Mike Vernal
- Seed/Early
My general goal and management style is just to try to make other people successful. If something goes wrong, I will try to jump in front of it, but otherwise I just want to see others win.
Backstory
I never aspired to do venture. I like building things! I was a PM and engineer at Microsoft and then spent eight years at Facebook leading engineering, product and design teams. But a close friend and college roommate—Matt MacInnis—founded a Sequoia-backed company called Inkling. He introduced me to Bryan and I slowly got to know the team at Sequoia. The most fun I had in my career were the early years at Facebook where everything was crazy and frenetic. It was just a bunch of kids running around, sleeping on sofas and trying to keep up with the insane growth while also building new products—it was incredibly fun. If you experience that once in your career, you are incredibly lucky. Sequoia offered the opportunity to help founders and teams going through similar journeys. I’ve seen hypergrowth a few more times now and it’s always exhausting but exhilarating. That’s probably what’s most exciting to me.
On the lookout for
I like folks that are super sharp and clear thinkers—people who tend to be simplifiers (vs. complexifiers). I also look for impatience—speed is one of a startup’s most important assets. I tend to not over-index on sector—great founders have a way of making any industry interesting and compelling. I’m on the board of Whisper.ai—a hearing aid company—not because I have any expertise in hearing aids, but because the founders saw an opportunity to make life meaningfully better for tens of millions of people around the world (while also building a great business). And the technology is really cool.
The two things I know best are consumer products and developer products. I spent about half my career doing each. I spent a lot of my career designing APIs, developer tools and documentation. Nowadays, I gravitate most to products whose fundamental goal is to connect people.
Get in touch with MikePersonal Side
- Dad
- Bass player
- Runner
- Madden (my pandemic vice)
Press & Media
Companies
Current Companies
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Aquarium is a machine learning data management system that helps teams improve their models.Current Stage
Seed
PartnerMike Vernal
Partnered In2020
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Blues Wireless builds and deploys wireless connected devices.Current Stage
Early
PartnerMike Vernal
Partnered In2020
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Census is the data automation platform that syncs users' data warehouse with all their business apps.Current Stage
Growth
PartnersMike Vernal,
Sonya Huang,
Lauren ReederPartnered In2020
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Citizen is a personal safety network that uses real-time alerts to keep you informed and prepared.Current Stage
Growth
PartnerMike Vernal
Partnered In2017
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Deno is building application development for the modern web.Current Stage
Early
PartnersLauren Reeder,
Mike VernalPartnered In2022
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Elementl is the company behind Dagster, a data orchestration platform.Current Stage
Early
PartnerMike Vernal
Partnered In2018
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Gadget is a development platform designed to rid ecommerce app developers of busywork.Current Stage
Seed
PartnerMike Vernal
Partnered In2021
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Notion is a collaborative workspace with notes, docs, wikis, and projects.Current Stage
Growth
PartnersMike Vernal,
Pat Grady,
Dannie HerzbergPartnered In2021
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PicsArt is a creative platform with free-to-use editing tools.Current Stage
Growth
PartnerMike Vernal
Partnered In2014
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Rippling connects every business system to one source of truth for employee data.Current Stage
Growth
PartnerMike Vernal
Partnered In2021
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Rockset is a real-time analytics at cloud scale.Current Stage
Growth
PartnersMike Vernal,
Bogomil Balkansky,
Carl EschenbachPartnered In2016
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StarkWare brings scalability and privacy to blockchains with zero-knowledge STARK proofs.Current Stage
Growth
PartnerMike Vernal
Partnered In2018
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Statsig is a modern experimentation platform that enables teams to ship products optimized experiences.Current Stage
Growth
PartnersMike Vernal,
Lauren Reeder,
Dannie HerzbergPartnered In2021
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Switchboard’s cloud coworking space makes remote collaboration as good as in person.Current Stage
Early
PartnerMike Vernal
Partnered In2020
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Threads is an online collaboration platform designed to scale decision-making.Current Stage
Growth
PartnerMike Vernal
Partnered In2017
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untapped is a recruiting platform that helps companies pursue their diversity initiatives.Current Stage
Growth
PartnerMike Vernal
Partnered In2019
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Verkada is a security surveillance system backed by software.Current Stage
Growth
PartnersMike Vernal,
Konstantine BuhlerPartnered In2019
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Whisper is using AI to build the best hearing aid system.Current Stage
Growth
PartnerMike Vernal
Partnered In2017