OUR TEAM

We are enterprise cloud founders and operators who partner early, and bring to bear 125+ years of combined enterprise operating expertise acquired across over a dozen startups.

As enterprise cloud investors, we employ a disciplined investment and operating framework that has been refined across 100+ enterprise cloud seed investments.

Spider is supported by seasoned enterprise operating executives who were instrumental in building some of the leading enterprise cloud companies, including Cisco, LiveOps, Salesforce, and Zoom.

MEET THE TEAM

Michael Neril

Minsoo Chi

David Berman

Judy Loehr

Neal Goldman

Philippe Suchet

Matt Fisher

Ofir Bar Levav

Jeff Ma

Courtney Broadus

John Gengarella

Yuri Sagalov

Charles Carmel

Alan Priest

Michael Neril

Founder and Managing Partner

Michael has been working with technology startups for two decades as an advisor, investor, co-founder or operator. Michael formed Spider Capital in 2015 to partner with visionary founders who are building dominant enterprise cloud software companies which are transforming industry.

Michael previously co-founded and led all investment activities at Webb Investment Network (“WIN”), the early-stage investment vehicle of Maynard Webb. Prior to that, he ran business development for LiveOps next-generation cloud-based work marketplace (which acquired his second startup). He started his career in technology as a technology investment banker during the first dot-com boom at ING Barings, advising venture-backed startups on M&A and corporate finance. He is also a mentor at several startup accelerators.

Michael earned a BA in International Relations from Tufts University and was a member of the Men’s Varsity Golf Team.

What aspects of your childhood had the biggest impact on you?
My father was always very persistent. Perhaps that was the New Yorker in him that rubbed off on me. Call it grit or a healthy disregard for the impossible.

What traits do you look for in founders?
We look for that grit and resilience as founders encounter numerous obstacles and roadblocks in their journey. How have they overcome past challenges? What does success look like?

We love investing in founders with a chip on their shoulder or something to prove. Maybe they are an immigrant, or were #2 at their last few companies and never got the recognition they deserved. Understanding these underlying drivers is critical as building an enduring company is a long journey.

What do you enjoy most about being an investor?
The people. Venture is a people business. It is built on relationships and trust.

One of the biggest joys is actually watching the founders we have backed grow into leaders of world-class companies.

One of the biggest challenges of COVID is the lack of human, face to face interaction. I miss the walks, hikes, dinners with the founding team, or riding a chair lift with a founder or fellow investor.

How did you end up in venture capital?
A lot of life is about timing, some luck, and of course hard work and persistence.

I had joined LiveOps in 2008, following the acquisition of my second startup. I was fortunate to spend an hour every month with the CEO of LiveOps, Maynard Webb, a highly respected technology leader who had previously been the COO of eBay. Mentoring growing leaders was a focus area for him, and I was very lucky to get some on his calendar. I remember during a 1:1 mentoring session I had with Maynard in early 2010, he shared his vision of setting up a family office to invest in technology startups, and asked if I would partner with him to create and run it. Maynard took a bet on me. We partnered together for nearly five years.

We invested in many transformational (and now public) enterprise software companies. I was fortunate to be part of an amazing and incredibly talented team. I then spun out and launched Spider Capital in 2015. Spider provided me the opportunity to be the “CEO of my own Destiny”, to quote an excerpt from Maynard’s NYT best-selling book Rebooting Work, which has now enabled me to bet on myself and many entrepreneurs who are pursuing their dreams.

What are you most proud of at Spider?
You plant a lot of seeds in the venture business, and it takes years, and often over a decade for the seeds (breakouts) to blossom and bare fruit. Startups are fragile. Spider is in business due to our world-class limited partners who have supported us since launching in 2015, the founders who have chosen Spider as their early and often first partner, and the caliber of the investment team we have assembled, who possess deep empathy for the founder journey along with unparalleled operating experience.

Minsoo Chi

Partner

Minsoo joined Spider Capital in May 2018 as the first investment professional, working across all aspects of the investment process, including sourcing, due diligence, portfolio company support, and investor relations.

Prior to joining Spider Capital, Minsoo was an Associate at NGP Capital, a $1B+ venture firm backed by Nokia. While at NGP Capital, Minsoo focused on growth stage venture investing in Digital Health and SaaS. Prior to NGP Capital, Minsoo was a Senior Associate Consultant at Bain & Company, where he focused on corporate strategy, GTM strategy, and post-merger integration for Fortune 500 clients, as well as private equity diligence for marquee PE firms.

Minsoo grew up in Seoul, South Korea, and came to the U.S. for high school. Minsoo received a BS in Neuroscience from Brown University.

