Team
Root Ventures is a San Francisco-based deep tech seed fund. As engineers ourselves, we specialize in leading initial funding for founders tackling new technical opportunities. Our initial investments typically range from $3-5M. With a selective few new deals a year and 2/3 of our funds in reserve, we are committed to being a long-term partner.
- Avidan Ross Managing Partner Avidan is the Founding Partner of Root Ventures. Previously, he designed industrial robotics for Food Network's kitchens and was CTO of CIM Group, where he focused on industrial investing, and worked as an embedded application developer at Excite@Home. Avidan has a BA in Computer Science from Columbia University.
- Kane Hsieh Partner Before joining Root Ventures, Kane was founder and Head of Product at Brilliant Bicycle Co. He has also worked as an early-stage investor at RRE Ventures, a software engineer at Romotive, and a Project Manager at Microsoft. Kane has an AB in Computer Science from Harvard.
- Chrissy Meyer Partner Chrissy has spent the past decade developing and shipping hardware as an engineering manager at Apple and Square. She was a founding team member at Pearl Automation, a vehicle technology startup. Chrissy has an MS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford and a BSEE from Rose-Hulman.
- Lee Edwards Partner Lee was most recently CTO at Teespring. Previously, Lee was a mechanical engineer at iRobot, a software engineer at Pivotal Labs, Lead Engineer at SideTour (acquired by Groupon in 2013), and engineering manager for GrouponLive. He graduated from Olin College of Engineering with a degree in Systems Engineering.
- Zodi Chalat Associate Zodi began his career as an engineer working on ML infrastructure at Netflix before moving into venture investing. He previously studied CS and comparative literature at Yale.
- Ben Lovell Head of Operations Ben worked at a16z, Menlo Ventures, and FT Partners to build operational automation and data pipelines. He also cofounded an adtech startup for rideshare companies. Ben graduated with a BA from Stanford University.
- Laelah Reino Operations Manager Laelah has spent over 15 years in marketing for films, consumer products, and subscription-based services. Laelah Reino has a BA in Business Administration with a Marketing concentration from Drexel University.