Ed Sim is the founder of boldstart ventures, a $1.1 billion AUM Inception-stage venture firm backing technical founders building the Autonomous Enterprise.

Since 2010, boldstart has partnered with founders from first commit, leading inception rounds across cybersecurity, AI infrastructure, and physical AI – the foundational technologies powering the Autonomous Enterprise.

Ed’s Inception Investments/Boards include:

Snyk, Protect AI (acquired by Palo Alto Networks $700M), Keycard, Spectro Cloud, Tessl, Surf AI, BigID, Humanix, Kustomer (acquired by to Meta $1B), Hypernative, Blockdaemon, Superhuman (acquired by Grammarly), Front, Security Scorecard. He also co-founded MState, an enterprise blockchain lab in partnership with IBM, where early investments include Fireblocks.

Ed has been recognized as a top investor on the Forbes Midas Seed List multiple times (profiled here) and ranked No. 1 in Business Insider’s Seed 100 in 2023 and 2024 (profiled here). He also authors What’s 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC, a widely read newsletter on venture capital, enterprise tech, and startup building.

Before boldstart, Ed co-founded Dawntreader Ventures in 1998, leading inception investments and serving on the boards of Greenplum (acquired by EMC, later Pivotal IPO), GoToMeeting (acquired by Citrix), and LivePerson (IPO). He began his career at J.P. Morgan, where he worked on quantitative trading models, and learned the art of sales selling Cutco Knives during college. Ed graduated from Harvard College with a BA in Economics and played on the D1 lacrosse team for four years.

Favorite food: Mexican food, breakfast burritos
Favorite arcade game: Donkey Kong Jr., Galaga
Favorite cartoon character: Underdog
Favorite music: Numb/Encore – Linkin Park & Jay Z
Favorite emoji: fire 🔥 muscle 💪 punch 👊 astonishment 😲, but admit there isn’t an emoji I don’t love.