Cynthia B. Padnos (Cindy Padnos) is the founder and Managing Partner of Illuminate Ventures. See sector focus and contact routes.
Cynthia B. Padnos (Cindy Padnos) is the founder and Managing Partner of Illuminate Ventures, a women-led Micro VC that invests exclusively in pre-seed and seed-stage B2B/enterprise software companies, particularly in cloud computing, SaaS, mobile software, and Big Data. She typically serves as a company’s first institutional investor, deploying check sizes ranging from $1 million to $5 million after angel rounds but before Series A. Her distinctive thesis focuses on “further along” teams with demonstrated resiliency and the ability to show rapid, measurable ROI, avoiding raw startups, hardware, and consumer internet. Notable portfolio companies include Red Aril (acquired by Hearst), WildPockets (acquired by Autodesk), BrightEdge, and Allocadia.
StartupFundraising tracks this investor record from SEC filings and announced rounds, updating focus, location and portfolio history as new data lands. Use it to gauge fit before an outreach, then widen the search to investors in Oakland.
Investors like Cynthia B. Padnos · Full investor directory · Investor access · Company funding database