This year was filled with many milestones and we’re grateful for our LPs, portfolio companies, founders and entrepreneurs, and the greater tech community who have been a huge part of our journey. From backing incredible founders to hosting various Upfront events, the year wouldn’t have been the same without the people involved. And as we head into the new year, we wanted to take a moment to share some of those highlights from 2022.
To kick things off, we started with the Upfront Summit at the Banc of California Stadium - bringing 1,500+ people together over two days filled with networking, content, and entertainment. After a 2020 hiatus from COVID, we were joined back on stage by a number of standout speakers such as Anne Applebaum to discuss the state of Ukraine, Russell Wilson and Harry Wilson who shared the benefits of having a neutral mindset, Jeffrey Katzenberg to talk about the future of digital tech, and more.
Head over to our YouTube channel for a full list of our speaker sessions.
In addition to the annual Upfront Summit, other Upfront events were also back in full swing post-COVID. From our community breakfasts to sunset happy hours, our rooftop deck brought together founders, entrepreneurs, and investors from all over the city. We also held intimate dinners for local founders and hosted industry-specific happy hours in and outside of the firm through efforts such as Aditi Maliwal’s and Katherine Zhang’s Women Leaders in Fintech dinner series and Kobie Fuller and Evan Hamilton’s Black Wealth and Power Expansion Series.
One of the most exciting news of the year for Upfront was the close of our 7th early-stage fund of $280M alongside our third $200M growth vehicle and $185M in our continuation fund - giving us a total of $650M active dollars to invest! Check out Mark’s blog on our announcement here.
And as we worked our way through the ups and downs of the VC landscape, we were heads down in growing the Upfront team and footprint - in fact, we’ve hired 10 new additional full-time employees this year alone. Most recently, we welcomed our newest Partner Nick Kim, who is an LA native focusing on seed and early-stage investing here at the firm. We also officially opened our second office in San Francisco - with a team of six investing professionals currently working out of the space.
While 2022 had many milestones, it didn’t come without its challenges as well. But we will continue to persevere as we look forward to what 2023 holds for us and the entire tech community. We also hope to continue doing what we do best - supporting founders and entrepreneurs on their startup-building journey.
If you like to stay in the loop on all things Upfront, sign up for The Syndicate, our quarterly newsletter here and our Upfront events here.
You can also follow us on our socials (Instagram/Twitter/LinkedIn) for more frequent updates throughout the year. We look forward to bringing you more insights and updates in the year ahead.
Happy holidays and we hope to see you in 2023!
Team Upfront
