Ed Sim is the founder of boldstart ventures, a true believer and partner from Inception for bold founders reinventing the enterprise stack. He loves working with engineering-driven founders with bold ideas and laser-sharp focus on product well before writing their first lines of code.

Ed is currently on the boards of Snyk, BigID, Blockdaemon, Protect AI, Env0, and a number of other cybersecurity and infrastructure startups. Other notable inception investments include Kustomer where he was on the board until exiting to Meta, Superhuman, Security Scorecard, and Front. Ed also co-founded MState in 2017, an enterprise blockchain lab in partnership with IBM, where seed investments include Fireblocks. He is a true partner from inception—helping bold founders start, scale, exit and have fun along the way.

Ed has been recognized as a Top 10 investor on the Forbes Midas Seed List for the last 3 years (profiled here) and also as the No.1 seed investor in the Business Insider Seed 100 for 2023 and 2024. Ed also writes a widely followed weekly newsletter, What’s 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC, covering the latest in venture capital, enterprise tech, and building startups.

Prior to boldstart, Ed was a Co-Founder of Dawntreader Ventures, where he led inception investments in Greenplum (sold to EMC, Pivotal—IPO), GoToMeeting (sold to Citrix), and LivePerson (IPO). Previous to that, he worked at J.P. Morgan, where he learned how to code and build quantitative trading models. Ed’s first job while in college was learning the art of true sales as a representative for Cutco Knives where he sold many a Homemaker + 8. Ed graduated from Harvard College with a BA in Economics and was a four-year letterman and award winner on the men’s lacrosse team.

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.