Viviana Faga
General Partner at Felicis — enterprise / GTM-driven investor with 20+ years building brand categories for cloud/SaaS + enterprise-social companies.
Background
- Operator-turned-investor (GTM/marketing specialist): VP Marketing at Yammer (→ Microsoft $1.2B acquisition; she became Head of Marketing for Enterprise Social — Office 365, Skype, Lync), Salesforce (6+ yrs), VP Marketing at Platfora (→ Workday), CMO at Zenefits.
- Emergence Capital — Operating Partner / advisor (before Felicis).
- Expertise: GTM SaaS team scaling, messaging/positioning, category creation, freemium strategy, sales enablement.
- Education: BS Operations Management & Information Systems, Santa Clara University.
Investing
- Stage/focus: Seed → Series C across AI, enterprise software, cloud/data infrastructure, dev tools, security, healthtech, fintech.
- Boards: Supabase, Runway, MotherDuck, DatologyAI, Knox Systems.
- Portfolio (selected): DeepJudge (legal AI — co-led the ~$41.2M Series A w/ James Detweiler, Nov 2025), Datology (w/ Astasia Myers + Tobi Coker), Exowatt (w/ Aydin Senkut), Armada, Hightouch, Coda, Hex, Knox, Blomma, Dreambase, MotherDuck.
Investing economics — check size & round profile (2026-06-02)
How much does she invest? Felicis does not publicly disclose per-partner or per-deal check sizes. The only published check figure for Viviana is an aggregator estimate: 15M entry check, Seed→Series A ^[single-source: Evalyze.ai]. What is verifiable is the size and stage of the rounds she leads or co-leads — and as lead, Felicis typically takes the largest single slice (the specific dollar isn’t disclosed). Each figure below is a round total, not her check.
| Company | Stage | Round size | Felicis role | Co-byline | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dreambase | Seed | $3.7M | Led | (solo Faga byline) | Apr 2026 |
| Knox | Seed | $6.5M | Led | Nancy Wang | Jul 2025 |
| Datology | Series A | $46M | Led | Astasia Myers + Tobi Coker | May 2024 |
| DeepJudge | Series A | ~$41.2M | Led | James Detweiler | Nov 2025 |
| MotherDuck | Series B | $52.5M | Led | Tobi Coker | Sep 2023 |
| Runway | Series C | (amount not re-verified) | Led | — | Dec 2022 |
- Read: her lane is data / cloud-infra / enterprise-SaaS / AI, and she operates across the full early-to-growth band — **leading sub-3.7M, Knox 40–52M Series A/B rounds. Dreambase (6.5M) are her clearest seed-lead data points; both rounds were angel/multi-investor, so Felicis’s actual slice is below the round total. The Evalyze “15M” band captures her typical entry check but understates the top of her range given the MotherDuck Series B lead.
- Note: both Knox (Jul 2025) and Dreambase (Apr 2026) are Felicis-LED seeds inside the Pass-2 18–24mo window that the firm-level seed enumeration on Felicis originally missed — see the Pass-3 correction there.
Competitor-conflict check (init.inc)
- CLEAN. Felicis is verified clean across all 8 init.inc competitors (no AI-ITSM exposure). Viviana’s own portfolio (Supabase, Runway, MotherDuck, DatologyAI, Knox, DeepJudge, Exowatt, Armada, Hightouch, Coda, Hex) contains no init.inc competitor.
- Closest adjacency: DeepJudge (AI search/workflow for law firms — “Glean for law”), a services-as-software play in legal, not IT/ITSM — adjacent thesis, different vertical. Not a conflict.
- Relevance: she’s a Felicis GP and a co-investor with James Detweiler (init.inc’s target Felicis partner) on DeepJudge — i.e., a plausible second voice / multi-partner audience inside Felicis’s IC if init’s process advances there.
Fundraise Relationship (init.inc)
- Intro in progress via Ryan Carlson (2026-05-31) — Ryan is introducing init.inc to Viviana. ^[per Sazzad]
- Clean lane: Felicis is verified conflict-free across all 8 init competitors, and Viviana’s book has no competitor exposure — so this is a real, conflict-free fundraise conversation.
- Felicis is already in init.inc’s pipeline via James Detweiler (target partner) + Peter Deng + Astasia Myers; Viviana adds a GTM-oriented second voice and co-invested with Detweiler on DeepJudge — a multi-partner Felicis audience is plausible.
Related
- Felicis (her firm)
- Ryan Carlson (intro source)
- James Detweiler (Felicis GP; co-invested on DeepJudge; init.inc’s target partner)