It’s been an incredibly fun journey building FirstMark Capital. Since we started in 2008, we’ve been honored to have over 50 entrepreneurs make the decision to partner with us and we’ve worked tirelessly to earn that trust. We’ve focused on building an “entrepreneur first” mission, a family culture, a world-class network, a powerful collaborative community infrastructure, and innovative programming that our companies leverage to catalyze their businesses. Five years and two funds later, we’ve decided to fortify these efforts by hiring our first new partner.

We’re very excited to announce the addition of Matt Turck to FirstMark Capital as a Managing Director. Companies are always on the lookout for great talent – we are no different. As we thought about adding a partner, we cast a select net across entrepreneurs, VCs, angel investors and executives as well as many other members of the community. So why did we hire Matt?

• Matt is an entrepreneur. He left a very successful early career in law to start TripleHop with Renaud Laplanche (now Lending Club’s CEO) in 2000. After the bubble collapsed, they persevered and continued to build the company under difficult circumstances. That experience of launching a company in tough times, sticking through the fire, successfully scaling an enterprise business, and ultimately selling the business to Oracle five years later has incredible lessons in it. Loyalty, grit (a key theme in our CEO Summits), persistence, and integrity. Who wouldn’t want that on their team?
• Matt has seen big company life. Matt stayed at Oracle for a few years, where he got to see how an unblinking sales-oriented culture operated. He helped take new products brought in via acquisition and launch them into Oracle’s mainstream enterprise channel globally. If you’ve ever wondered why selling through channel partners is hard for a startup, Matt can tell you why first hand and help you navigate the pitfalls.
• Matt is an investor. He was one of the founders of Bloomberg Ventures, where he experienced both starting and investing in companies. The skills of building, hiring and mentoring are learned through experience. Matt has built that experience over the last several years. In addition to his activity at Bloomberg, Matt has been an active angel, personally investing in several companies in the NYC ecosystem.
• Matt is a community leader. Many people talk about “passions” but do little about it. Matt created and runs one of the biggest Meetups in NYC – the Big Data Meetup (technically, the NYC Data Business Meetup) – with over 2800 members. It wasn’t for work, it was an outgrowth of his passion! We want to work with people like that. At FirstMark, we’ve invested heavily in our internal community building and fostered a number of grass roots organizations (like the Turing Fellows; a class at NYU called Ready, Fire, Aim!; Ingenuity, TechStars, etc). As an aside, expect even bigger things from Matt’s meetup!
• Matt is a great fit. Probably the most important thing in any business, and especially in a long term one like venture, is the chemistry of the team. Does this person share our value and ethics? As we have gotten to know Matt over the years, we have become increasingly impressed not only by his intellect and work ethic but as importantly his integrity and demeanor. Matt shares our passions about technology, innovation and entrepreneurship in a way that aligns perfectly with us.

In short, he’s the total package: an entrepreneur, an angel, a big company guy, a community leader, and most importantly, someone who embodies the virtues and philosophy we live by at FirstMark. Welcome Matt!

(For Matt’s perspective, click here.)