Steve Vassallo

Steve Vassallo started his first business at 13, a snow-blowing service called Steve's Snowblowing Service, and spent the first five years of his engineering career designing products at IDEO. As a general partner at Foundation Capital he led the firm's investments in Cerebras Systems, Stripe and Sunrun, and he wrote The Way to Design, a guide for designer founders.

Designing products at IDEO

At IDEO he was a project leader and design engineer, developing more than a dozen products for companies including Cisco, Nike, BMW and Caterpillar, and his work there earned more than 77 patents. He earned a B.S. from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Massachusetts, and an M.S. and an MBA from Stanford University.

Immersion and Ning

He was later director of engineering at Immersion, which pioneered touch feedback technology, and helped launch the social platform Ning in 2004, serving as vice president of product and engineering before joining Foundation in 2007.

Cerebras, Anomalo and other bets

At Foundation he invests across enterprise, fintech and frontier technology. His investments also include Anomalo, Framer, Loft Orbital and Mode. Cerebras co-founder Andrew Feldman, quoted on Foundation's site, said: "A venture capitalist's money isn't very interesting. It's what else they bring."