PILLAR - Key Persons
Alex joined Pillar in September 2023 as an Associate on the investing team, helping source, evaluate, make and manage deep tech investments, both in Boston and in NYC.
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder & Board Director at Modern Meadow, Fork & Goode, Organovo
- Co - Founder and Board Director of Modern Meadow
Andras Forgacs, Co-Founder and Board Director of Modern Meadow, is a serial entrepreneur in deep tech and life sciences.
Ash Ashutosh brings more than 25 years of storage industry experience to his role working on Products at Google.
Most recently, Ashutosh was the CEO at Actifio, a company dedicated to changing the way data is accessed, managed and stored. Actifio was acquired by Google in 2020. Prior to that, Ashutosh was a Partner with Greylock Partners. Prior to Greylock, he was Chief Technologist for HP Storage.
Job Titles:
- Executive
- CEO at Kula Bio, Monolith Materials, Mascoma Corporation
Bill is an executive and entrepreneur in the sustainable energy and advanced materials industries.
Job Titles:
- Chairman
- Founder
- Founder & Chairman at SimpliSafe
Co-founded with his wife, Eleanor, SimpliSafe protects millions of Americans, and continues to be the fastest growing U.S. home security provider year over year. Laurans bootstrapped the company for many years before raising capital, and today, SimpliSafe is the largest private tech company in Boston.
Job Titles:
- Chairman and CEO of Rapid
- Founder & CEO at Rapid7
Corey Thomas is the Chairman and CEO of Rapid7, a Boston company that provides cybersecurity data and analytics solutions.
Thomas serves on the Cyber Threat Alliance (CTA) Board of Directors and the Massachusetts Cybersecurity Strategy Council. Prior to his time at Rapid 7, Thomas spent time as a VP at Parallels, and as a Group Product Manager at Microsoft.
Job Titles:
- CEO
- Founder
- Founder & CEO at Insitro
Daphne Koller is Founder and CEO of insitro, a company using ML and high-throughput biology to transform drug discovery.
Koller was the Rajeev Motwani Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University, where she served on the faculty for 18 years. She was the co-founder, co-CEO, and President of Coursera for 5 years, and Chief Computing Officer of Calico, an Alphabet company in the healthcare space. Koller was recognized as one of TIME Magazine's 100 most influential people in 2012.
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder and CTO of Plexxi
- Venture Partner
Dave Husak was most recently the co-founder and CTO of Plexxi, a specialist in software-defined data center solutions that was acquired by HP.
Prior to his role as CTO, Husak served as CEO from founding through August, 2014. Prior to Plexxi, Husak founded C-Port Corporation, which was acquired by Motorola Inc. in January 2000. He has contributed extensively to industry standardization efforts.
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder & CEO at Netegrity / Aveska / RSA
- Co - Founder of Boston
He has more than 25 years of experience in leading and founding enterprise software companies. He previously founded Aveksa, Inc., where he served as the CEO, CTO and President. Aveksa sold to EMC/RSA in 2013. Prior to Aveksa, Deepak was the CTO of Netegrity, which was acquired by CA in 2004.
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder of Asimov
- Founder & CEO at Asimov, Venture Partner
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder & CEO at PathAI
- Co - Founder and CEO of Path
Their platform promises substantial improvements to the accuracy of diagnosis and the efficacy of treatment of diseases like cancer, leveraging modern approaches in machine learning. Previously, Beck was an Associate Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School, where he published over 110 papers in cancer biology, pathology, and informatics.
Job Titles:
- Founder and CEO at Seeding the Future Foundation. Board Member at Beyond Meat and CSO at General Mills
Dr. Bernhard van Lengerich is the former Chief Science Officer at General Mills and Board Member/interim CTO of Beyond Meat.
Currently, he is the Founder of CEO of Seeding the Future Foundation, a 501c(3) providing seed funding and support for early-stage initiatives and organizations to create high impact innovations that can transform the food system. He is also the Founder and CEO of Food System Strategies, which provides strategic advisory services to entities along the food value chain.
