Josh Coyne

I spend a lot of my time working with companies in applied AI, productivity/collaboration, fintech, data infrastructure, and cybersecurity. Having said that, I love listening to and learning from any founder who is dead-set on reinventing an industry — regardless of said industry. I’m all ears.

I generally believe that there are only 1-2 things that matter for a startup at any given point in time. My job as an investor and board member is to help startups figure out what that is. And then help advance it. Usually through some combination of asking questions, making connections, helping recruit, pushing when I see potential, and sharing stories from exceptional companies we’ve been lucky enough to work with.

I look for missionaries who are obsessed with the problem they’re solving; for exceptional storytellers who can attract talented people into their orbit; for voracious learners who can quickly adapt to change and take calculated risks; and for relentless executors who are desperate to win.

I never knew what venture capital was growing up. I’m originally from the Midwest and grew up in a blue-collar family where ‘VC’ meant something closer to ‘vacuum cleaner’ or ‘video camera’. It wasn’t until I joined an M&A advisory firm that I got my first real exposure to venture capital. After a few months on the job, I attended a company’s board meeting and met these individuals called “board members”. They were being paid to do a job that I would’ve done for free. It felt like a cheat code to life. Four years later, I joined Kleiner Perkins and never looked back.