What are the attributes you look for in founders?
Compelling vision, resilience, and integrity are key attributes which I try to flesh out during initial meetings with founders.

Visionary founders lay the foundation for company culture and they naturally attract exceptional talent. Strong culture combined with exceptional talent helps form the bedrock for successful companies.

Being a founder means that you will almost certainly have ups and downs. Many successful companies emerged from hardships and challenges. I want to back founders who won’t give up easily.

Last but not least, integrity is critical because it builds trust. Without trust, there is no meaningful relationship. Integrity means doing what is right.

What does being a venture investor mean to you?
We are here to listen to founders and provide guidance and connections to help them realize their visions. One of the first things I learned when I got into venture investing is that a venture investor is a kingmaker or queenmaker, not a king or queen.

What do you enjoy the most about working in venture capital?
I love listening to the founders’ stories and visions. I genuinely think this is the best part of my job and feel very fortunate to have this opportunity.

What are some of the questions you like to ask founders during your first meeting?
So naturally, I start all my first meetings with founders with “what's your story?” I am eager to hear the full story from the beginning (and it can be from childhood). I also ask “why” a lot. Asking “why” questions usually force founders to think deeply.

Where did you grow up?
I grew up in Seoul, Korea before coming to the U.S. by myself to go to a high school in New Jersey. I had to adjust to a completely new environment and learned how to be independent and resilient. In that regard, I am highly empathetic to immigrant and foreign founders.

How did you end up in venture capital?
I studied Neuroscience in college because I wanted to understand how the human brain works. After college, I started my career as a management consultant at Bain. It was an incredible two and half years of real-world business training and learning managerial skills. Then I joined NGP Capital which is a global growth stage venture firm where I focused on digital health and enterprise software. After two and half years at NGP Capital, I joined as the first full-time investment professional at Spider Capital.

What do you enjoy most outside of work?
I got into golf after moving to the Bay Area in 2016 (…after all, I had to take advantage of the nice weather!). The more I play, the more I realize that golf can be self-reflective and be used to exercise introspection and learn about my nature and tendencies. Or maybe I just love socializing in nature for a few hours.

David Berman

Operating Partner

David was most recently President of Zoom Video Communications, the leader in modern enterprise video communications, where he spearheaded the Company’s growth from $20M to over $400M in ARR. With more than 20 years of operating experience in the software as a service (SaaS) industry, David is known for his innovative, highly successful sales and go-to-market strategies, and for his expertise in leading high-performing organizations.

Prior to Zoom, David was President of RingCentral, and was a key contributor to their highly successful IPO, helping drive the company to industry-leading growth rates. Previously, David was President of Worldwide Sales and Services at WebEx Communications, where he developed the revolutionary web-touch sales and service model, helping the Company attain its IPO and 100X revenue growth.

David received his BBA, Business Administration from The University of San Diego.

What role are you most proud of in your career and why?
I had the opportunity to join Zoom Video as President in the early hyper-growth years. We grew the Company from $20M in ARR to over $400M in three years. The growth was amazing but even more important was our commitment to delivering happiness to our customers and employees. Our Net-Promoter Score was in the 70’s and employee turnover was less than 10%. That is pretty rare at a fast-growing startup where the wheels are often falling off. Zoom does it right, with an understanding and appreciation that if you take great care of your customers and employees, they will take care of growth.

What advice would give to founders that are starting out?
Be extremely hands-on with early customers and partners. These lighthouse customer accounts will help you fine-tune your product-market fit and are the glide path to scale. Conversely, if a customer leaves, it’s incredibly important that you understand the root cause around their churn. What else could you have done to keep them as a happy, engaged, and paying customer? Churn is the silent killer in a recurring revenue business and customer success is everything.

Why did you become a Venture Capitalist after 20+ years as an Operator?
I love working with intelligent and passionate founders that are solving difficult problems. My expertise is in Go-To-Market and I made a lot of mistakes over the years. It fires me up to have passionate conversations with entrepreneurs about the different ways to scale their marketing, sales, and customer success organizations. I have been in SaaS since the very early days and have seen it evolve and the dynamic, early-stage startup remains the most fun for me.

What was your first job in technology?
My first job in technology was selling payroll and tax filing systems at Automatic Data Processing (ADP) in 1993. Our sales demo consisted of an MS-DOS based payroll application on a 15 pound Hitachi personal computer. The sales training was terrific but carrying the computer around in a full suit on hot summer days is something I don’t miss.