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder at Petri
- Entrepreneur, Inventor
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder of Asimov
- Professor
- Professor at MIT
Dr. Chris Voigt is a leading synthetic biologist and Professor in the Department of Biological Engineering at MIT and is an Associate Member of the Broad Institute.
Chris is a co-founder of Asimov, a company that enables biotechnologies with global benefit by combining synthetic biology and computer science, and Pivot Bio, a synthetic biology company working on nitrogen-producing microbes.
Dr. Doug Cameron is an investor and advisor in food, agriculture and applied biology.
He is co-president of First Green Partners and is an advisor to the Asia Green Fund. Prior to being an investor, he was director of biotechnology and chief scientist at Cargill, Inc. and a professor of chemical and biological engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has had a passion for food and ag his entire career. His first job out of college was with a start-up, Advanced Harvesting Systems.
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder & CEO of Twist Bioscience
Dr. Emily Leproust is co-founder & CEO of Twist Bioscience, a synthetic biology company that has developed a proprietary silicon-based manufacturing process for the production of synthetic DNA.
Dr. Jennifer Holmgren is CEO of revolutionary carbon recycling company, LanzaTech.
She was named most influential leader in the Bioeconomy by Biofuels Digest in 2017 and received the Digest Global Bioenergy Leadership Award in 2018 and the 2020 William C. Holmberg Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Advanced Bioeconomy by the Digest. In 2021 Jennifer received the Edison Achievement Award for making a significant and lasting contribution to the world of innovation.
Ellen Rubin is a serial entrepreneur who enjoys building companies from the earliest stages.
She's focused on enterprise infrastructure challenges, with expertise in the cloud computing, business intelligence, analytics, data warehousing, and data center markets. She was most recently CEO of ClearSky Data, an enterprise storage as a hybrid cloud service that was acquired by Amazon. Previously, she was co-founder of CloudSwitch, a cloud enablement software company that was acquired by Verizon.
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder & Board Member at Constant Contact
- Co - Founder and Board Member at Pepperlane
Gail Goodman is currently Co-Founder and Board Member at Pepperlane, a business focused on helping mothers turn their skills and ideas into businesses that fit into their lives.
Goodman was previously the CEO of Constant Contact, an email marketing provider for small businesses. She took leadership of Constant Contact in 1999 (pre-product, pre-revenue and pre-funding) and led the company to a successful IPO (NASDAQ: CTCT) in 2007 and through its acquisition by Endurance in 2016 for $1.1b.
Jamie Goldstein founded Pillar VC with the ambition to build the next generation of lasting companies in Boston.
Jamie has spent over two decades working in venture capital, and is Founder & Partner at our firm. He also serves as Chairman of Petri, a program co-founded by Pillar VC focused on supporting pre-seed companies attacking the world's largest problems at the intersection of computation, biology and engineering.
Prior to Pillar, Jamie was an investing partner for 18 years at North Bridge Venture Partners.
How do I negotiate a term sheet? How do I deal with board observers? How much progress are VCs looking for in seed companies? What do I do if my relationship with a board member isn't working out? How do I close a pitch meeting? How can I really know my VCs intentions? What should I consider when choosing an investor? What should I look for in an independent board member? How do VCs view familial founding teams? How do I structure my board?
Job Titles:
- CEO at DraftKings
- CEO of Draft
Jason Robins is the CEO of DraftKings, the innovative sports-tech entertainment platform.
DraftKings has become the world's leading daily fantasy sports platform, an innovator in American online sports betting, and the preeminent sports entertainment company of the digital era. Under his leadership, DraftKings signed league partnerships with MLB, NHL and Nascar. Prior to DraftKings, Robins spent time at Vistaprint.
Jeff Binder is currently the CEO of Harvard Venture Partners, as well as the Executive Chairman for Pillar portfolio company, Soofa.
Binder previously served as the Chief Executive Officer of Layer3 TV, Inc., a next-generation cable provider, before the company was acquired by T-Mobile in 2017. Prior to Layer3 TV, Binder was the President and CEO of Broadbus Technologies, which was acquired by Motorola in 2006.
