Ed Sim is the founder of boldstart ventures, a $1.1B AUM venture firm that invests at Inception—helping the bold start. Since 2010, boldstart has been the first check for technical founders building across cybersecurity, AI infrastructure, physical AI, agents, and the occasional wonderfully weird thing.

Notable investments and board roles include Snyk, Protect AI (acq. Palo Alto Networks), Keycard AI, Surf AI, Kustomer (acq. Meta), Superhuman (acq. Grammarly), Tessl, Hypernative, Blockdaemon, Spectro Cloud, SecurityScorecard, and Front. The broader boldstart portfolio includes Clay, Generalist, and Topos Bio. Ed also co-founded MState with IBM, which backed Fireblocks at formation.

Names to 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), Ed authors What’s 🔥 in AI/Infra/VC, a widely read newsletter on AI infrastructure and venture.

With more than 30 years of venture investing experience, Ed previously co-founded Dawntreader Ventures, where he led inception investments in Greenplum (EMC, later Pivotal IPO), GoToMeeting (Citrix), and LivePerson (IPO). He began his career at J.P. Morgan building quantitative trading models and learned sales by selling Cutco knives in college.

Harvard College, BA Economics. Four years D1 lacrosse.

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.