Welcoming Frances Schwiep to Two Sigma Ventures
About 12 months ago, we set out to bring on a new senior investor to Two Sigma Ventures. As a team of people committed to continuous improvement individually and as a group, we wanted someone who could push us, challenge us, and make us better, all while finding highly ambitious entrepreneurs and delivering extraordinary value to their startups.
So I’m thrilled to announce that Frances Schwiep, who fits that description to a tee, has recently joined Two Sigma Ventures as a Principal.
When we met Frances, we immediately felt that we had found a person whose background and personal drive had all the hallmarks of someone who could capitalize on the unique Two Sigma Ventures platform and approach to venture capital. As someone who started her career as a data scientist building products, and who has worked in the venture industry since business school, Frances’s experience and passion for the challenge of helping highly ambitious and growing companies succeed is contagious.
She brings the scientist’s mindset — one that revels in experimentation, iteration, and improvement — that is a crucial part of how we believe venture capital should be done. To get a better sense of what drives and motivates Frances, we asked her why she loves startups and venture capital investing. Here’s what she said:
I realized how much I loved the early phases of tech development, most memorably, when I had the opportunity to build and launch a risk-assessment software for hospitals. I wrote the back-end algorithms and led a team of front-end developers to design, test, iterate/re-tool (countless times), and finally deploy the product to hospitals. I felt proud of what we built, and, on a personal level, I found meaning in this process of creating something from nothing.
That passion still motivates me today, and I think the power of human connection is why you do this job forever. I am genuinely inspired and humbled by the founders who I’m lucky enough to spend time with, and it’s what drives me to be the best I can be in my job.
That humility — understanding that an entrepreneur’s job is 10x harder than ours — is important to us, and it drives Frances and the rest of our team to do our best everyday to help our founders achieve their goals.
In her role, Frances will spend time on things like the future of intelligent apps, decentralized data networks, consumer tech, voice computing, and applied AI/ML, with a focus on the underlying and connected threads of how startups in these areas can leverage digital assets to redefine businesses and build new categories.
We’re thrilled to welcome Frances to our team, and we hope you will join us in saying hello! You can find her through email, LinkedIn, or Twitter.
The views expressed herein are solely the views of the author(s) and are not necessarily the views of Two Sigma Investments, LP or any of its affiliates. They are not intended to provide, and should not be relied upon for, investment advice.
