Welcoming Amy Cheetham and Tony Liu to Costanoa
As Costanoa approaches its eighth birthday, we are more than ever convinced that our unique approach to venture investing is just what the market needs. We strive to discover the best early-stage, product-driven companies — and serve their founders as an authentic partner throughout the startup lifecycle.
Of course, like any company, Costanoa is only as good as the people behind it. That’s why I’m proud to announce the addition of two highly talented people to our team: Amy Cheetham and Tony Liu.
Amy is an experienced investor, who combines strong analytical skills with a competitive drive honed as a college rower. She previously was on the investment team at Summit Partners where she invested in Infoarmor, Podium.com, and onXmaps. Among other achievements, she’s coming off a successful role as Chief of Staff at Zuora, where she ran North American sales strategy and operations. Her background as an experienced investor combined with hands on operating experience at a rapidly growing and newly public SaaS company will bring a great deal to founders and our team. Amy comes from Maine, the other Show Me State, so she won’t fall for mere storytelling.
Tony comes to us from Databricks, a leading data science and data engineering platform. He was a product manager who opened up new product categories. He was also a key figure in Koalas, an open source software project that made a major advance in helping scale Python data sets. Among other things, Tony has deep experience in customer discovery, a process that involves making judgments about potential new products that we rely upon heavily at Costanoa. He brings technical depth, product experience and deep knowledge of customer problems in data science and data infrastructure to our team. Tony grew up in New Zealand and is already advocating for the Auckland office.
As I’ve said many times, venture capital is a people business. It’s why we focus on finding and developing extraordinary founders — and delivering on our commitment to be an authentic partner who helps them build the business they envisioned. It’s also why we’re so dedicated to finding great people like Amy and Tony who can help us continue to uncover fantastic companies and nurture them to success. Their character and EQ as well as their knowledge, insights and commitment are already extending our team capabilities.
Please join us in welcoming Amy and Tony and follow us as our journey continues!
