Susa Ventures

Established in 2013, San Francisco-based Susa Ventures specializes in seed and early-stage venture investments in data-focused start ups. General Partners Chad Byers, Leo Polovets and Seth Berman, entrepreneurs and former operators themselves, founded the company on the basis of a shared belief that entrepreneurs are the lifeblood of progress, and we exist to help them realize their visions for a better world. Susa Ventures' portfolio includes Robinhood, Flexport, Stord and Stedi. Chad Byers Raised in Silicon Valley, Chad was exposed to entrepreneurship and venture capital at an early age, and was named among Forbes 30 Under 30 for VC in 2015. He focuses on investments in marketplaces, fintech, and healthcare. Chad led Susa's investments in Robinhood, Andela, Newfront Insurance, and Stord. Prior to Susa Ventures, Chad was the senior director of platform at Integrate.com and held various marketing and product roles at Silver Spring Networks, Bloom Energy, and Electronic Arts. Chad chased his love for skiing, mountains, and the outdoors to Boulder, Colorado where he mostly did those things but also received a bachelor's degree in Environmental Science. Leo Polovets Former software engineer Leo focuses on enterprise software; developer tools and technical products; and logistics and supply chain. Leo led Susa's investments in Outlier, Pex, Scalyr, and Stedi. Having been a software engineer for 10+ years, Leo approaches challenges with an engineering mindset and supports portfolio companies in vetting and hiring technical talent. Prior to Susa, Leo was the second engineering hire at Linkedin where he worked on the first versions of products like LinkedIn Jobs and LinkedIn Groups. Leo then worked on payment fraud detection algorithms at Google, and was also an early engineer at Factual, where he built data processing software. Leo received a bachelor's degree in Engineering and Applied Science (Computer Science) from Caltech. Seth Berman Seth focuses on investments in frontier tech, logistics, marketplaces & consumer. Seth led Susa's investments in Flexport, Periscope Data, and Expanse. Prior to Susa, Seth was an active angel investor. He has invested in 100+ seed stage companies in total, and his portfolio includes Nest, Optimizely, Wish, Omio and Docker. He also served as the VP of Strategic Marketing for The Richemont Group, a publicly traded company (CFR:VX) which owns brands and e-commerce sites Cartier, Net-A-Porter.com, Mr. Porter, Montblanc, and Chloe. Seth graduated from the University of Colorado Boulder with a bachelor's degree in Business and Finance. WEBSITE TWITTER