Mike Ghaffary, the former CEO of Yelp’s Eat24, cofounder of Stitcher, and general partner of Social Capital LP (the venture firm cofounded by early Facebook employee Chamath Palihapitiya), is becoming the fourth partner at Canvas Ventures. Ghaffary is joining general partners Paul Hsiao, Gary Little, and Rebecca Lynn.
While working at Canvas, Ghaffary is going to focus on investing in marketplaces, consumer, and software companies. Prior to joining Canvas, Ghaffary made several marketplace investments including HubHaus, CloudKitchens, and Faire (previously called Indigo Fair). And he also invested in Strava, Optimizely, Metromile, Skip Scooters, Superhuman, and more.
“We are thrilled to welcome Mike to the Canvas Team,” said Lynn in a statement. “He is an experienced operator and investor, with a vast network that he can tap to help our portfolio companies. His investment track record, which includes venture and angel investing, is very impressive.”
Photo: Mike Ghaffary
While working at Yelp, Eat24, TrialPay, and Stitcher for more than 10 years, Ghaffary oversaw 200 partnerships with companies like Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft. And he oversaw Eat24’s acquisition by Yelp and served as CEO of the company as a subsidiary.
“Canvas has a reputation of being a founder’s first call. I had the opportunity to speak with literally dozens of founders who have worked with the partners at Canvas, and they all told me how helpful and thoughtful Canvas has been,” added Ghaffary. “When asked to help, Canvas partners excel at recruiting executive management, advising companies on go-to-market strategies, business development, marketing, financing and more. I like how they operate, and it aligns with how I strive to operate too.”
Ghaffary is a native of Silicon Valley and wrote software at a young age. And Ghaffary earned degrees in computer science at University of Southern California (USC), an MBA from Harvard Business School, and a JD from Harvard Law School. Ghaffary started his career in investments at Summit Partners after graduate school
Canvas Ventures is considered an early-stage venture firm based in Portola Valley, California. The venture firm is known as thesis investors and specializes in marketplaces, new enterprises, and fintech. Previous to Canvas, the general partners at the venture firm led investments in top performing IPOs such as MuleSoft (2017) and Lending Club (2014).
For the inaugural fund in 2013, Canvas raised $175 million. And then Canvas raised $300 million for its second fund in 2016. The Canvas investment team also includes Executive in Residence Jun-Sheng Li.
