Ed Sim is the founder of boldstart ventures, a dedicated Inception partner to bold technical founders building the autonomous enterprise.

Ed serves on the boards of Snyk, Keycard, Tessl, Blockdaemon and other top cybersecurity and infrastructure startups. Notable inception board roles and investments include Protect AI (sold to Palo Alto Networks for $700M), Kustomer (acquired by Meta for $1B), Superhuman (sold to Grammarly), Security Scorecard, and Front. He also co-founded MState, an enterprise blockchain lab in partnership with IBM, where early investments include Fireblocks.

Ed has been recongnized as a top investor on the Forbes Midas Seed List for the last four years (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.