Strive and Twine. She previously worked as a vice president at Quora, leading advertising sales, HR and recruiting, and user operations, and helped grow the firm from 40 to 200 employees.

Smith was also an early employee at Facebook, where she was the director of online operations, leading and scaling many different teams during her tenure including the Austin operations and SMB growth. Under Smith's leadership, her team grew SMB revenue to more than $1 billion ARR while reducing churn and improving customer satisfaction. She received her MBA from Stanford and bachelor's degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

"During her time at Facebook and Quora, Sarah had significant impact and contributed meaningfully during each company's rapid growth phase," said Ajay Agarwal, managing director at Bain Capital Ventures. "Her diverse experience and deep networks across Silicon Valley will enable us to strengthen relationships with current and future founders, including opportunities in consumer, enterprise SaaS and marketplaces. We are thrilled to welcome Sarah to the team and look forward to her contributions to help us expand our early-stage investing practice."

Bain Capital Ventures is a bi-coastal firm that invests in deals ranging from seed to growth in a range of enterprise technology sectors, including cloud infrastructure, SaaS and business services, security, commerce, fintech and healthcare, as well as data-driven consumer companies. The firm's Bay Area team, established in 2011, primarily focuses on seed and early-stage startups on the West Coast, many of which have now achieved scale. West Coast portfolio companies include Acorns, Basis, Bloomreach, DocuSign, GainSight, LeapYear, LinkedIn, Redis Labs, SendGrid, Signifyd, SurveyMonkey and Sysdig. The West Coast market now represents more than half of the firm's annual investments.

"In every interaction with the Bain Capital Ventures team, I have been impressed with the people, culture and unique platform the firm offers entrepreneurs," Smith said. "Given its broad network and resources, Bain Capital Ventures has an extraordinary ability to accelerate founder and company success from the earliest stages through growth stages. I'm thrilled to join the partnership and increase our investments in world-changing companies."

Read more about Sarah Smith from Ajay Agarwal's blog post

About Bain Capital Ventures

Bain Capital Ventures partners with disruptive founders to accelerate their ideas to market. The firm invests from seed to growth in enterprise software, infrastructure software and industries being transformed by data. Bain Capital Ventures has helped launch and commercialize more than 200 companies since 1984, including DocuSign, Jet.com, Kiva Systems, LinkedIn, Rapid7, Rent the Runway, SendGrid, SurveyMonkey, Taleo, Turbonomics and TellApart. Bain Capital Ventures has approximately $3.8 billion in assets under management with offices in San Francisco, Palo Alto, New York and Boston. Follow the firm via LinkedIn or Twitter.  

Press Contacts

Annis Steiner
Bain Capital Ventures
[email protected]

Jennifer Jones
Jennifer Jones & Partners
[email protected]      
650-465-5831

SOURCE Bain Capital Ventures

Related Links

https://www.baincapitalventures.com