Enjoy lunch with the SV Angel Partners, Robert Pollak, Topher Conway, Kevin Carter, Brian Pokorny, and Abram Dawson, in San Francisco, CA.
Topher Conway is a Co-Managing Partner of SV Angel. At SV Angel, he works particularly close with Gusto, Github, Zenreach, Lookout and MemSQL. He was included in Forbes Magazine's 30 Under 30 in 2015. Prior to SV Angel, he worked at EQAL, Inc. At EQAL, he worked with the Business Development and Sales teams and led efforts in creating new business opportunities. In his Sales position, he developed and maintained relationships with top ad agencies and brands. Prior to EQAL, he held positions at eCost and a 2004 summer internship in Google's Direct Sales Organization.
Topher graduated from University of California Los Angeles with a degree in History. He is also a member of the UCLA VC Fund, helping foster entrepreneurship at the University. In addition to investing, Topher leads platform partnerships where he is responsible for establishing relationships with Corporate Partners and helping portfolio companies with Business and Corporate Development needs.
Brian Pokorny is a General Partner of SV Angel. Prior to this, he was at Airbnb, where he joined via an acquisition of DailyBooth/Batch. DailyBooth was a venture backed social media start-up that Brian led for 3 years as their CEO. Before this, Brian was a partner at SV Angel with Ron Conway upon the launch of the firm. Prior to SV Angel he was a founding team member and partner at Baseline Ventures, a leading seed-stage investment firm. Before joining Baseline, Brian spent close to 4 years at Google within various positions in the Content Partnerships team and Direct Sales Organization. Before this, he had various roles within sales operations and finance at Juniper Networks, TIBCO Software, and Applied Materials.
Brian graduated with a degree in Operations and Management Information Systems from Santa Clara University. Brian's first angel investment was in Twitter and he is also a personal angel investor in Square, OMGPOP (acquired by Zynga), Tweetdeck (acquired by Twitter), Milo (acquired by eBay), Chomp (acquired by Apple) and others. Brian has advisory positions with Ooyala (acquired by Telstra), Rupture (acquired by EA). At SV Angel, Brian has also originated investments in companies such as Instacart, Patreon, Mesosphere, Credit Karma, and foursquare.
Kevin Carter is a General Partner of SV Angel. He joined the firm upon launch in 2009. At SV Angel, Kevin originated investments in Snapchat, Pinterest, Casper, GroupMe (acquired by Skype) and Sunrise (acquired by MSFT), and works particularly close with Remix, FarmLogs, Amplitude and Optimizely. He was included in Forbes Magazine’s 30 under 30 in 2012 and 2013. He is also on the Engineering Advisory Board at Santa Clara University (EAB). Prior to SV Angel, he worked in the Private Equity Group at Silicon Valley Bank. At SVB he was a part of the Entrepreneur Services and Venture Capital Relationship Management Groups and helped with diligence and cross platform relationship efforts. Before SVB, Kevin worked at Affinity Circles, Inc. where he performed sales and client account management. While at SCU, he worked closely with the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, founded the CIE Mentor Program and was awarded “Outstanding Student Entrepreneur".
Robert Pollak is a General Partner of SV Angel. He joined in 2011 and is responsible for all aspects of running the firm. At SV Angel, Robert has originated investments in and works particularly closely with Fundbox, iCracked and Dronebase. He has spoken at international conferences including Techcrunch Europe and OpenAir Berlin. Prior to SV Angel, Robert worked for a multi-family office within Morgan Stanley, that focused on VCs, late-stage technology companies, and entrepreneurs. He also worked at Arnold & Porter LLP on large-scale M&A transactions in their anti-trust group.
Robert graduated from the University of Virginia with a B.A. in Economics and Foreign Affairs. About Abram: Abram Dawson is a Principal at SV Angel. Prior to joining SV Angel in 2012, Abram studied economics at Santa Clara University. In addition to investing & supporting portfolio companies, he is responsible for product development at the firm. Abram has originated investments in and works particularly closely with Hooked, Clearbit, BetterUp, Go, BigScreen and Product Hunt (acquired by AngelList). He was included in Forbes Magazine's 30 under 30 in 2016.
SV Angel is a San Francisco-based seed fund. They help startups with business development, financing, M&A and other advice.