Vinay Iyengar Partner

Vinay’s lifelong passion for technology began at age 13, when he learned to code by sneaking into a local community college class. By the age of 17, Vinay had published multiple peer-reviewed research papers on novel algorithms for elliptic curve cryptography. From his freshman dorm at Harvard, he started his first company, which attempted to use natural language processing to build a better email client for enterprises.

Today at Foundation, Vinay leads early-stage investments across the enterprise software stack. He is particularly excited about “picks and shovels” such as cloud/web/data infrastructure, developer tools, and cybersecurity. At the application layer, he is currently exploring generative AI, vertical software, and climate technologies.

Vinay originally joined the Foundation team as an executive in residence, where he helped lead an executive transition at the firm’s portfolio company, Fortanix. Prior, he was a principal at Two Sigma Ventures, where he was a founding member of the firm’s West Coast practice. He began his venture investing career at Bessemer. For the better part of a decade, Vinay has sourced or supported several early-stage investments that are now multibillion dollar companies, including Remote, Upside, and PagerDuty.

Vinay holds a B.A. in computer science and economics from Harvard. He is passionate about youth STEM education and sits on the advisory board of NAF, one of the country’s largest education nonprofits. In his free time, Vinay can be found cheering on his hometown Portland Trail Blazers, listening to a wide range of music (hip-hop to Bollywood to Afrobeats), and writing on his blog, The Vin Diagram.