Eric Paley is an American entrepreneur and venture capitalist. He is the co-founder and managing partner of Founder Collective, a seed-stage venture capital fund based in

Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Greater Boston, Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 United States Census, 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most ...

Early life and education

Paley grew up in Long Island."Leap of Faith: Dot-com startups still beckon traditional workers", ''Newsday'', 17 Sep 2000: F06. He attended Dartmouth College, graduating magna cum laude with a BA in political science in 1998. He received an MBA from Harvard Business School with distinction in 2003 as a Baker Scholar.

Career

Monitor Group, Abstract Edge

Following his graduation from Dartmouth, Paley returned to New York, where he began his career as a strategy consultant for

The Monitor Group Monitor Deloitte is the multinational strategy consulting practice of Deloitte Consulting. Monitor Deloitte specializes in providing strategy consultation services to the senior management of major organizations and governments. It helps its clien ...

. In 1999, with his brother and a cousin, he founded Abstract Edge Solutions, a web development company. Their clients included the

Million Mom March The Million Mom March was a rally held on Mother's Day, May 14, 2000 in the Washington, D.C. National Mall by the Million Mom March organization to call for stricter gun control. The march reportedly drew an estimated attendance of 500,000 to 7 ...

, a rally in support of stricter gun control that took place on the

National Mall The National Mall is a landscaped park near the downtown area of Washington, D.C., the capital city of the United States. It contains and borders a number of museums of the Smithsonian Institution, art galleries, cultural institutions, and va ...

on Mother's Day 2000. Abstract Edge developed the website, millionmommarch.com, which raised more than $100,000 for the organization. Paley attended Harvard Business School after leaving Abstract Edge in 2001. His classmates included Micah Rosenbloom and

David Frankel David Frankel (born April 2, 1959) is an American filmmaker. Most known as the director of 2006 film, '' The Devil Wears Prada'', he is an executive producer and the director of the first and fourth episodes of the Netflix miniseries '' Inventing ...

. As MBA students, Rosenbloom and Paley partnered with MIT professor Douglas Hart to co-found and run

Brontes Technologies Brontes Technologies, Inc. was a startup company that produced a digital dental impression system brought to market by 3M as The Lava Chairside Oral Scanner C.O.S. The Lava C.O.S. provides a powerful connection and improved productivity for a doct ...

, a 3D digital dental impression and fabrication system. Based on technology from

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

and the research of János Rohály and two MIT graduate students, Paley served as the CEO of Brontes. Rosenbloom was its COO and Frankel its first investor. All three graduated from Harvard Business School in 2003. Paley served as CEO of Brontes until 2006, when it was acquired by 3M for $95 million. He holds six patents related to the invention and commercialization of the Brontes system.

Founder Collective

Following the sale of Brontes, Paley began investing in technology startups with Rosenbloom and Frankel. In 2008, with several part-time partners, they founded Founder Collective, a seed-stage venture capital fund with the mission of “being the most aligned fund for founders at the seed stage." Paley has led investments in companies including

Uber Uber Technologies, Inc. (Uber), based in San Francisco, provides mobility as a service, ride-hailing (allowing users to book a car and driver to transport them in a way similar to a taxi), food delivery ( Uber Eats and Postmates), pack ...

(NYSE:UBER);

The Trade Desk The Trade Desk (stylized as theTradeDesk) is an American multinational technology company that specializes in real-time programmatic marketing automation technologies, products, and services, designed to personalize digital content delivery to u ...

(NASDAQ:TTD);

Airtable Airtable is a cloud collaboration service headquartered in San Francisco. It was founded in 2012 by Howie Liu, Andrew Ofstad, and Emmett Nicholas. Airtable is a spreadsheet-database hybrid, with the features of a database but applied to a spr ...

Embark Veterinary Embark is a canine genomics and biotechnology company based in Boston, Massachusetts. The company offers dog DNA testing services to consumers, breeders, and veterinarians. History Embark was founded in Austin, Texas, in 2015 by brothers Adam Bo ...

, WHOOP and

Cruise A cruise is any travel on a cruise ship. Cruise or Cruises may also refer to: Tourism * Booze cruise * Music cruise * River cruise Aeronautics and aircraft * Cruise (aeronautics), a distinct stage of an aircraft's flight * Aviasouz Cruise, a R ...

, acquired by GM.

Advocacy and recognition

Paley has been active in lobbying Massachusetts politicians for the elimination of non-compete agreements, fighting against patent trolls, and funding for student technology internships. He has appeared on the ''Forbes''

Midas List The ''Forbes'' Midas list is the annual ranking by ''Forbes'' magazine of the most influential and best-performing venture capital investors. Described by Kara Swisher as the "Oscars for venture capitalists in tech," the Midas List uses parameter ...

five times. He was #9 in 2020, making him the highest ranked seed investor on the list. He was named to the ''Business Insider'' list of Top US Seed Investors in 2021 and 2022 and the ''

Boston Globe ''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Glob ...

'' Tech Power Players 50 in 2022. He was an Entrepreneur-In-Residence at the Harvard Business School from 2011 until 2015.

Personal life

Paley and his wife, Shirley Paley, an attorney, live in Lexington, Massachusetts. They met in 1998 as students at Dartmouth College. They have two children.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Paley, Eric Venture capitalists Angel investors Harvard Business School alumni Dartmouth College alumni American founders Living people Year of birth missing (living people)