Judy Loehr

Operating Partner

Judy is Chief Product Officer at PartnerTap, the leading ecosystem sales platform for enterprises. A SaaS industry veteran, Judy has 23 years’ experience investing in and building enterprise SaaS companies from the ground up. She was employee 51 at Salesforce where she spent 4 years as the original PM for the Service Cloud, then moved to marketing post IPO where she drove the development, launch, and early partnerships for the AppExchange.

Post Salesforce, Judy has been an early-stage CMO, a venture capitalist, and an adviser for B2B SaaS companies. Judy is known for her strategic product and go-to-market advise, as well as her clear and direct communication style.

In her spare time, Judy mentors cloud executives, actively supports female founders, and is the Executive Producer for Makeshift Society – the first-ever tv comedy series about a female founder in Silicon Valley. Judy received her BA in Economics from Occidental College.

Neal Goldman

Operating Partner

Neal is an experienced entrepreneur, CEO, investor, and board member. Neal enjoys his role as a mentor and coach to several of the portfolio company CEOs and strives to be the consistent and supportive resource he always wished he had had throughout his career.

Neal’s CEO and entrepreneurial experience includes founding and serving as Chairman and CEO of Capital IQ, for which he raised approximately $40 million and subsequently sold to the Standard & Poor’s division of McGraw Hill for $225 million. Additionally, he is the Chairman of Relationship Science and the Co-Founder of Goode Holdings, an investment holding company which is the sponsor of approximately $600 million of private capital funds focused on investing in middle-market consumer companies.

Earlier in his career, Neal was an investment banker in the Mergers & Acquisitions Group at Lehman Brothers. Neal is a Young Global Leader at the World Economic Forum, a Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute, a Member at the Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the Young Presidents Organization, and a board member or advisor to several private companies and non-profit organizations. Additionally, Neal has served as an Adjunct Faculty Member at Columbia Business School. He received a B.A. from University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from Columbia Business School.

Why do you enjoy working with Founders?
Founders are a unique type of highly creative people manifesting change in the world. By starting businesses, they are demonstrating tremendous courage, commitment and a capacity for hard work. I appreciate and have deep respect for every founder I meet. I know how hard it is to “move the mountain” in face of the natural state of inertia. It gives me great pleasure to be one of the people that truly helps founders on their way to where they are going.

How do you help Founders in the portfolio?
I have been the founder and CEO of several companies over my career. I have executed many financings, hired and managed many people, built technology and commercial operations, and bought and sold companies. While I certainly haven’t seen everything, I do have a deep reservoir of experience to share with founders that can help inform their perspective and decisions. I try always to be available to our founders to help them in any way I can.

What advice do you have for founders who are starting out?
Remember to take care of yourself. Founders often put themselves last in terms of giving their energy to the company and their other commitments, which can lead to exhaustion and anxiety. This is a long and difficult journey, and the warrior who does not know how to rest will quickly be unfit for battle.

Philippe Suchet

Venture Partner

Philippe is a serial entrepreneur turned investor. He co-founded two companies in the marketing automation and mobile commerce spaces, which were respectively acquired by Acxiom (NASD: ACXM) and Shopzilla. He is an active angel investor in startups such as WePay (acquired by JP Morgan), Forter, FundBox and Le Tote and served as a mentor for 500 Startups and Alchemist Accelerator. He has also been a real estate investor and developer for over 20 years.

Most recently, Philippe was the Chief Strategy Officer at Shopzilla, which acquired his latest start-up, Zappli. Prior to that, he was the CEO and Co-Founder of Zappli, one of the 1st players in the mobile shopping and payment space. Prior to Zappli, he was the CEO and Co-Founder of Kefta, a leading online marketing SaaS player, acquired by Acxiom. Previously, Philippe worked for the Boston Consulting Group, Goldman Sachs, Abuzz (acquired by NYT), and Keeboo, and has lived in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and the U.S.

Philippe received Masters degree in Entrepreneurship from HEC School of Management, MSc in Statistics from ENSAE, and MBA from Harvard Business School.

How was working through several downturns informed your view as an operator, advisor, and investor?
I have been involved with technology startups since the late 90s, first by co-founding and leading several companies, and later by investing in many high-growth startups. Over my 25 year career, I experienced quite a few downturns. Through these downturns, I was able to see how the ability to face and respond to such adverse and unforeseen events was a key long-term success factor required for the best startups.

In downturns, I have learned first-hand that many of the following elements could have a life or death impact on the business: the presence of strong and positive company culture; the alignment of all the founders; the flexibility, persistence, and resilience of the management team: the underlying strength of the unit economics, and the level of satisfaction of the company’s partners and customers.

