Sarah Smith, a former executive at Facebook and Quora, has joined investment firm Bain Capital Ventures as its first female partner.
She will be based in San Francisco and will focus on early-stage investments across business and consumer technologies and marketplaces. Most recently, Smith was as an investor at Graph Ventures, where she funded more than 20 seed and Series A investments, including BetterUp, Winnie, Motion, OhmniLabs, Heartbeat, Strive, and Twine.
“Her diverse experience and deep networks across Silicon Valley will enable us to strengthen relationships with current and future founders, including opportunities in consumer, enterprise SaaS, and marketplaces,” said Ajay Agarwal, managing director at Bain Capital Ventures, in a news release.
Bain Capital Ventures is a bi-coastal venture firm that invests in deals ranging from seed to growth in a range of enterprise technology sectors. The firm joins several others who recently expanded the partnership to hire their first female investment partners including Union Square Ventures (Rebecca Kaden), First Round Capital (Hayley Barna), and BoxGroup (Nimi Katragadda).
The moves come at a time when the industry is collectively taking a look at its partnership composition. Only 2% of venture funding went to female founders in 2017, and just 8% of partners at the top of venture capital firms are women.
As Floodgate’s Ann Miura-Ko told Coins2Day in February, the tide is beginning to turn. She said, “I know for a fact there’s a ton of announcements coming out relatively soon about women being recruited into venture firms.”
