
Introducing David Peterson
Why we are adding a second partner
Today we announced our second fund, Angular Ventures II at $80M.
Even more importantly, however, we announced that David Peterson is joining Angular Ventures as a second full Partner in the firm. David will be leading investments, taking board seats, and working with companies across our portfolio.
Onto the radar. David first crossed our radar when our Head of Platform, Anne Blum, met him as part of her work to set up our portfolio support package. David was Head of Partnerships at Airtable, and Anne wanted to secure a discount on Airtable subscriptions for the portfolio. Impressed, Anne suggested him to me as a guest on our podcast/webinar series. Before officially inviting him on the pod, I met with him 1:1 over Zoom. At Angular, we are heavy Airtable users (we run everything on it), and David and I got into a pretty detailed discussion over Airtable’s features and roadmap. His depth of perspective, customer empathy, and ability to communicate clearly about all aspects of product strategy were off the charts. It was pretty easy to conclude that he’d make a great podcast guest, and the session we recorded on Strategies for Bottoms-up B2B Growth is one of my favorites. That podcast and the rapport we built led to introductions to a few portfolio companies for deeper engagement. That, in turn, led to rave reviews from the founders who worked with him and one team which actually gave him equity as an advisory. We were impressed, founders were impressed — and, as I started to think about expanding the team, David’s name kept popping up in my mind as the best match from a long list.
Long walks in a pandemic park. At some point in the early fall of 2020, I decided to ask David directly if a partner role at a small upstart fund like Angular would be of interest to him. That led to more calls that turned into walks in the park. The backdrop for all of these walks was London in winter in the pandemic — a strangely quiet and deserted place. At some point, we started spending a full day a week together just getting to know each other and talking at length about values, goals, ambitions, skills, weaknesses, and questions. For months, David was the only person outside my family that I actually saw in real life. We walked all over central London: Marylebone, Regent’s Park, Hyde Park. We walked the length of Regent’s Canal from Paddington to Angel. At the height of the pandemic, we found some of the handful of open coffee shops and drank hot hipster coffee in the cold. When the restaurants finally opened, we met for meals outside (the pandemic transformed central London into an unlikely paradise for al fresco dining). We reference-checked each other. We diligenced each other. We challenged each other. We each consulted with our advisors and friends. We consulted with our wives. Ultimately, the answer was clear: we had to do this. One of my closest mentors described the match between David and I as “almost too good to be true, but true.” I couldn’t agree more.
A uniquely relevant toolkit. That David and I share values, goals, and a common vision for Angular Ventures goes without saying. We also share some critical DNA as two East-coast American expats in London. His last role at Airtable involved meeting startups all over Europe, not unlike what a VC does. Similar to me, David’s done some angel investing and even got some “real VC” experience from a great firm (Founder Collective), where he worked as an associate during his MBA at MIT.
Our differences, however, are more interesting than our similarities. David brings a wealth of unique value to Angular Ventures that I believe positions the firm optimally for success and will bring incredible value to founders across our portfolio:
- An entrepreneurial operator’s mindset. David has been an entrepreneur in one form or another for most of his career. He’s founded a company and raised money. He’s joined a startup or two as an early employee. His time at Airtable was deeply entrepreneurial, as he worked closely with Howie and the rest of the Airtable team in the very early days.
- Experience at the forefront of hypergrowth. When David joined Airtable, he jokes, his title was just the word “growth.” It was vague and up to him to determine what he was supposed to do. David was part of a team at Airtable that scaled the business from zero to 200,000 customers and a $5.77B valuation. It’s one thing to grow fast. It’s another thing to grow fast while pioneering an entirely new category. That type of experience is rare — and it’s especially rare in European enterprise tech. That type of grit is what it takes to scale a business in the real world.
- Experience at the cutting edge of modern enterprise applications. Airtable is not just any enterprise software company. It’s a company that represents three of the most important trends in enterprise software: product-led bottoms-up growth, no-code software, and customer-built growth. David is a deep thinker on all of these trends. We’ve spent hours discussing and reflecting on how these playbooks are evolving, and I look forward to working with David to identify, invest in, and support the next generation of product-led, no-code, and/or customer-built growth companies. Knowing David — and knowing how endlessly curious and intellectually humble he is — when the next massive trend in enterprise software appears, I have no doubt that he will be among the first to spot it.

Our approach to partnership. Our approach at Angular is going to be intensely collaborative. As a full Partner, David will be taking board seats and leading investments. I trust David to challenge me, and I am sure I’ll challenge him. We’ve already done some investments together in Fund II, and will probably continue to do some investments that way going forward. We enjoy working together, and I love learning from David. As a firm, however, we plan to bring a full “all hands on deck” approach to our entire portfolio — not just David and myself but the entire broader team including our Venture Partners and Advisory Partners. David is already having a massive impact on companies where Angular invested years ago. Our goal is to be true partners and help each other do what is best for our portfolio companies and our LPs at every point — and we’ve worked to align our incentives to make sure that happens.
My main goal over the next few months will be to do everything I can to help David succeed, but — to be honest — I am not sure he’ll need that much help. The transition from operator to venture investor can be tricky to navigate, but I’m incredibly confident that David will make it look easy. I can’t wait to see what his first moves will be.
David, welcome to Angular Ventures. We are incredibly lucky to have you.
Founders, you can ping David directly at david@angularventures.com. You’ll be glad you did.