Do you miss being a founder/operator? What are some highs and lows of being a founder?
I tremendously miss my experience of starting and running companies. The thrills include the “aha moment” of figuring out the market dynamics; defining a vision for the company and reaching alignment on the path forward; going outside of your comfort zone and adjusting to all kind of complexities; the motivation and learning that comes from working with such great employees, investors and partners; closing the first large six-figure deals and framing the check or invoice; listening to delighted customers; and seeing team members fulfill their tremendous potential. All of this was so incredibly exciting, but I don’t miss the lonely periods I sometimes felt as a CEO, and the times when I would wake up in the middle of the night being worried about (often-insignificant) issues.

Matt Fisher

Venture Partner

Matt is a seasoned operator with 15+ years of experience as a senior-level executive across sales and operations. Currently, Matt serves as COO / Executive Vice President at Tristar Products, managing sales and operations with P&L responsibility.

Prior to Tristar Products, Matt served as EVP, U.S. Sales at LiveOps, a cloud-based contact center and labor marketplace, where he directed sales for the enterprise solution division. Prior to LiveOps, Matt was in Product Management at Lycos and he started his career as an engineer at Netscape.

Matt received BS in Applied Mathematics from UC Davis and MBA from UC Berkeley.

What was your first job in technology?
I joined Netscape during the first dot com boom as a QA engineer working on the browser and javascript which was called mocha at the time. I worked with incredibly talented people, and the network I built from my time at Netscape is something you can’t recreate.

Having grown up in the SF/Bay Area, and worked in technology your entire career, what has changed and what has stayed the same?
The amount of talented people who come to the SF/Bay Area has really made the area flourish. What used to be orchards are now office buildings. Boulevard is still one of the best meals in the Bay Area and I still go to the same Yank Sing for Dim Sum. The culture is always evolving but San Francisco is still one of the most progressive and diverse areas in the country. It's been this way since the goldrush. Season of the Witch is an amazing book that describes the evolution of San Francisco.

What are the biggest challenges you faced as an enterprise operating executive?
I joined what was then CallCast, which became LiveOps following the merger between the SaaS call center software business of CallCast and the virtual call center business of LiveOps.

I experienced many challenges first hand, including the friction that develops when you combine two different business models (a high margin SaaS business and a lower margin outsourced BPO) and the resource allocations to fund both businesses.

Focus is so important at a startup, as you have limited time and resources. It is hard enough to do one startup. We grew LiveOps into a $100M+ year revenue company that included some marquee F500 customers.

Having such great customer logos, though, also presents challenges, as invariably, some customers have a certain vision of your product that does not necessarily align with the overall company product roadmap. Put another way, it is imperative for startups to not get sucked into the “consulting” business trap, where you are spending a lot of engineering resources to build one-off features for a large potential customer, that may in turn not translate into meaningful revenue.

Ofir Bar Levav

Venture Advisor

Ofir is currently Chief Business Officer at Indoor Robotics and Insoundz. Prior to Indoor Robotics, Ofir was General Manager and VP Ventures of Open Innovation at Johnson Controls (“JC”) where he led select JC investments and startup partnership. Prior to JC, Ofir was CFO at Tyco Israel and was at P&G for 10 years with various roles including Co-Founder & CFO at Duracell Powermat JV and CFO of P&G Israel. Ofir started his career at Deloitte in Israel.

Ofir received his BA in Accounting & Philosophy, as well as MA in Philosophy from Tel Aviv University.

Jeff Ma

Venture Advisor

As a member of the infamous MIT Blackjack Team, Jeff Ma created an ingenious method for counting cards—using talent, creativity, math, and teamwork to win millions in Las Vegas. Ma was the inspiration for the best-selling book Bringing Down the House and the hit movie, 21. He is also an accomplished entrepreneur having started four different companies including GolfSpan (sold to Demand Media), CircleLending (sold to Virgin), Citizen Sports (sold to Yahoo) and tenXer (sold to Twitter).

Beyond his work as an entrepreneur, Ma has been at the forefront of the “Moneyball” movement working with professional sports teams like the San Francisco 49ers and the Portland Trail Blazers and media powerhouses like ESPN and Major League Baseball Advanced Media, helping them to make better decisions using data and analytics. His business bestselling book, “The House Advantage: Playing the Odds to Win Big in Business” draws on his unique experiences at the table and in the sports world to create a truly accessible book about analytics.

Ma has also held two executive roles, serving as VP of Data Science and Analytics at Twitter and as Microsoft’s Vice President of Startups. Currently, Ma is the Chief Digital Officer of Troon where he leads an ambitious effort to revolutionize golf with technology and data.

