- IVP has promoted Cack Wilhelm to general partner after three years with the late-stage firm.
- She cut her teeth in investment banking and learned enterprise sales at Oracle and Cloudera.
- As an investor, she brings expertise and a perspective that helps founders grow their startups.
Last February, Cack Wilhelm sat poolside watching her daughter take swim lessons while she typed out an email on her phone to the partners at her venture-capital firm, IVP. She urged them to invest in a data startup called Cribl.
At the time, a savvy team of data buffs had grown Cribl to annual revenues of single-digit millions and doubled its customers. The company had recently topped off its coffers with a $35 million funding round led by Sequoia.
Wilhelm wanted to invest before the startup could begin the next fundraising process.
"The world has changed where we don't have the luxury of sitting around," she wrote in the email.
The partners met with Cribl, and four months later, Wilhelm landed a coveted spot in the firm's new funding round.
That tenacity has served Wilhelm well her whole career — as a professional runner, an investment banker, a salesperson, and now a venture capitalist. On Monday, IVP promoted Wilhelm to general partner after three years with the late-stage firm. She becomes the firm's second-ever female general partner following Mary Jane Elmore's promotion in 1983.
Founders like Clint Sharp, the CEO of Cribl, and Jim Rose, the CEO of CircleCI, describe her as a "genuinely helpful" investor, whose experience and knowledge of enterprise software are "instrumental" to growing their businesses.
"Cack's superpower is her competitive drive and desire for excellence in everything she does," said Tom Loverro, a general partner at IVP. From winning over founders to mentoring new investors, she gets results, he added.
From pro athlete to venture investor
With record amounts of venture dollars up for grabs, founders have more options in investors. Insiders say they're looking for partners with the relevant skillsets and networks to help them scale, not just another check.
Wilhelm is a special breed of investor as a former operator with sales experience.
After a stint as a professional runner failed to bring her a ticket to the last Beijing Olympics, she went into investment banking, where she worked on tech and media deals and became an "Excel nerd," she confesses. Shortly after Lehman Brothers crashed into bankruptcy, Wilhelm said she shifted focus from initial public offerings to distressed startups, which were looking for money to stretch their runways or acquirers to buy them out.
The bank had an unwritten rule that if an analyst booked a meeting at a venture firm, they could join the meeting. The free lunch at these meetings was motivation enough for Wilhelm to pound the phones, she said.
The experience set her up for what was next. She left banking to pursue a career in enterprise sales at Oracle and Cloudera, selling database systems to other companies. During that time, she said she learned the fundamentals of product-market fit — the first step to building a successful business — and gained a new respect for founders.
In 2014, she took her knowledge of enterprise software and went to intern at Scale Venture Partners, an early-stage venture firm focused on the category. She ended up staying three years and has been in venture ever since.
"'I'm a former salesperson, but venture capital has a strong element of sales. It is about connecting with people, building rapport, and having them choose you," she said, adding that she still gets the "thrill" of closing deals.
Founders also benefit from her sales chops, said Sharp, the CEO of Cribl.
"Her tenacity and determination to build her portfolio and create meaningful investments and relationships really stands out to us, and makes her an invaluable part of the Cribl team," he said.
