First Spark Ventures: Home

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General Partner

Danny founded his first startup as a freshman in high school in Canada. After making several high-profile investments alongside famed investors in Asia, he joined ZJBIO, a successful antibody company based in Shanghai. He then moved on to lead an investment and create a joint venture company with Mesa Biotech, a San Diego based molecular diagnostics company. He served as a board member and the company was acquired by Thermo Fisher. Danny has made more than 16 investments in the biotech sector. He has also served as the Chief Investment Officer at Angel Pride, a large investment vehicle for a family office. He currently serves as the Vice-Chairman of Hong Kong Biotechnology Organization.

Eric Schmidt, Ph.D.

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Founding Managing Partner

Prior to co-founding First Spark Ventures, Manish was President at SRI International, leading research institute in Silicon Valley and the birthplace of companies such as Intuitive Surgical, Nuance, and Siri. He incubated and invested in over 25 Deep Tech startups, in addition to advising translational programs with the US Government that include agencies such as NASA and Department of Education. Prior to that, he was serial entrepreneur in Medtech and software, including cofounding Mytrus, software startup focused on direct-to-participant clinical trials. It was the first company in the world to have FDA approved electronic informed consent. Manish has a postdoc from UCSF in Medical Physics, a PhD from Cornell in Bioengineering, and undergraduate from the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai in Aerospace Engineering.

Eric Schmidt, Ph.D.

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Founding General Partner

Todd has a 12 year history of collaborating with Eric Schmidt. He is co-founder and co-chairman of XO Health, a leading health plan startup. Todd is a partner in Venturra, a private equity platform for Indonesian growth companies. Additionally, Todd was co-founder and GP of Priderock, a $2B hedge fund, co-founder and managing partner of J Net Ventures, a venture capital firm that sold to Epoch Holdings, and a founding member of the GP of Rhone Group, an $8B private equity firm. Todd began his career at Lazard Frères. He graduated, cum laude, from Harvard College and received his MBA from the Harvard Graduate School of Business.

Eric Schmidt, Ph.D.

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Principal

Peter has worked in Silicon Valley as an engineer spanning telecom, defense, and medical imaging. He has always tried to be at the intersection of hardware and software. Peter has wide experience designing analog front-end ASICs, writing simulation software for extremely complex systems, or building extremely complicated medical devices. He holds 25 issued patents for the most basic innovations at the transistor level up-to novel very large robotic machines that are used in radiotherapy. He has over 1800 citations for academic work in specialized sensors, medical imaging and radiotherapy. Most recently, Peter was the first employee at Reflexion Medical which successfully developed a robotic real-time imaging device to treat late-stage cancer. He started when the company was just a concept and helped get the device into leading clinics at Stanford, UTSW, City of Hope, and UPMC. Peter has a PhD from Stanford in Bio-engineering and an undergraduate degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of California San Diego.

Eric Schmidt, Ph.D.

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Founding General Partner

Peter is a veteran technology investor with more than 25 years of private and public market experience. Most recently, Peter was the founder and general partner at Dune Road Capital, a multi-asset class investment fund focused on the technology sector. Prior to Dune Road, Peter co-founded Empire Capital, a technology-focused hedge fund. During his 20-year tenure at Empire, Peter invested across a broad range of technology innovations and led the firm’s venture capital efforts. Peter began his career at Morgan Stanley in the investment banking division where he was trained in quantitative finance. Peter received an A.B. from Harvard University.

Eric Schmidt, Ph.D.

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Strategic Advisor & Founding Non-Managing Partner

Eric Schmidt is an accomplished technologist, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He served as Google’s Chief Executive Officer and Chairman from 2001 to 2011, where he pioneered Google’s transformation from a Silicon Valley startup to a global leader in technology. Prior to joining Google, Eric was the Chairman and CEO of Novell, a software and services company. Previously, he was with Sun Microsystems as Chief Technology Officer. He also held technical positions at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), Bell Laboratories, and Zilog. Inspired to continue to give back, Eric co-founded Schmidt Futures in 2017, which bets early on exceptional people making the world better, applying science and technology thoughtfully, and bringing people together across fields. In 2019, he and his wife Wendy announced a new $1 billion philanthropic commitment to identify and support talent across disciplines. Eric holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Princeton University and a master’s degree and Ph.D. in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley.

Eric Schmidt, Ph.D.

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Partner

Prior to joining First Spark Ventures, Aaron was most recently a Director at Schmidt Futures, leading early stage tech investments. He was formerly a co-founder and Chief Scientist at Searchable.ai, a venture-backed conversational AI startup based in San Francisco. There he led early product development and core R&D, leading to multiple patent filings, published research and beta launch. Before Searchable, Aaron was a technologist at In-Q-Tel, the venture arm of US Defense and Intelligence, focused on deep-tech investments in AI, AR/VR and quantum computing. He is currently an advisor to X (the moonshot factory) and serves on a number of startup, VC and university advisory boards. Aaron holds a PhD in quantum simulation and machine learning from Stanford University.

Eric Schmidt, Ph.D.

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General Partner

Gal is a General Partner at First Spark Ventures. Most recently, Gal was a Director at Schmidt Futures. Prior to that, Gal served in the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office as an Economic Advisor focusing on technology and finance. He served in an elite Special Forces unit in the Israeli Defense Forces. Gal is a graduate of the Oxford University and Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Eric Schmidt, Ph.D.

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Principal

Prior to joining First Spark, Jennifer was an Associate Director on the Ventures team at SRI International. She led the incubation program for its spin-out companies, as well as the institute’s market analysis team, focused on transitioning Deep Tech from lab to market. Prior to SRI, she was a business lead on the North American investment and innovation team at Konica Minolta, leading investments and partnerships in the areas of robotics and enterprise software. She had co-founded a venture backed social commerce startup. Jennifer holds a B.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Eric Schmidt, Ph.D.

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Partner

Prior to joining First Spark Ventures, Haitao was a Partner at SVE Capital, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm specializing in investments in early-stage biotech and med-tech companies. Prior to joining the venture capital world, Haitao was a group leader at Genentech, the US subsidiary of Roche, where she led drug discovery programs from inception to clinical development, and evaluated many new technologies as acquisition targets. She is currently an advisor to the Spark Program In Translational Research at Stanford School of Medicine and serves on the boards of a number of startups. Throughout her career, Haitao authored numerous research papers in high profile journals, such as Nature, Cell, and Science Translational Medicine. Haitao trained as a postdoctoral fellow in Neuroscience at Stanford University and holds a Ph. D in Biochemistry from Stony Brook University.

Eric Schmidt, Ph.D.

Investing in tomorrow, today

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Supporting founders who are shapingthe future

Danny Chen

Manish Kothari, Ph.D.

Todd Meister

Peter Olcott, Ph.D.

Peter Richards

Eric Schmidt, Ph.D.

Aaron Sisto, Ph.D.

Gal Treger

Jennifer Wu

Haitao Zhu, Ph.D.

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Walking Fish Therapeutics

Xona Space Systems

Inworld AI

Vitara

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Auxon

Confidencial

Syntegra

Latent AI

Normal Computing

Nimble Science

Simulon

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Figur8

Inlyte Energy

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Supporting founders who are shaping
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