Courtney Broadus

Venture Advisor

Courtney is passionate about helping startups execute, deliver, scale, and build excellent teams founded on strong cultures. She has an investment portfolio of over 30 startups.

Courtney has held executive leadership and management positions in technology for over fifteen years at both startup and Fortune 500 companies. She joined Salesforce when it was fewer than 60 employees and was a key technology leader in building the 1+B market-leading SaaS service and company that defined the cloud. She scaled her organization from 2 to 300+ over her 10 years at Salesforce.com, delivering innovation with excellence and defining the industry standard on how to consistently deliver scalable, reliable on-demand software with renowned quality.

Courtney graduated cum laude from Colgate University.

John Gengarella

Venture Advisor

John is currently the CEO of Contract Wrangler, a SaaS solution to accurately extract and transform contract prose to actionable data. Prior to Contract Wrangler, John was CEO at Owsy (Cloud Agency Management System purpose-built for specialty insurance distribution.) and at Netpulse (Provider of branded mobile apps for health clubs). Prior to Netpulse, John was Vice President at C3 Energy and also as CEO at Voxify which was acquired by 247 Customer, Inc. in 2011. Prior to Voxify, John was Vice President at Oracle. John also serves as a mentor at StartX.

John received his BS in Computer Science from the University of Pittsburgh and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Yuri Sagalov

Venture Advisor

Yuri served as a visiting/part-time partner at Y Combinator. In addition, Yuri is an active angel investor with portfolios including Flexport, Boom Supersonic, Mattermost, and others.

Prior to Y Combinator, Yuri was Co-Founder and CEO of AeroFS, an enterprise collaboration platform which got acquired by RedBooth in 2017.

Yuri graduated from the University of Toronto's elite Engineering Science program, majoring in Computer Engineering. Yuri was studying towards a Masters of Applied Science focusing on Distributed Systems at the UofT before taking a leave of absence to start AeroFS.

Charles Carmel

Venture Advisor

Charles is a seasoned technology investor, executive, and advisor with over 20 years of experience spanning private equity, venture capital, corporate development, and investment banking. He is a recognized strategy and deal leader with a successful track record of over $25 billion in investments and acquisitions across the technology industry. Charles is currently an active investor, board member, and advisor to several emerging growth companies and investment firms.

Previously, Charles was a Partner and Managing Director at Warburg Pincus where he led the firm’s multi-stage investing efforts in growth companies across the Enterprise and Communications technology sectors. His areas of focus included software, infrastructure, and services at the intersection of cloud computing, mobility, and data.

Prior to joining Warburg Pincus, Charles was the Vice President and Head of Corporate Development at Cisco where he managed a global team responsible for driving Cisco's worldwide acquisition and venture capital strategy. During his 10 years at Cisco, Charles led more than 30 acquisitions totaling over $20 billion including some of Cisco’s largest and most successful transactions. He was also responsible for Cisco’s $2 billion global venture capital portfolio that spanned across segments and stages creating significant strategic and financial returns.

Charles holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a Bachelor’s degree with honors from Tufts University

Alan Priest

Venture Advisor

Alan has spent his career as a finance and operations leader at high-growth enterprise SaaS startups. Along with other CFO and finance leadership roles, he was VP of Finance and CFO at Anaplan, responsible for all finance and legal functions as the Company grew from 40 employees to over 250 employees, helping lead their Series C and D rounds. He was also VP of Finance at LiveOps, leading all reporting, auditing, valuations, investor relations, M&A due diligence and forecasting during the Company’s rapid growth from $30M to over $100M in revenue.

Alan received his BEE from the Georgia Institute of Technology and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Relentless Hustle - examples in action

Investing in and building some of the world’s most transformative software companies is our life’s work. This isn’t a 9/5 job. We are on call 24/7 for you. We love to see you win and through your products, transform and elevate entire industries. We know you walk through or over walls. We expect nothing less of ourselves as your partner.

Uber Connector - examples in action

Nine months before a portfolio CEO was starting to plan their Series A raise (we like to get a head start on relationship building), we mapped the top GPs at leading venture funds whom we have close relationships with, provided select intros to start a casual discussion. These discussions resulted in multiple terms sheets (several preemptive) when the Company started to contemplate raising their A round. We repeat this playbook multiple times each year.

Another portfolio CEO had received multiple term sheets, but was looking to also bring in a strategic investor with relevant domain expertise. We provided an introduction to a highly relevant strategic investor, who in turn participated in the round.