Today we're excited to highlight Peter Zakin, who recently joined us as part of our growing investment team in LA. As a former founder, Peter brings in a breadth of entrepreneurial experience to the team and will be closely working with Upfront Partner Kevin Zhang.

Read on to learn more about his focuses and interests here at our firm!

How will you be adding value to Upfront and the portfolio?

The way I view my work as an investor is shaped by my experiences as a former founder. I have a strong view of what it means for an investor to be value-additive to the founders they interact with–whether they’re portfolio companies or not. I feel a strong internal imperative to live up to that standard.

From a practical perspective, I love working with founders on product and GTM strategy. I also have a soft-spot for founders who are navigating the ideation phase. It’s a phase of the startup journey that I have particular empathy for. Collaborating at this stage is also useful as a way of establishing a working relationship with founders prior to any plans for fundraising.

What's a practical piece of advice for founders and entrepreneurs?

The over-production of startup content over the years has made this kind of thing seem cliche, but it’s hard to overstate the importance of being customer-obsessed.

Founders can lose sight of this in a few different ways. One failure-mode is for founders to come up with a really clever solution and then try to work backwards and find customers who might benefit from it. Put simply, they’re building solutions that are searching for problems.

The other related failure-mode I sometimes see is founders falling in love with their long term vision at the expense of their customers. That kind of farsightedness is particularly dangerous.

What gets you excited about meeting a new company or startup?

I have the awesome privilege to learn what some of the smartest people in the world are working on.

Any meeting is a possible glimpse into the future.

What areas will you focus on?

My primary investment areas are developer tools, infrastructure, data, and AI. Essentially, I’m looking to work with startups that are trying to transform the practice of building software or unlock new possibilities for the kinds of applications we can build.

What's the best piece of advice you've ever been given?

You need to be able to wipe the slate clean.

I had a high school teacher who once told me a story about her time in art school. She had an instructor who assigned her a project that lasted a few months. I think it was a self-portrait. When it came time for the class to present their work, the instructor told them to rip it up. He told them that they needed to be willing to wipe the slate clean. The idea was that doing so would let them produce something better on the next go-round.

That’s always stayed with me—that starting over is an opportunity to do better.

Lastly, what are your favorite things about living in LA?

LA is an amazing food city. A few spots I’m particularly fond of: Crudo e Nudo, The Joint, All Time.