From dealmakers at significant funds to founding partners of new firms and industry-changing nonprofits, Forbes 30 Under 30 listed young leaders helping to shape venture capital’s future.
The list spotlights funders and founders aged 29 or younger as of December 31, 2023.
We have compiled a list of some people of color founders who are helping the venture capital industry.
Sesana Allen – Associate Investor, Smash Capital
Allen is an investor at Smash Capital, a late-stage venture firm backed by former Disney executives and investors from Insight Partners.
She sourced the firm’s investment in Fizz, a social gaming platform, and has invested in other notable startups.
Allen co-founded the Anti-Racism Fund, a nonprofit that’s raised more than $1 million to support initiatives that combat racism and promote equality.
She also launched RaiseFashion, an internship program that has placed more than 100 HBCU students in paid internships in fashion and technology.
Brandon Greer – Director of Corporate Development
Greer leads corporate development at HubSpot, the publicly-traded marketing software business he joined in 2018.
He launched HubSpot’s $100 million fund for front-office SaaS founders and has led over 30 investments into companies, including Hightouch, Descript, ClickUp, and Vanta.
Greer previously spent two years at OpenView, working on investments in Applitools, Calendly, and Loopio.
Proudly Black and gay, he recently joined the board of Fenway Health, a medical center focusing on healthcare access for LGBTQIA+ people.
Karthik Ramakrishnan – Partner
Ramakrishnan is a partner at IVP, a growth-stage venture firm with $8.7 billion in assets that he joined in 2019.
He has deployed over $700 million into companies like Checkr, CrowdStrike, DeepL, Jasper, Monte Carlo Data, and Skydio.
Ramakrishnan is an active investor in AI and gaming and led investments into Dream Games in 2021 and Jasper in 2022.
The Indian immigrant publishes IVP’s Enterprise Ai 55 list and is a mentor for NYU’s Endless Frontier Labs.
Sruthi Ramaswami – Principal
Ramaswami is a principal at ICONIQ Growth, a $15 billion venture capital firm, where she co-leads healthcare investing.
She’s built a portfolio of 14 investments there, with over $1.5 billion of capital deployed.
She has supported firm investments into Devoted Health, Benchling, and DexCare.
She has also sourced investments in Squire, Shopmonkey, Notion and Airtable.
Ramaswami is the Founding Limited Partner of Neythri Futures Fund, a $10 million fund for female and diverse founders that has invested in over 15 companies, including Rupa Health, DevRev, and Alchemy.
Tiana Tukes – LGBT+ VC
Tukes co-founded LGBT+ VC with Jackson Block, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing LGBTQ prosperity through venture capital.
Since its launch, LGBT+ VC has helped educate and train over 1,000 limited partners, venture capitalists, family offices, and startup founders, with Block and Tukes hoping to reach 10x that total by 2030.
Before LGBT+ VC, Block, and Tukes worked on the investment team at Colorful Capital; Block sourced the seed round for Mate Fertility and personally invested in Both&Apparel.
Tukes is the first transgender woman to work at a VC firm with over $1 billion in assets under management.
She also angel invested in Misterb&b.
Ana Carolina Mexia Ponce and Maria Gutiettez Penaloza – Nido Ventures
The duo Ponce and Penaloza are the cofounders of Nido Ventures, which launched as an angel syndicate and is transitioning into a venture capital fund focused on Latine founders.
Nido has raised $7 million in funding and invested in 16 startups, half of which have women on the founding team.
Each served as lead checkwriter on half of those deals.
Sai Senthilkumar – Partner
Senthilkumar became the youngest partner ever at Redpoint Ventures at age 27 in 2023.
He’s sourced and led $300 million in investment into companies including Alchemy, Cribl, Monte Carlo Data, Orca Security, and Timescale, helping represent Redpoint on their boards of directors.
Senthilkumar recently created the InfraRed Summit, an infrastructure SaaS conference, and launched a related stock index, NQRPCI.
The corresponding InfraRed Report was downloaded more than 60,000 times.
Senthilkumar, an immigrant who previously lived in India and Saudi Arabia, also writes a cloud infrastructure newsletter.
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