Feyza Haskaraman joins in Happy ventures 1 as a partner after several years at Menlo VenturesCrunchbase News has learned exclusively.
In his recent position, Haskaraman will focus on investing in Felicis’ “soon-to-market” AI infrastructure, cybersecurity and application businesses for Felicis, an early-stage company with $3.9 billion in assets under management.
During her time at Menlo, Haskaraman acquired and led investments in startups, including: Semgrep, Astrix, Abacus, Parade AND CloudTrucks — Early focus on how AI is transforming developer security and enterprise infrastructure.
Haskaraman, A WITH graduate born in Turkey, brings engineering experience to her role as an investor. Previously, she worked as an engineer in various firms at various stages of development, including: Analog devices, Fitbit AND Scientific core. She is also an ex McKinsey & Co. consultant who advised multi-billion dollar technology firms and early stage startups on strategy and operations. She joined it only after working with start-ups at McKinsey. Her interest in enterprise capital grew Insight partners.
Her decision to join Menlo Park, California-based Felicis is driven by the shared interests of the firm’s founder and managing partner Aydin Senkut build communities even in “unsexy” industries like infrastructure and security, she said.
“Whether it’s connecting AI creators or bringing together the tech and cybersecurity communities, the mission is the same: believe in the best founders early and help them go the distance,” she told Crunchbase News.
Felicis is currently investing from its tenth fund, valued at $900 million, its largest fund ever. More than 60% of Fund 9 and 10 investments (so far) are in the seed phase; 94% were seed or Series A bets. Felicis led or co-led the round in 83% of its investments.
Nearly $3 of every $4 that was deployed went to AI-related firms, including n8n, Supabase, Mercor, Crusoe’s energy systems, Periodic laboratories, Runway, Feast, Skillful artificial intelligence, Deep Infra, Browser usage, Evertune, By the pool, To read AND LMA.
In the interview, Haskaraman talked more about her investment plans in Felicis, in addition to why she believes we are in the “early stages” of artificial intelligence development. This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Let’s talk more about building community and why you think it’s so essential.
Over the last few years in the enterprise capital ecosystem, simply providing capital has not been enough. You need to surround yourself with the best talent. We are witnessing one of the fiercest talent wars in terms of AI talent.
So one of the things that I’ve spent a lot of time on in my VC profession is building a community, going back to my roots at MIT, surrounding myself with founders and engineers and ops, and also getting into specific fields like cybersecurity – just building a network of CISOs that I communicate with often and really support them as much as I can, and then after all learn about their latest technologies.
These forms of community-building efforts are something Aydin and I will probably be discussing with Felicis as well.
Yes, Aydin (founding father of Felicis) said that he thinks the next generation of corporate investors won’t only select firms, but also build ecosystems. Would you agree with that?
Yes, we fully agree on that. First of all, it is the way of obtaining raw materials. Being able to attract the best founders requires surrounding yourself with a community of individuals. You’re getting very close to them and you wish to be the first person to call when they determine to jump ship and start a business.
As investors joining the motion, we wish to invest in the founders as early as possible. That’s why we wish to immerse ourselves in these communities that provide a fertile foundation for technical founders to come in and build AI.
You were investing in artificial intelligence before the big boom began. Would you say there is too much hype around this place?
You’re right that there is a lot of euphoria around AI, but if you look at the overall landscape, we’ve not seen a technology that would have this big of an impact.
We are already seeing results in enterprises: buyers of those solutions and consumers of those solutions, including myself and our team, are seeing huge increases in productivity. I remain extremely optimistic about the future and investing in AI, which is something we are paid to do and something I enjoy as a former engineer.
Are there any particular features of artificial intelligence that you simply are particularly excited about?
Personally, I think we’re still at the starting of the first round. It’s been three years since ChatGPT was released and modeling firms have really pushed their products into our lives. But if you look at what’s happening now, we have agents who coordinate and automate our work.
How should we secure agent architecture? It’s also evolving across the board, and if you think about the next layer down, like the infrastructure to support these LLMs and agents, I have to ask myself, “What do we need underneath?”
I think a lot will occur and there is great hope for innovations that can appear each in the infrastructure layer and among agents. There’s also the query of “can the apps actually be turned on?” I come back to the importance of securing our interactions with agents and ensuring they are not abused and misused. This is a great time to invest in artificial intelligence.
What stages do you primarily invest in Felicis?
We try to leave as early as possible. But after all, given the size of our fund, we have the freedom to invest each time we feel the return on scale makes sense. However, most of our investments are of a seed nature.
There is a very competitive investment environment today. How do you stand out?
Ultimately, founders value the way you engage with them, your credentials. They appreciate the way you show up in these difficult times, the way you surround them with talents, the way you help them meet their needs. This is of great importance.
I consider winning comes down to the experiences of the previous founders you have left, individuals who can speak highly of you and how you’re employed. I tend to be a huge hustler. Therefore, there is much more added value that we wish to make sure we introduce before investing. And after the investment, we are going to give you the chance to proceed to bring this sort of value to the company.
Are you investing outside of AI?
I invest in AI infrastructure, cybersecurity and AI-enabled applications. We are also on the verge of major changes at the application layer, and the businesses we saw before AI are all being disrupted.
We see artificial intelligence creators, for example, in healthcare solutions. We see code generation solutions in developer stacks. We look at every vertical and horizontal application. I’m very interested in how the application layers of all these industries will get several types of automation.
What is your overall view of the market at the moment?
I feel like I’ve lived three lifetimes in my investing profession – in the last few years. As a VC community and tech ecosystem, we have learned a lot about what is going on on. We see recent ingredients on the market, i.e. artificial intelligence, which didn’t exist during Covid-19.
Think about it, this is not a structural change in the market driven by the economy. This is really recent technology. I’d consider these waves to be separate.
I’m very grateful to be investing at this time. What a time to be investing because AI is truly a game-changer as a technology.