Shawn Carolan joined Menlo Ventures in 2002 as an associate after earning electrical engineering degrees with highest honors from the University of Illinois and an MBA from Stanford, and was promoted to managing director just two years later at age 30. His technical background led him to some of Menlo's most distinctive early bets, including being the firm's first investor in Siri before Apple acquired it in 2010. His signature deal came in 2011, when he led Menlo's $32 million Series B investment in Uber - a deal a16z had walked away from - valuing the young ride-hailing startup at $322 million. When a SoftBank-led investor group bought roughly half of Menlo's Uber shares in 2018, the sale returned $973 million on an original $10.5 million stake, a 93x return. Carolan has also served on Roku's board through its IPO and currently sits on the boards of Chime, ShipBob, and Monarch Money.
Education
B.S. & M.S. Electrical Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (highest honors)
M.B.A., Stanford Graduate School of Business
Previous Experience
Developer, then Manager of Software Architecture, Open Port Technology - wrote wire protocols in C++, obtained a patent
DARPA-funded fellowship in computational electromagnetics