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Who is Neal Dempsey?

Sailed around the world?
Ran major marathons?
Climbed the highest summits?

Check, check, and check.

Who is Neal Dempsey?

Sailed around the world?

Ran major marathons?

Climbed the highest summits?

 

Check, check, and check.

Who is Neal Dempsey?

Sailed around the world? Ran major marathons? Climbed the highest summits?

Check, check, and check.

Neal is a thrill-seeker and a big believer in taking chances, which are mindsets he carries into his investment strategies too. He began his investing career by taking a chance on a young founder who had a compelling story and a commitment to see it through. Although the company was outside of the technology industry, Neal was so impressed with the passion and determination of the founder that he became a personal investor. That company? Starbucks.

Working with this kind of entrepreneur who was undeniably passionate about their vision set the basis for Neal’s investment thesis.

For over 25 years, that kind of dedication and grit have been traits Neal always looks for in the people he works with and invests in. It’s these people—the ones with a clear vision and the tenacity to see it through—who build successful companies.

Since then, he and his partners have achieved over 30 IPOs and over $3 Billion in returns. Having become a Silicon Valley legend for investing in some of the most well-known tech companies of all time, Neal now focuses on seed and angel investing as well as mentoring founders and students. Neal’s ability to drive successful outcomes has landed him on the Forbes Midas List, which lists the top 100 venture capitalists in the world.

Investment Strategy

Passionate about supporting unique ventures, Neal seeks out innovation that happens in unexpected places around the globe—and he’s always looking for more.
 
He believes some of the best ideas for solving real-world problems happen outside of Silicon Valley and knows that founders in remote places need mentorship and funding as much as anyone anywhere. Some of Neal’s investments have been in places like Saskatoon, Canada; Helsinki, Finland; Groningen, Netherlands; Barcelona, Spain; Berlin, Germany; and other tucked-away areas with burgeoning tech communities but fewer resources to make them successful.
Learn more about Neal's investments

Mentorship

Neal is a highly-regarded speaker, author, and adjunct professor at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business, where he teaches a CEO and Board Leadership and Governance class to MBA students.
 
Beyond the classroom, Neal has extensive experience working within the entrepreneurship environment and often mentors and meets with budding entrepreneurs. This led to the launch of Neal’s Running Start: an intensive mentorship program that brings entrepreneurs from around the world to Silicon Valley to learn from Neal and his network.

Active Ally

Along with mentoring entrepreneurs, Neal is an active ally for encouraging more women into the investment community. Having decades of experience in venture capital, seeing firsthand the gender gap in the industry throughout the years, and knowing that the lack of women entering into the field is due to systemic barriers, Neal is committed to shifting the unbalanced statistics.
 
With this, Neal has partnered with the research initiative, The Allyship. Neal is driving research questions and contributing to a roadmap that aims to accelerate the current pace of social change and get at least 30% of women to make up the space in the investment industry.
 
And he wants to hear actionable insights from women living these experiences, so he’s started a podcast called Passing the Mic to learn from women VCs and entrepreneurs about the matter.
About Passing the Mic

Giving Back

Giving back is a cornerstone of Neal’s investing philosophy. Attributing much of his success to receiving help and support from others financially and otherwise, Neal knows the difference a helping hand can make.
 

Beyond volunteering at the University of Washington, he has endowed scholarship funds for students, young assistant professors, and athletes at the University of Washington, Willamette University, and Claremont McKenna College. A lover of the outdoors, Neal serves on the board of ACES, an environmental organization in Aspen, Colorado. He is also an Uplift Family Services board veteran, which recently merged with Pacific Clinics to operate as Pacific Clinics: California’s largest community-based nonprofit provider of high-quality behavioral health care. The two health care providers bring together more than 150 years of experience, and with their team of more than 2,000 employees who speak 22 languages, they are dedicated to offering hope and helping thousands of children and their family members recover from trauma, such as abuse, severe neglect, addiction, and poverty.

Gates Volunteer Service Award Recipients

Neal and his wife, Jan Dempsey, are proud recipients of the Gates Volunteer Service Award and have supported the UW generously for over 40 years.
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