Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP) has promoted Charles Birnbaum, Amit Karp, and Kristina Shen to partner.
“We’re thrilled to recognise the major contributions that Charles, Amit, and Kristina have made to BVP’s investing practice over the years,” says Ed Colloton, partner & COO of Bessemer Venture Partners. “Each of them has demonstrated deep sector knowledge and a keen ability to spot standout companies early. As partners, they will each develop their own investment roadmaps and continue to significantly contribute to our practice in helping entrepreneurs build world class businesses.”
Birnbaum joined BVP’s New York office in 2013. Charles is actively involved with many BVP portfolio companies, including Main Street Hub, BrightBytes, Bread Finance, and August Home. He currently serves on the board of Zopa, United Capital, Fabric, Spruce and Eave. Birnbaum’s vast network and startup experience have been important to BVP’s early stage financial services portfolio, which includes high-potential companies such as Betterment and Quantopian. Birnbaum was involved in the exits of Yodle, 2U, and Kroll Bond Ratings. As partner, Birnbaum will continue to focus on financial services, consumer, and education investments.
Karp joined BVP in 2012 in the firm’s New York office, where he worked closely with BVP’s portfolio companies, including Blue Apron and Fuze. In 2014, Karp moved to BVP’s Israel office, taking his deep knowledge of building high-growth U.S. startups to Israeli companies. Karp currently serves on the board of otonomo and ScyllaDB. He is actively involved in the firm’s investments in Oryx Vision, Yotpo, Prospera, and Cloudinary, and the successful exit of CloudLock. As partner, Karp will lead investments in high-growth Israeli startups across all industries, including edge computing, machine learning, cybersecurity, consumer, and across all company growth-stages. With Karp’s promotion BVP is doubling the number of partners in Israel, a decade after opening the Herzliya office, and where the firm has invested in more than 30 startups.
Shen joined BVP in 2013. She works closely with BVP’s portfolio companies, including Service Titan, RainforestQA, Vidyard, Helpful, and Gainsight. Shen was actively involved in the successful exit of Instructure and is the BVP lead on the boards of Glint, DoubleDutch and Retail Solutions. Shen’s strong investment performance and operational insight has been crucial to the success of the firm’s best-in-class cloud investing practice. BVP has the largest cloud computing portfolio in the venture industry, and has been an investor in more cloud IPOs than any other venture firm. As partner, Shen will continue to invest in enterprise technology companies, specifically in the areas of human assisted AI, enterprise voice, enterprise mobile and next-generation HR.
