Mark Suster is an American

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values th ...

and

venture capitalist Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which hav ...

. He is a managing partner at

Upfront Ventures Upfront Ventures, formerly known as GRP Partners, is a Santa Monica-based venture capital firm that invests in early-stage technology companies. It is one of the largest venture capital firms in Los Angeles, with $2 billion in total raised funds. ...

, the largest venture capital firm in Los Angeles. Suster is a prominent blogger in the startup venture capital world.

Career

In 1999, with Ireland-based property entrepreneur Brian Moran, he founded his first company, a

construction collaboration technology Construction collaboration technology refers to software applications used to enable effective sharing of project-related information between geographically dispersed members of a construction project team, often through use of a web-based software ...

business called BuildOnline, where he was also chief executive officer. BuildOnline merged with US-based rival Citadon in December 2006. By April 2007, Suster had already left Citadon, having founded a second company (Koral, a content collaboration software business). In April 2007, Koral was acquired by

Salesforce.com Salesforce, Inc. is an American cloud-based software company headquartered in San Francisco, California. It provides customer relationship management (CRM) software and applications focused on sales, customer service, marketing automation, an ...

where Suster took the role of Vice President, Product Management. Suster joined Upfront Ventures (previously known as GRP Partners), an investment firm, in 2007. At Upfront, Suster leads investments in companies including Bird, Invoca, MakeSpace, mitu,

Nanit Nanit is an American technology start-up company that develops baby monitor devices connected through its mobile application. The camera captures the video recording of the child and analyzes the footage and shares insights based on the movement of ...

, Osmo, Tact, and

uBeam SonicEnergy (previously uBeam) is a U.S. company that claims to be developing a wireless charging system to work via ultrasound. Scientists have criticised the plausibility of this proposal. History SonicEnergy was founded in 2011 by Meredith P ...

. Suster also led the initial funding round for, and was on the board of,

Maker Studios Maker(s) or The Maker(s) may refer to: Film and television * ''The Maker'' (film), a 1997 American drama film *'' Makers: Women Who Make America'', a 2013 American TV documentary, a 2014 TV series, and related media *Maker Studios, now part of D ...

(acquired by Disney in 2014).

Personal

Suster grew up in Northern California and is a dual citizen of both the United Kingdom and the United States. He is of

Romanian Jewish The history of the Jews in Romania concerns the Jews both of Romania and of Romanian origins, from their first mention on what is present-day Romanian territory. Minimal until the 18th century, the size of the Jewish population increased after ...

descent. Suster graduated from the

University of California, San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Insti ...

with a Bachelor of Arts in Economics. He received his MBA from the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

. Suster is married with two children.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Suster, Mark Accenture people American investors American venture capitalists American people of Romanian-Jewish descent Angel investors Living people University of California, San Diego alumni 1968 births