Seed investor Semil Shah joins Lightspeed Ventures as partner

Tech investor Semil Shah has joined US-based Lightspeed Ventures as its venture partner. Shah, who founded early-stage investment firm Haystack, will continue to run the platform while serving the venture partner of Lightspeed.

Lightspeed, an early stage VC firm has backed over 300 companies globally in the past two decades including Snap, GIPHY, Nest, Nutanix, AppDynamics and MuleSoft and others.

Over the past five years, Shah has also backed several companies such as Instacart, Doordash, Giphy, Opendoor, Hashicorp, Wag and several others through Haystack.

“I am excited to announce that I'm teaming up with Lightspeed as a Venture Partner. I am grateful for the opportunity & for all the founders & investors who have given me a chance the last five years,” Shah tweeted while expressing his excitement on the new role.

1/ A bit of news... I am excited to announce that I'm teaming up with Lightspeed as a Venture Partner. I am grateful for the opportunity & for all the founders & investors who have given me a chance the last five years: https://t.co/AdPzCYmclq

— Semil (@semil) March 22, 2018

Also Read: News-aggregator Dailyhunt appoints ex-Facebook India head Umang Bedi as President

Shah further added that working with Lightspeed will be a learning experience for him in the growing startup industry.

“I think about my own strengths and areas I need to grow stronger in, Lightspeed created an opportunity for me that I felt compelled to seize. I have many friends already at Lightspeed and have known the founders for some years, and am excited to learn from their team,” he adds.

3/ As I think about my own strengths and areas I need to grow stronger in, Lightspeed created an opportunity for me that I felt compelled to seize. I have many friends already at Lightspeed and have known the founders for some years, and am excited to learn from their team.

— Semil (@semil) March 22, 2018

Shah has also worked with GGV Capital, a venture capital firm investing in US and China as a venture partner. Prior to investing, he has held various product and marketing functions across several consumer-facing mobile companies including Concept.io. It was acquired by Apple in about $30 million in 2014.

Being a prolific writer, Semil Shah has been blogging on emerging technologies for many years and eventually has evolved as a leading voice in the US as well as global startup communities across the world.

The story was sourced from Medium