Cherian Mathew is the Founder and Partner at Firebolt Ventures. See sector focus and contact routes.
Cherian Mathew is the Founder and Partner at Firebolt Ventures, a Palo Alto-based venture capital firm he launched in 2014 after earlier roles as a VC at Draper Associates and August Capital and as an engineer on Microsoft Bing’s search algorithm team. His investment thesis targets early-stage and seed-stage software companies, with a focus on enterprise B2B applications, fintech, consumer software, AI, and cybersecurity, primarily in the U.S. market. Firebolt typically writes checks between $500,000 and $5 million and usually coinvests alongside established firms, though it leads rounds when the traditional VC model is unsuitable. Notable portfolio companies include Deel, Groq, and BetterUp, with five of Mathew’s first ten investments reaching valuations of $100 million or more. The firm distinguishes itself through a data-driven, algorithmic approach to identifying opportunities, leveraging Mathew’s background in machine learning and petabyte-scale data sets. Mathew holds a Master’s degree from Stanford and a Bachelor’s in Computer Science from IIT Kanpur, which supports his technical edge in evaluating software startups.
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