Theresia Gouw is an

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value in ways that generally entail beyond the minimal amount of risk (assumed by a traditional business), and potentially involving values besides simply economic ones. An entreprene ...

and

venture capital Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to start-up company, startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in ...

investor in the technology sector. She worked at

Bain & Company Bain & Company is an American management consulting company headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. The firm provides advice to public, private, and nonprofit organizations. One of the Big Three (management consultancies), Big Three management co ...

, Release Software and

Accel Partners Accel, formerly known as Accel Partners, is a global venture capital firm. Accel works with startups in seed, early and growth-stage investments. The company has offices in Palo Alto, California and San Francisco, California, with additional ope ...

before co-founding Aspect Ventures, a female-led

firm, in 2014. According to

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine founded by B. C. Forbes in 1917. It has been owned by the Hong Kong–based investment group Integrated Whale Media Investments since 2014. Its chairman and editor-in-chief is Steve Forbes. The co ...

, Gouw is the richest female venture capitalist, with a net worth of approximately $1.2 billion, primarily due to her involvement with Accel's early investment in

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

Early years and education

Gouw's family fled

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian Ocean, Indian and Pacific Ocean, Pacific oceans. Comprising over List of islands of Indonesia, 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, ...

when she was three to escape the persecution of the country’s ethnic Chinese minority under the Suharto dictatorship. A dentist and a nurse in Jakarta, her parents settled outside Buffalo, New York, working as a dishwasher and a waitress before her father re-earned his dental certification in the United States. Gouw earned a Bachelor of Science in Engineering from

Brown University Brown University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. It is the List of colonial colleges, seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the US, founded in 1764 as the ' ...

, graduating

magna cum laude Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some Sout ...

, and an MBA from

Stanford Graduate School of Business The Stanford Graduate School of Business is the Postgraduate education, graduate business school of Stanford University, a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California. For several years it has been the most selective ...

Career

Early career

Gouw began her career at

. She left Bain to become a founding member of Release Software, a startup founded by business school classmates, where she served as Vice President of Business Development & Sales. After Release Software, Gouw joined

, eventually becoming Managing Partner.

Aspect Ventures

In 2014, Gouw co-founded Aspect Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm, with fellow venture capital investor Jennifer Fonstad. Gouw and Fonstad worked together early in their careers at

and at Release Software. During the first year, Aspect Ventures made several

Series A A series A is the name typically given to a company's first significant round of venture capital financing. It can be followed by the word round, investment or financing. The name refers to the class of preferred stock sold to investors in exchan ...

and

seed investment Seed money, also known as seed funding or seed capital, is a form of securities offering in which an investor puts capital in a startup company in exchange for an equity stake or convertible note stake in the company. The term ''seed'' suggest ...

s funded by the co-founders' personal capital. Aspect secured $150 million for its debut fund, which included outside capital from Limited Partners, and followed it with a second fund of $181 million in early 2018. It had 116 rounds of investments in 67 companies and had 13 exists. The firm made investments in companies including Exabeam and The Muse. The founders decided to split in 2019 over clashing management styles. Both founders started new venture capital firms. Fonstad started a new firm called Owl Capital and Gouw along with some other Aspect Venture staff started aCrew Capital.

2019 - present

In 2019, Gouw co-founded Acrew Capital with Lauren Kolodny, Vishal Lugani, Asad Khaliq and Mark Kraynak. Acrew's first fund was a ~$250MM fund. They've since announced a new initiative called Acrew Diversify Capital Fund (DCF) to diversify the boards and cap tables of market leading, late stage companies. In 2024, Gouw was part of a consortium of venture capital and private equity executives that purchased a minority stake in the

Buffalo Bills The Buffalo Bills are a professional American football team based in the Buffalo–Niagara Falls metropolitan area. The Bills compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the American Football Conference (AFC) AFC East, East div ...

Board member and advisor

She serves as Treasurer on the

Corporation Board. She serves as vice-chair of the board of

DonorsChoose DonorsChoose is a United States–based nonprofit organization that allows individuals to donate directly to public school classroom projects. The organization has been given Charity Navigator's highest rating every year since 2005. As of June 20 ...

, and is a member of the

Advisory Council. She also serves on the board of trustees of the Castilleja School.

References

External links

www.aspectventures.com

Theresia Gouw Twitter
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gouw, Theresia 1968 births Living people American venture capitalists Women venture capitalists Stanford Graduate School of Business alumni Bain & Company employees American women investors Indonesian people of Chinese descent Brown University School of Engineering alumni Female billionaires