- CRV (formerly known as Charles River Ventures) recently announced Anna Khan and Kristin Baker Spohn has joined their enterprise practice
CRV (formerly known as Charles River Ventures) recently announced it hired two new partners to the venture firm: Anna Khan and Kristin Baker Spohn. Anna and Kristin are specifically joining the enterprise practice at CRV. Some of CRV’s portfolio companies include Airtable, Drift, Iterable, SignalFx, Signal Sciences, Kong, Postman, and several others.
“We feel incredibly fortunate to have Anna and Kristin join our team. As is often the case, we were introduced to both through friends of CRV, and from our earliest conversations knew they would add tremendously to the firm. Kristin brings an impressive depth of knowledge in healthcare and a charisma that speaks to early entrepreneurs and seasoned executives alike, while Anna has an immense understanding of the SaaS world and an energy that has seen her accomplish so much in a relatively short period of time. Their experience speaks for itself, but it’s the passion and fresh perspectives Anna and Kristin bring to CRV that makes us so excited for the future,” said CRV general partner Murat Bicer.
Anna is joining CRV as the firm’s newest general partner. And she will focus her investments in enterprise software and is specifically interested in the unbundling of large archaic industries. Previously, Anna was a VP at Bessemer Venture Partners and a Forbes 30 under 30 Venture Capital Awardee.
While working at Bessemer, she sourced several breakout startups including Intercom, NewVoiceMedia (acquired by Vonage), and ScaleFactor where she was a board director. And she was also instrumental in deals with Sendgrid and Intacct. Her interested in entrepreneur and venture capital was refined while studying at HBS where she founded Launch X — an accelerator that helps female entrepreneurs learn how to raise funding for their companies.
“I was drawn to CRV for many reasons, but specifically because it’s a deeply diverse group of people. Like me, many of my fellow partners didn’t grow up in the United States but came here to chase a dream. I could see humility and perseverance in every conversation I had with them, and this deeply resonated with me,” added Khan.
Kristin is bringing significant operating experience to her role as a Venture Partner at CRV. She had spent her career building enterprise companies at the intersection of healthcare and technology. And she is coming to CRV from Social Capital and has been an active angel investor with investments that include Viz.ai and Modern Life. As an operator, Kristin scaled two healthcare technology companies leading the go-to-market as Chief Commercial Officer for Collective Health and driving business development and finance functions at Castlight Health through the 2014 IPO. And Kristin began her investing career while at Stanford Graduate School of Business managing deals for the Life Science Angel Network. Prior to business school, she was an investor at Goldman Sachs in the San Francisco healthcare group.
“Throughout my career, as both an operator and investor, I’ve been lucky to work with thoughtful, hard-working people striving to build great and meaningful companies. The CRV team is one of the most talented I’ve worked with, and I’m delighted to partner with them to support game-changing entrepreneurs,” explained Spohn.
