Vinnie Lauria

Vinnie Lauria is an entrepreneur-turned-venture capitalist who co-founded Golden Gate Ventures in 2011, an early-stage VC firm in Southeast Asia with $250M AUM, 70+ companies, and 9 unicorns in its portfolio. He is a Kauffman Fellow, a Tsinghua University EMBA candidate, and a guest lecturer at the National University of Singapore. Recognized as a Top Startup Mentor by the Founder Institute, Vinnie stood out among 2,500 mentors. Before Golden Gate Ventures, Vinnie launched two startups in Silicon Valley: Meetro, a location-based chat service, and Lefora, a forum hosting platform acquired by CrowdGather in 2010 after growing to over 100,000 communities. He also founded the Silicon Valley NewTech meetup, connecting hundreds of startups with a monthly audience of over 10,000 members. Earlier in his career, Vinnie spent four years at IBM, shaping the company’s approach to enterprise social software.