Steve Vassallo

General Partner at Foundation Capital, a design-driven, product-first enterprise investor with an IDEO product-design background.

Background

Role: General Partner at Foundation Capital (Palo Alto multistage VC). Joined in 2007. Invests across the firm’s practice areas and co-leads its crypto practice.
Focus: Product-first founders at the intersection of technology, design, and business; champions design as core to venture creation.
Prior career: Spent the first ~5 years of his career designing products at IDEO. Came to Foundation Capital from Ning (social platform he helped launch in 2004), where he was VP of product and engineering. Earlier, director of engineering at Immersion, a pioneer of tactile/haptic feedback technology.
Patents & recognition: Holds 77+ patents from his product-design career, along with several design awards. ^[single-source]
Writing: Author of The Way to Design, a guidebook for designer founders. Writes a regular column for Forbes on product, tech, and startups.
Notable investments (associated): Cerebras Systems, Stripe, Framer, Solana, Brave, Anomalo, KeeperTax, Tabular. ^[single-source]