Yeehaw! Elevating Amanda “Robby” Robson to Partner at Cowboy Ventures
Thrilled to share our awesome Cow-lleague Amanda aka “Robby” Robson has been promoted to be a Partner at Cowboy Ventures
By: Aileen (on behalf of Team Cowboy)
Thrilled to share our awesome Cow-lleague Amanda aka “Robby” Robson has been promoted to be a Partner at Cowboy Ventures.
If you haven’t yet met her, you’ll hear from those who know her that Robby is a hugely positive force of nature — as an investor, teammate, and friend. We’re grateful she joined our small team almost three years ago.
Before Robby joined, Ted and I had some deep conversations about the future of Cowboy Ventures. We’re no spring chickens. Could we find some special folks to add to the team who might be the future of Cowboy Ventures, to build it into something even better?
We started asking around about the smartest next-gen investors who build strong trust with founders, have a great nose for earliest stage opportunities and tech trends, are well respected by their peers, and are more about “we” than “me”. Amanda’s name came up quickly (with the help of the awesome Katie Bukstein Halimi).
By coincidence, at the time my husband was co-founder/CTO of an autonomous software company working on raising a series B. One night he mentioned, “we’ve been having some meetings with a firm and the senior associate seems really smart and asks great questions. Please don’t talk to her until our process is done, but you should probably talk with her.” Her name? Amanda Robson.
Alignment with Cowboy Values
Since Robby joined, in addition to making commitments to fantastic enterprise and developer-oriented teams like Byteboard, Drata, LaunchNotes, mobile.dev and SVT Robotics, our team has worked on defining Cowboy’s mission and values. Our mission is to deliver consistent top quartile venture returns, while having a positive impact on our industry. It’s a mission we think is pretty unique and motivating.
Robby is squarely aligned with this mission. She’s a top-notch investor and a learning animal who goes above and beyond to help Cowboy-backed portfolio companies and teammates be successful. And, she has multiple side hustles working to make tech a more inclusive industry, as the co-lead of the VC Champions program at All Raise, working nights and weekends on the Open Source Startup Podcast with fellow software infrastructure investor Tim Chen, building the VC community as a board member at NextGen, and cultivating an amazing network of female operator angel investors to help change who is on the cap tables of the next generation of leading tech companies.
Robby is an example of unusually great servant-leadership in the venture business. If you haven’t had the pleasure of meeting her yet, some quick takes from folks who have worked with her over the years, in the context of Cowboy Values:
Cowboy Value: Cowboys work as a team
“When I considered which fund to join, team was by far the most important: how they collaborated internally, with portfolio companies, and with the ecosystem. Robby outperforms across all three. She is always ready to support on every tasks, big or small, and makes every aspect of Cowboy feel like we operate as a team.” — Jill Williams, Principal at Cowboy Ventures
Cowboy Value: See potential to blaze new trails
“I walk away from every meeting with Robby with some new insight, clearer vision, more energy — often all of the above. We’re extremely lucky to have her in our corner.” — Leland Takamine, CEO & cofounder of mobile.dev, a Cowboy portfolio company
Cowboy Value: Venture as a craft
“Robby is able to see the macro and micro and add value everywhere in between. She’s the type of investor you’re told by other founders to look for, so appreciative of when you find, and then inspired to team up with. Robby is a true partner to us and we couldn’t be more thankful for that.” — Adam Markowitz, CEO & cofounder of Drata, a Cowboy portfolio company
Cowboy Value: Ready to ride
“From working weekends to help build my series A pitch deck, to helping create a financial forecast when we only had one finance point person with no financial planning experience, to giving me, a first time founder, really valuable feedback on all sorts of topics — Robby has your back and will roll up her sleeves to really help.” — Rylan Hamilton, CEO & cofounder of 6 River Systems (acquired by Shopify for $450m, Robby sourced and worked on Norwest’s Series A investment)
Cowboy Value: Room around the campfire
“It’s really hard to put words to describe Robby, as she is truly one of a kind in venture. She brings a combination of rare qualities:
1) Brings positive energy in every interaction in any moment
2) Authentic when it comes to building relationships
3) Hustles like a founder
4) Discovers insights in the developer space that are super smart but non-obvious
5) Ensures diversity on cap tables, even on podcast guest list too.
In this space just having 1) and 2) will cause someone to stand out. Robby brings all 5 to everyone that she interacts with.” — Tim Chen of Essence VC, Cowboy co-investor & co-host with Robby of the Open Source Startup Podcast
In her blog post about her new role, Robby says “thanks for taking a chance on me.” The feeling is totally mutual. You left a larger, more established multi-stage firm to work with a much smaller, boutique, seed-focused startup team. You’re a risk-taking entrepreneur at heart who sees the potential for opportunities all around us.
THANK YOU for all you’ve already contributed as a key member of Team Cowboy, and here’s to all that’s ahead.
If you’re a founder building in the enterprise infrastructure, developer tools, data, logistics or security spaces, or beyond — get in touch with us, and especially Amanda@cowboy.vc — we’re ready to ride with you!