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder & CEO at Circle
Jeremy Allaire is the Co-Founder & CEO at Circle, a global financial technology firm that enables businesses of all sizes to harness the power of stablecoins and public blockchains for payments and commerce.
Allaire previously co-founded and led Brightcove. He has provided expert testimony on digital assets and monetary policy before the US Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Government Affairs, US Senate Banking Committee, and has been named to the IMF High-Level Advisory Group on FinTech.
Job Titles:
- CEO at Dyn / Minim
- CEO of Minim
Jeremy Hitchcock is the CEO of Minim, a wifi management and IoT security startup.
Hitchcock was previously the co-founder and CEO of Dyn, which was acquired by Oracle in 2017. Today, he is a co-founder and Partner of New North Ventures, an early stage VC investing in dual use companies at the intersection of national security and commerce. On the side, Hitchcock started an independent bookstore and cafe in Manchester, NH.
Job Titles:
- Board Member at Netezza / Cazena
- Founder and CEO of Netezza
Jit Saxena was most recently the founder and CEO of Netezza, the leading provider of data analytics and monitoring appliances.
Saxena led its IPO and acquisition by IBM for $1.7B. Saxena also founded and led Applix, a leader in analytical CRM software, which he took public. Saxena has sat on many boards, including Demandware, Actifio, DataRobot, Cambridge Semantics, and more.
Job Titles:
- Director of Platform
- Founder Playlist / Guides
Katie Mulligan has experience across venture and venture debt ranging from early to late stage.
Katie joined Pillar from Northeastern University, where she was the Investment Lead for IDEA, the school's Venture Accelerator. Katie managed the Gap Fund, a $10,000 non-equity seed grant for ventures in the later stages of IDEA's program. Prior to Pillar, Katie completed worked as a co-op at Wellington Management in London where she served on the client and prospect communications team, and Hercules Capital, in Palo Alto, where she analyzed deals for the company's venture debt portfolio. Growing up, Katie was on a television show called Aqua Kids that educates young people about the importance of protecting marine and aquatic environments.
What should I include on my competition slide, if my company doesn't have true competitors? How do I find VC firms? Should I target specific partners at a VC firm? Which VC firms should I target with my outreach? How many deals does a VC firm do each year? Do VC firms specialize in industries? Do VC firms focus on specific stages of funding?
Katie Okolita is a seasoned front-end designer and developer with over a decade of experience working with small businesses, nonprofits, and start-ups.
Katie joined Pillar after spending nearly 15 years working as a freelancer, co-founder, and founder of numerous web studios. Prior to starting her own business in 2013, Katie contracted with a diverse set of design firms across Boston, New York, Providence, Phoenix, and Portland, Maine, working with clients such as the United Nations, Hilton Hotels, CVS, Hannafords, and WEX.
Before joining Pillar full-time, Katie worked with the platform team as a vendor to develop numerous properties across our ecosystem, including the Founder Playlist, Frequency, and the Term Sheet Grader. In 2021, Katie joined the Pillar team full-time with the goal of expanding, refining, and managing all properties across our digital ecosystem.
Job Titles:
- Senior Community Associate
Kendall joined Pillar in May 2022 as a Community Associate after graduating from Northeastern University where she majored in Marketing and Minored in Sports, Media & Communication.
Previously, Kendall worked in People Operations at DraftKings and in Recruiting at Boston-based startup LogRocket. When she's not working, Kendall enjoys watching sports, shopping, and trying new restaurants.
Job Titles:
- Founder & CEO at Air Protein
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder at DraftKings
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder & CEO at Wayfair
Job Titles:
- Professor at Harvard Medical School
Job Titles:
- Executive Partner at Optum, Humedica, Phase Forward
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder & President at DraftKings
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder at Ginkgo Bioworks
Job Titles:
- CEO at Plexxi / Advisor360
Job Titles:
- Principal & Co - Founder, Petri