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Hadley Harris

Hadley Harris is a co-founder and General Partner at Eniac Ventures[1], where he focuses on seed-stage investing in AI application and tooling layers, data and developer tooling, SaaS, and healthcare[4]. He leads the firm's long-term strategy development[4].

Prior to venture capital, Harris held operational roles at two venture-backed startups. He served as Vice President and Head of Business and Market Strategy at Vlingo from October 2007 to July 2011[7], where he worked on product, strategy, and marketing before the company's acquisition by Nuance for $225 million[4]. He subsequently became Chief Business Officer at Thumb from July 2011 to June 2013[6].

Harris holds a Bachelor of Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania[13] and an MBA in Entrepreneurship from the Wharton School, completed in May 2006[14]. His earlier career included positions at Microsoft[10], Samsung Global Strategy Group[9], Charles River Ventures[8], Pegasystems[11], and PricewaterhouseCoopers[12].

Insights & ideas

Hadley Harris argues that seed investing works best as a founder-first bet rather than a pure thesis play, pointing to Attentive as a case where he backed operators he trusted before the product idea was even fully formed [2]. He values founders with a strong, even contrarian point of view on at least one thing, rather than broad conviction across every issue, and believes founders should keep VCs somewhat at arm's length until they are truly ready to engage [2]. He also frames early customer discovery, citing how Attentive's founder spoke with over 100 potential customers before building product, as a practice that has since become more common but was distinctive at the time [2].

He sees his own role as a hybrid between founder and VC, arguing that building and running your own firm as a founding partner, rather than joining an established multi-stage fund as an employee, is what sustains long-term interest in venture investing after years as an operator [2]. His career view of mobile as the next computing shift came from firsthand observation in Korea, comparing 4G adoption and iPhone-driven usage there to the still-2G US market [1].

Experience

  1. Founding General Partner
    ENIAC VenturesSep 2010 to Present
  2. Chief Business Officer
    ThumbJul 2011 to Jun 2013
  3. Vice President & Head of Business & Market Strategy
    VlingoOct 2007 to Jul 2011
  4. Summer Associate
    Charles River VenturesJul 2007 to Aug 2007
  5. Manager
    Samsung Global Strategy GroupAug 2006 to Apr 2007
  6. Product Manager
    MicrosoftJun 2005 to Sep 2005
  7. Engineering Team Lead
    Pegasystems2000 to 2004
  8. Software Developer
    PricewaterhouseCoopers1999 to 2000

Education

Media & appearances

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